Bonjour! English and Spanish are too boring for me, so let's try French! (I don't know French...)
For all of you people who talk to yourselves like me, go check out Mewcat60's review. Also, Lake Blue1, to answer your question, my friend literally ran at the door and smashed the part he ran at. Jessie9095, for your question, you get locked out of the bathroom by locking it on the inside (you know, the little thing on the doorknob?) and then closing the door on the outside. Thank you CC RainbowUnicorn for informing me of the world population.
Shoutouts to my Guest (IDK who it is!) and Cy Crystal, a new reader who also put me down under her "Favorite Authors" list! Go read her first story, that's actually really good for a debut!
Astra was trapped. She would slowly die of starvation and thirst (She was not about to drink sink or toilet water). Eventually, her dead body will decay and only bones will be left for a penguin in the future to stumble upon. Well, maybe there would be maggots crawling through her eye sockets and the hole that's supposed to be her mouth, feeding on whatever flesh was left (Mewcat is going to kill me for this. I already told her a bunch of freaky stories), but that wasn't the point. Besides, Astra doubted that the fly larva could get inside a locked bathroom with no air vents or windows. The EPF tended to keep things in tip-top shape, so there weren't any holes in the walls for any flies to get in.
That made Astra wonder that if maggots do manage to get into the bathroom and eat her decaying body, how would they recycle it into the soil? There wasn't any cracks in the pristine white tiles that revealed any soil, and anyway, Club Penguin was mainly made up of snow and ice. Well, this led to Astra wondering how there's grass in the Soccer Stadium during warm seasons. She knew for a fact that the grass and dirt were real after playing soccer there once or twice before being called to the HQ to get more pizza and donuts for Rookie or dealing with one of Gary's explosions. Some penguin had thrown a tantrum after his team lost a game and kicked up so much dirt that Astra's eyes felt like acid was being dropped in them. The dirt definitely tasted like dirt than what would probably be the taste of chemically created dirt. Logically, factories wouldn't produce such dry, foul-tasting particles that burn a penguin's eyes and cause one to break out in a coughing fit from the lack of moisture. Everything that's factory made usually ends up being "better" than the original, natural product, but kills you somehow, like processed foods do (After that unit on nutrition last year, I'm now scared of the food I'm eating. My cousin also went through the same problem).
Wait a minute. Why am I still here, in the bathroom out of all places? Astra reached for the doorknob before remembering the answer to her question: she was locked in a stupid bathroom with no escape routes. (I get side-tracked easily...) The EPF was good. In fact, too good. She made a mental note to suggest installing an air vent in case another penguin ends up in the same predicament as her at least can get out.
How many people have ever been trapped in a bathroom? Astra wondered to herself. All of the bad stuff happened to her for some reason. It was as if karma had nothing better to do after going through a checklist of penguins to give good things to and slap in something bad into someone else's life. Maybe it would say to itself, Hey, I'm done with my work now, so let's go annoy someone for fun even though they're not on the list of people who deserve bad karma! Get a couple chuckles out of it while the penguin gets extremely frustrated with everyone!
Focus, Astra! a voice in her head yelled at her. You're stuck in a bathroom with no way to escape, food, or water and anything could be happening without you. Just this morning, the whole set was chaos until you showed up. Heck, even when you were here yesterday the place was in pandemonium. For all we know as of now since we're stuck in this stupid room where you relieve yourself and wash your hands, Gary caused an explosion in the storage room he's experimenting in and now everyone in the building except for you is dead. Maggots that, oddly enough, look like grubs will be crawling through their dead bodies and then yours later, once you join them in the afterlife.
Hey, does Rookie ever wash his hands? the voice that got easily distracted wondered after hearing the description of what you do in the bathroom. Come to think of it, Astra heard a rumor through the EPF that Rookie didn't know that you were supposed to wash your hands at certain times to avoid spreading germs until he joined the PSA, which she figured was the agency that preceded the EPF. Anyway, she figured that Rookie still doesn't do it because sometimes, there were crumbs all over his flippers and chocolate stains. One time, during an extremely long, unnecessary meeting on safety procedures already burned into Astra's brain from the training received back in the Arctic, she counted all of the crumbs and smears of jelly, Nutella (Because everyone loves Nutella!), peanut butter, and about seven unknown substances on Rookie's flippers. She didn't even feel like she was half finished with counting all the gunk on his flippers by the time the meeting was over.
ASTRA! the first voice shouted. Astra groaned mentally. She hated the serious part of her brain. It liked to take control and ignore all the other voices in her head, from the crazy one to the pessimistic side. HELLO?! YOU'RE STILL STUCK IN THE BATHROOM! EVERYONE ELSE IS PROBABLY DEAD BY NOW!
Shut up, she snapped back mentally at the first voice before tucking it inside a locked box (Still arguing with myself). Astra focused on the door and twisted the doorknob, jerking it, locking and trying to open the door, unlocking and trying to open, pounding and kicking against the door, and even ran at the door. The only thing she managed to achieve was a bruised shoulder and aching limbs.
Astra sat down against the door and thought about any possible ways to escape the bathroom. She could call someone, but everyone on set had their phones off because they didn't want any ringtones blaring out while filming. Calling someone outside of the building was out of the question because there was a reason they weren't on set in the first place: they're not allowed to. Security was probably slacking off, asleep at the front desk. The one penguin who actually was alert didn't believe in phones, her claim being that technology was preventing penguins from socially interacting physically. That made contacting her difficult, involving either sending a letter (which barely anyone, surprisingly, knew how to do) or having Rookie run down to the penguin's igloo as a way to keep him in shape.
Her next option was pounding on the door as hard as she could and scream for help, but Astra had slammed her full body weight against the door and no one noticed, so that wouldn't work either. Besides, she couldn't scream at will for some reason. It was more like a reflex that was too lazy to actually work.
The third option was to sit and wait for a penguin to come over to use the bathroom, but Astra was much too impatient and antsy to sit around and do absolutely nothing for twenty minutes, an hour, two hours, or three hours. Even when a website was loading on her laptop for like, three seconds, Astra would open up another tab and search up something to do in the meantime (Currently, I have five tabs open and two separate, personal stories I'm writing for fun).
The fourth idea that popped up in her mind was probably the craziest: Astra could dig a hole in the round with her bare flippers and tunnel out under the door. Unfortunately, she was not strong enough and the titles, knowing the EPF, were probably made of titanium. This meant that the only thing she could do was sit and wait, which was exactly what she decided to do. Well, Astra fell asleep after what felt like seven thousand hours.
Suddenly, the wall behind her disappeared and Astra fell backwards, waking up immediately as the back of her head hit the floor hard. "WHO DID THAT?!" she demanded, jumping up and glaring at the penguin who opened the door.
"AHH!" PH screamed at the same time, stumbling back, nearly crashing into a camera. "I was just moving the cameras and lights aside! Gary told me to put them against the bathroom door."
"I was in here!" Astra protested. "You couldn't have bothered to knock? Did you not notice I was gone?"
"Gary told me that no one was in there!" PH defended herself.
"Gary is so dead," Astra grumbled, running off to find that inventor.
Nice job Gary. Don't even bother to knock. That happened to me so many times, with people walking in when I'm using the bathroom. It usually results in cursing on my part. I even developed reflexes to close doors if they open just a tiny crack.
This is probably the longest chapter I've ever written...
Happy Thanksgiving! I published a separate piece just for this holiday concerning you, the reader, so if you could please click on the blue link of my pen name at the top and go all the way down on my profile to see it, that'd be awesome.
Come back for more if you liked this!