Chapter
XII
"A Wrong Turn"
"How much longer?" Barrel kept
asking much too often—every two minutes for the past hour.
"Shut
up!" Shock snapped. Then she hit him with her mask, or pulled a
twig off one of the many trees and hit him with that.
I, however,
kept silent. To tell the truth, I was somewhat frightened of the
woods. The only sound was Shock and Barrel bickering about something
stupid, or the rhythmic walking of the bathtub. I was so terrified of
complete silence for some reason. I was about to lose it when we came
to a circle of trees that seemed normal—like the rest of
them—except when our tub trekked into the circle, designs could be
seen on the trees.
"Finally, we're here." Barrel sighed
in relief as he hopped out and observed the stranger tree circle.
I
walked over to a tree with a depiction of an egg carved into it.
"Shock, Barrel," I called over to them. "What do you make of
this?"
They were silent.
"I think this is it." I
assured them.
"Look around you, Lock," Shock told me calmly,
"There are 6 other trees; it could be anyone. I think it's the
one with the tee painted on it"
"I trust him." Barrel said.
"Let's just try this one first."
Slowly, I opened the door,
but nothing was there. It was only black.
"What the hell!"
Shock raged. "That stupid skeleton wants us to go find this Slimy
Claws—"
"Sandy Claws." Barrel interrupted.
"WHATEVER!
And how does he expect us to find him if there's nothing in the
goddamn tree?"
Barrel contemplated for a moment, took the sack
out of the tub, and jumped into the tree.
"BARREL!" Shock
screamed.
He was laughing as he fell, we peered down and he got
smaller, and smaller, and finally so small, that he disappeared,
along with his laughter.
Shock and I gulped. "Wow," I
whispered in awe, "…long drop."
I stepped up on the rim
of the whole and was about to jump, but Shock grabbed my hand. I
turned to look at her and she had a fearful look in her eyes.
"Shock?"
"Do you think he's okay?"
"I'm
sure he is…" I said pretty optimistically, but it turned pretty
pessimistic at the end.
"He's always charging head on into
danger like that. Pretty much the way he got the name 'Barrel'.
Wanna hear the story?"
"Not really. Let's jump."
"Lock,
I'm scared."
Those are two words I thought I'd never come
out of Shock's mouth. "Really?"
She nodded fearfully.
I
took her hand and we both stood on the rim of the egg and we jumped.
We fell down at a furious speed. I closed my eyes and it felt
like we were falling for a long time. Eventually, we landed in a pile
of something. I opened my eye and discovered they were plastic eggs.
I popped up out of the pile. "Where the hell are we?"
"Where's Barrel?" Shock said frantically, digging through the
plastic eggs.
Barrel popped out of the pile next to his
half-sister. "Here I am." he stated quickly. "Were you worried
about little old me?" Barrel asked mockingly.
"No." she
denied quickly with her arms crossed.
I was barely listening.
"Guys, will you shut up for one frigging second?"
They were
quiet.
"Look…"
The sky was the brightest if blue
and the grass was greener than the grass back in our world. There
were tiny, fluffy, yellow chicks running around. All the houses were
shaped like eggs and there was a huge pink rabbit hopping along a
path made of bricks. He was carrying a basket full of eggs and wore a
beige sash that read "Happy Easter". Before anyone could say or
do anything else, Shock started screaming.
"THAT'S SANDY
CLAWS! GET HIM!" she grabbed the sack from Barrel, hopped
out of the pile and started charging towards Sandy Claws and Barrel
and I staggered to our feet and followed her
The rabbit turned
towards us and saw Shock, with her hideous expression, screaming
"kidnap the Sandy Claws!" at the top of her lungs and her
two little friends trailing behind. It saw that Shock was after it,
so it let out a short, high-pitched scream, and began hopping the
other way.
"Come back here!" Shock said, waving her arms
in the air, sack in one hand.
After the rabbit went into the
small town, he was out of sight and Shock plopped down on a small
knoll outside of town.
"Damn…" she sighed disappointedly.
"I thought we'd catch that Sandy Claws for sure…"
"Don't
worry," I said, "All we gotta do is corner him and then we'll
have him."
Barrel patted her shoulder. "C'mon, he's just
waiting for us to get him!"
Shock stood back up. "Alright,
weirdoes," she said as she smirked, shaking off her despair,
"Here's the plan; we'll go into the little village, and I'll
chase after him and try to lead him into some sorta dead end. Then,
you guys'll bag 'im." She talked like she was a general in the
army. "Everyone got it?"
Barrel and I held our hands to our
foreheads in salute. "Sir, yes, sir!"
She glared at us.
"Oh, sorry," Barrel said quickly.
"Ma'am, yes,
ma'am!" we said.
She smiled. "Good! Now mooooove out!
Shock ran into town and Barrel and I climbed up on house
roofs that were parallel to each other. They weren't very high. We
watched the streets below and in a heartbeat, we saw the rabbit. It
was hopping around frantically, but it stopped for a breather.
"Hey,
Sandy," Shock called from behind the rabbit.
The rabbit turned
slowly, and screamed when it saw Shock.
"Heh, heh, heh,"
Shock laughed playfully, "Trick…or…treat?" she dashed and the
rabbit dove in-between the two houses—Shock's trap was working
like a charm.
The rabbit realized he was trapped.
I jumped
down and held the rabbit still. "This won't hurt a bit, Sandy,"
I assured him a he tried to wriggle free.
Barrel hopped down from
his building with the sack and, at last, Sandy Claws was bagged.
We
dragged Sandy to where the pile of eggs was and, in an instant; we
were teleported back to the circle of trees somehow. We loaded the
bag with Sandy Claws in it into the tub and trekked back to the town
hall. We entered the doors, thinking how proud he would be.
"Jack,
Jack!" we all yelled. "We caught him! We caught him!"
"Perfect!" Jack shouted with glee. He strolled over to us
with his big, long legs. "Open it up, quickly!"
We untied
the noose and the rabbit hopped out.
"That's not Sandy
Claws!" Jack said with a chuckle, perhaps thinking we were playing
a joke.
"It isn't?" Shock said, dumbfounded.
"Who is
it?" Barrel asked.
Our fake Sandy Claws hopped across Town
Hall to a strange looking creature with an axe in his head. The
rabbit sniffed him for a minute, but got scared.
"BUNNY!" the
creature said.
The rabbit screamed and dove back in our bag to
hide.
"Not Sandy Claws," Jack said disappointedly. "Take
him back!"
"But, we followed your instructions!" I said in
despair because our work was for naught.
"Yeah," Barrel
agreed, "We went through the door!"
"Which door? There's
more than one" Jack said, getting a bit annoyed. He took a cookie
shaped like a tree out of his shirt pocket. "Sandy Claws is behind
the door shaped like this!"
Shock began choking me. "I TOLD
YOU!" she said, reminding me that she suggested it before.
"Get
off me!" I yelled.
Before any of us knew it, we were all
beating upon each other until we heard an extremely frightening roar
from behind us. Jack made it to calm of down. He looked at the bag
that the rabbit was in.
"I'm very sorry for the
inconvenience, sir." He looked at us. "Take him home first."
We started out the door as the bathtub followed.
"And
apologize again! Be careful with Sandy Claws when you fetch him!
Treat him nicely."
"Got it!" I called back.
"We'll
get it right." Shock said.
"Next time!" we all called back.
It took us awhile to find the tree circle again, but we did. We dumped the bunny down the Egg door and headed for the door with the tree on it. Barrel opened it up and again, like the Egg door, it was nothing but black inside. But, in a matter of seconds, a blizzard of snow rushed out and sucked us in and the door shut behind us.
