"THE LIFT! THE LIFT, BOSS!"

I jumped at the short, white-suit-wearing man's directions. I should've expected his yells when I walked inside of Plastic Beach, though, seeing how I'd played the game for hours on end on the Gorillaz' website. Murdoc didn't even bother to acknowledge the lift-man as he pushed open the doors and waited for me to join him.

I felt awkward standing in the creaky elevator, and a million questions were burning in my mind like a blow-torched candle. I just didn't have the guts to ask any of them. I kept eyeing the graffiti sprayed all along the walls and tried to decipher them to keep my mind off of my confusion.

Everything looked exactly like it did in the Plastic Beach game, right down to the text of the graffiti.

Then it hit me—I wasn't me!

I felt as though a knife stabbed me in the stomach. I ran my eyes over the skin of my arms, then I yanked at my skirt and surveyed the fabric. None of it was real—I was a cartoon! How could I have not seen it before? Everything around me was as though it had been drawn. You don't just miss something like that.

"Problem?" Murdoc had noticed my frantic looks.

"Oh, uh, well if I were dreaming I wouldn't have thought anything was weird, but I just realized that I'm a cartoon and if I were dreaming I never would've thought that it was strange, but I do, and-"

"You are? Well I didn't notice. I've always been a cartoon myself, y'know, but strange things happened at Kong Studios and strange things happen here, guess," Murdoc explained nonchalantly.

"Err, wait, are we going down? So my room is beneath? Not like underneath the beach, right? 'Cos that doesn't really sound safe…" I began to feel sick again.

"Well, yeah! 2D's been underground for like a year or something now, and he's perfectly healthy! Or at least he was last time I checked on him. He could be dead right now, as a matter of fact…" Murdoc suddenly looked like his thoughts were sidetracked.

"Oh. Um, what about my, err, stuff? Like clothes and such?" I asked. I really felt like an idiot every time something popped out of my mouth.

"All taken care of! You know your kitchen window is unlocked, right? Well, not that you can do anything about it now, but it certainly made breaking into your house a lot easier."

"Wait a minute- won't anybody find it suspicious that I'm in a coma or whatever but my stuff's all gone?" I wondered out loud, completely forgetting the fact that my house had been broken in to.

The lift came to a jolting stop and hesitantly the rusty doors opened back up. Murdoc stepped out first and I followed, waiting for a reply to my question.

"I don't know… but… none of it's actually here right now. So you'll have to make-do with the clothes on your back—oh yeah, and your book bag. I've got that somewhere…" Murdoc looked sidetracked again, then snapped out of it and led me down the hall.

"Umm… is 2D actually here somewhere? I mean…" I looked downward to hide my embarrassment, but I wasn't sure why I even needed to. It was pretty well known that I was a hard-core 2D fan.

"Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on if anybody's paid the whale lately," the bassist replied flatly.

Paid the whale? I wondered. Oh yeah—that whale that 2D hates so much. It's real?

Murdoc abruptly stepped to the side, in front of a neglected white door. I doubted it had been opened since its construction.

"Here it is! Your amazing room! Be glad you're here and not drowning in the middle of the bloody ocean," Murdoc exclaimed in a grand voice. He flung the dirty door open, and then turned back to the lift—probably to get my book bag.

I stepped inside for a moment, and when I heard the lift going back up, I walked into the hallway again.

I was living my dream- actually talking to one of the Gorillaz. But not only that—I was also a cartoon. And I was on Plastic Beach. I could finally die a happy person, no matter how crappy the rest of my life got. I paced the short hallway a couple times, then suddenly stopped.

I could hear faint sounds coming from somewhere. I completely froze and listened intently, until I realized they were from one of the other rooms in the hall. I could just make out the sound of gunfire. A movie, perhaps? I uttered a gasp as I realized it could very well be my fictional hero, 2D. Instead of following the noise to its source, I skipped back into my room. There was just no way I'd barge in on someone, especially someone famous. Maybe I'd get to meet him later.

Scanning the inside of my room made me feel a bit scared. There were cobwebs everywhere—which implied spiders. I really didn't like spiders. Could they possibly be on Plastic Beach, though? I mean, in the middle of the damn ocean?

I got over my short-lived fear and ambled over to the mirror. The closer I got, the more butterflies hatched into my stomach and thrashed around. Once in front of the mirror, I must've stood there for around ten minutes, just staring at my animated self.

Quite frankly, I looked a hell of a lot better as a cartoon. I looked thinner, and older. It was great, only it would take a while to get used to.

Finally I cantered over to my bed and away from the mirror. It was a new mattress, as far as I could tell, and there were no sheets on it at all. There was also nothing underneath it.

It was just a damn mattress on the floor.

I sighed and paced over to peer into the dressers that lined the left wall. They were empty, of course, but something behind one of them caught my attention. I grunted and turned shades of red as I attempted to lift the heavy piece of furniture, but to no avail. Eventually I just pushed it far enough to the side to examine the mysterious thing hidden behind it.

It was wood nailed onto the wall, but I suspected something was underneath the wood. I dug my fingernails beneath the metal nails and began to pry them out. It hurt like hell, but eventually I managed to yank two of them out. The wood board fell to the ground, still half-nailed to the wall, and I could see then that there was a laundry chute in the wall. It was rather large, and I noted that it would be easy to slip down into and explore, but I'd have to do that later.

I shoved the board back up and pushed the dresser in front of it. Suddenly I remembered Murdoc getting my book bag, and wondered what was taking him so long. Right as I walked out of my room to investigate, the lift came down again, and Murdoc stepped out. He was holding a bottle in one hand and my bag in the other. I guessed the bottle was some sort of alcoholic beverage—probably rum—and figured that's what was taking him so long.

"Ah, hello. Here's your bloody book bag. Nearly killed myself getting the bloody thing…" he tossed it over to me. "Oh yeah, you haven't eaten in like two days, girly! You don't eat much anyways. You'll never grow, poor thing. I'll send that bloody robot down with something… probably spam. Get used to it, it's about all we've got…" Murdoc took a swig from the bottle and ambled back over to the elevator.

He'd managed to get tipsy in around twenty minutes—amazing. I wondered how many drinks he'd had.

When Murdoc said I hadn't eaten in two days, it made me realize how painfully hungry I was. And by 'robot' did he mean Cyborg? The 'Noodle Copy' was actually coming to my room!

I let out a gasp as I heard the creaking of the lift once more.