A Magical Adventure

Once upon a time there were two children who lived in a very boring town and their names were Robin and Sally. Robin and Sally’s father used to be in a pop band during the Eighties called Fun Fun Fun and he’d since then got a normal, boring job in a bank, but he still had a mullet and wore pink T-shirts and a snood in his spare time and made hideous noises on a Botempi organ in the garden shed. Their mum still loved him but she also found him really embarrassing and didn’t go to any of his old band’s revival concerts. One day, in the middle of the summer holidays, Robin and Sally were at home and they were really bored. There was nothing on TV except adverts for stairlifts and life insurance and gardening programmes, so they decided to play hide-and-seek since Mummy was hogging the X Box again.
It was Sally’s turn to seek and she was counting to 100 while Robin looked for somewhere to hide. He decided to go in the bathroom since it was the last place Sally would look since he seldom used it.
Just as he was closing the door, Robin heard a funny noise behind him. He turned to look and what should he see but a tiger climbing out of the toilet! It was a very big, scary looking tiger and Robin was too scared to move.
“Robin, Child of Earth,” the tiger boomed, its’ hot breath blowing in his face, “I have been sent from the magical world of Choomhimbahoom to fetch you…”
“AAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!” said Robin, “AAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!”
“We need your help,” the tiger continued, “King Noblebeard has been captured by the Wicked Queen of Spanking, and she has turned the kingdom and all its’ subjects into marzipan. Only you can break the spell.”
“AAAAAAAAAA!!!” Robin said, “HHHELP!! TTTIGER! PPPPLEASE DON’T EAT ME!!!”
“Come with me now,” the tiger said, “There is little time, and we must enter the portal before the Queen finds out and sends her minions of darkness. Hurry!”
“MUMMY!!” Robin said, “MUMMY!! HELP!!”
“Look,” the tiger growled, finally losing patience, “Stop it!”
Robin wouldn’t stop it. He carried on screaming until the tiger finally became testy and gave a loud roar.
“Stop wailing!” he snapped, thrusting his furry snout in Robin’s face, “I was sent here to fetch a hero, not a blubbering little girl. Just shut up.”
The great animal’s proximity just made Robin’s fear even worse, and a hot stream of pee gushed down his trouser leg.
“That does it!” the tiger grunted. He picked the boy up roughly by the scruff of his neck, carried him, still screaming, to the toilet, and dragged him in. Robin grabbed desperately for the edge of the seat as he was pulled down, but to no avail. There was a loud flushing noise, and everything seemed to spin round as boy and tiger were transported to another world.

Chapter 2

When Robin regained conciousness the tiger was gone, his trousers were still wet, and he was lying in a forest. He heard a funny, squeaky little voice giggling, and turned to see a rabbit staring at him.
“Greetings, Child of Earth,” said the rabbit, “Welcome to Choomhimbahoom.”
“AAAAAAAAAAH!!!” said Robin, “A TALKING RABBIT!!!”
“Ssshh!” said the rabbit, “Do you want the Wicked Queen of Spanking to hear you?”
“I want to go home,” sniffled Robin.
“You can’t,” the rabbit replied, “You must break the evil Queen’s spell and rescue King Noblebeard and deliver the Nice People of the White City from being marzipan.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Robin asked, although he had every intention of finding a toilet and diving into it at the first opportunity in the hope of returning to his own world.
“You must steal the Precious White Stone of Niceness from the tower of the Evil Wizard Who Chases People Down the Stairs,” said the rabbit, “It’s insanely, suicidally dangerous, but it’s the only way.”
Suddenly, the rabbit’s ears pricked up, as a sound came from somewhere nearby.
“It’s her!” he whispered. “Quick, climb into my rabbit hole.”
He leapt into a hole in the ground. Robin tried to follow him but any idiot knows that a rabbit hole is too small for a little boy to get into, and he got his head stuck instead. He wriggled and squirmed and made a high-pitched girly noise as SOMETHING came up behind him.
“It’s the Evil Queen!” hissed the rabbit from the safety of his warren, “Bad luck!”
“Help me!” squealed Robin.
“Stick your finger up her nose,” said the rabbit, “It’s her only weakness. It will make her explode.”
“What’s this then?” boomed a woman’s voice. Something grabbed the helpless boy by his trousers, pulled him out of the hole with a POP and flung him unceremoniously on the ground.
He looked up to see a seriously evil-looking bitch in a carriage with a pointy silver crown on her head. The carriage had six black wolves harnessed to it, and in the front was a gnome with a long beard and a laptop.
“Bring him to me!” ordered the Queen. The gnome put down his laptop and, leaping out of the carriage, grabbed Robin by his collar and thrust him at his mistress.
“Tell me your name, boy,” she said, “And where you have come from. Do not think of lying to me, for I am OW!”
She pulled Robin’s finger out of her nose, and looked very, very cross. She also didn’t explode.
“Tee hee hee!” chuckled the rabbit in his hole.
“That was very, very rude!!!” the Queen shrieked. “Let me show you why they call me the Wicked Queen of Spanking.”
With that, she put Robin over her knee, pulled down his trousers, and smacked him until his bottom was bright red.
“Now, Child of Earth,” she said sweetly, placing him down in the carriage next to her, “let us be friends. Would you like some chocolate buttons?”
“Y-y-y-yes please,” Robin said, the throbbing in his bum temporarily forgotten.
“NO! YOU’LL SPOIL YOUR DINNER!” the Queen screamed, and, whisking the boy onto her lap, she proceeded to smack him again, very, very hard.
“Now,” she said again, placing a quivering Robin back in the seat next, “let’s try again. Would you like some chocolate buttons?”
“N-n-n-no..” he snivelled.
“SO YOU WOULD REFUSE MY HOSPITALITY?!?” she shrieked, hefting Robin onto her knee and smacking him until his bum began to smoke. “INGRATE! I CAN SEE THAT SHALL HAVE TO TEACH YOU A FEW MANNERS!”
Her anger apparently spent, the Queen threw the boy into the bottom of her carriage and turned her attention to her attendant gnome.
“Well, Lord Why-Won’t-the-Bloody-Computer-Work? What shall we do with this Child of Earth? What say you?”
“The stupid thing’s packed up on me again!” the gnome grumbled distractedly, punching buttons on his laptop’s keyboard.
“Oh, let me see,” said the Queen, “Maybe you’ve got too many applications open. Try pressing the reset button.”
While both of them were distracted, Robin seized the opportunity to make a break for it. He leapt out of the carriage, and ran like the clappers, deep into the forest. The last thing he heard was the Queen saying “You’ve got coffee on it, you prat!”

Chapter 3

It wasn’t too long before Robin found himself hopelessly lost. The whole forest was repetitively forest-like and one clump of trees looked very much the same as another. It was beginning to grow dark and his tummy was rumbling and his bum still stung.
“I wish I was still at home in front of my nice warm Nintendo Game Cube”, he moaned.
Just as things were beginning to look really grim, Robin came across a clearing with a sweet little cottage in it. In the front garden there were rows of turnips and cabbages, and smoke curled up out of the chimney. There was a soft light coming from behind the drawn curtains in the windows.
“Maybe there’s someone here who can help me,” Robin said to himself. As he drew near, the sweet little front door opened and a furry head with a black snuffling nose poked out. A pair of dark eyes blinked uncertainly in the light, and a round, fat hedgehog shuffled into view.
Robin was about to introduce himself, when the hedgehog pulled out a double-barrelled shotgun and levelled it at his head.
“Get off my land!” the creature yelled, and pulled the trigger. Fortunately, it was a poor shot, and the cloud of buckshot went wide of the mark as Robin turned and ran for his life.
“Trod all over my cabbages, the little blighter!” growled the hedgehog as he stomped back indoors for another cup of tea and a slice of caterpillar cake.

Chapter 4

Robin might have wandered in the forest for a very, very long time if the writer of this tale hadn’t started to get bored, and provided a way to move the story along. Just as our hopeless hero was staggering along, on the verge of collapse, he fell into a clump of magic mushrooms. Now, these weren’t the kind of magic mushrooms that his dad had told him about (the fun kind), these were the sort of magic mushrooms that are occasionally used as contrived plot devices to transport characters from one scene to another in order to save time.
When Robin got up, therefore, he found himself indoors – to be precise, on the top floor of an evil wizard’s tower. He didn’t at first assume it was an evil wizard’s tower, although the spell books, jars of animal body parts and magic mirror sort of gave it away.
However, these weren’t the things that drew Robin’s attention. What drew his eye straight away was the toilet in the corner of the room. It was a very nasty toilet, the kind of cracked, white porcelain thing with a rusty chain and a wonky seat, that you would find in a school or a wizard’s study.
Taken with the possibility that this might be a portal back to his own world, the boy walked over to it, and taking a deep breath, dived into it head-first.
There was a loud crack and a splosh as Robin’s head collided with the bottom of the toilet bowl. This was, in fact just a toilet. (Even wizards have to go sometime.)
Unfortunately, as he staggered across the room, clutching his head and trying not to cry, Robin knocked over a pedestal with a crystal ball on top of it.
“Ow!” screamed the crystal ball as it hit the floor, “Watch it, you little brute!”
This woke up the magic broomstick that was resting in the corner.
“OY!” it roared, “WOT’S GOING ON?!?”
This roused the sleeping colony of bats that were dangling from the ceiling.
“EEEK! EEEEK!” they squeaked, “Intruder! Intruder!”
There was a grunting and a shuffling from the next room as the wizard, who had been in bed, asleep, got up and put on his slippers. In a panic, dodging the bats’ leathery flapping wings, Robin made for the door and began running down the stairs.
Alas, it was a very, very long flight of stairs, for this was the home of the Evil Wizard Who Chases People Down the Stairs and Robin ran as fast as he could, with the pounding of heavy footsteps following above him. Every time he looked up, he would see a head with a pointy hat and a furious expression peering down at him over the banister. This went on for a very very long time, until Robin was out of breath and wheezing and had a stitch in his side. Just when he thought he could go on no longer, he heard a loud giggling to his left, and he turned to see the talking rabbit sliding down the banister.
“There’s only one way to break the wizard’s power,” said the rabbit, “You have to turn round, and run back up the stairs at him. Otherwise you’ll be chased down the stairs forever.”
With that he shot off down the banister into the darkness.
Summoning up his courage, Robin turned around and began, with shaking legs, to make his way back up the staircase. “I can do it!” he muttered to himself, swallowing down his fear, “I can do it! I can confront the nasty wizard!” He carried on repeating this to himself until he came face to face with the wizard, who picked him up by both ears and gave him a massive kick up the bottom, and then carried him squirming and screaming upstairs and into his study, where he threw the boy into a big cage in the corner and slapped a padlock on it.

Chapter 5

Poor Robin! It would have gone very badly with him then, had he been abandoned to the mercy of his captor, who had every intention of keeping him in the cage and letting him go once a week just so he could chase him down the stairs again. As it happened, just at that moment, a gruff voice from outside the door said, “Right, that’s enough!” and the tiger burst into the room. With a single swipe he knocked the wizard’s head off, and turned to confront Robin who was cowering in the bottom of the cage and trying to be as invisible as possible.
“You,” said the tiger, demolishing the cage with one swing of his mighty paw, “are the most useless Child of Earth I have ever come across. I send you here to perform a simple deed like breaking the power of a wicked witch and freeing a bunch of nice people from her spell, and you cock it up utterly.”
“Well, why didn’t you do it then if you’re so blinking powerful?” screamed Robin in a temper, his mortal terror of big carnivorous animals temporarily forgotten.
“BECAUSE I WAS BUSY!!” the tiger roared back, “GOOD GRIEF, DO YOU THINK I’VE BEEN SITTING AROUND ON MY BACKSIDE PICKING MY NOSE WHILE YOU’VE BEEN HERE MESSING ABOUT? FIRST I HAD TO SEND JENNY AND JEREMY FISHPOLE OF STOKE-ON-TRENT TO THE LAND OF BIBBLEBOOB TO FIND THE LOST PRINCE OF BURPOPALIS, THEN I HAD TO RESCUE DANIEL SACKVILLE-BAGG OF SOUTH CROYDON FROM THE CLUTCHES OF THE GIDDY GNOMES SO HE COULD RESTORE COLOUR TO THE KINGDOM OF WIDDYWEE AND THEN I HAD TO CARRY BETSY DEEDLE TO THE UNDERSEA KINGDOM OF POSEIDOS SO SHE COULD SING THE SONG OF AWAKENING AND BRING THE WATER GERBILS OF ORATHOTHAHOM BACK TO LIFE!!!
“Oh, come on,” he said, abruptly, looking very tired. “Let’s go.” <>With that, he scooped Robin up onto his back and walked towards the door.
“Grab that Precious White Stone of Niceness for me, could you?” he said as they walked out of the room.

Chapter 6

It didn’t take long for the tiger to use the Stone’s power to free King Noblebeard and his subjects from the Evil Queen’s spell and restore their city to its’ former glorious state. The Nice People of the White City were very glad to be freed from their marzipan curse, even the ones who had had bits nibbled off them by squirrels, and there was great rejoicing in the streets. The men and women danced together and sang:

“Hoorah, hoorah, O happy day,
The power of wrong is broken,
And we are free, hooray hooray,
Let happy words be spoken!
Tra la la-la la la-la nonny-nonny-la!
And other such nonsense. And the children joined in, playing on little instruments and making wreaths and necklaces out of flowers, and the talking rabbits and mice and birdies joined in, gambolling round in a joyful dance.
“I expect they’ll carry on like this for a good couple of months,” the tiger muttered to Robin. “I’m off!” With that he turned and disappeared into the nearest manhole.

Chapter 7

After that, Robin lived in the White City for a long while, and to begin with he really enjoyed it. The sun always shone, the girls were all well fit, and the air was very clean. There was no school, no dentist and no cabbage for dinner.
However, after the first five years, he began to grown tired of life among the Nice People. They were always, always being positive and happy about everything, they had seriously uncool haircuts, and their taste in music was appalling. He missed his computer games, he missed being able to tell dirty jokes without being frowned at and he missed his family.
One day, having got in trouble for kicking an irritating singing mouse, and confined by the King to his room, Robin decided he had had enough.
“Please, somebody, get me out of here!!!” he cried.
“You must leave the same way you arrived, Robin Son of Earth,” said an eerie voice from nowhere in particular, “But know this: That one who leaves the land of Chimhoombahoom can never return, for this is the way of the old magic, that once childhood has been left behind and adulthood embraced, there is no way back to…”
“Oh, whatever,” said Robin, and he got into the toilet (feet first, so as to avoid any accidents like last time) and felt himself being sucked back into his own world.

Chapter 8

Robin’s mother was very surprised when she entered the bathroom to find her son, dripping wet, getting out of the toilet and getting water all over the floor. After she had recovered from the shock, she gave him a severe telling-off, dismissing his stories of his adventures in the magical land of Chimhoombahoom as “very worrying” and booked an appointment with the school counsellor.
Robin, meanwhile, was very surprised to find that he hadn’t aged a day, and it was still the same time in his own world that it was when he left it.
“In Chimhoombahoom,” whispered the eerie voice, “a thousand years is but a single day in your own world.”
“So I’ve still got to go to the dentist tomorrow?” thought Robin, “Pants!!!”

THE END