Maverick stomped across his room. “It’s not fair!” he shouted, hoping his mom would hear.

He had run up and pushed his sister for no other reason than to make her angry. Unfortunately for him, his mother had seen everything from around the corner. She had been cooking in the kitchen and Maverick didn’t see her.

It didn’t take him long to run up the two flights of stairs to his room after seeing the anger on his mother’s face.

He didn’t know why he was acting like this, it just felt good. He was tired of bottling up his emotions. He just wanted to let it all out.

He began throwing things across his room. Small things at first, things that wouldn’t cause damage: stuffed animals, rubber balls, plastic action figures.

Then he started throwing more things…things that would scuff up the walls or break a window. His mother would really lose it then. He picked up his biggest Lego creation—a build he had spent days on, the Titanic—and chucked it at the wall.

CRASH.

Thousands of pieces flew everywhere across the room. Maverick looked at the wall and saw a large hole. Now his dad was going to get mad. And that made him mad at his dad. He began throwing things his dad had brought back for him from his work trips: a cowboy boot from Arizona (one of the pair), a shisa dog set from Japan. Then he picked up the rock from a mountain in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

He looked at the rock, hand-carved with Swahili writings on the back and the path his father had taken on his adventure on the front. He knew he couldn’t throw it. He knew it would upset his father terribly. He knew.

Then he threw it as hard as he could at the wall, the same wall he threw his Lego Titanic at.

The rock went straight through the hole in the wall, and then…nothing.

No CRASH, THUD, BANG…nothing.

He walked to the wall, something inside him scared of what he’d find. He grabbed a flashlight off his shelf as he walked over, turned it on, and shoved it at the hole. But he couldn’t see anything.

He got closer and tried to look in the hole from every possible angle. Nothing. Just Lego pieces everywhere. As much as he didn’t want to, he stuck his arm in the hole. He felt around for the rock, but there wasn’t anything there.

Then he heard his mom coming up the stairs, probably to chastise him. He tries to take his arm out of the wall and hide under his bed, but he couldn’t take his arm out of the wall.

Something was keeping it there. And to his fright, it was pulling him in, more and more.

“MOM!” he screamed. “MOM, MOM, MOM!” But her footsteps didn’t move any faster as they usually did when he was scared and yelled for her.

Then the wall transformed into a beautiful portal with great, tall trees and open meadows on the other side.

And then a force pulled him through to the other side.