The King of Snorbatron

Short story by Tobias Malm

I lost Eric in a freak accident twenty years ago. He was only seven. My life never returned to normal after that. The grief was overwhelming—but it wasn’t just grief. It was shame, too. At the time, I was so consumed by my career that I hardly spent any real time with him. I told myself I was working to give him a bright future. But what he needed more than anything was a father—and I wasn’t there. I never truly got to know my own son.

Just before what would have been his twenty-seventh birthday, one of Eric’s former teachers reached out to me. She said she had found some of his old drawings tucked away in a forgotten storage room at the school. I knew he used to like drawing, but I couldn’t recall ever seeing any of his work. The shame rose quietly from deep inside me. She spoke gently, with a voice full of care. She knew what had happened. She had been there that day. I hadn’t. I hadn’t been there for him. The thought forced its way in.

“Would you like to come and get them?” she asked.

I said yes. It felt like a small chance to get to know my son a little better. The next day, I drove to the school and met his old teacher at the entrance. She was nearing retirement now. I usually avoided this part of town. Just seeing the building brought everything back—the phone call about the accident, the chaos at the school as parents were told what had happened, and then the moment I held my son’s lifeless body in my arms, his face pale, my tears falling onto him. They returned now, those tears. The teacher pulled me into a gentle hug.

I followed her inside. Children were playing in the schoolyard and running through the halls, unaware of the tragedy that had taken place there twenty years earlier. Some glanced at me with curious eyes, wondering why a tall, broad man like me was struggling to hold back tears. A part of me kept searching for Eric in the crowd, half expecting to see his face peek out from behind a corner. The room where it happened had since been torn down for safety reasons. In its place stood part of the cafeteria. But the absence of that space was its own kind of presence. I paused and looked toward the spot where it had once been—the activity room where my son took his final breath. He died doing what he loved: drawing with his friends. Three other children died that day. The investigation never found enough evidence to confirm the cause, but in the absence of anything more certain, they concluded it was carbon monoxide poisoning.

“This way,” the teacher said.

She led me up to the school’s musty attic and handed me a box filled with standard A4 papers—each one holding something my son had drawn. I thanked her.

“You know,” she said, “Eric really put his soul into these. I’ve never seen a child so happy while drawing.”

I thanked her again but didn’t say much more. I left the school quickly. She didn’t take it personally. She understood the storm I was carrying inside.

I didn’t look at the drawings until later that evening, after I had come home. It was already dark outside. I poured myself a glass of brandy—something strong to settle my nerves—and sat down in the living room. The box rested on the coffee table in front of me. I stared at it for a while, sipping slowly, gathering the mental strength to open it. Finally, I lifted the lid and placed the drawings in my lap.

They were cheerful, filled with colorful characters drawn in Sharpie and crayon. He had real talent—not just the kind a parent imagines, but something genuine. I looked through the drawings one by one. Each featured the same kind of characters: geometric shapes with little arms and legs, smiling faces, and playful scenes set in strange, exotic places. Some of them had short texts written in the margins. His handwriting was messy, but readable.

“Welcome to Snorbatron, the world of the Snorbees,” one of them said.

He had never told me about this. He had a whole fantasy world inside his head that I never knew existed. Seeing it now—these pieces of his imagination—was like discovering the remnants of a mind I’d barely gotten the chance to know.

I had been afraid the drawings might reveal some hidden pain caused by my absence as a father, so it was a relief to see how joyful most of them were. But when I reached the last one, a chill ran up my spine. It showed the Snorbees—this time in a jungle—but they were all screaming in terror, running from something unseen. A few of them, red circles that looked like little humanoid apples, were lying dead on the ground with their insides torn out. At the center of the scene stood a small door, perched on a grassy platform floating in midair.

Could this have been the one he drew that day—his final drawing before he lost his life? Maybe the carbon monoxide had started to affect him already. Maybe it clouded his mind. I shook my head, trying to push the thought away. My eyes lingered on the little door. There was something unsettling about it, something I couldn’t quite explain. I ran my hand over the drawing, feeling the texture of the old paper beneath my fingertips as they drifted slowly toward the door.

It felt cold, somehow. I tried to lift my finger, but my arm wouldn’t respond. Something was wrong. A heavy exhaustion settled over me, making it hard to keep my eyes open. I fought against it, but it was no use. Within seconds, I drifted into sleep.

I woke to the smell of rotten flesh. Lying in front of me, on a patch of unnaturally light green grass, was something that shook me to my core. It was one of the Snorbees—a blue, spherical creature about the size and shape of an orange. I stood up, unsteady on my feet. My thoughts were foggy, but even in that state, I understood that something impossible had happened. The drawing had pulled me inside.

The jungle around me was dense, but it didn’t feel vast. The sky hung low, no more than thirty feet above my head. The door—now full-sized—stood in front of me. I reached for it, ready to step through and return to reality. But then I heard a child crying. Could it be?

I jumped down from the platform, which floated about three feet above the ground, and slowly walked toward the sound of the crying. The humidity pressed in around me, thick and suffocating. The air smelled of decay and feces. Everything was still. Not a single breeze stirred, and the white clouds above hung motionless in the sky. Suddenly, a group of small, red, furry balls burst out of the bushes. They had large, doe-like eyes and squeaky voices, and they screamed as they came to a halt in front of me. I stared down at them in shock. They stared back, just as frightened. Then they turned and bolted into the bushes, their screams growing louder as they vanished.

I kept moving until I spotted an opening a short distance ahead. That was where the crying was coming from. I crouched behind the trunk of a palm tree, watching carefully, my heart pounding in my chest. I hadn’t dared to fully believe it, but ever since I entered this strange place and heard the cry of a child, one feeling had taken hold of me—an overwhelming hope that I might see my son again. But the child wasn’t him. It was a young girl, about the same age Eric had been when the accident happened. She wasn’t wearing any clothes, though her body was so covered in dirt it was hard to tell at first.

“But I don’t want to eat more!” the girl said.

“Cry-baby, cry-baby!”

The voice came from a grown man somewhere out of sight.

“You have to eat them. Don’t be like the fools, you hear me? I told you what happened to them.”

There was something strangely childlike about the way the man spoke. What is going on? I knew I couldn’t stay hidden forever, so I stepped into the clearing. The man froze, clearly stunned by the sight of me. His beard was long, tangled, and soaked with blood. He was naked, his thin body smeared with mud. Blood dripped from his beard onto his chest. In one hand, he held the limp body of one of the small, furry creatures. A large bite had been taken out of its side. My eyes moved slowly from his hand to his face. He looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes. And on his head sat a shiny golden crown. He was the first to speak.

“D-Daddy?”

Of course. I could see it in his eyes.

“How—” I stepped toward him, tears streaming down my cheeks, trying to pull him into an embrace. “You’re alive . . . here?”

He stepped back, moving behind the little girl. She looked at me with trembling lips, clearly afraid. I stopped in my tracks.

“Eric,” I said softly, “you don’t know how much I’ve missed you. My boy, my boy, my little boy. I thought you were gone, I—”

The crying overtook me, and I could barely get the words out.

“Where have you been, Daddy?”

I saw the tears forming in his eyes too.

“I didn’t know,” I said. “I held your body in my arms. You were dead. We buried you.”

“Oh,” he said. “Um . . .”

“What—” I wiped my eyes, trying to steady myself. “What is this place?”

“Maybe that’s why we couldn’t return,” he said. “You moved us away from the door. We used to play here when the teachers weren’t looking. But one day, we couldn’t go back.”

“But this isn’t real,” I said. “This is . . . this is magic, this is—”

“I made this place,” he said, stepping forward.

“You made it?” I asked.

“I just wish I could remember how.”

A look of sadness crossed his face, but then he broke into a wide, almost manic smile.

“I’m the king here. The king of Snorbatron!”

“The king?” I said. “Where are the others? And who’s this little girl?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his cheeks flushing red. Then, in a quiet, regretful whisper, he added, “She came out of Linda’s foo foo.”

I stared at the girl, unable to speak.

“Dad?” my son asked, clearly nervous about how I would react.

“Where’s Linda now?” I asked. “Where are the others?”

“I’ll show you!”

He looked down at the little girl with a scowl and shouted, “Go away! I don’t want to play with you anymore. My dad is here!”

The girl quickly skittered away and disappeared among the trees. I wanted to stop her, to tell her she didn’t need to be afraid, that I would never hurt her—but my thoughts were racing too fast to act. My son adjusted his crown, smiled, and wiped some of the blood from his beard with his arm. Then he started walking, taking exaggerated, childlike steps.

“I grew out of my clothes a long time ago,” he said. “But my friends didn’t. You’ll see. They were such fools.”

He let out a loud laugh and shouted, “Watch out, the king is coming!”

The creatures hiding in the bushes screamed in their falsetto voices, completely terrified. After a short walk, pushing through thick layers of brush, we reached what seemed to be the edge of the jungle. At first glance, it looked as if the jungle continued—just much denser—but it was actually a solid wall of trees and thorny bushes, impossible to pass through. I turned around and realized I could see all the way to the opposite side of the jungle.

“This place can’t be much larger than a football field,” I said.

“It seemed much bigger before.”

My son was standing close now. I could smell his breath, and it was foul.

“It’s almost as if it has shrunk,” he said, smiling to reveal half-rotten teeth.

“No, Eric,” I said. “You grew up.”

“Yeah.” He glanced down at his dirty feet. “I guess so.”

I wanted to rest a hand on his shoulder, to offer some kind of comfort. But something in his eyes—small, sunken, and unreadable—made me stop. Something was wrong. Not just with this place, but with him too. I thought about the little girl, trying to piece together how she fit into all of this.

“Well, here’s Daniel,” my son said, pointing to something sticking out of the wall of bushes. “He tried to escape from me while we played royal tag.”

My heart sank. It was a sneaker, still attached to the bones of a leg. Daniel must have tried to force his way through the thorny bushes, desperate to escape, and gotten stuck.

“For the love of God,” I whispered, barely believing what I was seeing. “He’s dead.”

“He was a fool. They both were.”

My son placed his hands on his hips and snorted. Then his expression softened slightly.

“Except for Linda . . . she was okay, I guess.”

“How were they fools?” I asked. “What happened here?”

“They didn’t want to play with me. Said I was stupid. Said my world was boring.”

He looked up at me. “Trust me, Dad. They were real crybabies.”

A look of contempt crossed his worn, shabby face.

“Y-you didn’t hurt them, did you?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. He just turned his face away and blushed, like the schoolboy he had been before he vanished.

“And your other two friends?” I asked. “Where are they?”

“Jonas is over here,” my son said. “He tried to take Linda away from me, so I pushed this boulder right on top of him!”

The skeleton of a boy lay on the ground, dressed in a faded Mickey Mouse T-shirt. A large rock had been tipped over his head.

“You murdered him!” I shouted, my voice filled with anger—and shame. Shame that my own son had become someone capable of this.

“I saved Linda!” he said, as if that made it right.

“Where is Linda now?”

He blushed again and stayed silent.

“Well?” I snapped. “Where the hell is she?”

His eyes welled up. “I-I didn’t know what to do, Daddy.”

Her mummified body leaned against a tree in the middle of the jungle. She was naked, her legs spread apart. She looked older than the others, but still just a teenager.

“She just kept bleeding from her foo foo,” Eric said, now crying softly. “We were supposed to be king and queen.”

“I’m so sorry all of this happened to you,” I said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I should have spent more time with you. This is just awful. I should’ve—”

“It’s okay, Dad,” he said. “You’re here now, aren’t you? Now we can finally play together.” He smiled again. “Forever.”

He shifted from one emotion to another in less than a second, as if his sadness had been nothing more than a mask he could replace at will. Had he become this way after spending his whole life trapped in this confined jungle? Or had he already been like this when he arrived all those years ago? I was still in shock, especially after seeing Linda’s body, but the pieces were starting to come together. I understood now. The little girl—she was my granddaughter.

“We need to get you and that little girl out of here,” I said. “This isn’t—this isn’t real, Eric. We need to return to the real world.”

“I don’t want to go back to your stupid world, with all its boring rules and mean teachers telling me what to do!”

I looked at him with both empathy and concern.

“You’re an adult now,” I said. “It will be different for—”

“Here, I make all the rules!” Eric shouted. “Here, I’m the king!” He laughed maniacally. “Let me show you my castle, Dad.”

There was real pride in his eyes when he spoke. He truly believed his own delusions. The castle stood in a clearing, perched on a small island surrounded by a pool of gleaming water. It was built from light blue bricks and looked like something out of a fairy tale, though it was no larger than a playhouse. Two fluffy, potato-sized figures guarded the entrance. Each held a tiny spear in its small hand, and both were cross-eyed.

“That’s Florb and Plorb,” my son said. “They work for me, so I don’t eat them.” He glanced at them with a threatening look and added, “. . . unless they disobey me.”

He laughed, and the creatures responded with something incomprehensible—a string of words that sounded like pretend English spoken on helium. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it was clear they were trying to sound cheerful. Beneath their high-pitched voices, though, I could sense it. They were terrified.

“Wait here,” my son said, then crawled inside the castle.

“Listen, Eric—” I began, but he was already gone before I could finish.

“This is going to be so fun,” he giggled from inside.

When he emerged, he was holding a longsword.

“Whoa,” I said, stepping back. “What are you planning to do with that?”

“Relax, Dad,” Eric said as he adjusted the crown on his head. “It’s a game. I play it with the crybaby all the time, but she’s always whining and, well, crying. It’s so annoying.”

“She’s your daughter. Doesn’t she have a name?”

“Daughter?” He looked confused, as if I’d spoken in a language he didn’t understand. “What are you talking about? She came out of—”

“I—I know. Linda’s foo foo,” I said, closing my eyes in frustration and embarrassment. “Didn’t the teachers ever explain the birds and the bees to you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said flatly. “Do you know what he’s talking about, Florb?”

The creature known as Florb looked up at him like a guilty puppy and muttered some unintelligible sounds.

“Me neither,” Eric said. “But her name is Crybaby because she’s crying all the freaking time.”

“Who raised her?” I asked. “How did she survive?”

“The Snorbees took care of her underground,” my son replied.

“My God,” I said. “And now you’re forcing her to eat them.”

“Enough about the crybaby!” he snapped. “I want to play royal tag now. And since I’m the king, you’re it!”

He raised his sword.

“I don’t want to play any games!” I shouted. “I’m your father. You have to listen to me! You can’t just order people around like—”

“But that’s what you did, Dad,” he said with a grin. “You told me what to do all the time and never let me have any fun.”

“I—I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you really needed me,” I said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t a better father. But this isn’t right. If you don’t want people to hurt you, then you have to understand that they don’t want to be hurt either.”

My son let out an exaggerated yawn. “I didn’t understand any of your boring words. I’ll count down from ten—even though I can count down from a hundred—and then I’ll come after you. Okay?”

“No,” I said. “Let’s try to get back. There has to be a way—”

“Ten!” Eric shouted.

“Why aren’t you listening to—”

“Nine! Eight!”

“Hey!” I called out, but it was no use.

“Seven!”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” I muttered, stepping backward.

“That’s it, run! It will be fun! Six! Five!”

There was no way to reach him. I turned and ran into the jungle, hearing my son count down to zero before charging after me, screaming like a maniac. My breath was ragged. My only thought was to find the door again and escape this nightmare. Eric had either lost his humanity or never developed it at all. As painful as it was to admit, there was no saving him—not even if I somehow found a way out. I kept searching frantically for the door when I stepped on one of the small creatures. It let out a squeak, like a dog toy, then crawled a few feet before dying. I stared down at it, horrified. They had taken care of my son’s daughter. I wondered how they had managed that, how they had raised a human child in this world. And in that same moment, I knew I couldn’t leave without her.

“I’ll find you!”

Eric was close. I tried to recall which direction the girl had run as I pushed through the strange, make-believe jungle. The miniature creatures zigzagged in front of my feet. Some of them floated through the air, propelled by tiny spinning devices on their heads. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the glint of my son’s crown. I turned. He was leaping toward me, swinging his sword wildly. As he moved, he slashed through several of the flying creatures, cutting them in half. The sight made him burst into uncontrollable laughter.

“Oh, this is fun!” he shouted. “You won’t be able to get away!”

“Why can’t we play later?” I called out as I ran toward the far corner of the jungle, hoping the girl had hidden there—somewhere, anywhere—from her lunatic father. “We can try to get out of here. All three of us!”

“But I’ve already waited years for this, Daddy!”

I found the girl sitting on a floating platform beneath a palm tree with blue leaves. She was petting one of the apple-like creatures.

When she saw me, she froze in fear.

My son was closing in fast. I didn’t have a second to spare.

“D-don’t be afraid,” I said, trying to sound calm, though my voice betrayed me. “Is that your apple friend?”

The red creature nestled against her chest turned to look at me with its unnaturally large eyes. It cooed, gurgled, and let out a soft giggle. But the moment it heard my son’s cries of wild enthusiasm in the distance, it buried its face in the girl’s chest, trying to hide.

“It’s not an apple,” the girl said. “It’s a Hoppitoss.”

“Listen,” I said. “We need to get out of here.”

“The King says it’s impossible to leave,” she replied. “That we’re trapped here forever.”

“There’s a door on a platform like this one, just a little higher up,” I said. “But here’s the thing—I can help you reach it, and we can go through it together. It leads to the real world.”

“The real world?”

“Just trust me,” I said, offering her my hand. “Let’s go before he finds us, all right?”

She took my hand and stepped down from the platform, still clutching her little friend to her chest. I turned to lead her toward the door. But as soon as I did, my son emerged from the bushes, sword in hand, the blade slick with blood.

“Found you!” he shouted, joyfully swinging his sword at me—not to harm, but still too close, too wild. “What are you doing with the crybaby?”

“We are leaving,” I said. “She deserves a normal life.”

His smile disappeared in an instant.

“You aren’t leaving,” he said. “It’s against the law. That’s right. It’s against the law.”

I scooped the girl into my arms. I needed to be clever. My poor son might have looked like a grown man, but inside, he was still seven.

“If you let us go,” I said gently, “I’ll come back and play with you forever. Daddy just needs some time to rest. And you know what? I can even bring you some new friends. How does that sound?”

He paused to think, and for a moment I had hope. But then he said, “You’re just trying to fool me. I’m not a fool like the others.”

“Please,” I begged. “If you hurt us, you’ll be all alone. You don’t want that, do you?”

“I’m not gonna hurt you, Dad,” he said with a laugh. “It’s just a game.”

“He’s lying,” the girl whispered. “He always hurts—”

“Shut up!” my son shouted, his face contorting with fury. “You little bitch.”

The girl began to cry.

“Boohoo!” he mocked. “Cry-baby! Cry-baby! Cry-baby!”

“That’s it,” I said. “We’re leaving.”

He stepped in front of us, blocking the path. His grip on the sword tightened, and his foul breath hit our faces.

“I decide who comes and goes,” he said. “I’m the king.”

I pushed him aside and walked away.

His eyes filled with tears, and he clenched his jaw in rage, trying hard not to cry.

“Who’s a crybaby now!” the girl shouted, sticking out her tongue.

“Don’t provoke him,” I said, but it was already too late.

He stomped his foot on the ground and let out a scream of mindless fury, gripping the sword in front of him. Then he charged at us, crying and shouting all at once. Just like that, he had forgotten everything he had said about not hurting us. I held the girl tighter and ran as fast as I could. My son was right behind us. I could hear the sword slicing through the air, swinging wildly from side to side. His tantrum had taken over completely. He had lost all control. The girl clutched her little friend by the arm. The Hoppitoss looked back at my son and stuck out its tongue, mimicking her defiance.

“I’ll kill you!” my son screamed. “I’ll freaking kill you!”

Just before we reached the platform with the door, I tripped over an exposed root. We all went down, landing in the stinking mud. Eric raised his sword high above his head. A sadistic smile began to spread across his face. He brought the sword down. I was certain it was the end. But just as he was about to strike, several creatures leapt from the trees and landed on his head. He fought them off violently—biting into one of their stomachs and trampling another to death—but the distraction was just enough. I grabbed the girl and threw her up onto the platform, then scrambled up after her. She opened the door. On the other side, there was nothing but darkness.

“No!” my son shouted. “Don’t leave me here!”

He grabbed my leg as I crawled toward the door.

“Go inside,” I said to the girl. “I’m right behind you.”

She hesitated for a moment, standing still in the doorway. Then she stepped forward. Her body collapsed to the ground, lifeless—just like Eric’s had, back when I thought he had died.

Eric was pulling himself up onto the platform. I crawled to the girl, terrified she was dead. I checked for a pulse—nothing. No, no, no. Maybe my son had been right. Maybe it really was impossible to leave this place. Eric was just about to rise to his feet. I rolled onto my back and kicked him in the face with all my strength. He fell from the platform and landed hard. A moment later, he began bawling, sobbing loudly on the ground. The sound of it hit me with a sharp pang of guilt. I stood up, reaching down to lift the girl’s body just before the door pulled me in, maybe because I got too close. Once again, I felt that strange wave of drowsiness sweep over me. Then everything went dark.

I woke with my face resting on the table. For a split second, I thought it had all been a fever dream. But then I saw her, standing in the middle of my living room, quietly taking in her surroundings with wide, curious eyes. I let out a deep breath of relief. Her body had remained in that world, just as my son’s had remained in this one. I mourned him all over again. It felt as if I had lost him a second time, even though I knew he was still alive, somewhere inside that enchanted drawing. And yet, at the same time, I felt a joy I hadn’t known in years. Because I had saved her. I had brought her back. The granddaughter I never knew I had.

I considered throwing the drawing into the fire, ending my son’s misery once and for all. But I couldn’t do it. Part of me worried that a connection still existed between the drawing and my granddaughter—what if destroying it made her disappear? And then there were the Snorbees. Those strange, noble little creatures didn’t deserve to die. So instead, I framed the drawing and hung it on the wall. The glass covers the tiny door, making it impossible to enter without removing the drawing from the frame. I sometimes think about going back, just to try again—to see if there’s still a way to reach my son. But I don’t dare risk it. Not if it means I could lose her. I wasn’t there for him, and I have to live with that. But I’ll be damned if I fail her too. Her fun-sized, goofy little friend—the Hoppitoss—can be a handful, but I have to admit, it’s growing on me.