The Chocolatiers

The Factory Open to Guests

*Grace's P.O.V.*
It's been a few days since the inventing room. Today is the day that the five kids and their guests come. I eavesdropped some more to find out the date and time of it. I was thinking maybe I'll sneak into the group at some points in their tour. Get to hear what Mr. Wonka says about some things. I know that he doesn't want any kid to touch him. I heard about that one a long time ago.
Anyway, I am in my temporary room right now. I switch rooms every other day to be sure I don't get caught in here. Right now I'm in some sort of storage room. There's a whole bunch of different things in here. I am currently laying down on my makeshift bed, playing lightly on a guitar I found. I don't have many things of my own, just a handful of clothes and a gold locket from my birth parents before they died in a fire. I heard the boat outside the door. I quickly hid. Five Oompa Loompas came into the room, looking for something. I had the sudden urge to sneeze. I held it back for as long as I could. One of them grabbed a doll sort of thing, while the others followed suit.
I couldn't hold back my sneeze any longer. It was a very loud one. Ugh. Curse my loud sneezes. The Oompa Loompas paused, looked at each other as if asking who sneezed. Then looked in my direction, I gulped quietly. Time to disappear. An Oompa Loompa was close to my hiding spot. So I quickly snapped my fingers, and appeared in the Eatable room. (Just remembered it was the eatable room and not the waterfall room :P ) It's one of my favorites. It's very beautiful. So now you know another one of my secrets, I have powers. (And sorry for those who hate stories like this, but I thought it might be interesting to make her have powers :D) I have more than one power, but you'll find out the rest later. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding in, and sat down underneath a candy apple tree.
I looked at my watch. The guests should arrive at any minute. I heard the door to the Eatable room being unlocked. I got up, and ran over to the door. I hid behind it and waited. It opened, and Mr. Wonka along with a bunch of others stepped out into the room. The last to step into the room was a boy with a brown sweater and an old man, who I assumed to be his Grandfather. I walked up behind them, and followed, listening to Mr. Wonka.
"Be careful, do not get over excited, don't loose your heads." A fat kid dropped his chocolate bar. I would have done that too, if I was him. No where else had I ever seen a place like this. We went over to the bridge and Mr. Wonka guided us forward. "This river is made entirely out of melted chocolate, the waterfall churns it up, makes it light and frothy. In fact, there is no other factory that mixes ifs chocolate by waterfall, and you can take that to the bank." I giggled. The others looked back at me. "You sure love your job, Mr. Wonka." I stated. He looked at me, then at the others, seemingly counting the kids.
"Who are you, and where did you come from?" At this, I started to panic and get red in the face. The others were staring at me. Well most of them. The boy and his grandfather was looking at Mr. Wonka and I was looking back and forth between them. " I knew this was a bad idea." I said, turning around and started walking to the door. "Wait, you just got here, why leave now?" Mr. Wonka asked. "Um, I thought," "Oh Poppycock." I looked at him for a moment, then said "hmm. That's actually a good idea." Thinking of how much it rhymes with poppycup which sounds like a good candy idea. I then got out my notepad from my back pocket, and wrote that down. "What's that?" Mr. Wonka asked. "Just a notebook where I put a bunch of ideas that are not really finished. Some are waiting for the right inspiration." I said looking up at him. just then it hit me.
"Oh! How rude of me, I'm Grace." I said holding out my hand. He looked at it for a second. "Oh, right, sorry. Almost forgot. No touching." I said putting my hand down. He tilted his head at me. I heard a notice above me, and looked up. Mr. Wonka did the same. "Oh, people." He said, turning to the others. "That pipe, along with others, take up thousands of gallons, and carry it all over the factory." He explained. Lots of them looked bored at this. "Do try my grass, it's so darn delectable and so good looking, go ahead and try a blade." "You can eat the grass?" "Of course, everything in this room is eatable,even I am. But that is called cannibalism, my dear children, and is in fact, frowned upon in most societies." Mr. Wonka explained. That is true. I nodded in agreement. "Go ahead and eat, enjoy." At that, the kids and adults ran off, well most of them. An older man, the father of one of the girls looked at Mr. Wonka weirdly. I glared at him. He raised an eyebrow at us both. Mr. Wonka looked back at me, and I smiled.
I went over toward the boy who was near my favorite candy apple tree that I was sitting under earlier. "Hi, I'm Grace." I said. "Charlie." We shook hands. "Who did you come with?" Charlie asked. He was really nice, so why not. "Can you keep a secret?" I asked. Charlie nodded. I looked around to find no one within hearing distance. I lowered my voice to a whisper, to where if someone would come by only he would hear me. "I have been living here since I was ten. It's been eight years." I told him. "What?!?" He exclaimed. "Shh!" I said, putting a hand on his mouth, and looking around. Mr. Wonka had looked over at us, suspicious as to what was going on. I looked at Charlie and took my hand off his mouth. "So is there anyone else?" "No, I am orphaned, my parents died in a fire, and I have no other family. None that I know of, at least. But I still hope that there is someone." I explained. "I'm sorry." "It's alright, I'm over it now." Suddenly I heard, "Hey look!" It came from the girl whose father stared at Mr. Wonka so weirdly. We all went over there to see what she was looking at. I didn't see the fat boy though, must be stuffing his face with something. Oh that was mean. I mentally sighed. I don't want to be like one of the bullies that I had growing up before the accident. "What are they? Who are they?" She asked. "There's more than one of them." Said the other girls's mom. They were wearing matching outfits. Like usual. These ones must be the ones who pluck and cut the ripe candy. I can tell because they are wearing the red suits. "Are they real people?" The boy with spiky hair asked. "Of course, they are Oompa Loompas. Straight from LoompaLand." I explained. Everyone looked at me, even Mr. Wonka. "Yeah. That's right." "There's no such place." Said the spiky haired boy's father. "What?" Asked Mr. Wonka angrily. "Mr. Wonka, I teach high-school geography, and I'm here to tell you-" "Well, then you'll know all about it, and, oh, what a terrible country it is." Mr. Wonka said with slight annoyance in his voice. The man looked at him like he was crazy. I glared at him, and he looked uncomfortable under my stare. then he looked like he was looking at something far off into the distance. I knew that he was having a flashback. "The whole place is nothing but thick jungles infested by the most dangerous beasts in the entire world. Hornswogglers and snozzwangers and those terrible, wicked whangdoodles." He told us with a disgusted, terrified look. "I went to Loompaland looking for exotic new flavored for candy. Instead, I found the Oompa-Loompas." He looked over at me. I smiled at him. "They lived in tree houses to escape from the fierce creatures who lived below. The Oompa-Loompas are nothing but green caterpillars, which tasted revolting." He made a face, at remembering the taste. I followed suit. I was actually with him, but he never saw me, I was following close behind him. Invisible. I had followed him up to the nest-like houses in the trees and with him when he 'spoke' to their chief. "The Oompa-Loompas looked for other things, to mash up with the caterpillars to make them taste better: red beetles, the bark of the bong-bong tree. All of them beastly, but not quite so beastly as the caterpillars." I remember him not wanting to take the bowl of the caterpillars from the chief that offered it to him, but he insisted. Being respectful, he slowly took it. He smelled it, which from where I was sitting it smelled awful. He then proceeded to pretend it looked and smelled delicious, and stuck a gloved finger into the green goo that had chunks of other gross looking and smelling things. He pulled it up, and like spaghetti wrapped some of the goo that was dangling from his finger, and like some of it up. The chief had smiled at him. I remember, walking silently over to Wonka, and curiously dipping my tip of my fingernail in. It was gooey and a small eyeball got stuck underneath my nail. I was disgusted, but I still proceeded to stick my finger on the tip of my tongue. I instantly regretted it. Cursing my curiosity. Didn't the smell warn me enough? I soon got the eyeball out from underneath my fingernail using another of my fingers, and turned to see Wonka returning the bowl, gagging a little, with a small smile. "But the food the longed for the most was the cocoa bean." I remembered that night they had a cocoa bean celebration, with the shell on their heads, faces drawn on it, with rattles made from the shells, dancing around a small bonfire. Banging on drums,and speaking/singing to a song. "An Oompa-Loompa was lucky if he found three or four cocoa beans a year. But, oh, how they craved them." Yeah. Worshiped them is the more correct term. They even bowed to them, with the cocoa bean on a stand being shown upon with a single light. "All they'd ever think about was cocoa beans. The cocoa bean is the thing from which chocolate is made, so I told the chief: 'come live in my factory. You can have all the cocoa beans you want! I will even pay your wages in cocoa beans if you wish!' Which, he agreed to." They shook hands, well, the chief shook Mr. Wonka's finger, and the deal was made. When they told the rest of the tribe, they celebrated that night, and invited him. Of course, he agreed, and threat is were we saw their ritual. The cocoa bean dance.
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Thank you for reading! Please vote and comment your thoughts! I really love to hear words of advise! 😁
See ya later!
~ GraceRi 😊