Jim Smith - Future Ratboy and the Attack of the Killer Robot Grannies

‘Squeak!’ squeaked something, and seeing as it couldn’t have been Bird, because he was just a cuddly toy bird that couldn’t speak, I looked around the bin for something else that might have made the noise. AND THAT WAS WHEN I SPOTTED THE RAT.

‘RAAAAAT!’ I screamed. Not that anyone could hear me, what with the lightning bolt hitting the bin.

I woke up and didn’t know where I was. Then I remembered I was in a bin.

I lifted the lid and jumped out. It was morning and the little apple tree in my front garden was now a gigantic, ancient one. ‘Coooool!’ I said, and I looked up at my house, which was two times taller and more metal-looking than I remembered. ‘Also coooool!’ I smiled. I like saying ‘cool’, in case you haven’t noticed.

‘Mu-um! I’m ho-ome!’ I shouted, knocking on the front door.

The door whooshed open like one of the ones at my local supermarket, and an old lady with a shiny metal head and red traffic-light eyes peered down at me. ‘HELLO DEAR,’ she bleeped, in a robotic voice.

‘Hmmm . . . you’re not my mum,’ I said, scratching my chin and looking her up and down. She had skinny metal legs, just like a robot would, except at the end of them were clippy-cloppy brown shoes. Dented into her metal skirt in scary-looking capitals was the name ‘MAVIS 3000’.

bleeped MAVIS 3000, her mouth not moving.

‘So where are my mum and dad and little sister?’ I said, peering past her into the hallway. Usually our hallway is filled up with trainers and coats and tennis balls and things like that. Now it was just an empty metal tube with flashing buttons on the walls.

MAVIS 3000 opened a little door on her square, metal belly and stuck her claw-hand in, pulling out a mug. ‘NICE CUP OF TEA?’ she bleeped, pouring a sip’s worth into her non-closing mouth. ‘MMM,’ she pinged, like my mum’s microwave, and a cloud of tea steam hissed out of her nostrils and into my face.

‘DIVE FOR COVER!’ I shouted in my superhero voice, not diving for cover at all. My scuba mask had misted up from all the tea steam, and I backed away down the path, bumping into the green plastic wheelie bin I’d just jumped out of.

Bird fluttered out of the bin. ‘WAAAHHH!’ he screeched, peering up at MAVIS 3000, and he flew through the air towards me and tucked himself under my arm.

I glanced down at Bird, forgetting about the crazy robot granny for a millisecond, and wiped the tea steam off my scuba mask.

‘Something weird’s going on here,’ I mumbled, poking Bird’s fat furry belly, and he squawked. ‘Bird doesn’t ruffle his fur . . . or fly through the air . . . or squawk when you poke his belly!’

I peered into Bird’s shiny plastic eyes, and they blinked. ‘YOU’RE NOT BIRD!’ I shouted.

screeched Bird, copying what I’d just said, and I was just about to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming, when I heard MAVIS 3000 clip-clopping down the path towards me.

‘FANCY A BISCUIT?’ she bleeped, towering above us like a lamppost, which is my second name in case you forgot. A chocolate digestive whirred out of a slot in her belly and she pincered it with her claw and slid it into her mouth. ‘YUMMY,’ she bleeped, and a crunching sound blurted out of the little speaker on her chest.

You know when you chomp on a chocolate digestive and the crumbs start flying out of your mouth? That’s what was happening now. Except that the crumbs flying out of MAVIS 3000’s mouth were zooming towards my face like billions of tiny bullets. ‘ARRGGHH!’ screamed a flower sticking out of the front lawn, as a crumb shot through one of its petals. Which was weird, because I’d never heard a flower scream before.

‘OOf !’ groaned a snail, its shell exploding from a biscuity bullet.

‘Operation Don’t Get Hit By A Chocolate Digestive Crumb!’ I cried, diving into the wheelie bin with Not Bird. My house was on a hilly road, and I’d always wondered what it’d be like to roll down it - NOW WAS MY CHANCE!

‘Let’s get the uncoolness out of here!’ I screamed, as the bin began to move and we zoomed down the slope towards Shnozville High Street.

The bin crashed to a stop and I crawled out. We’d bumped into a pair of legs with yellow trainers on the end of them. The trainers hovered a centimetre off the pavement, which was lucky, because underneath them was a worm going for his morning stroll.

‘Hey, your bin just crashed into my legs!’ shouted the owner of the legs, who was an angry-looking lady with a see-through TV screen floating in front of her face. She wasn’t actually even looking at me, she was more staring at her screen.

‘Good morning! It’s Sunkeels the two-hundred-and-seventeenth of Plurgtember, Eight Million and Twelve, and this is today’s news . . .’ said the man on the screen.

‘Sunkeels?’ I said, looking around at Shnozville High Street.

The buildings were about a hundred and seventeen times taller and shinier than I remembered, and the cars floated more than usual. ‘What’s a Sunkeels?’ I said. ‘And what was all that about it being Eight Million and Twelve?’

The lady looked down at me, her eyes turning from angry to scared.