The blood drains from my face when I read that. First I was so certain that my dad was…..well, my dad, and now I have something that contradicts everything I know, or at least I thought I knew. Is…...Is the man I've called my father for over a decade not actually my father? Is it all just a ruse? A cover-up of some kind?
Wait. Didn't he confirm that Zinnia was my mother? I think back to what Wonka said.
"Deep down, I had a feeling that their child would turn out to be special, unless of course they inherited their mother's traits, something I deeply feared. Zinnia, though quite a beautiful woman, was not the sharpest sandal in the saddle. Thankfully this was not the case, but I was not sure of this quite yet."
Nothing makes sense anymore, and it's making me infuriated! Is there another kid like me? Another girl named Matilda? Maybe we got switched at birth? Wait. Why am I trying to rationalize what Wonka's told me? The guy's a certified nutcase!
"Huh. Would you look at that? I'm 11 years old and already going through an existential crisis," I say.
"I didn't think I'd have one until I was at least 16."
There has to be some sort of way out. But where? My eyes dart around this chocolate cavern and that's when I spy it; there's a tunnel. But….is it a trap?
I suppose it's better than being stuck in here and eating chocolate for the rest of my life.
I dart for it when I hear the sound of someone picking away at the rocks and giggling like a mad man.
Probably because it is a mad man.
I try to keep my cool as I crawl in through the cocoa tunnels, but that laugh scares me.
"Matildaaaaaa!"
It's a sing-song voice. That's even worse. Not only that, but the cocoa smell is overwhelmingly strong, so it's 2 sensory overloads for the price of 1. But if I have to take one over the other, the cocoa's my decision.
I dig in even quicker, hoping to come to the end of the tunnel, and soon. Suddenly I feel the ground slope below me.
If I remember anything Mr. Turkentine taught us, a slope is "a surface of which one end or side is at a higher level than another." And a downward slope will have more of a pull from gravity, so if this is sloping downward, then that means-
That's when I begin to slide down rapidly. I clutch onto my notebook and samples like my life depends on it as I slide down probably a few-hundred feet or so before the ground evens up.
That means that that happens.
It takes me a moment to collect myself, and me hiding behind a bunch of boxes to avoid being caught by the oompa-loompas, before I see what room this is; a long row of large pipes emerge from the floor. From within, little white crystals appear and the oompa-loompas are running around furiously to catch them all in golden boxes.
That's when I hear another scream.
"Let me out of here! My father will file a lawsuit and have this place shut down if you don't!"
A girl with brown braids, full-moon glasses, and a school uniform is tied up and on a conveyor belt being directed into a hole in the ground. Things don't seem to add up well for her, so I start looking for a way to stop this. That's when I spy a generator with a nail or two missing.
I guess maintenance is beginning to become less of a priority.
I sneak over and search for anything I can use to jam the thing. I look inside and see a bunch of cogs and whatnot, but nothing that could stop them. Unless…..
I look down at my feet. Is this dangerous? Perhaps, but so are a lot of things, and for all I know this girl could be heading for her demise. As quietly as I can, I take off my shoes and drop them inside. Sure enough, the leather gets stuck inside the cogs and everything stops. A second or two later, the oompa-loompas begin speaking as I sneak around, trying to avoid their lines of sight.
"What the?"
"Who turned off the machine?"
"Maybe the power box is on the fritz."
"Wasn't someone supposed to do maintenance on that?!"
"I think that was Orange Fizzy."
"Don't you pin this on me, Orange Dizzy! You're just as part of maintenance as I am."
"You think the Sweet One got in here and jammed it somehow?"
"I thought the boss managed to secure her."
"Apparently she's run off again, at least that's what I heard."
"Well, if she's in here, then find her. We could get that promotion!"
"What about the power box?"
"Forget the bloody thing! We'll fix it later."
"But if we don't get this new version of Spotty Powder shipped out, we won't be able to mutate the children!"
"We won't have anyone to mutate until we have a world in which their version of normal doesn't match."
"Oh to h*ll with this! Just split up! Half of us inspect the power box while the other half searches for the Sweet One."
As soon as they disperse, I'm already at the conveyor belt, looking for a way to free this girl.
"Who are-?!" she demands.
I shush her instantly and as quietly as I can while I try to keep her from getting crushed into powder. Glancing around, I spy a sharp-looking woodchip and dive for it before getting right into the ropes. Each time the wood chip chips, I just use the broken part to continue it until it gets down to a splinter, by which time, the ropes have split. I pull her off and head for the door as quietly as I can; an added perk of getting rid of my shoes is that I don't have to worry too much about making noise. But this is also the point that I hear someone else sliding down the slide I came down.
"Sir!" one of the oompa-loompas exclaims. "Is it true? Has she really escaped?"
"Not for long," he giggles madly.
As quietly as I can, I open the door and pull the girl out. It slams shut, so I pull her and we start running. Once things have settled down, I peek out. No sign of crazy candy connoisseur or his henchpeople it seems, but I still try to keep quiet.
"Who are you?" the girl hisses.
"Matilda Prescott. You?"
"Miranda. Miranda Mary Piker."
She says this as if I'm supposed to know who she is.
"And I should be in school, but instead I'm here."
"There are worse places to be, but this is definitely up there. What happened to you?"
She sighs.
"I was lured in here by a trail of textbooks. The next thing I knew, I felt a blow to the head and woke up in a cell. What about you?"
"Wonka brought me in personally after I ran away from my mother. He's trying to use me as a power source of some kind to basically take over the world, make it nonsense or something."
"Nonsense has no place in this world, nor does that stupid Spotty Powder."
"Yeah, about that, what even is that?"
"The most horrible thing; it's candy designed to make you look sick so you can skip school!"
That's…..an interesting reaction.
"I fail to see how that's a problem."
She gives me a disgusted gasp.
"Children are meant to work, not to play! I've been working my whole life. Why, even before I was out of diapers, I was reading my first textbooks. You can't get anywhere in this world if you don't work hard."
"That's true, to an extent. You do need hard work to achieve success, but play can also be valuable. It can teach children motor skills, play a role in cognitive development, help to develop imagination-"
"Imagination!" she sniffs. "Imagination is useless."
"Imagination is what got us to where we are today. We wouldn't have electricity or books or…..anything without imagination."
"It's silly!"
I swear, I'm tempted to just turn her in with the way she's speaking.
"Look I don't want us to get killed or worse, so you're going to have to listen to me and follow my lead if you want to get out safely. And we're also going to have to find a few others who are prisoners here. Do you know if there's anyone else being held captive here?"
She gives this some thought.
"I could've sworn I saw a boy being lured in on my way back from honors' group a few days before I got stuck here. I was in my cell across from him this morning. He said his name was…..Marvin Prune, I believe."
Marvin Prune…..okay then.
"Right, let's get going. The sooner we find Marvin and the others, the sooner we can take down Wonka for good."
"And how exactly do you propose we take him down?" she sniffs as I start to pull her out.
I can think of only one way.
"We're going to destroy the factory."
