A six year old boy named Melvin found a portal and came out in a giant garden, where he was found by a ten year old girl named Portia who was staying at her Aunt Natalie’s house for the school holidays. Portia brought her dolls house out into the garden and met Melvin there every day and played dolls with him.

One day her aunt came out and stooped down and picked up Melvin.

“Portia, I’ve been telling you for days to clean up your room. Go up and do it now. I’m going to put this little boy in the oven and warm him up. If your room’s not all tidied up by the time I’ve cooked him, I’ll eat him all up.”

Portia hurried upstairs and got to work.

Natalie took Melvin to the kitchen and switched on the oven at low temperature.

“Are you really going to eat me?” he asked, strangely thrilled at the prospect.

Natalie looked at him sternly.

“Yes I am,” she said, “I know you must find that unfair, but my niece needs to learn to do what she’s told.”

She put him in the oven and closed the door. He watched her doing other things in the kitchen until he saw her come over and open the door.

“Are you going to eat me … all the way down to your tummy?” he asked.

“I think you already know that that’s the only way a person can be eaten,” she said, “It’s no use trying to talk me out of this, little boy. If Portia hasn’t come down with her room cleaned up, by the time I put you into my mouth, I’m going to swallow you.”

Natalie took him to the table and sat down.

She looked at him with no hint of mercy in her pretty but stern eyes, and brought her hand close to him. He saw her hand opening, and looked at the approach of her fingers and thumb. He felt them gently closing around him and then he was lifted up towards her face. She opened her mouth wide in front of him and moved him towards it. He stared in at her tongue and couldn’t believe that she was about to give him such a thrill as a punishment for her niece.

Suddenly Portia ran into the room.

“It’s all done!” she said.

“I’d better come and inspect it,” said Natalie and all three of them went upstairs.

The room was perfectly tidy.

“Good, now keep it that way. I think you’d better send your little friend home now, and then you can help me get dinner ready for both of us.”

Portia carried him outside and put him near the portal. There was about an hour of sunlight left in both their worlds.

“I don’t want you to come here anymore,” she said, “It’s too risky.”

Melvin left despondently. It wasn’t until two years later, that he thought of asking Natalie to eat him anyway, once Portia had left her house and gone back to school.

He went back to the giant house, but an unfamiliar lady told him that she’d bought the house