Floyd Kelly

The road trip was finally, actually on.

For the first time in a while, that low hum under Rumpelstiltskin’s skin wasn’t the usual itch for mischief. It was the highway, the steady vibration of asphalt passing under his ‘97 Aerostar. Freedom. Experiencing life on the vast road. He was heading west. He was going to get his dog.

After a few hours of blasting Katy Perry, watching the lush Florida pines bleed into the marshy flatlands of the Gulf Coast, he pulled into a rest stop just over the Mississippi line. The air, thick and wet, smelled of salt and diesel. He parked the van under a sprawling oak, away from the other cars. This wasn’t a prank stop. This was business.

He just sat for a minute. Looking around, feeling a sense of relief for Beebers but also a long road ahead. This situation, he thought, required a different kind of magic. A shortcut. Who doesn’t love a shortcut?

He reached into the back. Pulled out the old burlap sack. His fingers brushed past the relics and the new, glistening paper towel roll. He grabbed The Sphere of Precise Magic. It felt cool in his palm. He spent a few seconds balancing in his hand, feeling the weight. A perfect, solid cobalt blue glass orb that just seemed to drink the light around it. He caressed it. A long, tender moment between a magician and his powerful tool. This was serious.

Looking around to ensure nobody is watching, he became relaxed and comfortable. He slowly lifted his right hand, the sphere in his palm to near his chin, then to close up to eye level.

He began muttering, practicing the incantation, the words simply a low whisper under his breath. He could feel the sphere thrumming, a low vibration against his palm. He closed his eyes. Focused his intent: Louisiana … Jefferson Parish … Beebers.

He stopped. Took a deep breath and opened his eyes and looked deep into the sphere. He mouthed the words one last time, silent, making sure every syllable was perfect. This had to be exact. One wrong word and he could end up on a subway in New York with a goat. Again.

He took a breath. Spoke the words, clear and confident.

“From Train to Plane, From Space to… Plane!”

He blinked. A hot spike of dread went through his body. “No! … That wasn’t right!”

A brilliant, silent flash bleached the world white from the inside out. The familiar, unwelcome pressure of a spell gone sideways. For a split second, the van was still, but the universe around it twisted, folded, and just snapped back into place.

The air wasn’t thick and wet anymore. It was thin. Crisp. Cool. The sprawling oak tree? Gone. Replaced by an endless, flat plain of brown grass under a vast, pale sky. In the distance, a single old grain elevator stood like a lonely monument. No magnolia blossoms. No Spanish moss.

This was not Jefferson Parish, Louisiana.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” Rumpelstiltskin yelled, almost about to shed a tear, his head falling back against the headrest. The moments went by as he let his new reality sink in. The first thing he thought was to find out where the heck he is. And when?

The van doesn’t have GPS. He doesn’t wear a watch. The phone is dead. There are the default minutes past midnight on the radio clock reading 12:02 am. Just a basic CD player and a radio. Ah! The radio. He started sweeping the bands. FM was a wasteland of static. He switched to AM. After a few seconds of crackling, he landed on some sad-sack country song about a truck and a waitress’s broken heart. He left it. 2 minutes later, the song faded. A calm voice came on. “Jeremiah Jacobs, KDAK 1600 AM on your dial, today is Friday, July 18, 2025, and now for the local news segment for Ruso, North Dakota…”, The voice paused. “In agricultural news, the wheat stocks are not looking good this year.” Rumpelstiltskin just stared at the radio. Ruso, North Dakota. He was, he realized with that familiar sinking feeling, so far off. So very, very far from home.

He killed the engine, plunging the van into a vast, unnerving silence. He dug through the glove compartment, past the ketchup packets and gas station receipts, and pulled out the map. Spreading the map for the upper Midwest across his dashboard, he found the tiny, almost non-existent dot for Ruso. “Alright, man,” he muttered to himself. “Okay. We can fix this. It’s a whole situation, but we can fix it.”

His new plan was simple: search for a new direct route, go south. He drove for hours, the endless brown plains eventually giving way to the slightly more populated landscape around Bismarck. He got a cheap motel room, slept for two days straight, and then got back on the road.

He made it to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, before his cash situation became concerning. He found another faded motel, The Prairie Dog Inn, and decided to stay. The road trip was on hold. Again.

A few days later he visited the Sioux Falls public library. No theatrics. He got a library card and started checking out books—piles of them. Mystic myths, ancient poetry, forgotten verses, books on magical theory. He returned books on time, using the Worn-Out Sponge of Wealth for small, precise cash infusions, just enough to get by.

Over a few weeks, Rumpelstiltskin used all these strange books to update his skills. His motel room transformed from a chaotic crash pad into a makeshift wizard’s study. He spent hours practicing, his voice a low murmur as he repeated incantations, focusing on perfect pronunciation. His main focus was the Sphere and the Galactic Gold-Finder. He’d hold the cool, cobalt blue sphere in his palm, pointing the small LED flashlight with its red light directly at its center. He learned to manipulate it. To see the swirling star maps of the universe within its depths, to track his current location, and most importantly, to trace the trajectory of his last, disastrous jump. He saw the mistake. The single misplaced word that had flung him to North Dakota instead of Louisiana.

He practiced for days and hours on end, tracing new routes, refining coordinates, his frustration slowly giving way to a new, hard-won confidence. He wasn’t just a trickster with a bag of magical junk anymore. He was a self-taught magician, learning the rules to a game he’d been playing on easy mode his whole life. And soon, he knew he’d be ready to up his game.

Money was short. But this was an easy fix, he thought. On a nice Saturday, he walked to Sherman Park. Playing fake hopscotch along the way. He found a nice bench and settled in. He placed his magician’s hat on the ground before him, the “DONATIONS” sign facing out. From the burlap sack, he grabbed the glistening paper towel roll. He held it to his lips like a megaphone, took a deep breath, and said loudly, “Chicken Fried Steak and a Chocolate Milkshake!” The effect was instantaneous and chaotic. For a one-mile radius, people stopped what they were doing and their thoughts were replaced by a wave of manic, compulsive generosity, it washed over the population. Suddenly! People began frantically giving away whatever they could get their hands on to anybody they saw—neighbors offered each other lawnmowers, toasters, velvet paintings of dogs playing poker; businessmen tried to hand off real estate deeds to strangers on the street! The lines at the ATMs were overwhelming, a gridlock as people ran as quickly as they could to give away things they received from other people. Cash flew through the air. It was a 1-mile frenzy, a panic of giving, with everyone freaking out that they wouldn’t be able to give enough away. On his bench, Rumpelstiltskin was the calm eye in a well-designed act of charity. For one glorious hour, people sprinted towards him, stuffing his hat with cash, jewelry, and other oddities. An hour later, when the spell finally broke, the people blinked, collectively confused. Rumpelstiltskin sat and counted his haul: a thick wad of cash, the deed to a mysterious cheesecake place, and a brand-new Sea Monkeys starter kit!

The next day

Rumpelstiltskin was rested and hit the rode again. He was excited to get to Beebers! He drove south on the 29, his next stop, Lincoln, Nebraska. He stopped for a drink at a store and sped off and took a wrong turn. The road turned into a rural road, then even more road. After many miles of tall grasses, barns, and darting deer he saw the sign “Rock Valley” and then he took another wrong turn and ended up heading towards “Le Mars”.

Talking to himself, “Alone. Accept that wrong turn as a simple excursion. That’s what road trips are all about. Right?” Then, there it is.

At first, just a glint on the horizon. A flash of silver against the pale blue sky. But it grew with impossible speed, resolving itself into a perfect, massive, circular shape. A spaceship. A classic, no-frills, round UFO, utterly silent and impossibly large. It zoomed toward him, its gray surface and all its piercing twinkling lights, and then it just… stopped. Directly above his van, blotting out the sky.

Rumpelstiltskin slammed on the brakes, the Aerostar skidding to a halt in the middle of the dirt road. He stared up through his windshield, his mouth agape. He leaned out the window, looking up, a sudden strong sustaining wind. His wild hair flowing with the wind.

Before he could even think of grabbing the Sphere or the Jar of Frozen Moments, a column of brilliant, white light erupted from the bottom of the ship, engulfing his van completely. An intense light! The radio dissolved into a shower of static, the engine went blank. The smiling bobble heads on his dash vibrated violently. He felt a strange, weightless sensation as the entire van—including the smelly interior, the half-eaten bag of chips, and the burlap sack full of magical junk, everything—began to lift off the ground.

He leaned out the window and saw the roads shrinking below him. A big smile on his face. The ascent was smooth, silent, and efficient. He realized, “Yep! I’m being beamed up!” The light intensified, and with a final, gentle pulse, the van was pulled through the bottom of the ship.

Then, everything went white.

He came to with a groan, the smell of chocolate-chip cookies replacing the familiar funk of his van. He was lying on a cool, comfortably padded table in a room tiled in a sterile, pale blue. Above him, a three-sided black viewing box hummed silently. He could see silhouettes of something moving behind its dark screen. Then, an image flickered to life on the center screen. The classic: green skin, a large, elongated head, and enormous, black, almond-shaped eyes.

A look of pure dread spread across Rumpelstiltskin’s face, then a slight smirk. “Oh no! Help me! Save me!” he whisper exclaimed with a fake terror. He knew that face on the screen.

A translator, obviously synthesized, speaking with the sound of a scratchy, slightly garbled male voice echoed in the room.

“Rumpelstiltskin!” the alien’s image chirped. “We meet … again.”