“Shabalabalop! Boom! Tummy! Pop!”

Dion Phaneuf, the captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs and so much more, wakes with a start. Something is wrong, and the wrongness has disturbed his slumber. No sights or sounds intrude on the dark of his room. The problem exists outside our everyday reality.  Dion reaches out with his extra-planar senses.

As soon as his astral self leaves the physical realm, The Captain is bombarded with an aching hunger. A grotesque appetite has soaked into the Thirteenth Dimension and Dion knows that what this force seeks to consume is him.

“Shabalabalop! Boom! Tummy! Pop!”

The rhyme might almost be cute except it repeats incessantly in The Captain’s imagination. If his psychic powers were as dull as a human’s, Dion could have been overwhelmed.

The Captain begins to absorb the rhyme. “Shabalabalop! Boom! Tummy! Pop!” The words become a part of him; he is a part of the words. Ever so slowly The Captain lets go. Dion is no longer under psychic attack because he is the psychic attack. Once he is immersed in the pulsing flow of power, he is able to feel for the source of it.

As he closes in on the source the intensity of the rhyme increases. “Shabalabalop! Boom! Tummy! Pop!” The words repeat one last time, and then there is silence.

The Captain’s astral self floats in a void. Below him he can see a swirling, pulsing, sparkling ball of force, glowing contentedly. The weaver of the ritual does not sense their targets escape. Fool. A tiny red ribbon flows into that ball. Power trickles along the ribbon feeding psychic force into it from afar. Dion follows this ribbon, his imagination sending him hurtling though space and time at speeds that would tear his physical body apart.

Dion does not notice the obstacle until he is upon it. Stopping suddenly, he narrowly avoids a crash and is confronted by an image of revolting majesty. A human figure, more gut than man, stands before him. At first The Captain thinks it is a statue but it moves its head to look at him. The thing’s skin moves as though covered by insects. Only when it smiles does Dion realize it is constructed entirely of hotdogs which writhe and squirm to stick together.

“Papa is hungry.” The foetid reek of processed and digested beef-like products cradles its every word. “Papa wants to play.” The Captain knows better than to answer; to do so would be to welcome madness. “Papa misses you. Papa is going to beat you. Papa will always beat you” The Captain isn’t listening anymore. He springs forward and attacks the thing before it can even register surprise. Burnt hotdogs scatter into the ether of the Thirteenth Dimension.

Dion continues to follow the ribbon. No more defenses rise up against him. The trail of power leads Dion to a circle spinning inside a circle spinning inside a circle; three psychics bonded in the ritual.

Stepping from the Thirteenth Dimension into our Third Dimension is simple as an astral projection. The Captain knows exactly where he is.  Three hooded figures stand facing each other in a clearing high up Mount Washington. Below them is the Monongahela River and behind that, the city of Pittsburgh glittering in the night.

If the three fools understand what they have started no one can say. Once begun, this ritual will demand their lives, as final agonizing payment. It is with mercy that The Captain breaks their psychic link, killing them instantly.

How Phil found three people to conduct such a ritual is not as interesting to Dion as why he would go to the trouble, but as his astral form returns to his physical body he decides he does not care.

Kessel is waiting. The Captain is ready.