Calvin shot straight upright in bed.
He cut his eyes from side to side, and sniffed the air.
"What is it?" Hobbes yawned, rubbing his eyes, and sitting up.
"My 'Dad's gonna make us all miserable again' sense is tingling." He muttered.
"You're just worried about the letter." Hobbes replied. "Your Mom took care of it."
"I still think we better go investigate." Calvin said.
Hobbes stared at Calvin.
"What did it do?"
Calvin halted at the edge of his bed, and turned a blank stare onto Hobbes.
"What?"
"What did the gate do?" Hobbes asked.
"What are you talking about?"
"Well, you said you were going to go down to arrest the gate." Hobbes replied.
Calvin's eyes bulged, his teeth gritted, and he felt his temper rising.
"I said I was going to go down and investigate! IN-VES-TI-GATE! Do you stay up at night and think of ways to pull me into your mindless drone!"
"No, I think it just happens."
Calvin stared at him.
"Fine. Whatever. I'm going now. Stay here, and don't ever speak to me again!"
Calvin jumped off the bed, and landed on the floor.
A tentacle shot out from under the bed, and hurled for Calvin.
Calvin held his foot up, and brought it down as hard as he could onto the tentacle.
STOMP!
"YEEEEE-OUCH!"
Maurice pulled his aching, throbbing tentacle back under the bed.
Winslow stared at his monster companion, as he started sucking on his sore tentacle.
"Baby." He spat. "Watch this."
Winslow stuck his tentacle out from under the bed.
STOMP!
"YEEEK!"
Winslow yanked his tentacle back inside and stuck it in his mouth.
Calvin stormed over to the door.
"Alright." Calvin whispered. "You stay here, and guard the bed."
"Roger." Hobbes said.
"I'll go arrest the gate."
He paused.
"INVESTIGATE!" He screamed. "DO SEE WHAT YOU DO TO ME!"
Hobbes blinked.
Calvin tiptoed out of the room, and started down the stairs
Calvin hear Mom and Dad talking.
Fighting, actually.
"We could go on a road trip." Mom said.
"No."
"An airplane ride."
"No."
"A tour of some museum."
"No."
"Uhh... a road trip."
"Dear, Calvin is going to be thrilled when he finds out about this, so don't ruin the fun."
"No he's not." Mom said.
Calvin listened harder. They were talking about him.
And for once it was in a quiet voice.
"Shall we wake Calvin up, and ask him if he's excited?" Dad asked.
"Dear, why ruin his last good night's sleep?" Mom replied.
"Ha ha. That's a laugh. Just be sure to have your bags packed tomorrow. This Tree Huggers International meeting starts in five days, so we have to be in the car by tomorrow afternoon."
Calvin's lower jaw dropped three inches, and his eyes nearly bugged out of his bed.
He threw his head back, held it with both arms and screamed.
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!"
Mom and Dad looked up.
"Calvin!" Dad exclaimed. "Guess what! We're going to Georgia!"
Calvin stared at Dad.
Then he replied in the best way he could under the pressure.
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!"
Mom and Dad stared at Calvin.
Calvin ran around in circles, still screaming, ran into the wall, trip on the rug, and flew up into his bedroom screaming, "HIDE ME! HIDE ME! HIDE ME!"
Mom blinked.
"Hmm," She thought out loud. "He took this quite well."
Dad rolled his eyes.
The next day, Dad came up to Calvin's room.
"Rise and shine, Calvin!" He cried. "This is going to be a great day!"
Dad yanked the covers off of the bed.
It revealed several of Calvin's clothes piled up onto a broom.
Dad blinked.
"Oh for crying out loud. Not this again."
Calvin looked out from some binoculars from the bush outside.
He saw Dad walking out of his room, and down the stairs, holding the broom.
"He took the bait." Calvin whispered.
"Yeah, the broom was my idea." Hobbes said.
"Shut up. Now we'll make a detour around the house, and press our feet into the grass so they make footprints. We'll walk up to the tree house, then rush off. While Dad's looking in the tree house, we'll go into my room, pack my inventions, and fly off in the Time Machine. Got it?"
"No."
"Good. Move out."
Calvin and Hobbes tiptoed around to the back of the house.
"Heh, heh." Calvin chuckled. "Nice try, Dad. But we'll never catch us, now!"
Just then Dad walked out the door, and spotted Calvin.
"There you are!" He yelled.
"Darn it." Calvin spat.
There was a blast of wind, and a blur of orange, and Hobbes disappeared.
Figures.
Calvin screamed, and rushed off.
Dad went after him.
Dad followed.
Calvin zoomed down the streets, flinging his arms everywhere, and screaming his head off, and Dad chased after him, his arms outstretched, as he tried to grab him.
"HELP! HELP! I'M BEING HELD AGAINST MY WILL! SOMEONE CALL THE POLICE! I'M BEING KIDNAPED! HELP! ME! HELP! ME! HELP! ME! HELP! ME!"
Socrates stood out on his front porch sipping on a milkshake.
With a dull expression on his face, he watched as Calvin went flying past with Dad right behind him.
"This is such a weird neighborhood." Socrates said, going back into his mansion.
Calvin continued running. And screaming.
He was about to enter the town, when Dad finally caught him.
He carried him all the way back to the house, and dumped him into his room.
"Calvin, this is going to be fun." Dad assured. "Just get packed, and we'll leave."
"I'll leave!" Calvin screamed.
He made a dash for the window.
Dad rushed over, slammed it shut, and locked it.
Then he left Calvin in his bedroom.
Hobbes was already there, reading a comic book.
"I ought to sue you." Calvin growled.
And with that, he took his hypercube, and started piling inventions into it.
Then Dad came in, told him to stop packing toys, and pack clothes, and stuff he'd actually use.
"Dad, I am going to use these. We have the Time Pauser, Mega-Shrinker 5000, The Mini Duplicator..."
"Just pack some clothes." Dad ordered. And with that, he closed the door.
Calvin shrugged.
He took his drawers, and dumped all the contents into his hypercube.
Which did not just consist of clothes.
It consisted of toy trucks, empty soda cans, comic books, and several other things Calvin managed to shove in there.
It was a long tedious process.
Hobbes watched, silently for a while, as Calvin tried to jammed everything in there.
"Calvin, why don't you just take the clothes you need?" He asked, finally.
"Shut up. I know what I'm doing." Calvin spat.
Calvin spent the next hour trying to jam all his clothes into the hypercube.
Hobbes watched.
Finally, Calvin managed to get the hypercube full.
"Okay," he said. "Let's go to our imminent doom."
Calvin walked towards the door…
…and his eyes fell upon a cardboard box.
"Huh. Could've sworn I packed that."
Then his eyes narrowed.
"Hobbes, did you…?"
"NO! I DIDN'T TAKE IT OUT! WHY DO YOU ASK?"
Calvin sighed.
Then he saw how the box was positioned.
It was on its side.
"Hmmm," he said.
Hobbes gulped.
Then Calvin set the hypercube down and approached it.
"Uh, Calvin? What are you doing?" Hobbes asked slowly.
"Saving myself a week of torment," said Calvin.
He opened up the box.
"Umm, I don't know what you're thinking, but the fact that it obviously has to do with that box is a bad sign."
"Hobbes, think for just a second without your brain blowing up," said Calvin. "We are about to go on a trip that could very well lead to our instant death, right?"
"Right."
"And it would seem there's no way out of it, right?"
"I would assume so, yes."
"Now stay with me here. What if we went, but it actually wasn't us who went?"
Hobbes stared.
"Uh…what?"
Calvin sighed.
"We'll duplicate ourselves, and then we can send the clones off on the camping trip, and we can hide here!"
Hobbes thought about that.
"Gee, I can either go to an island where the mosquitoes rule over everything else or I can step inside your death-trap box of doom. Wow, I hate them both so much."
"Just think of this, Hobbes: If you pick the camping trip, you have to put up with eating no tuna, no salmon, just spam. Spam for breakfast. Spam for lunch. Spam for dinner. Spam for those little in between snacks. Spam here. Spam there. Spam everywhere! Spam out the wahzoo! And that's not a metaphor. I mean literally that!"
Hobbes sat there for a brief minute.
A really brief minute.
"Okay, in we go!"
But before they could start, Dad burst in.
"Okay, let's hit the road!" he said happily.
Calvin and Hobbes gulped.
"What do we do?" asked Hobbes.
"We'll duplicate the next chance we get it. Let's just go."
Calvin and Hobbes loaded the Duplicator into the hypercube, and then they ran downstairs and into the car.
Dad pulled out of the driveway, and they drove off for Georgia.
But right after they left, the mailman walked up.
He jammed some mail into the mailbox, and then walked away.
He hadn't closed the door, so that left a postcard to tumble out.
It was a picture of Chill, looking exactly how he had when he'd kidnapped Calvin and Hobbes.
And there was a message, and it read:
I'M HERE.
AND I'M READY TO KILL.