In tomorrow’s edition of the weekly newspaper The Canterville Portal, they are publishing a warning to all dog lovers and/or dog owners (sadly, there is a difference) that they should avoid purchasing imported chew toys which were made in the Flatlands dimension.
The world is not a nice place, and the same holds true for those ancillary worlds of Canterville, the pocket dimension which is a limbo state still tethered to the Connecticut Notch, yet inaccessible to its neighbors; and the Flatlands, a flat planet in its own, larger, dimension, where it is stitched together by a crazed toddler godling who stole whole landmasses and civilizations to add to its collection, countries forgotten now by Earth save as fiction in myths, Bible stories, and a few works of literature.
The news story was initiated because of recent events in Canterville, and it has mushroomed into a wider investigation which – allegedly – has spread into the Flatlands.
Apparently there is a practitioner of the Dark Arts somewhere in the Flatlands who has been crafting chew toys which have a vaguely human appearance. But when handled by the purchaser, these chew toys not only resemble the pet owners, but they absorb a reflection of their personality as well. In effect, they become voodoo doll chew toys.
No harm comes to the dogs; it is only the humans who would be injured, and possibly even killed, by such a vicious spectral mauling.
The Monitaur agents working out of Pooticuck County in the Flatlands have been investigating, and they embargoed a huge shipment of these chew toys (under various brand names) which had been scheduled for export into Canterville. There was more than ever would be needed by dog owners in the former Fort Kathlyn farmlands, so it appears that the original scheme was to smuggle the rest through the thin walls between worlds and inflict these chew toys on the populace of the United States.
Such business is controlled by the Simcooth Conglomerate (unfortunately, Canterville has no regulations against monopolies), but they claim innocence in the matter. Of course they do.
The Monitaurs are working to discover who the thaumaturge might be who is capable of such villainy, but there are so many repressive states and evil empires in the Flatlands, and the resources for the Monitaurs to work undercover espionage in those foreign lands is limited.
And the possibility exists that it could be a “freelance” necromancer plotting their own machinations.
Of course, because of interdimensional diplomacy protocols, the Monitaurs can neither confirm nor deny those reports.
Luckily the Monitaurs assigned to the Canterville dimension, mostly to safeguard access to the vortals back to Earth and to the Flatlands, were quick to respond when somebody did fall victim to the voodoo chew toys.
Emil deWintrie is a Canterville expatriate, now living down South in Candletop. (There are reclusive communities of relocated Notchfolk throughout the country.) But he had returned to Canterville to visit family and do a big favor for two of his friends….
Those friends are Blake Wiyomin, a public relations consultant (who is descended from those blue-skinned aliens who crashed in Connecticut under cover of a meteor explosion in 1807) and his husband, Gabriel Knoft (music teacher at Canterville High School.) They were going to spend their honeymoon in the Flatlands, touring several of the islands in the archipelago of the Sundering Sea, which cleaves the Flatlands nearly in half. But they needed someone to watch over Damosel, their puppy, for those two weeks.
Damosel and Emil got along great, bonding almost as if they always belonged together. On the day before Blake and Gabriel were to come back home through the vortals, Emil stopped into Swedyon’s pet supply shop to find a toy to give Damosel, in hopes that she would remember their time together whenever she played with it.
One of those malefic chew toys caught his eye and he bought it for her.
When they got back to Blake and Gabriel’s home, Emil was surprised to find that the chew toy looked something like him. He thought that might help in imprinting memories of him in Damosel’s mind, but to further seal that deal, he rubbed the toy all over himself to make it his perfect avatar.
I will spare you the details.
When he gave it to the puppy, Damosel eagerly grabbed it in her mouth, her teeth lightly clenching the doll in its midriff.
Emil suddenly felt the slight pangs of intestinal distress, but couldn’t determine if he needed to go to the bathroom or to the kitchen to make a sandwich. The puppy meanwhile happily tossed her new toy in the air in the living room and suddenly Emil was gripped by the rush of vertigo.
And that’s when Damosel sank her teeth into the doll’s left leg.
Emil screamed in agonizing pain.
When Damosel’s parents walked back into their home the next morning, they found Emil on the kitchen floor, unconscious, with Damosel solicitously lying across his stomach, whimpering quietly as though she also was in pain.
While Blake called eleventy-one to report the emergency, Gabriel noticed that aside from all the blood soaking the left pant leg, the pants were otherwise unmarked. There was no indication that they had been chewed.
Emil deWintrie recovered quickly, although there is some scarring. (Canterville physickers have access to medical… “talents,” which are only the stuff of legend in the outside world.)
Let this stand as a word of warning to all Abbistocks* - never give your pets chew toys which resemble you. (And I would be remiss in my lapsed Catholic upbringing if I didn’t warn that using one against your enemies would be a sin.)
* “Abbistock” is a corruption of an old Scottish word, “àbhaisteach”, meaning “mundane”, “ordinary”. (In other words, humdrum humans like you and me.) In fact, there is a village in Pooticuck County with that name. Abbistock began as a commune, a kibbutz if you like, for all the displaced “Whiskaways” kidnapped from Earth. They were whisked away even though they didn’t have special bents which usually caught the attention of Astiph, that petulant toddler godling who created the Flatlands.
Pooticuck County already had towns with populations of Firbolgs with tails, blue-skinned extraterrestrials, circus folk descendants, werewolves, were-bears (both Native American and Brooklyn Jewish), people cursed with bad luck, people stuck forever in a time loop, two different First Nations, descendants of escaped slaves (many of whom have the ability to fly), travelers, rich folk, mobsters, and cowboys.
So why not a community of just plain people?)