Selby Speaks (5 page)

“What’s happening?” Glenda said looking up at Selby. “Are we shooting again? Hey! Where did the dog come from? There’s no dog in the script. What’s going on here?! Where is everybody?”

“Crikey,” Selby thought, desperately trying to untangle his paw from the rope. “I’ve started the flippin’ saw and now I can’t reach the lever to stop it.”

The whirring blade sliced its way down the
log towards Glenda who screamed louder and louder.

“If she’d only stop pulling on the rope I could get my leg loose,” Selby thought. “If I don’t get out of here fast, we’ll both be sliced salami!”

“Help! Save me!” Glenda screamed louder than she had when the cameras were going.

“I’ve got to tell her to stop struggling,” Selby thought as the saw sped towards Glenda’s head. “But if I talk to her my
(gulp)
secret will be out. And if my secret gets out, scientists will want to study me, the only talking dog in Australia and — for all I know — in the world. They’ll keep me in a laboratory and ask me stupid questions all day long
(gulp).
I’d rather be dead than let people know that I’m a talking, thinking, feeling dog. Yipes!” Selby thought suddenly. “Did I say
dead?”

Selby looked deep in Glenda’s lavender eyes and said suddenly in plain English, “Listen carefully, Glenda. There’s no time to lose.”

“Hey,” Glenda said. “You talked. The dog talked! How is that possible? The only talking dog I ever saw was the dog in my picture,
Kelpie, King of Queensland
, and he wasn’t really a talking dog. They used the director’s voice. In fact —”

“Shut up, Glenda,” Selby said sternly. “Just do as I say! Stay still and stop struggling!”

Glenda was so stunned by the sight of a talking dog that she stayed still for a moment and Selby jerked his foot loose.

“Now there’s some slack in the rope! Squiggle over to the side of the log, Glenda!” Selby yelled. “Quick!”

The saw caught Glenda’s blonde wig and ripped it to shreds just as she squiggled, leaving her dangling on one side of the log and Selby on the other. As the blade passed between them it cut the rope and they fell safely to the floor.

“I don’t know who you are or how you learned to talk,” Glenda said, throwing her arms around Selby and giving him a big kiss on the lips, “but you must be the smartest, bravest dog in the whole world. How would you like to be in one of my movies? They’re making a sequel to
Kelpie, King of Queensland.”

“I — I — don’t think so,” Selby stammered.

“What’s going on in there?” the director yelled as he ran into the shed just as Selby was running out. “And whose dog is that?”

“I don’t know whose dog he is and I don’t care,” Glenda said dreamily. “All I can say is, he’s twice the dog you’ll ever be.”

“Bushfire love, yeah yeah, bushfire love,” Selby sang along with the latest video clip by the rock super-group, The Screaming Mimis, as he danced around in front of the TV. “That Mimi, the lead singer, is great! And, what’s more, the group is coming to Bogusville tonight! I’ve got to find a way to get into the Town Hall to see them!”

That night Selby ran down to the Bogusville Town Hall just in time to see
The Screaming Mimis
unloading the equipment from their van. He looked around for a way into the hall but
there were guards at every entrance holding back screaming fans.

“If only I could get by the guards and then hide under a table till the show starts,” Selby thought as he watched the band come and go through a back door. “How will I do it?”

For a moment, everyone was in the hall and Selby jumped in the back of the van.

“Hmmmmmmmm. What’s this?” he said, pulling at the sides of a big wooden box. “They must have equipment stored in it. If I can only get in it …”

The box was nailed shut but some of the nails had come loose and Selby prised the side open and hopped in, hitting a mass of wires.

“Phew!” he said, pulling the side closed again after him. “There’s barely enough room in here for me.” He was peering out through the tiny holes in the sides of the box when Mimi and her drummer, Slam-Bam Benson got in the back of the van.

“Help me carry the box, Slam-Bam,” Mimi, said in a tiny, high-pitched voice.

“Cripes!” Selby thought. “That’s Mimi. But what’s happened to her voice? She doesn’t sound anything like her records.”

Mimi and Slam-Bam lifted the box out of the van and began carrying it inside.

Suddenly Mimi put her end of the box down.

“I can’t take it any more!” she blurted out. “Driving all day, working all night — we’ve been on the road for six months and it’s just too much! I can’t sing tonight. I can’t!”

“Please, Mimi. We can’t go on without you,” Slam-Bam pleaded. “It’s the last night of the tour. We can’t cancel on our last night.”

“I don’t care. I sound like a budgie,” Mimi said, wiping away a tear. “If I don’t sing
Bushfire Love
at the top of my voice, the audience will feel cheated. And I can’t do it.”

“Don’t worry,” Slam-Bam said. “We’ll turn the amps way up.”

“It won’t be enough,” Mimi said. “Listen to me. I can hardly talk.”

“Speak up, I can hardly hear you,” Slam-Bam said.

“I
am
speaking up,” Mimi said in a voice not much louder than a whisper.

“Don’t worry, Mimi,” Slam-Bam reassured her. “We live in the age of electronic wizardry. We’ll turn the amps way up and that’ll do till we get to
Bushfire Love.
Then we’ll connect up the Super Computerised High-Pitched Ear-Piercing Brain-Scrambling Sound Blaster. It’ll make a whisper sound like a stick of gelignite.”

“I don’t know …” Mimi started.

“Trust me, Mimi. I built it myself and I tell you it can do everything except sit up and sing,” Slam-Bam said, “and I’m working on that.”

“Wow!” Selby thought. “A Super Computerised High-Pitched Ear-Piercing Brain-Scrambling Sound Blaster! I can’t wait to hear it.”

“No offence, Slam-Bam, but I don’t trust it. We haven’t used it before in a concert,” Mimi said as she peered down into the holes in the box, not quite seeing the dog-figure lurking in the darkness inside. “Besides, it’s been bouncing around in the van so long, it’s falling apart. Look, the nails are coming out.”

“That’s nothing. I can fix that in a second,” Slam-Bam said.

And before Selby could say, “Oh no, I’ve just climbed into a Super Computerised High-Pitched Ear-Piercing Brain-Scrambling Sound Blaster without realising it,” Slam-Bam dropped his end of the blaster and gave the loose nails a whack or two with his hammer — which would have been okay if Selby’s head hadn’t been right up against the side of the box and got such a good banging that he didn’t remember a thing till three paragraphs from now.

“There, it’s fixed,” Slam-Bam said. “It’ll really blast the rafters, you wait and see.”

“I warn you, Slam-Bam,” Mimi peeped. “If it doesn’t work tonight, I’ll put an axe through it.”

Selby awoke that evening to the deafening sound of drums and screaming teenagers. He peered out through the holes and saw the flicker of lasers in the air.

“Now for our final song,” Mimi squeaked as she connected up the sound blaster. “
Bushfire Love!”

“Oh, no!” Selby thought as he peered out of the blaster and then scratched and pushed with all his might. “If I don’t get out of here fast, this
Super Computerised High-Pitched Ear-Piercing Brain-Scrambling Sound Blaster’s going to pierce my ears and scramble my brains for sure!”

Slam-Bam hit a drum and Selby bounced off the inside of the blaster, his fur standing on end, then collapsed in a heap, his ears ringing like churchbells.

“I’ve got to do something fast!” Selby thought. “If he hits that drum again, I’m gone! My secret doesn’t matter any more. It’s a matter of life and death! Help!” Selby screamed in plain English at the top of his lungs. “There’s a talking dog stuck in the sound blaster — and it’s me! Let me out!”

But Selby’s screams were nothing but a peep as the drummer sent another and another beat through the blaster.

“I’ve got to destroy this contraption before it destroys me!” Selby thought as he grabbed a mouthful of wires and pulled them, covering himself in a shower of sparks.

“That’s done it!” he thought. “I’ve disconnected the blaster. Now all I have to do is wait till someone opens it.”

Mimi sang soundlessly for a second and then gave the blaster a whopping great thump with her boot.

“I told you it wouldn’t work!” she cried. “It’s a useless piece of junk.”

With this she grabbed a fire axe and raised it over her head, ready to chop the blaster in two.

“Gulp,” Selby said, staring up at the axe. “This is not the way I wanted the blaster to be opened. I’ve got to do something before that crazy crooner gives me the chop!”

And with this he screamed out the chorus to
Bushfire Love
as loud as he could, imitating Mimi’s voice:

Mimi stared at the blaster as Selby sang on and on, louder and louder.

“I can’t believe it,” she said, scratching her head. “That box is singing my song!”

Selby finished the song to a roar of applause. And before he realised what he was doing, he took a deep bow, sending the blaster tumbling off the stage and onto the darkness of the dance floor below, where it broke open.

“I can’t believe it,” Slam-Bam said. “I said that contraption could do everything but sit up and sing. I was wrong — it sat up and sang.”

“And in quite a good voice,” Selby said as he ran across the crowded dance floor and out the exit. “Even if I do say so myself.”

Selby was feeling guilty. He was feeling guilty in the way a dog might feel guilty if a crowd of crazy poetry lovers had ripped apart an old mansion and he had found out that it was all his fault. The reason he was feeling this way was that a crowd of crazy poetry lovers
had
ripped apart an old mansion and it
was
all his fault.

“I don’t deserve to be their dog,” Selby thought as he looked up at Dr and Mrs Trifle. “They’re such warm and wonderful people and I’m such a … such a … well they’d never forgive me if they knew what I’d done.”

Selby curled up on the carpet and put his
paws over his eyes, thinking of the day before — the day it had all begun …

It was evening and he and the Trifles were sitting in front of the TV set watching an episode of
Famous Dead Poets.

Malcolm Mumbles, the narrator of the program, was walking along the beach at Surfers Paradise reciting a poem by the famous dead surfie poet, Clancy of the Undertow: