Once upon a time, many years ago, there were five children much the same age as you. This was a happier time, when petticoats were worn and quarries were safe to play in, resembling, as they did, giant sand pits. The five children spent their days digging in the sand, looking for buried treasure, building castles in which to lose their imagination, running races and kicking an inflated pig's bladder about, much to the chagrin of the pig and the local ball salesman. Their nights were spent sleeping, rarely if never in the sandpit, more usually they plumped for the relative absence of grit that their beds offered. These were five special children: they were able to do the same thing day in, day out, living their life as meaningless repetition with no new thoughts or experiences for the whole summer, with nary a complaint allowed to escape unpunished by their kangaroo court.
Summer was drawing to an end, the evenings were cooler and darker. The summer of the giant sandpit would soon be over and the children would soon have to leave to grow up or whatever it is children do. As they traipsed back to the house, lit by the final glow of the sun behind the horizon, the youngest child, a lollygagger if ever there was one, tripped over something. She looked to see what had brought her crashing to the ground, and let out a scream. There was the strangest little creature sticking up out of the sand.
"Come here! Oh, come quick! It's alive! It'll get away! Quick!"
They all hurried back.
"It's a rat, I shouldn't wonder. Father says they infest old places."
"Perhaps it is a snake."
"I'm not a rat, or a snake. I'm Dave. I'm abused. ...And if you're going to take dialogue from E. Nesbit's book Five Children And It, you should probably mention it, even though it's not copyrighted," said the creature who had sent the little girl sprawling.
"What's a 'Buuzed'?" asked the youngest.
"A mythical Greek creature," explained the eldest. The middle three were too busy prodding and poking the Buuzed to speak with any frequency. "I shouldn't wonder: Father says childhood isn't the time for magical thoughts."
"Not a Buuzed, abused. I am an abused child. People abuse me. Use me 'ab'ly," said Dave the Buuzed.
"Ably?" asked one of the indistinguishable middle three, taking a quick break from prodding.
"'Ab'ly. As in the prefix meaning opposite to, from the Latin 'ab' meaning from," explained the eldest one who knew everything, because he was nearly a grown up with his 11th birthday coming up in nine months. "He's a mythical Latin creature."
"Please get me out of here," begged Dave the Buuzed. "My mommy's coming back any minute now, she'll hurt me. Please help me. Just dig me out of here. Please."
Before the next middle child could ask a question for the eldest to answer, the five children heard a strange rumbling. They ran to hide in the holes they'd been digging, behind the castles they'd built. The littlest sidled up to the pig and pretended to be a piglet. She really did look like a piglet. She was dragged away to the pig's nest high in the tree tops, with the other children unable to do anything because they were hiding from the rumbling. Dave the Buuzed's mommy drove up in a temporal anomaly.
"Hiya Pooky," she said to a very embarrassed and very scared Dave the Buuzed. "Momma's just gonna leave this tractor and plough parked over here for a while. I'll be back in an hour or forty eight to plough up this stoneless quarry with you buried in it, then I'll treat your wounds with bleach. You gonna be ok here while momma goes and does other things, Pooky?" She kicked him in the ear eight or nine times, kissed her finger and planted it on his forehead, then exeunteted pursued by a pig that had realised its mistake, returned the youngest child to the giant sandpit, and then decided to follow the new person to escape from the cruel children.
"Oh please dig me out, please help me." Dave the Buuzed was crying. "Oh my poor whisker. Will I never get to lick it clean again after making a cake? Oh please help me, you five children. Please dig me out. You heard what she's going to do to me. Please help me. Why won't you help me?" The tears were streaming down Dave the Buuzed's face. "My poor whisker."
The children poked their gradated heads out from their hiding places, looked at each other, and then to the eldest for confirmation; they set off for home.
"PLEEEEEEEEASE!" screamed Dave the Buuzed. A look of terror came across his face: had his mother heard him? He whispered loudly to the children. "Please dig me out. I'll grant you all sorts of wishes, just please dig me out." This caught the attention of the only child yet to speak. He or she was less satisfied with life than the others, and was always looking for some alternative, whether through uproarious music, drugs, self-mutilation or seeking wishes from Buuzeds. She looked to the eldest from approval, which wasn't forthcoming. They went home.
When the children arrived the next day Dave the Buuzed was still there. As soon as he saw them he set about begging and crying for help, repeating his promise to grant them wishes if only they'd dig him out. He had a plan to convince them of his magical prowess: Dave the Buuzed had been a devotee of Mark Twain before his mommy cut his right eye out as a punishment for daring to look at a book; since then he'd done his best to keep up with eclipse news without being found out in case just such an occasion arose. As luck would have it, there was an eclipse due that very day. Dave the Buuzed cried, begged, reiterated that he would grant them wishes if they'd dig him out, and then said he would make the sun vanish to prove he had the power to grant wishes.
"You're not in California anymore, Toto," snarled the eldest, as luck would have it, a bookish sort who also kept up to date with eclipse news. "This is England. You didn't think to keep up to date with worldwide eclipses did you, you shortsighted fool? You just stuck to American eclipses. You go ahead and 'make the sun vanish' but we won't be able to see it." If Dave hadn't been buried up to his chin they would have seen him gulp; they saw his eye flit around, as if the quarry held some way to convince them that he could grant wishes.
"Oh let's help him, eldest brother," enthused the alternate seeker.
"No," stamped the eldest. "I'll speak for everyone here, Mr. Buuzed, because I know the naughty words. Stop fucking bothering us. Stop fucking moaning. Fuck off and write a fucking book or something..."
"Done."
"...Then write another."
"Done."
"Then sell the fucking movie rights you fuck. Stop fucking bothering us. You don't think of anyone but yourself do you? This is our very last chance to be children, don't you see? The summer's ending, nothing's ever the same again after this, it gets boring. This is our last ever chance to dig and build and run, and you expect us to give all that up to dig you out? How greedy is that? Don't try and win us over with the promise of granted wishes. Maybe you can grant wishes, maybe. If you can then you're even nastier than I had you pegged for. I know how that works: you grant the wishes and they blow up in our faces, teaching us some lesson about being content with what you've got, or be careful what you wish for, or just that life's shit and it fucks you over whenever you think something good is going to happen. What does that say about you that the way you show your gratitude for us saving your life is to fuck us over? Not nice is it? Maybe we're fucking you over in not digging you out, maybe. It's a hard world, Dave the Buuzed; it's fuck over or be fucked over. I'm not proud of it, it's just the way things are. Please just leave us alone to dig and build and run."
The children did just that. Dave the Buuzed spent the whole day quietly sobbing to himself and planning a merchandising campaign. The children left that evening to grow up, never returning to the giant sandpit until they were all grown up and had children of their own, except one of the middle ones who was more inclined to bachelordom and sodomy. They never met Dave the Buuzed again, although sometimes late at night, when the temporal anomalies come out to play, the littlest one could have sworn she saw a computer game and action figures that looked like Dave the Buuzed. And he still wouldn't fucking shut up.