AAOOOSC! #10

The morning sun is bright with its rays raining down on John’s house. Yet there is nothing bright in John’s house. All there is is guilt and regret flooding the rooms and drowning John himself.

John is sitting on his sofa in his living room, attempting to immerse himself in a Greek newspaper. Not even Greece’s news can lighten him up and make him forget about his atrocious doings.

He thrusts the newspaper against the almondade-littered coffee table, revealing his worn out, distressful facial expression. He yanks off his reading glasses, tosses them on top of the newspaper, then runs his fingers through his slightly, spiked-up hair.

“How am I going to apprise the League Leaders I don’t hanker after this scheme anymore?” he mumbles to himself. His eyes are glued on the ceiling, like as if the answer is written up there.

Then the dreaded doorbell rings: Ding-dong!

John turns his head to the right, staring at the red door like as if it is a threat itself. “They’re have arrived.” He swallows hard, then forces out, “Enter.”

The door opens and the three-membered League Leaders, Harry, Larry, and Gary hobble in, or glide in, in Gary’s case. In Harry’s hand is a briefcase.

“Oh good morning, Mr. Tavares!” Harry exclaims in his hoarse voice. He then settles himself next to him, placing the briefcase by his feet.

Larry sits next to Harry; Gary parks his bed next to the sofa.

“Good morning to you, too, Harry,” John wrings out with a nod.

“Now--” Harry lifts the briefcase onto his lap. “--let’s get down to business.” Before he could snap open the bag, the doorbell rings again.

The three men perk up and eye the door in confusion.

“Who’s here?” Harry barks at the door.

John shrugs. “I’m not expecting anyone else.” He then cautiously gets up and makes his way to the door.

He opens it up slightly; his eyes immediately fly open.

On the other side is Toews himself in his NHL ruler attire. He does not look amused one bit.

“Kid--?”

“We need to talk,” Toews cuts in sternly.

“I-I-I can’t--”

“Now.” With a swipe of his hand, Toews swings the door open fully, getting a good view of the living room and who is in it.

“Ah, hello, Mr. Toews!” Harry greets with an insidious tone.

Toews brushes by John, who is clearly bewildered, then spins on his heels to face him. “How could you do this?”

John snaps his eyes at Toews with a petrified look. “Kid--”

“I see I wasn’t invited to the party…!” a familiar voice rings out from the open doorway.

All eyes go on the doorway to see who just intruded: Jimmy.

“What are you doing here?” Toews snaps.

John’s eyes are as wide as hockey pucks when he turned around and caught sight of the goalie.

“What else?” Jimmy swaggers deeper into the house, adjusting the black gloves from John’s negating machine. He faces Toews with a menacing look. “I’m here to finish my job.”

He then pulls his arm back; his glove-covered palm begins to build up yellow, vibrant energy.

“No!” Toews immediately shoots his hand out and closes it in a fist.

The energy in Jimmy’s hand quickly diminishes.

“What-!” Jimmy wiggles his arm, but it is like as if an invisible force is holding it in place.

“I thought you had no more powers!” Toews’s eyes then widen as information creeps into his head. “You got some from the machine…!”

A wicked grin spreads across Jimmy’s face. “You thought I was a goner, eh?”

Toews angrily swipes both of his arms across him.

Jimmy follows his arms’ direction, flying across the room and crashing against the sliding glass door.

Toews spins around to face Jimmy, who is now crumbled by the door. “I’ll make you gone!” He then extends his arms out in front of him; his facial expression becomes filled with tenacity.

A black space begins unfolding between the dining room and the living. The space emits screeches and howls and other horrific cacophony from it. He stretches it so that it is the size of a person.

Then with one hand, Toews attempts to move Jimmy into the nightmare he just opened up. Yet he is too slow and something else escapes from it.

More like familiar faces escape from it.

“Hello, there, Toews,” Kari Lehtonen calls out with a smirk and crossed arms. “Glad you got us out of there. It’s about time.”

The other EHP members in their suits and ties, Ben Bishop, Claude Giroux, Henrik Lundqvist, Ryan Miller, and Carey Price, file out of the portal, halting behind their Master.

From behind them, Jimmy slowly lifts his head up. A hopeful smile grows on his face. “Oh...you guys...you’re back...yes…!”

Toews’s expression morphs from surprised to perturbed. His eyes are wide with anxiety and his breathing has grown heavy. “Oh no, no, no, no, no…! This can’t be happening…!” His voice is wobbly and weak.

John has his jaw dropped with fully open eyes. “Do something, kid,” he mutters.

Harry turns to Toews. “Oh, well, thank you for giving us something extra to do.”

Toews averts his worry-filled eyes back on Kari.

Kari has pure light building up in his hands, ready to fight for revenge.

With a split decision based on trepidation, Toews thrusts his hands farther out.

Immediately, the air in front of his hands begin to shift as a line of glowing white energy forms.
The glow opens wider, like curtains parting; the shape the rippling glow outlines is first an oval, then a circle.

As the new portal begins to grow larger, familiar sounds of a hockey game is heard from the other side: blades of skates scraping against the ice, sticks clicking against the ice and each other, the puck slapping against the blade of the stick, a few fans chattering among themselves.
The view of the other side matches the sounds from the zamboni tunnel’s point of view. Yet it seems like they are looking out at the ice from a mouse’s point of view.

“What is the portal leading out to?” John hastily asks the ruler of the NHL.

“I don’t know--!” Toews halts his talking when the pull of the portal kicks in and Carey gets thrown into the portal.

“Blinkin' knickers! This has a pull!” John yells. “Obstruct it, kid, obstruct it!”

“Just let me put them in here!” Toews snaps as Claude follows into the portal. He slowly transfers the control of the portal to his left hand, by pulling his right hand away.

Yet the transfer does not go smoothly.

The portal’s size flies open, achieving the size of the living room wall’s length. With that, every single person in the room gets snatched as victims of the portal and are thrown into it.

Including Toews.

Toews flies through the opening, rapidly nose-diving against the rough, frigid ice due to the harsh force of the portal.

He lays there for a few seconds until he hears an ear-splitting sound of skates braking against the cold surface and chunks of ice spewing on his back. He immediately perks up; his eyes fly wide.

There are hockey players on the ice playing hockey. Right away Toews notices that they are taller than him--not just a few inches taller, a whole lot of feet taller than him; they are giants compared to him! The second thing he notices is who the teams are: the New York Islanders in white and the Chicago Blackhawks in red. The third thing he notices is that he is in a familiar and awfully larger location: the United Center, his home ice.

Suddenly, the puck, which is inches shorter than him, zips above him, almost taking out his head. In fright, Toews scrambles to his feet and slides to his left just as the colossal hockey players invade his spot.

He attempts to run on the ice, but due to its slippery surface, he keeps stumbling and falling.
Toews buries his face against a hole made in the ice by skates earlier. Where am I? he thinks to himself. Why is everything so much bigger here? He then sense a giant hockey player looming over him. With curiosity and courage, he slowly raises his head up to see who is above him.

He takes in the mountainous skater: He is an Islander, proudly wearing the “C” over his heart. His eyes widen. Is that John?

The skater awfully looks like the John Toews knows. Yet, there is something off about his facial features: his eyes are smaller, his skin has a rougher texture, his facial features are sharper like creases of his eyes, he is much taller, of course, and the most obvious difference of all: he overall appears more realistic.

Toews gawks at this much taller, lifelike John. “John?” he gasps under his breath.

He then catches something from the corner of his eye: The John he knows of is against the boards a few yards away, looking out at the scenery with agitation.

“John!” Toews roars over the scrapes, hoots, and slams.

He launches himself into the air and begins to soar over to him. He twirls around the legs of two skaters, then squeezes between the arm and side of a skater, dodges the flying puck, then dives down at John.

He stomps his feet against the ice as he lands, grabs John’s shoulders, and slams him against the kick plate. “What do you think you’re doing? How could you go against us after vowing to never go back to your devious plans? You betrayed us! I thought I could trust you!”

“Kid, I must inform--”

“No, John, no! You blew it! You blew your chance to stay in the GHP. Go do whatever you want to do, but know this: I am against you and will do everything in my power to make sure you don’t win!”

“Kid!”

“Don’t call me that anymore--!”

John roughly grabs Toews’s shoulders, forcing him stop talking. “Kid, will you listen to me?!”

Toews stares at him with disgust.

“I am terminated with the scheme. I attain no more supernatural abilities.”

The disgust immediately morphs into shock. “What?”

“You heard me right: I have no more powers,” John replies in plain English.

Before Toews could respond, he feels someone from above staring down at him. The two small skaters slowly lift their heads up to come almost face-to-face with a towering Blackhawk. They immediately recognize who he was: the realistic-looking Jonathan Toews.

“Oh man, let’s go!” Toews yells in fright. He quickly grabs John’s hand and blasts off into the air with him. With the same anxiety and fear from last time, he conjures the portal back to John’s house in midair. He then leads John and himself into it.

They both glide back into the warm, cozy, regular-sized living room and tumble onto the wooden floor. Behind them, the portal automatically closes, locking all of the EHP and League Leader members behind.

With groans, Toews and John get up and climb onto the sofa, sitting side-by-side. They stare at each other with bewildered expressions, taking in and processing what they just witnessed on the other side of the portal.

“What portal did we just access?” John breathes out.

Toews stares at him, gaping. He then shakes his head. “I have no idea. But it’s a whole new world out there.”

Notes