Halloween night. A wonderful time of year of laughter and candy and not very spooky skeletons. For the Sciocco family, that means family reunions and pasta. Lots and lots of pasta. Marco Sciocco, the nine-year old Sciocco son, had finished more than ten different bowls of pasta in just one night.

As you can imagine, eating ten bowls of pasta is not good for the stomach of anybody. Poor Marco could only mumble as he struggled off to his bedroom. His stomach groaned under the strain of a thousand pastas. The pain worked its way all the way to  his head as Marco fell asleep.

Marco awoke standing. But he wasn’t in his bedroom anymore. Marco was in an almost different world.

The yellowish ground he was standing on had wavy lines running across, like a planked floor and almost familiar looking…was that lasagna!? And that tree… wasn’t really a tree. It was a tree-look-alike made of tagliatelle!

Everything was pasta! Marco was overwhelmed!

“Confused?” A high-pitched voice asked from the tree. Where? Up! Left? Right! There! A bird, made of pasta, just like everything else in this…Pasta Dimension.

“Hi. I’m Bill. Bill the Bird!” The bird said.

“Hello, Bill. It appears I am stuck in an alternative pasta-related dimension opposed to Earth. Is there some way you can assist me on my endeavors to return to my wondrous abode?” Marco replied, utilizing his nine-year old vocabulary.

“Sure! We get people like you all the time!” Bill flew down next to Marco.

“Excellent.” Marco rubbed his hands together.

“There is a mountain over yonder. Up there is something that lets you get back to the real world. At least that’s what Fred told me.”

“Who?”

“No one. Anyway, let’s go.” The duo began trekking towards a towering mountain dwarfing all of its surroundings. It took them an hour to get there, and the shotgun-blasting pasta in Marco’s stomach wasn’t helping.

As they neared the base, a pasta knight stood. Imagine a medieval knight, but made of pasta, with corzetti chest-plates, orecchiette helmets, and a manly gemelli sword.

“YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” The knight shouted in an angry manner.

“Why?” Marco inquired.

“I dunno bro, my boss told me to. It’s kind of boring…” The knight scratched his head.

“Would thee perhaps haveth the fun of joining mē-self in our adventure up the hill?”

“Sure. This is boring anyway.” And thus, the trio began walking up the lasagna hill. As they walked up, they began to fight through more and more pasta trees. Still, they fought.

At this point, Marco just wanted to leave. To go home and maybe have a normal night’s sleep instead of having to do with pasta birds and medieval swordsmen. They forged onward.

After a couple eternities, they reached the summit. However, at the summit, sleeping on gnocchi stones was a massive pasta dragon.

A yellow pasta-clad beast with scales the size of doors, it easily could have squashed a hundred Marcos with its massive yellow feet and outflown Chinook helicopters with its sky-scraping wings.

Upon seeing Marco, it roared ferociously. The knight was so scared, he ran away at Usain Bolt speed.

“Should we ask for the jar nicely?” Commented Bill.

“Does the dragon seem friendly to you?” Marco hissed back.

“Mr. Dragon,” Bill nevertheless asked. “Can we have that jar, please?”

“I really don’t care. I just came here to sleep. It’s a good nap place.” The dragon rumbled in sudden perfect English and flew off with that elegant parting word.

Marco ran up and grabbed the jar. On it wrote William’s LEGENDARY Antacid Tablets.

“Well Bill, it’s been an honor meeting you. But I must go now.” Marco popped the lid open.

“Until next time, my friend.” Bill tilted his imaginary hat. Marco swallowed and was suddenly plunged into a void of darkness.

Suddenly, Marco awoke to the smell of spaghetti and groaned.