Forward
Prologue
This story begins, not on Earth, but in that bright, beautiful place some people call Heaven. To be more precise, it begins in God's Palace. Alright. Now, let me begin.
God was seated in a comfortable chair, staring at his miniature version of the multi-verse. Every universe, at that precise moment, was in absolute peace. He contemplated it, then froze it, getting up and walking out of the white room.
"Eris!" A young woman wearing a white dress and large, blossoming wings flew over to God and curtsied.
"Come see this." She followed Him over to the room with the miniature multi-verse. "It's the multi-verse," He explained. "Absolute peace in all of them. Really, I've never seen an entire neighborhood in a city in a state in a country on a planet at total harmony. Look, look!"
They went inside, and the angel, Eris, bent over the model. She gaped at it.
"You're right!" She managed. "Well, that definitely is something new. I don't
believe something has ever happened before like-"
"Have you been doing your job?"
"Yes, of course! You know I love my job. Just yesterday I took away some farmer's cow on Earth in universe 3,812,759,995,037 and put it Sweden. The quarrel between him and his next door neighbor was quite entertaining. . ."
While Eris was speaking, God singled out that particular universe and found the farmer. He and his next door neighbor were sitting on his front porch, playing cards, with a strange look on their faces. It looked almost like-
"Boredom?" said God.
Suddenly, there was a small popping noise behind the two, and a young man appeared with an uninterested face. He, too, was wearing white and had smaller wings than Eris. "Hello. To what may I owe the pleasure of this meeting?"
Eris and God turned around to see Him. Eris had a blank and confused look on Her face, while God had an amused one.
"Ah. You must be Boredom. But let's give you a better name. How about Tedious, Ted for short?"
"That's fine," He said dully. "Who're you?"
"I am God, and She is Eris, the Goddess in charge of Discord."
"Welcome," said Eris, none too pleased. "I take you're the one messing everything up?"
"I'm messing things up? How?"
"Eris. It's not His fault. He was created by humanity itself. They made
themselves like this."
Eris scowled, but said nothing.
"Messing things up?" asked Ted. "You're in charge of Discord. Shouldn't you like it if I mess things up?"
"No. This is messed up the wrong way. I like it when things are messed up the right way."
"Well, then," said God. "Let's mess things up the right way." He snapped his fingers, and, with more popping sounds, a young girl appeared.
"Hi. I'm Aventura." She turned to Eris. "I'm your little sister."
Eris was still as a statue for a long moment. Then She said slowly, "If I were human I would faint."
"Aventura is going to help you fix the problem of boredom," said God. "She writes stories."
Eris, getting over her shock, smiled faintly. "She's cute," She said, watching Aventura skip around and around the model of the multi-verse singing a bright, cheery song.
"Now," said God, "I'd like you, Tedious, to stop spreading Boredom so that Eris and Aventura can do their job. In the meanwhile, I have some friends that I think you would have a good time with. Just because you are the God of Boredom doesn't mean that you have to be bored as well. . ."
They both left the room leaving the two new siblings alone.
"Well, why don't we get started?" said Eris. "We have quite a lot to do. . ."
"Yes," said Aventura elatedly. "I adore creating stories. I already have an idea based on a charming little novel about a chocolate factory. Chocolate it fantastic, don't you think?"
I was pulled into Aventura's story.
Chapter I
It was cold.
It was a wonderful cold, the kind that gently floated around in masses, and was accompanied by a fresh breeze. It whispered in your ear and told you about the marvels of the earth.
"Hey, Malli!" shouted someone. That voice seemed familiar.
I turned around to see one of my best friends, Angela. I smiled and waved enthusiastically for her to come over to where I was.
"Are you ready to see the movie?" she asked. We were in one of the best movie theatres in the city, going to watch a recent release.
"Of course. Thank you for inviting me."
"The pleasure is all mine," answered Angela. I checked my watch and then my ticket.
"The movie's at eight o'clock, but it's only seven thirty. Do you want to buy anything, or use the restroom, or something like that?"
"Well, I need to use the restroom, so let's do that first. Wait, strike that. Let's get out of this horrid cold, first."
"You don't like the cold?"
"Not much," said Angela shakily, as she drew her coat tighter around her body.
"That's because you're much too thin! Look at yourself. No bodily protection whatsoever."
"No, it's not because of me," she said, laughing a little. "My 'thin-ness' runs in the family. You know that. It's because of you. I always told you that you should move to Canada. It would save your parents a lot of money on that air conditioner you use to keep that room of yours absolutely freezing."
"Yes, well, we can't," I countered. "My father likes his job here." I paused, and looked up into the sky. "We'd better go in. It looks like it's going to rain."
Waiting for Angela in the bathroom, I looked at myself in the mirror.
I never was satisfied with how I looked. I was an Indian girl, you see, and I always dreamed of a different eye color or skin color. I always thought that the grass was greener on the other side, but people there envied me.
I stared into the face looking back at me through the mirror. It had dark brown eyes, almost black, but it had a bucket of golden thrown into it to make it lighter and, of course, golden. Its skin was a very light brown. Its hair was jet black and long, with strands of hair framing the face. Thinly layered, and lightly wavy, I wished for a better haircut. It looked a tad bit nicer when with hair clips. My mouth and lips were alright, except for the fact that I constantly had to apply chap stick all times of the year. And I had braces.
And last, but not least, my nose. I really hated my nose. It was always a tad bit too big. Well, sometimes it looked alright, but most of the time I found it off. The things I liked the most about myself were my eyes (which I could creep people out with if I made them very big) and my hands (with fingers that were long, and used to play the violin).
I was of average height, and had an I.Q. of 148, I'm proud to say. I loved to read fictional books, and always dreamed of going into one and being part of it, knowing what was going to happen, and seeing it happen right in front of you.
"Let's go," said Angela, after washing her hands. I handed her back her thick coat and we headed off towards the assigned theatre room.
We watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I was seeing for the third time. I really liked it, and Angela hadn't seen it yet, so we went together.
"Hee Hee Ha Ha Ho Ho Ho. . ."
Angela looked absolutely terrified in the dim lighting. I laughed quietly.
"Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka, He's the world's best chocolatier,
Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka, Everybody give a cheer,"
"Malli?" asked Angela. "This movie is scaring me."
"He's modest, clever, and so smart, he barely can restrain it,"
"Really?" I asked. "I actually find it very nice. The words rhyme very well, and it makes you feel better if your sad or something. That's probably because they're so shocked by it you forget what you were doing."
"With so much generosity there is no way to contain it,"
"R-right," she said.
"To contain it, to contain it, to contain, to contain, to contain it,"
Angela kept commenting about how eerie it was when Mr. Wonka (or the actor playing Mr. Wonka) either smiled or stared fixedly at someone. Especially when one of the five golden ticket winners was about to "leave the group" by either going up a chocolate pipe, inflated into a blueberry, thrown down a garbage chute by a pack of squirrels, or accidentally miniaturized to the size of a peanut.
Finally, when there was only one golden ticket winner left, Charlie Bucket. . .
"You've won! You've won the special prize at the end!" said Mr. Wonka animatedly.
"What's the special prize at the end?" asked Angela.
"Charlie gets Mr. Wonka's factory."
About twenty minutes later, when the end credits started, we both were walking out the theatre room discussing the movie intently. "I found one of the funniest parts the part where Mr. Wonka tells everyone about cannibalism."
"You can eat the grass?" asked Charlie.
"Of course you can! Everything in this room is eatable. Even I'm eatable, but that is called "cannibalism", my dear children, and is in fact frowned upon in most societies."
"Yes, that was amusing," I said, smiling.
Angela's mother dropped me off at my home that night, and by then it was around ten o'clock. The only person in my family that was still awake was my mother, who was waiting for me to come home. Well, my older brother, Giri, was still awake, but that was only because he was out checking his patients, since he was a doctor. He wasn't at home yet.
Mother went to bed, and so did I. I hadn't slept very well the night before, so my body was begging me for rest.
After changing into my night clothing and brushing my teeth, washing my face, etcetera, I turned on the air conditioning and the fan. As Angela had said earlier, I liked to keep my room chilled.
By ten-thirty, I was on the brink of sleep, when-
Tap tap tap tap.
My eyes snapped open, and I froze under the covers, hoping that if it was a burglar, it would think that I was already asleep, or a serial killer, that I was already dead because I was so still. No one ever knocked on my door.
Tap tap.
What to do?
Tap tap tap knock.
There was some muttering behind my bedroom door, and I distinctly heard, "Eh, forget it," just before someone quietly opened the door and silently moved across the room.
I tensed. After a few moments I had absolutely no idea where the person was in the room, or if he or she had left it.
Suddenly, the bedcovers were whooshed off and a blinding flashlight was shown in my face. I wasn't one to scream. I was one to inhale sharply, or gasp.
And that was what I did.
"Quiet!" the someone hissed. Now I could tell that it was a man's voice. He took the blinding light off of my face and smoothly switched on the room light. I sat up in the bed.
Blinking rapidly, I could now distinguish the man's figure. I temporarily couldn't see any more than that due to the flashlight's upshot image. After a moment, I could see enough to cancel out my fears; he had no visible weapon.
The man was wearing a black coat, black pants, black shirt, black tie, a black top hat, and silver-colored gloves. He was very tall, and for some reason I can never remember his face.
"H-hi," I said. I spoke softly, too softly for someone to hear, I realized, but the man heard me anyhow.
"Hello," he said. "You are Malli Swamy, are you not?"
"That's me," I said feebly.
"Good. I have come to ask you to help me in a very important matter."
My voice grew a bit stronger. "And if I don't?" The man sighed, and waved his gloved hand toward the polished wooden floor. In the space between us, a large, gaping hole appeared, which on the inside had scorching flames and searing lava dripping lazily from the sides. At the bottom of the large pit were a pile of menacing grinning skulls.
"I hate it when I show people this," he muttered. "You stay in there for a day or so, or until you do as I say." I swallowed dryly.
"Where are you from?"
"Oh, I'm a Heaven employee."
"Employee?"
"Yes. I get paid in privileges. My job is to communicate needed messages to humans, plants, and the average extra terrestrial. Trust me, I spent much more time with humans than anything else. You lot are so interesting."
"Er, thank you?"
"You're welcome. Now, my errand. . ." The man took out a shiny silver tablet from nowhere and began to read it.
You, Malli Swamy, have been chosen to participate in solving a very recent multi-verse dilemma. Your species, homo sapiens, you call it, have accidentally created a God which is destroying the Goddess of Discord's job. The God that you have created is the God is Boredom. Now, teamed up with the Demi-Goddess Aventura of Narration, the Goddess Eris of Discord are trying to bring the multi-verse back to its normal state through story-telling.
This is where you come in. You are to take part in a particular story placed in an alternate universe, so that the job will go faster. You see, since you are in this universe, and are traveling to the other where the story takes place, both worlds will be affected. When you go there, you will find it painfully obvious what your adventure will be. Good luck. Oh! And if you mess up, your messenger, Jeremy-
"That's me," said the man,
will come and take you back to the time just before you made that mistake.
Cheers,
The Goddess of Discord and the
Demi-Goddess of Narration :)
"Well, that's noteworthy," I said lamely.
"So, will you come now, or spend some time in that hole and then come?" I looked nervously at the ominously ever-present pit of doom.
"I'll come now," I said quickly.
"Alright then," said Jeremy, tossing the tablet into the air, which then vanished. The gaping pit rapidly shrunk into nothing with the point of a silver-clad finger. He pulled out a vial full of ice blue liquid and shoved it into my hand.
"Here. Drink this, and go to sleep. Tomorrow morning you will find yourself in the position of your alternate self, Molly Hyssop, and she will find herself in yours. If you have any questions, just say my name. Now, I have a lot of visiting to do tonight. Until later, then?"
Jeremy waved and- was that a smile? –walked out of the room, flicking the room light off as he went.
I stared at the potion in my hand. It glowed radiantly in the dark, casting bluish shadows across the room.
Well, here goes nothing, I thought, pulling the stopper out and taking an experimental sip. It was minty, and delicious. I speedily ingested the rest of it. I quickly became tired, and tucked myself comfortably into the covers again.
My last thought before falling asleep was this:
Was everything that just happened to me just a dream?