Candy Island

Esther

"Toooooommmm" i say, exausted from walking so much.

"Hmm?"

"I'm tirrrrreeeeeddddd!!!! Can we take a break!?!"

My feet hurt. And my knees ache. Ive got CRAMPS. Meanwhile, Tom is perfectly fine and excitedly walking along this long candy-bug infested path. How can he have so much energy!!??

He's happy and doesn't even care if theres huge bugs and creepy looking, candy-smelling plants all over the place. Bleh. He's going around smelling all sorts of weird plants.

Honestly, sometimes I wonder if him and Raymond are related because they are so alike.

He's not even listening to me!!! Ugghhh!!!

"Tom!!" I shout once more.

This time he actually turns around and faces me.

"Yeah?"

"Can we please stop?! I ache all over!!"

"Aww c'mon Esther! Stop being a sissy."

I walk over and punch him in the arm. There. That'll teach him not to mess with me.

"Ow!! Okay, okay! We can rest here for a bit..." He says, and sits down on a nearby rock. I plop onto a patch of strangely colored grass. The grass is sticky and smells like flat soda. I never did like candy that much... Maybe that's why I'm not as excited as Tom is about this place.

I'm falling asleep when I feel the ground below me shake.

"DID YOU FEEL THAT!?" I yell in Tom's face.

"God! Esther what the heck are you talking about!?" He gives me a confused snarl. I can tell he was falling asleep too, because his eyes are red and tired like if he just yawned a bunch of times.

He rubs his eyes and examines the ground.

"I don't feel a thing."

Now I just feel like a crazy person. Was I dreaming!? I don't think so. No. But why didn't he feel it?

"B-b-but I felt...the ground.. shaking..an-" I start, but I'm cut off by a loud crack that cuts through the air like a shotgun.

Suddenly the ground beneath me starts to shake again and it starts to rise. The rocks crumble below me and start to fall off the sides. Red roots rip off the tree I was leaning against, and before I know it the tree is falling in my direction.

"Tom!" I look for him but he's seemed to have dissapeared. I look down and realize that it's only the land surrounding me that's moving. Tom is standing on the ground below me, his figure getting smaller by the second. He frantically waves his hands back and forth, trying to get my attention. He points behind me.... The tree! I quickly jump to my left, falling in a pile of purple mush.  I take a closer look at the ground before me and notice its in the shape of.... A hand? That's purely coincidence...  Right? There's plants and trees growing on it so it can't possibly be a hand...

I hear Raymond's barking from far away. I turn onto my back so I can finally see what's going on. I'm looking into a huge blue crystal eye.

"Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!" I scream at the top of my lungs. I've gotta get away from whatever this thing is AS FAST AS I CAN. I scramble to get up, tripping over my own foot in the process. The ground starts to move again, but this time closer to the eye. I bet I look like a fool, but that's the last thing I'm worried about right now. A rock falls from the corner of the eye and barely misses me.

Really!? An earthquake AND rocks falling from the sky!?

The hand moves away from the eye and I see the scariest thing I've ever seen. A giant. No, Not just any friendly giant like in the movies. It doesn't have pretty eyes and a cute gentle smile plastered on its face. It doesn't rescue you from wild pigs and gently set you down on the other side of the creek.

This thing is the complete opposite. It has gross eyes, with huge rocks at the corners. And not two eyes. Not three. It has more eyes than I can count in my lifetime. Literally it's whole torso is just eyes. It wears nothing but a loincloth, and its moldy skin is an ugly shade of green and brown. There's chocolate dripping from all its eyes like tears, and its white fingertips are littered with small patches of wierd grass, droopy-looking candy cane trees and melted gumdrops.

His mouth is set in permanent snarl as if he was disgusted with every single thing to ever have existed. I freeze right where I am. I can't move. I can't move. God! I can't move! In that moment, my life flashes before my eyes, and I'm convinced that this is it.