There’s an 826 Seattle now (since ‘05, but that’s recent in my book), which is welcome news, and they’re producing some very creative work over there. Here’s a short story by David, who’s in second grade at Brighton Elementary School. Note David’s precocity for book criticism (“The book was very good. But it smelled like badness. It stunk like rotten eggs and somebody’s arm pit”), which may serve him well in his future publishing career, perhaps with his own McSweeney’s imprint. Good ol’ 826—give them a donation so David and friends can terrify us well into the future!

The End of E.B. White
 
At 3:00 A.M. one Tuesday morning, E.B. White wrote down the new story, The Return of Charlotte’s Web. This story was about a spider named Charlotte and a pig named Wilbur who grew horns out of his head. He turned into a bull. The bull was very mean and the people from Mexico, the bullfighters, had to come and fight the bull. The book was very good. But it smelled like badness. It stunk like rotten eggs and somebody’s arm pit.
 
Everybody wore nose plugs.
 
Everybody died because they liked the book so much. Even though it smelled horrible, the story was really good. But when people bought the book and took it home, their houses filled up with the terrible smell and that made people die.
 
E.B. White became filthy rich which allowed him to eat his favorite food: jelly doughnuts. He ate thousands of jelly doughnuts and sometimes he even ate his second favorite food: mayonnaise doughnuts. He never mixed them though. It was either jelly doughnuts or mayonnaise doughnuts.
 
One sad day a giant, black moon rock came from outer space and crushed a scared E.B. White to smithereens. His body oozed out from underneath the giant rock and smelled like old mayonnaise mixed with cranberry jelly. Suddenly, a colossal black hole sucked the ooze and his money away.
 
On the skinny side of the black hole, right there in the eye of it, were all of E.B. White’s books. They were covered with jelly. Nobody knows why.