Get Set, Go!

The Mystery world...

The place looked like another planet, maybe Mars with extra craters. It had red rocks everywhere and the gravity didn't seem any different from the Earth's gravity, we weren't floating in air at least. We didn't know where we were but his certainly wasn't Earth. It was isolated with no signs of life and the atmosphere gave an eerie feeling. The sky was purple, and there were strange noises around, like something was boiling and was ready to erupt. A volcano? That was quite possible.

The rollercoaster suddenly turned upside down, travelling on a loop. That is when I saw where it was taking us. We were climbing a mountain and there was steam arising from its peak. We were heading towards the volcano. Terrified, I try telling Jeremy about my discovery. He didn't seem to be able to hear anything over the boiling sound and the speed of our rollercoaster so i point out at the peak of mountain and shout, "A volcano!"

From the look on his face I knew that he saw it. He brought his mouth close to my ear and shouted, "Candace. Tell me what you did with the crows." I think Jeremy took some serious blows on the head from the trees and the crows. He was talking gibberish. I just shrug and shout, "I don't understand. I didn't do anything to them."

"See, the rollercoaster was moving on straight for a long time when it suddenly swerved as if that was not planned. And I don't think that all those crows were meant to hit that tree. So, just think and tell me if you did anything that would have brought that change. Just think."

I thought for a while but nothing came to my mind. I couldn't have done anything. I was too frightened to even move. "I didn't do anything, Jeremy. I was too frightened to even move. All I could do was pray. I just wished that the rollercoaster swerved before the crows would reach us and the crows hit the tree and then that just seemed to have happened. I did not do anything."

Jeremy considered this and then there was this look on his face which he had when he realises something. "That's it Candace. You have to think. Try it again and get us out of this."

I give him an are-you-okay look. At that time we were on top of the mountain. Jeremy continued with the rubbish, "Hurry up, Candace. Use your imagination. Imagine something that would take us off this situation. Manipulate the track. That's what you have to do. Candace, think!"  The car was slowing down. It covered a crest and was suddenly hurtling down towards the lava. Jeremy shouted again, "Imagine!"

I look at the hot bubbling lava. It reminded me of chocolate. Call me crazy or whatever but that's how my brain works! It always interpreted something as something else, something more fun! The boiling lava was about how a boiling hot chocolate looked.  Suddenly, I wasn't seeing the lava anymore, I was seeing a pool full of hot chocolate! Wow! It worked. I should probably open a chocolate factory, Willy Wonka style! This was crazily amazing! Oh, wait. I shouldn't leave the thing hot considering that we were going to splash into it soon. I tried imagining chocolate which was not hot, a bowl of Hershey's chocolate syrup. The chocolate pouring down from the Hershey's bottle drop by drop into a bowl, trying to change the boiling bubbles of the hot chocolates to the drops of the syrup. Just as we were about to touch the once-a-lava, the chocolate stopped steaming, and we splashed into the chocolate without burning dead. We glided all the way through the chocolate trough, the chocolate splashing all over us.

I shouted out in glee. "What is this?" Jeremy looked at me, bewildered. "A chocolate splash! It's yummy!" I say, licking the chocolate off my hand. Jeremy looked at me, astonished and licked a pea-sized bit of chocolate off his hand, just to confirm what I was seeing. When satisfied, he puts his full hand into the mouth.

By the time we started to climb back out, his mouth was covered with chocolate. He grinned at me and said, "You did it, Candace! You saved us." And we start laughing.

When the laughter died away, Jeremy's face became sober and he said, "But I only hope it doesn't get worse." Yes, Jeremy is always the optimistic kind.