It's Read In Week! I get to zoom or google meet into Naia's class and read to them. The theme for this year is "To Each Their Own Story" so, I wrote something especially for them today- last year I had just written the story "Curse of the Dad Joke" and read it to the class, and they loved it. So, in a similar vein, here is
The Portal To, Uh, Some Other Place
Every day Pallas and Naia walked to school with their Dad, and every day their Dad warned them about the hole in the path. Now, ‘hole’ is kind of a strong word- maybe ‘slight dip’ would be more accurate. Nevertheless, their Dad always shouted a warning- “Girls! Watch out for that hole!”
The girls never fell in the hole. Sorry- slight dip. In fact, even if the girls had tried to fall in the hole they would have found it very difficult to do so. They would have had to put on a show worthy of grade 5 boys playing soccer, trying to convince everyone that they had just been fouled.
One day Naia decided to just that- pretend to fall in. “Argh! Ouch!” she cried, and Dad almost jumped out of his pants.
“Naia! Eyes on the prize or everyone dies!”
Naia just looked at Pallas and winked. Somehow they managed to make it to school safely every day.
But then one day- the day of the Halloween party at school- Dad said, “Hey, I know! Why don’t we take the puppy to school today. It’s getting closer to Halloween and pretty soon it will be too dark and cold to take her.”
“I don’t know, Dad,” said Naia, “every time we’ve tried it before it’s always turned out to be a bad idea. A really bad idea. Remember that time she chased that rabbit and dragged you by your face down the road? What if she chews on my Halloween costume?”
“Nah! It will be fine,” said Dad, with all the confidence of a middle-aged dad who obviously didn’t remember all the times before when it most definitely was not fine.
But you know what? It kind of was fine. At least as far as the Remedy. “See?” Dad said. “She’s not a bitey little foofball anymore. She knows how to act right. Wagh!!” Their puppy- Ahsoka- chose that moment to lunge for the hole, yanking Dad’s arms badly.
Ahsoka disappeared down the hole.
Dad’s mouth fell open, kind of a black hole not unlike the one on the path, only deeper. Naia called out to him, “Dad! Do something!”
When Dad just stood there, staring open-mouthed, Naia and Pallas grabbed the leash and pulled as hard as they could.
Ahsoka popped out of the hole, tail wagging. There was something in her mouth.
“What the heck is that?” Dad shouted.
“Leave it!” Naia said, and Ahsoka dropped the thing that was in her mouth. Which immediately wiggled away in a disgusting, slithery, slimy sort of way that didn’t quite make sense to the eye. But Naia saw it had a face full of tentacles and eeny weeny wings probably too small for flying. Decoration, maybe. It was kind of green, and kind of not. It was definitely gross, though, and if it had just slithered away that might have been the end of the tale- just one of those weird things that happened as one walks to school, kind of a shruggable “what a strange day” sort of story you tell your friends when you’re bored in math class.
But Dad decided to give the thing one of the treats he had in his little fannypack he used for training Ahsoka. The thing caught the little chunk of hot dog in its tentacles, and Naia was sure she saw its eyes glow red, and it jumped up much higher than you would expect, and flapped its widdle wings and attached itself to Dad’s face. Then it grew humongous, and then it swallowed Dad.
This was no longer just a strange day. This was a bad day.
The thing looked down on them with its red eyes. It spoke. “Hear me, mortals. I am a Great Old One, and this whole world belongs to me now.”
“Wrong!” said Naia.
“Wrong!” said Pallas.
“You don’t look so great to me,” said Naia. “But you definitely look old.”
“Yeah and anyways we are even greater young ones and we banish you to, uh, some other place as long as it’s far away from here!”
“Either that or you can just explode, we don’t really care. But let our dad go!” Both girls held up their Halloween costume props, which were just sticks they had found at the park and stuck some glitter gems to make them like wizard staffs or whatever. The sisters had coordinated their Halloween costumes so that they looked like twin sorceresses, Naia in a black robe, Pallas in a white. They had planned to be superhero space robots but had run out of time, so. Witches! Or whatever.
The Great Old One shrank back from the dual assault. “The Staff of ulhuhtC- where did you get that??? How dare you command me? Ouch! Ok ok just don’t poke me with those staffs, they are very poisonous to Great Old Ones.”
Naia and Pallas looked at each other, with their sister power looks that only they knew how to read. They winked, and together they threw their staffs at the monster. Who exploded. Such a mess- Esther Starkman School and the Remedy café, and everyone in the vicinity -including all of grade 5- were covered in chunks of brown-like green-tinged goo. And at the centre of it all sat Dad, nearly unrecognizable beneath all the slime. He looked at his daughters. “What just . . . did that… that thing didn’t just poop me out did it?”
“No Dad,” Pallas replied. “Naia and I made it explode. We rescued you!”
“OK, um, thank you. Uh. Wow. Anyways. We are late for school so we should probably get going.”
“Sure, Dad.” Naia said. “Just watch out for that hole. It’s deeper than it looks.”
