Kyle walked down the bumpy gray sidewalk running along squares of grass forests with white, wooden fences. Oak trees lined along the steaming, black asphalt road rustled their leaves as the cool, gentle breeze blew across the blue sky with the golden, gleaming nugget-like sun above. Kyle stopped dead on his feet and turned his head around.

A long, empty sidewalk with a wooden fence as tall as Kyle himself blocking the corner was in view. There were no sounds except the leaves beginning to dance in a little ballet as the breezes picked up. The soft mumbling of a whispering car engine passed by.

Kyle turned forward and continued walking home. He thought that he could hear faint thumps on the ground behind him, but every time he turned around to see what it was, he was only welcomed by the empty sidewalk and the gentle swaying of the oak trees. Kyle was about to turn around again when something suddenly grabbed his ankle.

WHAM! Kyle was suddenly pulled by the ankle, falling face down on the gray pavement. He yanked his leg away and began to burst in a run, seeing a glimpse of what was a group of older boys. These were the boys whom he had gotten in trouble unwittingly at school, and they had just spent the last two hours scraping man's best friend's droppings off the school's pavement. Now it was going to be Kyle being scraped off the pavement. Kyle began sprinting at full speed, stretching his leg muscles into pain. Kyle could hear the drumming footsteps behind him sounding like the arena of a horserace.

"Oh, are you going to run away now, are you?"

Kyle kept running.

"Go and run to your mommy, you girl!"

Kyle's face reddened as tears trickled down his cheeks. He closed his eyes and ran. He knew that those boys were in the varsity teams of just about every team sport as opposed to the physically unfit boy he was. It was only a matter of time until they caught up to him.

"Got him!"

Too late.

They began introducing their fists to his stomach, one by one. Kyle choked and shut his eyes tighter, squeezing the last bit of tears from his eyes.

"Oh, ya gonna cry now? HUH?"

Kyle suddenly felt himself being raised up from the ground with many hands holding him up. He was being swung back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until...

"Throw him through that window!"

Kyle suddenly felt a release, gaining the temporary feeling of flying that he always did when this launch was done to him. He had just healed a scar from this very same act two weeks ago. Kyle still remembered the feeling of sudden contact at concrete at a very high velocity. And because of the brawn of these guys, Kyle could be hurled through the air at a pretty high speed. Suddenly Kyle stopped flying through the air. No hard landing. No concrete. Kyle waited for the moment. Nothing. Slowly, he opened his eyes.

He saw snow. But it was warm, and the snow that he sat on was warm. Before Kyle was a large mirror with a grand frame of pure gold, or that was what it seemed like. Through the mirror, Kyle could see the other side. It was like a tinted window, like a magnifying glass seeing the distant happenings outside. Kyle saw the boys confused on the other side, searching around trees and behind bushes for someone, probably Kyle. Kyle noticed that on the other side, there was a large bush that seemed to hide most of this window from the other side. That was probably why the boys on the other side of this window hadn't seen him yet, or hadn't seen his foot sticking out through the mirror to the other side. Kyle moved his foot slowly in and out through this window, making ripples on the glass that looked like liquid metal.

Kyle had flown right through the window. How? Kyle pulled his foot to his side of the window into this new dream world. The mirror stood alone in this cold-looking, warm land of snow. But his mom would be waiting for him at home, worrying about him, maybe thinking that he had disappeared like his father had. Kyle had to return to home. He began to walk into the mirror but slammed into it.

"No." Kyle tapped the window. It could not be passed through anymore. "Oh no." He banged on the window, trying to break the glass, but the glass was very rigid and wouldn't give in. How had he gone through the mirror? "NO!"

Chapter 2: The New World

Well, this new world wasn't half as frightening as it had seemed when Kyle fell through that mirror. Yes, it was in fact, a mirror, not a window. It looked so much like a window on that strange, abandoned house. Kyle attempted to move the enchanted mirror, but it wouldn't budge. Frustrated, Kyle threw his arms up and began to walk away from the mirror, down a short concrete path. Then it stopped. The rest of the patch was a long windy road with a different look. It meandered through a forest and up a mountain far in the distance.

It was a yellow brick road.

"Har har. Hilarious. And to complete this ordeal, all I need is fluffy gray dog."

POOF. A dog crash-landed from the sky. Along with a pot of tulips.

Kyle looked up at the sky just as the clouds were closing up an opening just recently created. The gods must have a really goofy sense of humor.

So Kyle began to embark on a wondrous journey through a twisted, demented realm with a mix of Oz and The Land of Narnia. Snow here. A cornfield there. And lo and behold, there was the sudden appearance of a centaur, only with a goat's body. And the goat was made of...straw?

"Good day, youngin'," said the goat-body centaur made out of straw. "In case you don't already know me, I am Flement, the otherwise stoic creature of extreme reticence, unless, that is, you intrude in my territory, in which case, I'd have to kill you."

Kyle stared, bedazzled.

"Uh, I wouldn't want to intrude on your territory because I just want to go home. My mom's probably worried sick about me, and as much as I'm really not looking forward to seeing those guys' fists up close again, I'd really like to go home."

"I have only half an acre of peachiekeene grass in my possession, all of which I hold as dearly sacred."

"Well, as much as I'd like to stay here and mourn over your tales of woe, I'd really like to go home."

"Tell me, are you knowledgeable in botany?"

"Well, I can tell the difference between a nose-piercing rose and an ass-piercing cactus, but I'm not exactly your local expert in the Kmart gardens."

"Lovely field we stand upon, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's very lovely."

"A lovely field of peachiekeene grass."

Kyle was starting to get the hint.

"Um, look, this was an accident. How about letting me go upon a solemn promise that I will never stand on your fields again?"

The goat-centaur-haystack creature suddenly proved that the idea of retractable horns was actually possible. Oh no.

"Do you see those two oak trees out yonder?"

"Yes, I do. And let me guess; that's the place for our duel?"

"As the one being challenged, you may have the choice of weapons." Flement pulled a branch like a lever, and one third of the bark folded out into a table full of weapons strapped. Diamond swords, mahogany daggers, acorn catapults.

"I'd rather not be armed."

"What???" Kyle threw all the weapons onto the ground.

"I'm unarmed." Flement shrugged, which looked very odd from a goat-like centaur.

"Suit yourself. Let the fight begin." Kyle and Flement stood in the center circle of the platform and began to step slowly in opposite directions, ten steps to their starting positions. 10...9...8... Kyle thought to himself, debating over whether this was really a good idea. ...6...5...4... No time left. Surrender or risk the fight. 3...2...1...

...to be continued