…suitable for 4 year olds and some adults.
This salesman runs out of gas in a thunderstorm. He tries and tries to use his cell phone, but it’s not picking up any signal because of the storm or the remote area he seems to be in.
He sees lights on in a huge ugly and over done mansion across the road. Using his rain coat to keep dry, he crosses the street and walks up the long dark drive lined with unkempt and very large shrubbery to the front door.
He knocks at the door using the huge lion head knocker. The knocks were as loud as thunder. No one comes and he knocks again.
The door slowly and with loud creaking begins to open and a tiny little butler with a very large nose looks out and asks in that way that butlers tend to have, "May I help you?"
"I hope so. I’ve run out of gas across the road here," he points to his car suddenly visible via a huge and very close strike of lightning. "May I come in and use your phone to call triple A?"
The butler looks past the salesman and to the car with his upturned chin and says, "I see. Well, of course. You must come in and use our telephone."
"Thanks so much," the salesman says. "You’re a pal."
The butler pushes the door open wide and says to the guy, "Follow me."
The salesman is lead into a large foyer. The walls are dark with heavy woodwork. The center table has a bouquet of thorny roses, but the flowers have folded over and begun to dry out from a lack of watering. Dried petals upon the table scatter about from the "SWOOSH!" of the front door closing with a loud THWACK!
The salesman is lead into a library filled with old dusty books and a rolling ladder to reach its upper shelves. The room is heavy with the scent of mold and mustiness.
"Wait here," the butler says to the salesman. "And I will bring you a telephone."
With quick and tiny steps the butler leaves him alone in the room and closes the door to the library on his way out.
The salesman takes a seat in what looked to be a big comfy chair, but instead he slips out from its shiny leather seat and on to the floor. He tries other chairs and the sofa in the room, but they are all made of the same overstuffed shiny leather and he just can’t get a seat in this overwhelmingly dark stinky library. He is stuck with just having to look over the selection of books on the shelves lining the walls from floor to high ceiling in the danky dark library.
He pulls a book from a shelf and takes it over to to a side table. He switches on a lamp, but nothing happens. Click, click. He tries it again. Nothing. None of the other lamps work either. Only the lone ceiling pendant lights the dismal room.
So the salesman waits.
….and waits.
…and waits.
Suddenly the door to the room flies open and in walks a very tall and quite slender butler, but with a very tiny nose. A teeny nose. A barely pimple of a nose at all, notices the salesman.
"You are needing a phone?" he asks the salesman.
The sales man nods his head yes to the spindly butler.
"I’ll go and find you one then, " says the second butler and he quickly turns on his heels and is out of the library with door snapping shut behind him.
And the salesman is left to wait. Again.
So he waits.
…and waits.
…and waits.
The library door opens quietly and the man watches as a quite round butler enters the room pushing in front of him a very large box. This box is really big. Nearly bigger than the very round butler struggling to get the box through the library door.
The box is quite shabby with bits of tape just barely holding it together. Large stamps of "FRAGILE" and "DO NOT DROP" are over lapping each other all upon the box.
The salesman makes a move to help this very obese butler bring in the box, but he is quickly given a wiggle of "no" from the butler’s chubby right index finger.
The salesman is beginning to wonder just how many butlers he’s going to see before one brings him a telephone…
Finally the butler has positioned the box in the very center of the room. He turns to the salesman and asks, "you’re needing to call a car service?"
"Well, really triple A," the salesman replies. "Unless you have access to gasoline?"
"Oh, no," the butter-ball of a butler says. His mouth seems to stay in the round tight "no" a bit too long. "We don’t keep such things on hand. Much, much too dangerous," he sighs.
The salesman just stares at him.
The much more than portly butler stares back.
"Is someone bringing me a telephone," the salesman asks.
"Of course," says the butler seemingly a bit annoyed with the salesman as he waddles his way back to the library door. "A phone is on it’s way I assure you, " he tells the salesman as he turns in the doorway and looks over to the box he’d just brought in.
"In the mean while," he asks a bit timidly to the salesman, "do you think you could unpack this box?"
The salesman is becoming quiet exasperated with all these butlers and their apparent lack of butleling assistance. He is just about to say no and leave the mansion and it’s unhelpful staff, but the fat little butler gives him such a beseechingly sad plea of a look that the salesman says,
"I suppose so."
The salesman watches as the bulky butler quietly closes the door behind him. Once again he is left alone to wait for a phone in the very large and useless library. He sighs. He stares at the over sized box in the middle of the room.
"I guess I’ll have to work for the use of a telephone around here," he mumbles to himself as he walks towards the sizable package. The box is as wide as a refrigerator and just as tall, too.
The salesman circles the box once and draws his ring of keys from his raincoat pocket. His cell phone slips out and drops to the floor. He picks it up and looks to the screen to see still not a single bar of signal available.
A strike of lightning shines through the tall windows and a crack of thunder follows immediately.
The sales man opens the small swiss army knife attached to his key ring and begins slicing through the tattered tape of the humongous box. The worn out box sides fall to the floor and inside the box is — another box.
The salesman quickly cuts the tapes holding this much tidier box sealed and its sides fall to the floor revealing — another box, but this one is held together with twine.
The twine is quickly cut and the box sides fall away to show — another box!
Through tape, twine, brown paper and more tape, twine, and brown paper the salesman cuts his way through open one box inside another. The boxes continue on and on, each one smaller and smaller than the one before before until the salesman comes to a box about the size of a toaster.
The sales man carries the small box to a side table. It is so light in weight he is thinking that it must be empty as he uses his little knife to cut through the taped top.
Inside is a — ANOTHER BOX.
He opens it and continues opening more and more smaller boxes and then he reaches what must surely be the last box as it is no bigger than a thimble and how could a box be any smaller than a thimble?
He opens the thimble sized box and out JUMPS this very ORANGE and enormous MONSTER! A monster bigger than the very first box the man had opened!
The salesman jumps back, nearly falling over the back of a sofa to get away from the very ORANGE and stupendous sized MONSTER and the MONSTER begins to chase the salesman all about the now seemingly very small library.
The salesman is climbing over furniture and ducking under tables, but there just seems to be no possible way to outrun the very ORANGE and immense MONSTER! He tries and tries, but the very ORANGE and big MONSTER keeps blocking his every attempt to reach the library door!
Quickly the man scrambles up one of the rolling ladders, but the monster just climbs up right behind him.
The salesman has reached the top of the ladder and there is no place for him to go unless he were to turn around to jump off and over the very ORANGE and colossal MONSTER, but the floor of the library now seems very far and away.
He does turn around to see that the very ORANGE and great MONSTER is just a few rungs behind him. Already he can smell the tang of the very ORANGE and monstrous MONSTER’s breath.
The MONSTER is nearly upon him. The salesman does his best to squeeze himself as far back into the ladder and bookshelves as he can. His poor head is pressing against the ceiling and beginning to ache from the pressure of being squeezed where there is no room to squeeze.
The salesman watches in terror as the very ORANGE and alarmingly huge and close MONSTER raises one of his huge beefy hands for the salesman.
The hand reaches closer and closer with its large and pudgy index finger coming closer and closer to the salesman’s chest. The salesman wants to close his eyes in fear, but he just can’t stop staring into the very ORANGE and tremendous MONSTER’s deep and hollow holes of black eyes.
The very ORANGE and jumbo MONSTER pokes at the salesman’s chest with his very long and prodigious index finger. He looks into the salesman’s face of terror and opens his mouth to squeal,
"TAG! You’re it!"
P.S. The key to this ending is to have been moving closer and closer to the child so that you could POKE THEM IN THE CHEST WHEN YOU SQUEAL AS LOUD AS YOU CAN, "TAG! YOU’RE IT!
P.P.S. While I did write this little story I did not create the basis for it. It was told to me by an old school chum in a life and time far far and long long ago…
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