Prologue

Mavis Pale was a shy girl who at the age of sixteen still found herself playing with dolls and having lively conversations with imaginary friends. She was a clever lassie who enjoyed her time by baking cookies with various ingredients and reading everything that came in her sight. Nutrition facts, street names, manufacturing dates, shirt labels- the list could be written on a very long sidewalk in chalk.

Mavis was a petty thing with large gray eyes and short sandy hair- nothing spectacular or of great importance. In fact she was someone who could be classified under the easy-to-forget category. At least six times each school year somebody would give her a look and then ask in a rather obnoxious way if she had recently moved into town. The answer was always the same: "No, I've lived here all my life." She didn't even have to think about the qustion- the answer came naturally.

Life had suddenly turned into a long consecutive blob of reruns and repetitive actions.

Beginning:

It was a cold snowy day with the wind slightly blowing, making the leaves dance to an unheard tune. Mavis was sitting indoors flipping through the morning paper and trimming out random photographs of couples holding hands. Then with particualr ease she trimmed right down the middle of each pair to leave each separated from their soulmate. Mavis stared and blinked.

"Mavis, dear, go outside and fetch the milk glasses please." her uppity, well-married mother called from the living room.

"O...k." Mavis said nonchalantly back through a robotic-like stare in her direction.

She sighed and placed the paper on the kitchen table. She grabbed the door handle and kicked the door open carelessly. It banged on something hard and she heard someone yell in a rather peculiar voice, "A-OW!"

Mavis shrieked, quickly closed the door shut, and hurriedly secured all of the locks. She sat on the floor and leaned her back against it to baracade it shut. She opened her eyes wide and looked sideways to the left then to the right. She got up and quietly stood up on tippy toes to view the person outside her doorway through the window above her eye level.

Standing there was a lanky pallid faced young man who appeared to be in his late teens. He was an unusual display, wearing a black and white tight fitted collared coat. His tie flung over his shoulder to hang in a disheveled like manner. His bangs elegently fell to the left to gently conceal his eyes in a curious shadow. His pants were black, straight, and a wee bit tight. Shiny dark dress shoes adorned his feet and gloves the color of a vintage maroon fit nicely on his hands. Everything about him from head to toe was odd.

Mavis opened her eyes wider while she stared at the strange person in her doorway. Then in a timid voice asked, "Um...may I help you, sir?"

He looked at her with one eye slightly twitching while smoothing out his hair. "You don't even say sorry, do you?" He put on a straight face and eyed her as if trying to examine her gloomy blue aura.

She looked at his head and a strange croaky noise emerged from her throat. She flushed and cleared her throat, "Oh dear... I'm sorry for slamming the door shut on you and for not apologizing in the first place."

He raised his eyebrows while pointing his finger at his off centered hat atop his head. "If I wasn't insane, then I'd say that you were forgetting one more thing to apologize for dear girl."

Mavis inhaled a hiccup. "Right! Sorry about your head, mister."

Then without warning he exploded, "My head! NO! NO, my dear child! My hat! You bent it. It was fairly new..."

Mavis gave him a confused look and smiled through tightly pressed lips.

"Your hat is more important than your head?" Mavis asked. "Very well then, I apologize to your hat!" She tried to sound as concerned as possible.

The odd fellow stared at her so long and so hard as if he were about to do something horrible. But then he quickly turned his angry pout into a dazzling white smile. How straight, clean, and magnificently bright his teeth were. Almost too perfect. He took his hat and popped it back in place then put it on his not-so-important head. The hat was slightly crooked.

"Oh yeah!" he said. "I was gonna give you these." He handed Mavis the milk glasses that had been sitting buried in snow banks outside her door. "They were getting all covered in slush and I didn't want them to get too chilly." He smiled again and somehow his hat didn't seem so crooked anymore.

"Well then, thank you Mr.-?" Mavis asked awkwardly.

"Willy Wonka!" He responded rather quickly. " Got it? Good! But unfortunatley, I should leave now for there are so many many things to do! It was very nice to meet you..." Willy stopped and looked at her, searching her face for her name.

"I'm Mavis." She nodded her head. "Mavis Pale."

"Okay Miss Mavis P-A-I-L. Goodbye!" He quickly turned his heels and walked down the steps leading from Mavis' house.

"No, not P-A-I-L, Mr. Wonka." Mavis said with slight irritation. "P-A-L-E."

He spun around to face her but ended up slipping all around with skinny legs on the ice covered sidewalk and arms waving about like a mad chicken. He immediately regained his composure and pretended that Ms. Pale hadn't seen that. He glanced his eyes to the far left and discreetly blushed. "Uh-huh. Okay."

Mavis stood in her doorway as she watched him leave. He was halfway down the block, then turned around and yelled, "My hat accepts your apology!" He fashioned his thumb and forefinger to pinch the brim of his hat and grinned. Then he skipped down the street and dissappeared into the fog.