Hello, I am Emy, the main character of this story. My grandfather died reading a book (I do not know the title) because a tornado came out of the book. Now, let me tell you the story.
So, it was a regular day at school (Friday, if you want to know) and my friend Elvis kept reading this weird book. Because my name is Emy, he calls me Emmanuel.
Back to the book: it was all ripped up, and the title was Bressling. The pages were dark, the words were light. You could tell it was a very old book. One day, during recess, Elvis was reading this book. He said that he liked this book. I sat next to him, reading my own book. Suddenly, a tornado came out of the book and sucked Elvis in. I got so scared that I ran home.
I asked my dad, “What was the name of the book that Grandpa was reading when he got sucked in?”
“Oh, I don’t know… Bressling, I think. Why do you want to know?” asked my Dad.
Without answering my Dad, I ran to school terrified and breathing heavily. When I finally got to school, I took the book from Elvis’s desk. I looked. The title was “Bressling.”
“I knew it!” I said. I looked at the page where Elvis stopped because the book was still open to that page. I knew it was the correct page. Then, I looked at the sentence where he had gotten sucked in: “Then the book took in a man and a boy, Albert Senstein and Elvis Toddler.”
Albert Senstein was my grandfather. Elvis Toddler was my friend. “This book’s haunted!” said my friend, Nate. He was sitting in the room the whole time paying attention to his work until I ran to Elvis’s desk. Then I thought, The only way I get to Elvis is to read the book until a tornado sucks me in.
I started reading the book from the beginning. Then, a tornado came out of the book and sucked me in. The last thing I saw was Nate running out of the room. Next, I was falling from the sky and landed on the floor of a desert. Next to me was Elvis. He pulled me up and started talking.
“Hey! Emmanuel! Look at this old man. This is a character from the book.” He pointed at a white-bearded man. “His name is Zalen.”
“Hi, Zalen, I’m –– ”
“Emmanuel, I know. Hello, Emmanuel,” said Zalen, in an old, old voice that reminded me of my friend’s grandpa. That’s when I realized there was another man who looked about 72 years old.
I didn’t even know him, but he must’ve known me because he came up and hugged me and said, “Emy, I only saw you as a little baby. I always wanted to see you when you were nine years old. Now look at you –– you have grown. I am your grandfather who was sucked in by a tornado from a book.”
Then Nate came plopping on my head and said, “I started reading the book and then a tornado came out and I ended up here!”
I was annoyed. “So not only did I come here, but you did too. Now I have to get all of you out!”
Then my grandfather Albert looked at me. “Hey. Who put you in charge? I’m the oldest… I’m supposed to be in charge.”
Zalen looked at him as if he were blind and said, “I’m the oldest. Look at you. You’re 72. I’m 137!”
Then Albert said, “You’re in the book! You’re supposed to be inside the tornado!”
Zalen said, “Right, yeah. I wish the author of this book had never written it. Now I’m stuck here for the rest of my life!”
“It’s fine,” I said, “but how are we going to get out?”
Then Zalen said, “I know this witch that lives in the north. All we have to do is walk 100 miles to the north and then we’ll find her. She is the author of this book. She’ll know how to get us out.”
“Okay, not helping. 100 miles?!”
Zalen said, “Okay, fine, fine. But it’s better than nothing. What other choice do we have?”
“Good point. Isn’t there any faster way to get there?”
“No, sorry. We could camp. I have tents and food –– a whole lot of food!”
“Ok,” said five-year-old Nate, who did not know what was going on. He was only pretending to know what was going on.
Then, we heard a strange noise. The next thing we knew, Nate was gone.
We looked around for Nate, until Zalen said, “Where could he be? In this desert, there’s nothing but sand. There’s no hiding places.”
Albert said, “I disagree. There are cactuses all over this place.”
He was right: the desert was full of cactuses. I got an idea.
“How about the four of us split around and look for him? He always plays around with jokes,” I said. Then we heard the same noise again.
“It doesn’t sound anything like Nate,” Elvis said. “I think he is making one of his stupid noises.”
Suddenly, a little dwarf came out holding Nate.
Elvis said, “How much do you want for that stupid little boy?”
“Five hundred bucks,” said the dwarf in the same voice they heard earlier.
Zalen said, “You came to exactly the right person! I’m a billionaire!” Then he held up a wallet, which was not exactly a wallet. It was a big bag of money and gold. “I got it from my father!” he exclaimed, pulling out five $100 bills and giving them to the dwarf.
The dwarf said, “Give me another $500, or I’ll kill the boy.”
Then Elvis said, “Oh, whatever… Hey, dwarf, I know dwarves like big hats. Do you want this hat?” He took off his own hat.
The dwarf said, “No!” and pulled out a knife.
Then Elvis said, “I go to karate!” He wrestled the dwarf to the ground, took the knife, and threw it into one of the cactuses.
“I knew it would become useful someday!” said Elvis. He got off the dwarf and grabbed Nate. Then he said, “Don’t mess with me again!” The dwarf ran away.
Zalen took out a compass and said, “Go that way. Let’s go!” He pointed North, and we started walking. After 50 miles (we walked really fast) Zalen said, “Okay. My feet can’t walk anymore. Let’s rest.”
“Okay,” said Albert. “Do you boys agree?”
“Yes!” said Elvis and I.
“What about you, Emmanuel?” asked Elvis.
“I said yes!”
“Oh,” said Elvis.
Zalen pulled out a big tent and sticks from his backpack and started unfolding it. Then he put the sticks up and put up the tent and it was standing.
Zalen said, “Get inside the tent unless you want to stay outside. It’s getting dark.” Albert tried to go inside the tent but Nate pushed him aside and went in first.
Then Albert went in and said, “Nate! That was rude.”
Elvis got in next and asked, “Emmanuel, are you coming in?”
“Yeah,” I said, climbing in.
When I woke up, I was not in the tent….
I was not in my tent, and I was not even lying down –– I was in a chair. I looked around. There were other chairs, and Zalin, Elvis, Nate, and Albert were sitting in them. I tried to stand but could not because I was in front of a desk. So were my friends.
A man came into the room. He had dirty blonde hair, brown eyes, yellow teeth, black skin, black glasses, black pants, white t-shirt, and white sneakers.
He said, “Why don’t we take a test? Why are all of you the same? I’m not included.”
Then Nate raised his hand.
“Yes?” said the man. “Oh, by the way, if you cheat on this test, you will be eliminated. Oh, sorry –– did I say eliminated? I meant executed. Now that will calm you down.”
Nate said, “We all have to answer your stupid questions?”
“Um, no,” said the man.
Albert raised his hand.
“Yes?”
“We all have white teeth.”
“No.”
Then I raised my hand. “Yes, we are all captured, but we don’t care.”
“What do you mean?”
“You captured us, but none of us seem to care.”
“OH, now I get it. No. Now I will kill you…. Actually, no. I will spare you and give you one more chance. When I say ‘hey,’ you will race to the end of the room. I will kill the loser.”
We lined against the wall.
Then Albert said, “Hey!” and ran. When he got to the other side of the room, everybody looked at him, surprised.
Then the man said, “Look dude. I didn’t say ‘hey.’ You did. Get back to the other side of the wall. And when I say hey, you run. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” we all said.
Then the man said, “Hey!” and we all ran.
To Elvis’s luck, he got to the wall first. Then I got there and then Albert and then the limping old Zalin. We all looked at Nate, but he wasn’t running –– he was looking at the man.
The man said, “Okay. The little boy in the pajamas will be killed.”
Elvis wrestled the man to the floor and took the man’s gun and pointed at his face.
Then the man said, “Shoot, you stupid idiot.” He smiled a creepy smile that showed his yellow teeth.
Elvis shot. There was a great big sound that sounded like a bomb exploded. We all looked at the man, but the man was laughing. The gun was blank.
So, Elvis punched the man in the face, and the man fainted. Then, we found a bucket of bullets in one of the corners of the room. We loaded the gun and Elvis shot the wall. The gun worked because there was a hole.
“Let’s go,” he said.
We all stepped out and Zalin said, “What? This was the desert we were walking through until we woke up in that stinking room that smelled of rotten poop.” Then, we saw the tent. We all turned around and saw the room. But it wasn’t really a room –– it was a few cactuses built up into a room. We saw the hole we had gone through and then we understood everything: the man had taken cactuses, built up the room, and dragged us in there.
“I am keeping this weapon,” said Elvis.
“Listen, you kept the knife. Now you’re keeping the gun? You gotta be kidding me,” I said.
“Okay, fine, fine. You get the knife. I get to keep the gun.”
“No, I want the gun. You get to keep the knife.”
“No, I do.”
“No, I do.”
“Nope, I do.”
“No, I do.”
“No –– ”
“OK, can I say something?” asked Zalen.
“No!” Elvis and I said in unison.
“Okay,” said Zalen, and he walked away.
“Fine –– you get to keep the gun. I keep the knife,” said Elvis. He put the knife in his belt and handed over the gun. I put the gun in my belt (we both had belts because they were part of the school uniform).
Then we started walking. Soon, we had walked another 50 miles, and Zalen said, “Stop!” If we’d walked one more step, we would’ve crashed into a big hut with a roof that looked like a witch’s hat.
“This is it!” said Zalen. We knocked, and a very old woman opened the door.
She had a hat that looked exactly like the roof.
“Come in, dears,” she said in a very kind voice. Inside the hut there were many pictures. In the middle of the room there was a small black table, with pot of some green liquid on top.
“Can I drink that?” asked Nate.
“If you want to explode, yes,” she said, pausing. “Ah, yes, you don’t know my name and I don’t know yours. I’ll go first: my name is Minerva. What’s yours?”
“Zalen,” said Zalen.
“Albert,” said Albert.
“Emy,” I said.
“Elvis,” said Elvis.
“Poopy Pants!” said Nate.
“His name is Nate,” said Elvis.
“No, my name is Poopy Pants!” cried Nate.
“Alright,” said Minerva. “I believe that your name is Nate… but I am going to call you Poopy Pants.” Then she asked, “Why did you come?”
“We want to get out into the outer world,” I said.
“Who? All of you? And what do you mean by the outer world?”
“The answer to the first question: Nate –– well, Poopy Pants –– me, Elvis, and Albert want to get out. To the second question, we were trapped in a book called Bressling…” And I told the story about Bressling but kept forgetting to say Poopy Pants instead of Nate.
“Ah, yes, Bressling. I wrote it, and I cast a spell on it. And I read it and I got sucked in because I wanted to. And then I forgot something, so I cast a spell to write in the names that got sucked in. Now, all you need to do is drink this little potion that I am going to make right now… Here it is. Hokatee pokatee lokatee pookatee shokatee nokatee sokatee… ah, where was I…?” she interrupted herself. “Oh, right, yes. Noopatee kloopatee crumpatootatee, and, last of all… compoopatee! Oh, how dumb am I? I forgot the bowl, the water, and my wand.” Minerva got the bowl and the wand, and pointed at the bowl and said, “Shoompatee, gloompatee.” And then some water burst out of the wand and flew into the bowl. “Enough! Enough, you stupid spray!” The wand stopped the water and she said, “Now, what was the spell? Hokatee pokatee lokatee pookatee shokatee nokatee sokatee noopatee kloopatee crumpatootatee!” Then the water turned red, then orange, then yellow, then light green, then dark green, then light blue, then dark blue, then pink, and finally purple. And then it turned every color, in a mix. She took four cups and put them on the table. She took the bowl and poured equally into each cup.
“Alright. All of you who want to go back to the outer world, please drink this.” We all drank it except for Zalen. Then Minerva said, “Alright. Now, in ten minutes, you will go back into the outer world, in front of the book in the place where you were reading when you got sucked in. Why don’t you find something that’ll entertain you for the time being?”
Then, she pointed her wand at the table and said, “Shoompatee, loompatee, gloompatee, foompatee!”
A chessboard with chess pieces appeared on the table, and Elvis and I sat down at the table and started playing. “Thanks for the chess board,” I said.
She conjured a magic carpet using some other words I couldn’t hear correctly.
“Here you go, Poopy Pants,” said Minerva. Nate jumped onto the magic carpet and started flying around, and he went out the window and flew around the yard. Nine minutes later, the magic carpet landed. Nate got off. Elvis and I finished the chess game with a stalemate. Elvis was so close to winning –– he had a queen up –– but I drew into a stalemate.
Minerva shouted, “One minute to go!”
Sixty seconds later, we appeared in the classroom where we’d started.
“I miss Minerva and Zalen,” I said.
“I miss them too…. If we want to see them, we have the book.” Elvis pointed at Bressling. Then Nate started crying. We looked at him.
“What’s wrong now?” we asked him.
“I miss my flying carpet!” he cried.
I slapped my head. “He’s so stupid!”
Elvis and I ran home with Albert. We came home (by the way, I forgot to tell you, Elvis was my neighbor. I lived in apartment 5D and He lived in 6D).
My father sat up and said, “I do recognize you, Daddy. How the heck did you get here from that book?” He pointed at Bressling, which I was holding in my armpit.
Then Albert said, “You should’ve met Minerva.” And the three of us laughed.