Crap Kingdom Read Online Free

as clever.
    “Sorry!” the Donator said, and rolled off of Tom.
    “Listen,” Tom panted. The long-awaited adrenaline was giving him just enough diaphragm strength to beg for his life, which, if he was honest, was a way more Tom thing to do than making some last great physical effort. “I’m not gonna say that I’ve got like, rich parents or anything. We’re not rich. But . . . but . . . anything we have . . . I mean . . . my mom would . . .”
    “What are you talking about?” the Donator said.
    “Just please don’t kill me.”
    The Donator burst out laughing. “Kill you? You’re the Chosen One! If I killed you everyone would hate me. Even more then they already do,” the Donator said. “The portal’s timed. Give it a couple of minutes.”
    “Okay,” Tom said.
    “Kind of creepy here in the dark, though, right?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I think I have something for that.”
    The guy Tom thought of as the Donator snapped the fingers of his right hand, and it was like someone had switched on a light inside the donation box.
    At first Tom wished this hadn’t happened, because the only thing worse than being inside a dark metal box you could just assume was filled with grime and roaches and a crazy guy was being in a well-lit metal box where you could see the exact location of the grime and the roaches and the crazy guy. Then Tom saw where the light was coming from. It wasn’t a flashlight or any kind of bulb. It was a flame, but not a flame given off by a lighter or a match. It was a purple flame rising from the palm of the crazy guy’s right hand. It was unlike anything Tom had ever seen. It didn’t burn like a normal flame. It poured upward from his box companion’s hand. It was a tiny upside-down waterfall of purple light and mild heat. The man held it close to his face. He looked excited but not entirely confident in his mastery of it, like a kid holding a hamster.
    “The Tame Flame,” he said. “Not my people’s native magic but still, pretty cool, right?”
    Tom nodded. So, he thought, the guy actually was Gark. The most negative thing Tom could imagine—that he was about to be serial killed—turned out to be fake, and the most fantastic thing—that this guy was actually from some other universe—might actually be true.
    “You guys have roaches too?” Gark said, noticing some of the box’s amenities. “We have roaches where I’m from, so you won’t miss them.”
    “That’s good,” Tom said.
    “Shouldn’t be long now,” Gark said, “which is good because—c’mon, c’mon, don’t be like that, hey . . .”
    The fire in Gark’s hand was becoming more firelike, the orderly droplets of purple light becoming tongues and curls of standard fire. It grew wilder and crawled up Gark’s arm. In its tame form it had burned silently. Now it popped and hissed, seeming to want to make up for all the time it had spent pretending not to be a dangerous fire.
    “Don’t worry,” Gark said, “I can . . . Hey, flame! Hey! Let’s—HEY! OW! OWWWWW!”
    Gark started whipping his flaming right arm around what little space there was inside the box.
    “Roll!” Tom said. “Roll on it!”
    “Okay!” Gark said. He threw himself onto the floor of the box. Tom huddled as far away from the burning as possible while Gark rolled, banging repeatedly into the far side of the box, howling in pain.
    The light went out. Tom could hear Gark panting as he finally lay still.
    “Good idea,” Gark said.
    One second later, it was brighter than ever in the box, because every piece of Gark’s clothing burst into flame.
    Tom lunged toward Gark to try and help him beat down the fire, but he didn’t land on Gark. He didn’t land anywhere. He had been flying through the tiny space in the box and then, instantly, he was underwater.
    It wasn’t like he’d dived into a pool. It was like he’d just appeared, submerged, in the deep end. He was confused and panicked until he realized he was