We have a black hole on the roof. I don't know how it got there, all I know is that if we don't get rid of it soon, we're all going to get sucked up.

I first noticed it when I was bringing a roll of toilet paper from the linen closet to the bathroom. The toilet paper suddenly unrolled and shot to the ceiling. I couldn't think of what to say to that.

I got my mother, and she looked at the toilet paper on the ceiling for a long time. Then she went next door and got my grandfather. Grandpa looked at the toilet paper and turned to me. "How did this happen, Jim?" he asked.

"I don't know. I was just walking past here with the toilet paper, I was gonna put it in the bathroom, and suddenly it got sucked up to the ceiling."

"Well, I'll go up in the attic and have a look," Grandpa said. He went up and didn't come down for about an hour. I guessed that maybe he got stuck by whatever got the toilet paper, so I went up with a rope around my waist and yelled, "Grandpa!"

"Over here, Jim!"

So I ran over, careful not to lose the rope, and felt something pulling me. I went flying up to the ceiling, next to Grandpa.

"What's going on, Jim?"

"I don't know, Grandpa," I said. "Hang onto me, I'll pull us back with the rope."

Grandpa helped me pull on the rope. It was another half hour or so before we managed to drag ourselves back to the trap door in the attic. We climbed down without problems.

"Well, Daddy?" Mom asked.

"I don't know," Grandpa said. "I think there's something on the roof."

Meanwhile, I noticed, the laundry basket had just sailed up to the ceiling. I yelled, "Mom, the laundry basket is on the celing now."

"Well, dump out your hamper and I'll use that for the wash," Mom sighed.

When Dad got home, he and Grandpa went up to the roof to see what was going on. They wouldn't let me go, so I climbed a tree to see.

"Mother of God, what is that?" I heard Grandpa exclaim.

It was a good question. There was this huge black nothingness sitting on our roof, sunning itself.

"That looks like a black hole," Dad said.

Grandpa said, "Jay, whatever it is, we're going to have to get it off the roof."

"How?" Dad asked. "Ed, you can't go near a black hole, it'll just suck you up."

"I'm going to try to lasso it and yank it into that tree," Grandpa said. He grabbed his rope and made it into a big lasso.

"I don't think you should, Ed," Dad warned, but Grandpa didn't say anything, he just threw the lasso and watched as it disappeared into the black hole. Then it started to pull him in. Dad yanked Grandpa and both of them fell off the roof, right into the swimming pool. Fortunately neither of them was hurt I guess the pull of the black hole must have kind of broken their fall.

So now we're trying to find a new house. We're all nervous wrecks, even Mom. Me and my brother never know when the book we're reading will just shoot up to the ceiling, or the coat we're putting on, or our box of Kleenex. And it's getting worse. Lately, even the heavy things have begun disappearing without a trace.

I have a theory about that. I think the black hole has been sneaking into the house at night and taking things. I'm going to stay up tonight, to see if it does. If I see some nothing tiptoeing into my room, I'll throw a book at it. I've got the book all ready, too. My plan is that it'll get so engrossed in the book, it'll forget to take anything, and then we can all escape. I only hope that black holes can read.

I wrote this when I was 15 or 16, I think. And yes, I knew at the time that black holes do not work like this. It was based on a dream I had, but I was deliberately trying to be completely goofy.