The Big Favour
We all pick our noses from time to time, don’t we? I know you do. Yes, I’m talking to you, dear reader! When no-one is looking and you get that irritating little itch inside one of your nostrils, what do you do? You scratch the itch directly, don’t you? Maybe remove the mucus that’s blocking your airway slightly? And when you do, don’t you just feel better? But then… what do you do with the bogey? I’m sure you, dear reader, go to find a tissue, wipe your finger off thoroughly, throw the tissue in a bin then wash your hands. Good for you, dear reader! But did you know that some people – not you, of course, but some people – don’t get a tissue?
No, they just rub off that bogey on whatever surface is nearby. The underside of a table or chair, the side of a couch or anywhere on a blanket, and that’s just at home! Oh, some people will dispose of a bogey anywhere they think it will not be noticed. But have you ever noticed that those bogies have a way of disappearing once you have forgotten about them? No of course not dear reader, you would never leave a bogey just lying around in the first place, but people who do never see those bogies again. And that is all thanks to The Bogey Monster, AKA The Booger Monster, AKA the Snot Monster, AKA Larry.
Larry’s job since the beginning of civilised society has been to collect every single discarded bogey in the world. When you – I mean, people who do not dispose of their bogies cleanly – are sleeping, Larry will appear out of thin air, absorb the bogey into his body, then disappear. This happens in a tenth of a second, so even if you were wide awake, you would never catch him in the act. And in case you were wondering, yes, The Bogey Monster does essentially look like a six foot tall, roughly man-shaped booger. Because of this, Larry has always had trouble making friends. Tooth fairies, Jack Frost, elves on shelves… they are all grossed out by him. He looks horribly slimy and doesn’t smell too pleasant either, if we’re being honest. There really is only one person in the whole world nice enough to speak with Larry, and that’s Father Christmas, AKA Santa Claus.
Father Christmas and Larry are both super busy all year round though, so they only ever meet whilst ‘on the job’. Once a year, Father Christmas will visit a child’s house that Larry is also visiting, and though Father Christmas usually visits over a hundred homes per second, he’ll slow down to just ten a second so that he can speak with Larry for a minute or two as they flash from house to house. Now one or two minutes to you or me would be a rather short conversation, but to beings who move as fast as Larry and Father Christmas, it can feel like a very long conversation indeed. And oh, how Larry looked forward to his chats with Father Christmas. He never got a present from him – those really are for well-behaved human children only – but this year Larry intended to ask him for a favour. A big favour. Probably his request would be turned down flat, but it couldn’t hurt to ask, right?
Their paths crossed this year at 14 Platensgatan, Motala, Sweden. After some pleasant small talk, Larry asked his favour. “Mr.Christmas, do you think that this year, you could maybe…
What do you think Larry will ask Father Christmas for?
Will Father Christmas grant Larry’s request? If not, why not?
What new characters could you add to the story?