When I was a wee tot in elementary school, if asked what I planned on doing when I turned 21, I honestly would not have said anything I'm about to tell you. I probably would have told you that I hoped I'd be in school, or working in my grandfather's museum. Heck, if I was feeling particularly hopeful that day, I may have even said I wanted to be married to one of the New Kids on the Block. But, no matter what went through my head back then, never in a million years could I or would I have told you I wanted what really happened on my twenty-first birthday. I mean, who can honestly say that when they're supposed to be having a day full of friends, fun and potential alcohol poisoning, they actually went on a walk, had to hide from a bunch of asshole schoolmates and somehow ended up blasted with some kind of magical spell into the ACTUAL middle ages? And on top of that, they were nearly trampled by ogres, only to run into a group of several multicolored bears wearing clothes?! Yeah...it was pretty unbelievable. And this is coming from someone who was actually there. But, I guess I should really start at the beginning if I expect you to believe any of this. So, here we go. This is the story of how I, Margaret Annabel Thorne, came to be friends with the Gummi Bears.
The whole mess started on my birthday, April third, the year, 2013, in the middle of a dark alleyway. I hadn't really intended to be there that day; I just needed to get out of the house. Melrose, my sweet little sister and my darling mother were having an argument that morning, about what I don't even remember. Given their volatile relationship, it could have been anything. I was sound asleep when the sounds of their screaming at each other forced me awake. I groaned, wondering who the Hell decides to pick fights at nine in the morning besides my family. Melrose and I were both out of school that week because of spring break, and though most of her friends and my classmates had gone off to get Chocolate Wasted, mom had forbidden us both from going anywhere out of town. Well actually, she had forbidden Melrose from going out of town. She only nagged me as a pleasantry, knowing that I didn't have any friends or any inclination to party with the other kids at my University, nor they any desire to be seen with me. So for this week, it was just me, my books, my iPod and my mom nagging me every time I stepped out of my room.
Realizing that they weren't going to stop, I begrudgingly sat up in bed and fumbled for my glasses and eye patch. I had a lazy eye, so I was required (ie; forced) to wear it under my left lens. Honestly though, I never minded as much as I pretended to. It made me feel like a pirate, and as much crap as I got for wearing it, it's not like people would have stopped picking on me if I left it off and let my sight deteriorate. After a failed attempt to run a comb through my hair, a thick, curly black mass that even a rat wouldn't want as a nest, I decided to screw it and wear a ponytail. Grabbing my music and purse, I slipped on my ratty sneakers and stalked downstairs. The yelling got louder with every step.
"Watch it, Maggie!" Melrose screamed at me halfway down, shoving me. She ran to her room and slammed the door with a feral growl. I stepped back, wondering what the Hell her problem was.
My mother stood at the bottom of the stairs, expression set in a furious scowl. "Where are you going?", she questioned suspiciously.
"Out," I said, avoiding her gaze. She does this cute thing whenever she's mad where she takes it out on everybody else.
"Out where?" She fixed her glare on me. "I know that you're 21 now but if you think I'm going to let you go out to drink at nine in the morning-"
"Mom, I'm not going out to drink. I'm just going for a walk, maybe to the library or to get some ice cream." It wasn't a lie; I was going for a walk, to get away from her and Melrose. I didn't know why she couldn't just trust me and let me leave, especially since I was an adult, and even though I lived with her, I deserved to be able to go out on my birthday without getting the third degree.
She huffed, putting her hands on her hips. "Fine...I can't see why you have to go out, though. I was planning on taking you birthday shopping for some nice pretty new outfits, something that'll really make you look nice, and then all of us going out to dinner as a family. But if you really want to go out, then go ahead." My mother just loves to guilt-trip me.
I tried to smile but what I pulled was more like a happy grimace. "I'll be right back, mom. We can do that later, okay?" Before she could protest or sulk, I ran out the door, offering a quick wave and a fast "love you!"
Once out the door and far enough to where she couldn't flag me down and nag me back home, I slowed to a brisk walk, relishing the tepid spring weather. Compton, New Hampshire may not be the nicest or the biggest town in the world, but it was pretty nice in the spring. Besides, at least I knew where everything was. I'd lived there my entire life, seen the college kids come and go through, read half the books at the tiny library on the corner, participated in the Girl Scouts and even marched with the other band geeks in the town's annual Fourth of July Parade. But most of my time in that dinky little town had been spent down by the oldest part of it, in a tiny two-story house with my grandfather. He ran a museum out of his great-great-great grandfather's house. Thinking about it the way it was-with windows and doors locked, a closed sign in the front window indefinitely, torn and faded bits of old police tape-sent a stab of pain through my heart. With that cringe-worthy thought, I popped in my ear buds and cranked my iPod to full volume to chase the sorrow from my head. Deciding to follow the sidewalk wherever it would take me, I turned the corner-and froze.
Trisha Sanders and Eddie Yearwood. The King of our college's most well-known fraternity and his girlfriend, the richest man in Compton's daughter. Were walking my way. It wasn't that I was starstruck, oh no, it was quite the opposite; I hated Trisha and Eddie. Trisha and I had been friends in elementary school, stayed over at each others' houses, trick or treated together, the whole shebang. But during middle school, when she became pretty and ascended to popularity, and I was still just me, she decided that she was too good for Ugly Little Maggie. If that wasn't bad enough, she began bullying me to affirm her status, using the secrets I'd told her against me, and using her knowledge of my life and my sore spots to rub salt in the wounds of her betrayal. As for Eddie? He's just a prick who thinks he's better than everybody else, especially me. He started picking on me after he hooked up with Trisha. I'm sure that if he could have proposed to her while standing on top of my cold corpse, she would have said yes right away.
I tried to back up, or turn tail and run. Unfortunately, as though smelling my fear, their eyes focused on me, and the two terrors began in my direction. "Hey, Maggie!" Trisha's voice was a mix of saccharine and poison.
I refused to look at her. "What do you want, Trisha?" I didn't mean to be snappy...that was a total lie. I meant it, and if I could I would have done it again.
She feigned a hurt expression. "Geez! Can't I say hi to an old friend on her birthday?"
"You can. In fact, why don't you go find one and wish her a happy birthday for me?"
Trisha ignored my raging snark and continued. "So, how's the birthday girl? On her way to the docks to see-oh, that's right. I forgot about that, you can't go see your grandpa at his museum anymore." I trembled with rage. Nobody, nobody, was allowed to bring that up. She smiled maliciously and went in for the kill. "But hey! The lake should be unfrozen by now. Maybe you can go down there like you did last year. If you really do it this time, maybe you can get to spend your birthday with him after all."
That. That was the absolute final straw. I'm normally a peaceful person. I try to stay out of peoples' way and if they mess with me, I usually shrug it off or combat it with biting sarcasm. But that...that bitch...had taken it too far. First off, she dares to mention my grandpa in a bad way, when she has no right to talk about him at all. And secondly, she brings up what happened last year. I've been told and called some pretty horrible things in my life and all of them I could deal with, but nearly everyone had the decency to avoid mentioning THAT. Apparently Trisha didn't know decency was something that even she was required to possess a small amount of. I froze in my tracks a moment, every cell in my body clenched with pure hatred. After what seemed like forever, I whirled around and, with a strength I never knew I had, I shoved Trisha Sanders as hard as I possibly could.
"Hey!" Her shrill voice cried out in indignation before she landed butt-first on the sidewalk with a single bounce. "Eddie, she shoved me!"
Eddie Yearwood had been silent up until now, allowing his girl friday to do all the thinking and talking. But he turned his attention to me, sneer on his freckled mug. "You'll pay for that!"
As long as I had known Eddie, I had known him as a bully. And now the three of us were on the sidewalk of a virtually empty street, right after I had shoved her girlfriend and made him angry. It was not looking good for me, so I did what anybody in their right mind would do; I ran like it was the apocalypse.
In hindsight, the threat was probably empty, and even if it wasn't I should have been looking where I was going. All I knew is that I was afraid and I didn't want to get beat up, especially today of all days. I swerved into an alley, the adrenaline coursing through me being able to provide enough of a boost for me to clear a trashcan and narrowly avoid crashing into a stray cat. I turned to the left and...
My heart felt like it stopped when I saw what awaited me there. There was a man, or at least, what I assumed to be a man, holding a large, ancient book in his clawed hands. He chanted something in a deep, ominous voice while holding it before him, completely fixated on it as if it was the most precious thing in existence. The figure was small, and though any facial features were invisible to me, he had on the tackiest hat I had ever seen. It looked like a rooster's comb made out of red leather and was huge on him. Of course, that wasn't even the bizarre part. The book in his hands was glowing. I repeat, it was freaking glowing, with a blue light that sputtered and sparked like an unearthly bolt of lightning.
I had built up too much momentum by this point to stop running, even as my mind tried to process this ungodly new sight. "Look out!" My voice was hoarse and desperate as I twirled in a last-ditch effort to avoid running into him.
"No!" We collided, him falling back against the concrete wall and I onto the ground. The glowing book flew to the ground in front of me, still lit, now even more intensely than ever. "You fool!", he hissed, full of more malice than even Eddie had been. "Have you any idea what you've just done?!"
I honestly didn't, but I wish I had. I gazed down at my trembling hands; blue. They were now glowing blue, as brightly as the book was. The tome shook violently, now suspended in the air above my head. A concentrated beam of the blue light swallowed my head, then my shoulders and arms and torso and legs. I felt as if I was being eaten alive. A loud roar erupted in the air all around me, drowning out my terrified screams. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Instead, fate was lucky enough to let me rest for awhile so at least I couldn't die of fright quite yet. My eyes rolled back in my head, and I fainted.
I don't know how long it took me to wake up-it could have been anywhere from a few hours to days. When my eyes came open, I knew right away that I wasn't in Compton anymore. Wherever I had landed was rural and warm. The sun flooded every pore of the land in a last golden blaze of glory before it set for the night. I could feel grass on my hands and legs and beneath my sweater, and after a few moments of recollecting the events that had led up to this and gathering my belongings, I reluctantly sat up. The only way I could describe my location was...beautiful. There were hills behind me and a thick forest a few steps ahead. The sound of a creek bubbling beckoned me ahead. Feeling that the least I could do what get a drink and clear my head before I tried to figure out what was going on, I stumbled onward into the forest.
The forest was cool and peaceful, and despite me not knowing much about the woods, I felt safe there. I found the stream and putting my fear of parasites aside, I dipped my hand into the frigid water and pooled it, bringing it to my mouth and taking a nice sip. It at least tasted clean, and it definitely made me feel better. The sun was setting further and further, and I knew that if it set before I found where I was, it would be a long and very cold night in the woods for me. I sat up from my spot and began to trudge along through the wilderness path on my own.
It was maybe twenty minutes later I felt the ground first rumble. Earthquake? Landslide? Creepy wizard guy came back for me? All of these flashed through my brain when I heard it hit again. Whatever it was, it was coming from behind me. I whirled around, taking a defensive position when I saw what I can saw without a doubt were the two ugliest creatures I had ever seen in my entire life.
They looked like giant, gangly frogs with hair and clothes. One was orange with red fur, the other a sickly pale green with mossy purple fur. They had ears like those creepy Furby things from Gremlins and with every lumbering step they took, the ground shook. "You have got to be kidding me..." I don't like to whine, but, can you really blame me? They continued shuffling in my direction.
"D-uh, who that?" The orange one pointed at me, voice slow and confused. This one was definitely not a Nobel Prize winner. I froze, too horrified to move. "She dressed all funny!"
The green-purple one had a similar, albeit deeper voice. He scratched his head in the same dull confusion as the first one. "She look like she never seen ogres before."
"We ogres never seen her before neither. We should take funny-clothes lady to Dukey. Maybe he give us a reward!" The orange one nodded to the green one, and they both began walking toward me with their clumsy, albeit very effectively intimidating gait. The spell of my fear finally broken, I began running for my life for the second time that day.
The orange ogre-I now knew that they were ogres-called after me. "Weird-dressed lady, don't run! We not hurt you!...much!"
They were too stupid to even come up with a lie to tell me. I didn't know who this "Dukey" was or why he might want me, but I wasn't about to find out, especially if he was of any importance to those disgusting things. I lit out of there as fast as I could, darting through trees and hopping over rocks and branches. I knew that any slip-up could be potentially fatal.
Eventually, my legs began to feel rubbery, my chest thumping and pained and my ribs aching. Honestly, accepting my inevitable demise began to sound good at that point. At least if I was eaten by those ogres or whatever a Dukey was, it would be less painful than running. My legs buckled, and I stumbled a bit. I felt a renewed sense of fear as I fell like a chopped tree, noticing below my feet what I had stumbled on. There was a hole in the ground, as big as a cave mouth, more than enough for me to fall through. Indeed, I was falling through it. At that moment, I took back what I had thought before about choosing death over running. My mind filled with curse words as I tumbled down, down, down into the unknown.
I sailed through the hole, landing head and back first onto what felt like a dirt floor. "Ouch...if this is how Alice felt I wonder why there wasn't a shit ton more swearing in that book..." I struggled to get up, not realizing that I was being watched by a few very curious and frightened faces.
"Grammi! Zummi! Come quick! There's a human in here!" A horror-stricken voice came from behind me. I twirled around, only to find that I was face to face with a small bear! And of course, this wasn't just any bear. This one was small, with a curl of hair over her head. She was yellow from head to toe and dressed like Robin Hood. Her paws had flown up to her mouth like startled doves landing on a perch and her eyes bugged at the sight of me.
Another tiny bear was beside her-this one pink and in a red outfit with a feathered cap. He was pink and about the size of my granddad's old hound dog. He swung a toy sword at me defensively. "Who are you?!", my pint-sized aggressor demanded, "And how did you get here?!"
I stepped back away from them, confused and about to ask them the same thing, when eight more footsteps interrupted me. I turned back around, only to find-oh joy!-more bears. All of them, save one tall blue bear, were shorter than me. One was purple with glasses and perhaps the most ridiculous hat I've ever seen. Another was blue with a brown shirt. One, another female, was orange and red with a blue dress, and she seemed ready to hit me with the rolling pin she held tightly in her fist. The last one was short, with a green hat and a scowl etched into his features. He snapped, "Who left the secret passage open?! I told you kids time and time again and look what happened?!"
"Oh, stuff a sock in it, Gruffi!", the orange bear snapped, swinging her rolling pin for effect. "Placing blame isn't gonna help what's already happened! We have more important matters to tend to now!"
The tall blue one offered a wave of his arms. "This is all a dream~", he intoned mysteriously, "We are all just pigments of your imagination~! None of this is real!"
They all started chattering at once, if not at me, then to each other. My head was pounding, my entire body was sore, I had run for my life twice today, once from ogres and once from two people who bore an uncanny likeness to them, and not to mention that I had been taken away from my home and sent to whatever God-forsaken place this was. I pulled at my hair with both hands, yelling "Enough!"
All six bears stopped and stared at me. I continued, breathing heavily, "All I wanted today was to go for a walk and avoid my family, and instead I get taken away from home by blue lightning from a book, almost flattened and kidnapped by ogres and fall into a hole in the ground, and now there are a bunch of Care Bears yelling at me! Look, I didn't mean to come into your home, but I'm lost and confused and I have no idea what's going on right now! So please, can anybody explain where I am and what's happening?!"
The purple bear stepped forward, his brow quirked. "Uh, d-did you say blue lightning? Brom a fook-ah, from a book?"
I nodded. "Yeah..."
He looked to the others, who looked back and forth between him and I. The purple bear sighed. "Well, for starters, my name is Zummi. Allow me to try and explain what's going on here."