Wendy and the Ice Monsters

Wendy and the Ice Monsters (a Grandma tale)

Chapter One: WHERE’S SANTA?

Once there was an eight-year-old girl with red hair and lots of freckles. Her name was Wendy, and she was very independent and liked to have her own way. She didn’t care what the other kids thought of her, even if they called her names like Carrot Hair or Orange Crush or Wednesday.

One night Wendy was trying to sleep. But she couldn’t sleep because it was Christmas Eve, and who can sleep on Christmas Eve?! She wanted to stay awake so she could see Santa bringing presents for everyone.

So she decided to stay awake, but Santa didn’t come, and Wendy was very ticked off. It seemed like hours were going by. “Ill bet Santa will never come,” she said.

But just then. . .
CRASH!

WENDY FELL THROUGH 

THE FLOOR!

She fell and fell. She fell and fell and fell and fell and fell!

“Help!” screamed Wendy. “I’m falling!”

Then suddenly. . .

She fell some more. She fell and fell and fell and fell and fell.

“Rats,” said Wednesday. She was getting used to falling by now, and wasn’t afraid. Well, she was a little bit afraid.

She thought she might land on a rock or go THUD on the ice. But when she finally landed, she felt light as a feather. But she didn’t land on feathers. It was frost, like you see on the tree branches and leaves in the winter.

“Yikes! This is cold on the bum!” yelled Wendy.

It was very very dark and cold.  She didn’t know where she was. Some kind of ice cave? Talk about scary! Wendy was a brave girl. Most of the time. But this time she wasn’t too sure.

“I want my Mummy,” she said, and began to cry.

POOF!

Chapter Two: Hello, Frost Man!

Something or someone appeared in front of her. He was nine feet tall and BLUE! He was all covered with blue and silver frost.

“You look cool!” said Wendy.

“Thank you, little girl. I am cool. I have to be, or I would melt. By the way, who are you?”

“Who am I?” Wendy cried. “Who am I?? I’m normal! I’m a little girl. You’re the monster, aren’t you?”

When she said this, Frost man began to cry. She had hurt his feelings. Wendy suddenly felt very bad about what she had called him.

As he cried, water ran down his face.

“I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, Frost Man. You’d better stop crying, or you’ll melt,” Wendy said.

“But I’m frightened.”

“Of me?”

“No. You’re not as brave as you say you are, or you wouldn’t make fun of other people.” Wendy felt embarrassed, because he was telling the truth.

“So who are you frightened of?”

“I’m afraid of the Ice Monsters. I can see their shadows moving around in the distance.”

(Oh no, it gets worse, Wendy thought to herself.)

“Listen, Frost Man, I don’t know who or what you are, but I like you. I’ll help you beat those Ice Monsters. We’ll do it together. As a team.”

Frost Man gave her a quavery smile. He really wasn’t sure a little girl could help him with something as scary and powerful as the Ice Monsters. But he was glad to have a friend. There weren’t too many Frost People around in this strange hidden world.
Then, all of a sudden –

BLAM!!

Everything exploded into ice cubes! Wendy was amazed to see that everything around her was made of ice crystals.

“Is this Ice Land?” Wendy asked. She had heard about it in geography. It was a country that sounded very cold.

“No. It’s the Land of the Ice Monsters.”

“So where did all the other Frost People go?”

“They’re hiding. When the ice explodes like that, it means. . . THEY’RE COMING!”

“OK then!” Wendy had made her mind up. “Let’s go

deal with those monsters!”

They made their way through chunks and hunks of ice. Wendy couldn’t see any Ice Monsters. The place seemed deserted. Then. . . What was THAT??

Something was appearing in the mist. It looked like an ice cloud. Then it got bigger and bigger!

It was an ICE MONSTER!

Chapter Three: The Land of the Ice Monsters

“Aeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh,” screamed Frost Man. He started to run away. “Don’t you dare run away,” said Wendy. “You must confront your fears.”

“What does that mean?”

“You can’t run away.”

“Oh.”

The Ice Monster looked terrible. He looked worse than anything Wendy had ever seen. He had awful eyes. He had awful hair, like big splinters of ice sticking out of his head.  He looked like the Abdominal Snow Man, or Bigfoot with white fur, only a lot meaner. He looked ten feet tall!

“I know how to deal with this guy,” Wendy said.

“HOW??”

“He’s an Ice Monster, isn’t he? We can melt him.”

Frost Man looked doubtful.

“There’s no electricity down here. We don’t have any blow driers or anything like that.”

Wendy thought and thought. She had no idea how to melt the Ice Monster. But it got worse! Just then she saw another TEN Ice Monsters coming up behind him! They looked awful! They looked scary!

YUCK!!

“Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!” screamed Wendy and the Frost Man.

But then she had an idea. “It’s Christmas Eve, a magic time. Maybe that will give me magic powers!

The Frost Man looked doubtful. “Are you sure?”

“No. But do you have any other ideas?”

“Uh, no. Let’s go for the magic powers.”

She pointed her finger at the Ice Monster. “ZAP-A-DOODLE!” she screamed. A lightning bolt shot out of the end of her finger and hit the Ice Monster!

“Ow,” he said.

“He’s melting!” cried Frost Man..

“Zap!” yelled Wendy. “Zap-a-doodle-doo!”

Chapter Four: VICTORY!

Bolts of lightning were flying everywhere! All the Ice Monsters began to melt like icing on a hot day.

The Ice Monster began to turn into slush as he screamed and ran away. “He turned out to be a big coward,” Frost Man said in surprise.

“We won, we won!” said Wendy. “He’s just a puddle now.”

 “Yay,” said Frost Man.

“But wait a minute. It’s Christmas Eve! I’m supposed to be in my bed, waiting for Santa.”

Frost Man looked at her. “Remember, this is a magic night.”

“It is?” Wendy wondered if she had used up all her magic zapping the Ice Monster.

“Of course it is.”

ZAP-ZAP-ZAZZLE!

All at once, the dark ice cave vanished, and Wendy was miraculously back in her bed.

“Wow!” she said. “It’s so good to be home. Nobody’s going to believe what happened to me.” Then she thought of something. “But I miss Frost Man. He was such a good friend to me.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Even if he comes back, how am I going to be friends with a person who has to stay frozen all the time? I wonder if I can keep him in the freezer.” She was very discouraged.

Then she heard a sound outside her window. A sort of sparkly, tinkly sound like ice crystals hitting a pane of glass.

Slowly a pattern formed on her window. It was a face! A face made of frost and starlight. And not just any face, but one she knew very well.

“It’s you! I knew you’d come back.”

“Merry Christmas, Wendy.”

“Merry Christmas, Frost Man. Well, it’s not quite Christmas yet. So Merry Christmas Eve. How did you get here?”

“This is a magic night, remember? So here I am.  Every Christmas Eve, just look out your window and make a wish, and I’ll be there.”
POOF! The Frost Man disappeared, as Wendy watched in wonder.

When Wendy woke up the next day, she shook her head. “I’ve never had a dream like that before. It was a doozy.” Then she noticed a strange sort of pattern on the window.

The sun was shining through it and it was all glittering blue and silver, almost like diamonds.

“Pretty,” she said, and ran downstairs to see what Santa had brought her.

THE END

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A spider went up my nose (a Festive Tale)

 

 

 

 

 

 

All I wuz trying to do, see, was get out some Xmas wrap on those long tubes, I mean really really long ones so I had them in the corner of the closet all kind-of standing up on their ends sort-of? and took a lint roller - never mind why a lint roller, OK, because I took out pompoms I'd made last year, Xmas pompoms because I'm too cheap and lazy to make MORE pompoms to put on my Xmas presents as decorations insteada bows, like? I don't use bows. So I take out the old pompoms and shake them and a whole buncha stuff comes out so's I have to get out the lint roller which goes "zzzzzzzzzzzzt!" when I try to pull off the old stickamy-thingie, you know, so 97 pieces of stickamy come off of the roll and I have to try to put them all back on. But that is the unimportant part.  When I began to try to find the rolls of Xmas wrap - God - God - So I see this - GOD its legs were so long it just - . I screamed and started fencing with it and jabbing it with the lint roller which was all covered with lint from the pompoms? so nothing would stick to it anyway so I jabbed and jabbed and jabbed and after a while it started to become clear that the spider wouldn't die cuzzadafact it was GONE somewhere in some freaking CRACK or crevice or maybe up inside my favorite sweater where it would just hunker down and lie in wait. Its legs were At Least 4 Inches Long or More, and they wiggled around because it sort of clambered except real fast like a hundredyard dash inside my closet. And I could not BELIEVE I could have a huge spider inside my very own closet which I share with no one, no not even a fucking arachnid from hell, because about a week and a half ago we took everything out of that closet to paint inside it and lay new carpet, and I'd thrown away all my gross old sweaters and old boxes of stuff and everything, yet still, here was this HONKIN' HUGE thing like from some rainforest, and to be perfectly honest I DO live in a rainforest which is part of Vancouver. Oh god but at least it didn't have any egg sacs throbbing on its body, its body was really teeny but its LEGS were like half a mile long and EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH! My husband heard me screaming my guts out and came in with a good-natured look on his face and said, "What?" and I asked him HOW a spider cudda got into my newly-painted, freshly-carpeted wonderfully clean bedroom closet, and he says "hmmm, what about that cardboard box?" and I say "WHAT about that cardboard box?" and he says "that cardboard box you brought in" and I say "WHAT cardboard box I brought in?" and he says "that cardboard box you brought in from the garage" and I say, "ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." THAT cardboard box. That. I Brought. In. From. The. Garage, to put some sort-of-a gift in, in fact I think it was a snowman or some-such thing that I made for my grandgirl, she likes snowmen and I almost SEALED A SPIDER INSIDE THE BOX with the little cute little snowman in it so that when she opened it up on Xmas morning, all excited about what could be inside, an EVIL poisonous multi-legged throbbing iggidy-wiggidy-piggly-wiggly-legged spider would've popped out at her and ruined her Christmas, so maybe things weren't so bad after all except I still haven't stopped screaming and feeling cold waves of shuddering all over my skin, involuntary shudders of disgust and revulsion at the sight of that MONSTER spider just scurrying along, just scurrying along the wall of my freshly-painted, newly-carpeted closet, hunkering down in the corner where all my neat little rolls of gift wrap are stored, not even in the plastic but already OUT OF THE PLASTIC so the spider could easily just zip down inside any of the rolls he wanted so that when I finally do wrap my presents, SURPRISE, out will pop the Spider from Hell to terrorize me and ruin my Xmas, except that at this very moment I think that the spider must be crawling around my scalp inside my hair which is why it is now standing on end and which is now why I cannot stop screaming and perhaps will never stop screaming until the life cycle of this particular spider finally ends.