Chapter Two: In Which There Are Buttons That I Want to Press
"What," she said, and then ran back outside to circle the blue box. "No, no, that's not right. It's small, see, I can circle it, I can almost hug it, but…but…it's bigger on the inside?" She stepped back inside just to make sure what she saw was true, back inside the cursed thing, with its bright bleeping lights and lots of buttons and levers and a lower floor and a high, domed ceiling. "Yeah," she continued in a dazed and feeble voice, slumping down to the golden floor, "this must've been a really, really expensive lawn-mower."
"No, no, no," she mumbled while hugging her legs to her chest. "I'm not sitting in a lawn mower that's bigger on the inside than it looks. That's not what's happening. I am, I am…" she banged her head against the wall of the whatever-it-was, "probably intensely hallucinating."
Meg stood up and walked uncertainly towards the center of the thing, eyes on a big, circular device which housed what seemed like a thousand different buttons, levers, and lights. Her mind raced with a million different thoughts that she couldn't comprehend, a million different undecipherable images and feelings—except for one that she thoroughly understood and fully intended to act upon.
"I really want to touch it," she whispered to herself, eyes wide. Her mind was full of fantastic fancies, of all the marvels that could happen if she touched a button or pulled a lever. It was a magical lawn-mower, after all—one with a door, glowing lights, and an impossibly large interior.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a white, swiveling chair.
"Oh, this is brilliant," she exclaimed, and her eyes sparkled as she noticed a television screen in front of it. "And I think I've figured out how it works—"
Before she had finished her thought, she was up and running around the large, blinking motor-device and towards the comfy-looking chair. However, just as she was about to reach it, she heard voices outside the lawn-mower's door. There were two voices, in fact: a man's and a woman's, both rather heavily accented.
"But Doctor, why would it land here of all places?" asked the woman. "It's nothing terribly exciting, just a bunch of boring brick houses."
The man's voice then intervened. "Well," he said, his voice drawn out and squeaking around the word, "to be fair, they are lovely brick houses, and look! Christmas lights! Fascinating that they'd still be up so long after Christmas. Americans sure are funny creatures, even more so than you British lot."
"Shut up," the woman softly said, but Meghan could almost hear her smile through the words. "I'm cold. Let's just get back inside."
Meg ran down a small flight of stairs and found herself right underneath the center of the lawn-mowing machine just as the door creaked open again.
"Doctor," inquired the woman, "do you think you can fix it? It still smells a bit—funky."
It was then that Meghan remembered she had forgotten to put on her deodorant that day, choosing instead to lounge around on her laptop in her pajamas. She internally groaned as the funny-sounding man replied.
"Well, really it just needs a good—" BANG! "—hit over the head!"
The woman didn't sound amused. "So we didn't actually need to go traipsing around in the cold at night."
"Of course we did! I don't often come to America. And Ohio! Full of cows and corn, I hear. Though unfortunately I didn't see as many cows—or corn!—as I would've liked. Well, actually, I didn't see any cows or corn at all—"
"In the cold. At night."
"All right, Rose, I think we're all set! Now, where did you want to go, again? The Medusa Cascade? Kataa Flo Ko? Clom? I love Clom, such a simple-sounding place, but sometimes a bit dangerous—"
Meghan's head was reeling. She couldn't even concentrate on the rest of these two strangers' conversation. Medusa Cascade? Kataa Flo Ko? From the sounds of it, these people were British, but even British people weren't that weird.
She was busy mouthing the word "Clom", whatever the word meant, and trying it out for size on her tongue when she heard the strange noises from earlier. Her eyes widened.
"Shit!" she whispered as she toppled to one side. "They're starting the lawn-mower!"
She almost distantly heard the man talking as she tried to steady herself on the ground by grasping onto a metal bar. "It is strange, though," he said, seeming to mutter to himself, but Meghan couldn't make out the rest of it.
"What, what's strange? Doctor?"
Before he could reply, another sound transcended the beeping and buzzing and lawn-mowing of the machine.
"ARRRGGHHH!"
"Doctor," the woman said. "Doctor, what was that?"
There was the sound of footsteps clanking against metal, and then Meghan found herself face-to-face with a man's surprised-looking face. "What?"
