Slam! Walls shook, Lucy kicking shut the back door, then – clatter, crunch, whap, whap, whap – kicking the stupid letterbox. She kicked it again. She stomped through into the living room, marched to the far corner and, arms folded high and tight across her too small chest, sat in her favourite armchair. She vowed never to leave it.
Her lower lip jutted, teeth grinding into oblivion.
She watched Destructor. He was at the room’s centre, playing with his pathetic war table. On one side, representing the forces of Earth, stood plastic Star Trek figures retrieved from cereal packets; twelve Mr Scotts, a Captain Kirk, two Bones; and half a Mr Spock, melted when she’d dropped him in the toaster while teasing the insect during breakfast. Each wielded a phaser, each with his head chewed off, each head discarded on the table. Opposite, two cockroaches and a ladybird gathered.
Between the opposing forces stood the toy Blackpool Tower she’d purchased from a gift shop while the owner wasn’t looking. Presumably Destructor meant it to represent the Eiffel Tower. Only an idiot would choose Blackpool as his key strategic target.
Gloating over the table, he urged. ‘On, on, my beauties. Destroy the humans. Let them know the bitter taste of defeat. Soon, soon, all Blackpool sea front shall be ours.’
The insects ambled in their own half of the table, feelers waggling, occasionally colliding while, on their behalf, he pushed Mr Scott over. As master plans went, it didn’t.
She sighed hugely, looking as fed up as possible. He didn’t notice, too wrapped up in his schemes.
She told him her problems regardless. ‘You know what’s just happened to me? I’ve been kicked out of Poly, that’s what.’
Uninterested, he knocked over the Blackpool Tower.
‘Have you, Luce?’ she asked herself. ‘Yup. Who can believe it? You steal the odd thing, hit the odd kid, and they kick you out. I mean, it’s not like I assaulted the College Principal or anything – at least not till after he expelled me. And if you do it after being expelled, it shouldn’t count against you on your college records should it?’
He put the tower back upright.
‘So that’s my brilliant career buggered before it even began. And you know what pisses me off? I could’ve been a good psychiatrist. I know people say I couldn’t, that I’m pathologically unsuited to the profession but they’re wrong. Listening to people, I could have learned to do that.’
He knocked the tower over again.
‘And my passengers escaped. I knew they would. I should sue.’
But Destructor’s cockroaches were eating his ladybird. ‘No, no,’ he protested. ‘Don’t do that, my little friends. Regardless of past differences, you are all on the same side now.’ He tried prising them apart but too late. Colonel Ladybird was gone, and Destructor’s hordes were down to two.
Like Lucy cared about ladybirds. ‘That’s terrible. Luce. What’ll you do now?’ she asked herself. ‘I don’t know, Luce. I’ll probably just hang myself from the light fitting, right over my flatmate’s sodding war table that’s so much more important than me.’
‘Is something bothering you, Lucille?’
‘Never mind.’ So he didn’t.
Thirty minutes later, Lucy still sprawled in the armchair, now holding her hair before her eyes, comparing it to Jennifer Aniston’s on the portable. Aniston’s wasn’t indelibly green, following a school laboratory accident. And it didn’t need washing. And it wasn’t more lifeless than the Dead Sea. Otherwise it was a fair contest.
Remote control in hand, Lucy watched on. Some bloke with a monkey was depressed. Everyone rallied round.
She compared her hair to the monkey’s. It was a close call but she reckoned her hair just about won, just so long as the monkey didn’t get shampooed. ‘Des?’
‘Hmm?’ Destructor eyed the battle that wasn’t unfolding before him. His insect horde was now down to one. If that took to eating itself, things would look bad for the invasion.
‘D’you want to go to the pictures?’ she asked him.
‘The pictures?’
‘I need cheering up. And you may be a scraggy geek with too many arms and not enough marbles, but that’s what flatmates do when one of them’s down – the others rally round, feed them popcorn, and cheer them up.’
‘This was what you did with your last flatmate?’
‘All the time,’ she lied. ‘Danny was great. He took me everywhere. He was a much better flatmate than you. Danny was my best friend ever, and I loved him deeply.’
‘And what are these “pictures”?’ asked the ant.
‘You don’t know?’
‘On my world, we do not have “pictures”. I would be fascinated to discover what such a thing is and whether it is a threat to my invasion plans.’
‘Good. Then we’ll go.’
‘Go where?’ he asked
The monkey got shampooed.
And Lucy sighed.