Photo by The Enchanted Gallery

At long last, here’s our completed piece for Round 4 of Build A Story With Bryan! Thanks to everyone who contributed, as well as to those who read along as it was being created. Round 5 will probably begin in the next few weeks, but until then please enjoy the fruits of Round 4’s labor, and let me know if you have a suggestion for a title.

He said there’s nothing to be afraid of and soothed his bitten hand with our last stick of butter. He wasn’t thinking about how fond rats are of butter. Suddenly, there were scratching and squeaking sounds coming from under the floor boards. This was soon followed by a distinct shaking sound, which grew louder by the second.

“What is it?!?,” I screamed.

I’d never seen this man before in my life. A pleasant dinner with open windows and screen doors leads to this. Teacups vibrating off their hooks, shattering on the countertops. I pushed Bobby behind me and backed into the dining room. The house was coming apart.

Suddenly everything was still, and I could hear my own heart beating wildly.

Bobby lunged in front of me and shouted, “What is that?” As he pushed me under the dining room table I caught a glimpse of something I hadn’t seen in years. After all this time, I thought I’d successfully disappeared, but it found me again.

Yes, it was the magician, come back for the audience volunteer who had vanished from his Chinese box all those years ago, and this time he had a blunt instrument!

“I’ll be blunt,” he sneered menacingly.

Bobby erupted in menacing laughter as I leaped toward the gaping hole that had been my dining room wall just minutes before. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him pull out a gleaming blue magic wand and point it at the magician. 

“You know what I’ve done, but not what I’m capable of doing, you nefarious fiend,” he snarled; I had no idea he was capable of sounding so menacing, so otherworldly.

I could scarcely believe what I saw next. I pinched myself to make sure I really was awake, and I was!

Bobby morphed into a creature that can only be described in small bits: green scales here, smoke coming from his three nostrils there, leathery wings that shone with an inner light sprouting from—what were those things? My son! I thought, but was he?

This emerald imp grasped the hem of my dress as it struggled to rise on one horribly deformed foot. As we came eye to eye the skin below its nostril split and that gaping wound grew until it formed a mouth large enough to hold a human head. Its breath was foul.

And like some monstrous chicken it squawked one terrible word: “Mama.”

That word. It snapped me out of my terrified paralysis and an icy calm came over me. I knew what I had to do. I crawled across the floor and opened the desk drawer. I knew what I was looking for was there somewhere. There it was – the letter I’d kept secret all these years, with blood-red sealing wax still keeping its secret intact. Was it finally time to break the seal?

No time for that now I thought. Must find that crossbow. I had made sure to buy a desk with extra large drawers for the sole purpose of storing my crossbows there.

Now, where did I put the key? There, already in the lock. I snapped it open, grabbed the closest bow of nine arrows with one in the pull and spun.

The magician was advancing on Bobby. I brought death to my shoulder and sent a needle through his throat. Blood coughed outward and landed on the floorboards in one great sheet. I spun the iron tensile mechanism I’d invented, so the string drew back on a ratchet and dropped a new arrow into the groove.

Bobby took two strides toward the magician and unleashed a vomit of white flame that did exactly what I imagined. He writhed in the heat storm, yet grew, morphed, metastasized into an undulating giant, too big for the room. It pressed the now burning roof outward like doors to some giant meat cellar. The fire burnt down around it and we found ourselves staring up at a giant forty foot rat, formed by the clawing bodies of thousands of individual rats. If it’s possible, it grinned.

I slung a twenty-count bow onto my back, whistled, and Bobby joined me. He picked a crossbow, the first he’d been given, still flecked with blue and red paint. Together we stalked back into the bathroom and the yard beyond. If only it would be that easy.

As the bracing night air hit me, I turned to my still-mutated son and said, “Um, Bobby, what… I mean how… um, I mean…”

“No time for that now, Mom,” he snapped, “The world as we know it could end within moments if we make one false move.”

We speedily moved through the neighbor’s backyard, the neighbor who lived alone, always kept his shades drawn, rarely left the house, only kept one light upstairs illuminated, and made everyone wonder. The neighbor’s upstairs light went out and the front door opened slowly, revealing a darkness that felt deeper than the moonless night that surrounded us. This was the kind of darkness you only hear about from people who have been in very dark places, both physically and mentally.

I felt Bobby’s claw take my hand and understood its meaning. We both stepped in. A cool breeze met us, misted us, and spurred us on even as I looked back. There was no door behind, only blackness. My instincts told me there were no walls within any distance I could conceive. I shrugged free of the crossbows. We wouldn’t need them here. Our handhold tightened and we continued pacing. Bobby said nothing but tugged twice with meaning, jogging my memory.

“Oh, yes,” I said, and reached into my pocket.

I brought out the envelope, ran my thumb across the wax seal. Bobby’s center claw cut through it and immediately a thin golden light creased its edges searching to be freed. I opened it, the brightening light brought my son into focus, returned from his genetic exile, his big brown eyes filled with the wonder I had known. The light grew and grew into blinding rays of starfire, obscuring everything. I drew Bobby into my arms and held the envelope aloft; the final trick, stolen from a bitter magician who deserved nothing.

And in the distance, if our ears were to be believed, Christmas bells beckoned. It would seem we had made it through another year, after all. We walked toward their promise.