If Carpets Could Rule The World (and other stories)

Rakes Over Eternal Torture

There's days when you wish there's no school, and then there's days you wish it- and find a smoking crater where your high school once stood. Complete with the maniac who torched it, still hovering above the crater.

"Accepting applause and all forms of payment!" the creature, evidently a fairy of some sort, yells to the crowd below. "What, you're not grateful that I took care of this school for you? Do you know how lucky you are? Most children who wish their respective institutions would vanish don't wake up to find it blown to bits, you know!" The fairy raises his arms, waiting. "A little appreciation, people!"

I hear appreciation, all right. Someone beside me is busy trying to convince the cops- over the phone- that our school's been hijacked by a paranormal creature. Judging by the creative methods used, the cop clearly hasn't turned on the news. The news people are here too, debating whether the hyper fairy warrants an interview. Clearly, no one's seen this happen before.

But that's not completely true, I realise, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Because I, Carter Reed, have already had both the pleasure of meeting it- and ordering it to get out of my pile of leaves.

It was extremely un-pleasurable, too.

Yesterday, I'd been raking the backyard- and when the whole space was clear, I headed inside for just a minute. Or maybe twenty.

When I came back out, there was a fairy camped in my leaves.

Naturally, we had words. Liberal threatening to use the rake was also involved, and equal threats to send a human like me to eternal torture- wherever that is.

Rakes are worse than eternal torture, apparently, because it took one look at the rake for the creature to decide that I was worth bribing with two wishes - in exchange for freedom and release from the Pronged Terror.

I'm not stupid, honestly. The second thing I wished for was the power to grant my own wishes. The first was that the fairy wouldn't have any takesy-backsies.

The fairy tugged on the tips of its pointy ears and grinned cheekily. "Man, you're stupid!"

There's a legitimate reason I don't like fairies anymore. And ninety percent of it is the attention-loving fairy currently introducing himself as Ro.

The other ten percent is all me- forgetting that I can grant my own wishes, and subsequently destroying an important landmark. I'm just an ordinary kid who wished we wouldn't have school today, okay? Remember that when the interspecies lawyers come for me, world!

At least we don't have school anymore?

Meanwhile, Ro is busy running his mouth to the cameras. "Yeah, so he pointed the rake at me, like, Dude, I'm coming for you! And I was like, I wanna live! So-"

I sprint to Ro, ripping the microphone out of his hands. "Ro, I wish you'd undo everything I've wished for!"

"No takesy-backsies, remember?" Winking at the camera, Ro tugs his ears and disappears. 

[an Aim To Engage entry]