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Author's Chapter Notes:

Things heat up in the kitchen for Colleen and Stanley

She took him down to the kitchen and placed him on the kitchen bench, and squatted down on the floor and began rummaging around amongst the crockery on the shelves.

“There’s a baking dish in here somewhere,” she said, “Although you might have to wait to be cooked. I don’t want to use a metal one, as it would heat up too much and too fast and burn you before you could be gently warmed up. I’m trying to find the porcelain one, but I’ll have to rearrange a lot of this in the process, I think.”

Stanley had noticed that the window was open behind the bench, when she’d first brought him into the kitchen, but he hadn’t seen any benefit in that with her standing right there towering over him. Now she was almost on the floor and as out of sight to him as he must therefore be to her. He saw a rack of serviettes, and took one, held onto its four corners and stood at the edge of the window ledge. He jumped, and let the serviette slow his fall, just as a parachute would have done. He reached the garden bed and started running.

The portal was a long way off, and he still had an hour of daylight. He was almost to the flowerbed, when he heard her calling through the window.

“You really do put me to an awful lot of trouble, Stanley. Here I come.”

He reached the flowerbed, and looked back, just as she opened the back door. He backed into it, watching her cross the lawn in much less time than it had taken him, while he kept edging backwards, using what cover he could and looking for the invisible portal. He looked up at her towering form, beautiful but to be escaped if at all possible. He didn’t know how he could ever hope to come back and be with her again, if he did get away, but the important thing to do now was make it safely back to earth.

“You won’t escape me again this time, Stanley. I’ll find you and catch you and eat you all up!”

He came to a thick dense group of bushes, and darted in, turning his back and running. With any luck, it would come out in a position where he could double around and sneak back to the portal. He ran with all his strength, and then the bushes thinned out, and he came to another garden bed, although here  the plants were a little taller, impossible to see over. He ran and ran and then stopped to catch his breath.

Suddenly Colleen came bursting through the plants in front of him, crawling on hands and knees. She had broken off the chase behind him, doubled around quietly and crawled through to ambush him.

“What would you have done anyway, gone back to that emptiness you spent the afternoon telling me about?”

“I didn’t fully know. I had to escape, before I could think that through. You know it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

“And you know that this doesn’t mean that I don’t love you, but you can’t escape. I found the right baking dish, before I looked up and saw you out here. I’m going to take you back to the kitchen, cook you in my oven and gobble you all up.”

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