REACH — a fiction by Ollie Francis

A moment from childhood

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There is a hole in the trunk of a tree in the bushes at the end of our garden. I noticed it when I was a ninja fighting aliens. It’s not the sort of thing you tell your mum — I don’t think she would be interested in it anyway. But it’s there.

The thing about holes like that is that they don’t always obey the normal rules of phys-eds. Sometimes they just don’t make sense. You put something in them one day and the next, it is gone. Nada. Not there. Completely absent.

When I reach in, my arm just goes on and on, past the bugs and rough wood, past the edges to the worm’s hole, into space and back again.
I don’t know where it ends up, but I know there are bad guys there. Sometimes I have to fight them. Swing my arm back and forth, using my magic powers to beat them up. I don’t know where these bad guys think they are hiding, but I know they are getting trashed.

Other times, I hide the treasure inside. Huge chests of pirate gold, magical diamonds from the Planet Droon.

I know they’ll stay safe inside, forever.