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Chapter Nine: Plittereeg

“Boo,” we heard from behind us, with a thick Irish accent. The alabaster lion roared, I jumped, and Plittereeg EEPED. We turned around and standing before us was a measly, furry little creature with two arms on each side of its body and close in appearance to a weasel.

When we arrived in the home of the little green creature, we noticed one major difference from houses on Earth: the furniture was built into the floors and walls and couldn’t be moved.

“My name is Plittereeg. Welcome to my home,” said the little green creature. Plittereeg led us to a hidden stairwell and signaled for us to follow him down underground. We walked down the stairs for quite a long time, at least an hour, judging by my watch, until we reached a vast network of tunnels. We walked through a couple of the tunnels and came to an open expanse of cave that was dimly lit.

As we walked farther and farther, it got lighter and lighter until we could see it was actually an exit. When we got out, we looked up.

“Wow,” I said, awestruck. We had gone at least a mile down underground in the stairwell. The mile high cliff was littered with other caves with stone ladders carved into the mountainside underneath them. There was one cave, the biggest one, that had no ladder at all. This cave looked unused and had a small stream of murky brown sludge trickling out of it.

“Whose cave is that?” I asked Plittereeg.

“That, I don’t know. When I was little my parents used to tell me stories about vile monsters living up in that cave, but as far as I know, nobody knows for sure what is living in there.”

“Huh. Maybe we’ll find out.”

“I sure hope not,” said Plittereeg, “I’ve heard way too many bad stories about that. The scariest is that it’s inhabited by a giant octopus that lives in a pool of that murky brown sludge trickling out of the cave and is lying in wait to strangle anybody who comes to close to the entrance. Another one of the scariest stories is that Abraham Lincoln lives in there and drives up to houses in a stretch limo at night and waits to attack you.”

“Abraham Lincoln?”

“Yeah. There was this weird time capsule thing that had a green piece of paper with an Abraham Lincoln portrait on it.”

I slapped my face like you see people do when somebody is oblivious to something that seems really obvious to you. “Anyway, why did you bring us out here?” I asked.

“So that I could show you my section of the house. It’s connected to the house by the family cave, but not actually in the main area. This way.” He led us back into the cave and into a hole in the wall.

He led us quickly through a tunnel and down into a large open space which had a stone bed, wardrobe and fluffy chair. Don’t ask me how a chair made of stone was fluffy, because I can’t really describe it.

Plittereeg led us to a ladder that led up a shaft. We followed and came to what was evidently a storage space full of alien knick-knacks that I had never seen before. Plittereeg said, “Hmm. I’ve never noticed that before,” pointing a dexterous finger at a chipped and broken stone ladder in the corner of the room, halfway covered up by piles of glittering brown transparent gems.

“Why don’t we go check it out?” I suggested.

“Good idea,” said Plittereeg. We followed Plittereeg up an empty shaft into another cave, larger than Plittereeg’s home cave, and much cooler and damper. We walked to the exit and looked around. We were high up, and we could see all the caves of the other families around us. There was no ladder leading down from the cave mouth, like there were with the other family cave, and in the far corner of the cave mouth was a brown, sludgy stream.

With a concerned look on his face, Plittereeg followed the stream with his eyes. We followed his gaze and saw a huge, murky pond, full of the brown sludge.

“Boo,” we heard from behind us, with a thick Irish accent. The alabaster lion roared, I jumped, and Plittereeg EEPED. We turned around and standing before us was a measly, furry little creature with two arms on each side of its body and close in appearance to a weasel.

“Me name’s Weasel.”