Page 14 - Mateo and the Gift of Presence audio flip book Ch 1-2

Mateo and the Gift of Presence

But let’s return to Mateo. What happened to him next is
difficult for me to describe because nothing remotely like it has
ever happened to me. However, since I’m the narrator of this
extraordinary tale and it’s my job to explain it, I’ll do my best.
The moment the violent jolt of electricity exited his
toes, Mateo was sucked up through the crack, which opened

just wide enough to let him through before snapping shut
behind him.
For one brief (but creepy) moment, Mateo found
himself crouching in the cramped crawl space between his
bedroom ceiling and the roof, staring into the eyes of a resi-
dent rat. But it was a short-lived encounter, for suddenly, he
was siphoned upward again, so fast that his body thinned and
distorted into a long, flexible noodle, slender enough to thread
through a small hole in the roof and into the blue sky beyond.

Up, up, up he went, soaring through layer after layer
of Earth’s atmosphere, the sky growing darker and darker with
each passing second until it was blacker than black and exploded
with millions of twinkling stars.
But the stars didn’t twinkle for very long; they morphed
into streaks. By then, you see, Mateo was traveling faster than
the speed of light through a space-time tunnel that only a few

brilliant physicists believe exists. And this, it turns out, was
lucky for him, for outer space is a very inhospitable place and
it’s best to cross it as quickly as possible.
Mateo was chilled to the bone, for the space between
stars is very, very cold. And he was suffocating too, from lack of
air. But worst of all, the sudden change in air pressure forced

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