Wake Up

Chapter 2

Ziggy wiped some sweat off his forehead as he sat waiting in the town square. It was still early but the sun had already burned off the morning dew from the grass and it looked to be another scorching hot summer day. LazyTown had been gripped by a heat wave for the past week and there was no relief in sight.

The little boy waved as soon as he saw Stephanie coming down the street towards him. "Stephanie! Are you ready to practice?" he asked, his hand ready on the boom box sitting at his side.

"Not today, Ziggy," Stephanie said. It was then that Ziggy noticed a strange noise as the pink girl walked towards him. Every step she took made a slapping sort of flip-flop noise against the sidewalk.

"Huh? What's wrong with your shoes?" Ziggy peered at her feet. Stephanie threw herself down on the bench beside him and pulled up one leg to show the bottom of her shoe. The rubber sole was melted and stretched out like a flipper. "Wow, it looks flatter than a pancake! What happened?"

"I'm not sure," Stephanie said. "They were fine when I took them off yesterday. But then I had this really weird dream last night."

"A dream?" Ziggy tilted his head.

"Yeah," Stephanie said. "I was dancing on a stage and my shoes stuck to the floor! There was a man there, I think he did it somehow. When I woke up they were ruined." She sighed. "There's no way I can practice my dancing in these."

"You mean you dreamt about your shoes getting ruined, and it really happened?" Ziggy furrowed his brow. Stephanie chewed on her lip.

"Maybe," she said softly, a tentative thought. "It did feel pretty real."

"If your dream came true," Ziggy contemplated, "does that mean if I dream about my room filling up with chocolate, it could come true too?" He let out a wistful sigh. "That's my favorite dream."

Stephanie giggled at her friend. "I don't know, Ziggy. Maybe you should dream about sportscandy instead."

"Hey," Ziggy said, "if you can't practice your dance today, why don't we go get some vegetables from the garden and have a picnic?"

"That's a great idea," Stephanie said, and hopped off of the bench. Her shoes slapped on the burning pavement. "It's too hot to dance today anyway. Let's just relax and take it easy."

"Can we get ice cream too?" Ziggy asked, jumping up alongside her. Stephanie gave a playful shake of her head and led the way.

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Ziggy loved to work in his garden. Being the littlest kid in LazyTown he was often told that he couldn't do certain things or play certain games with the other children. In the garden he was big enough to grow anything he wanted, and he was good at it too. All except for the lollipops he tried to plant, at least.

"Boy, these carrots look great!" Ziggy hummed to himself as he tended his garden. He turned over the soil and watched as the vegetables seemed to grow bigger before his eyes. He wriggled the tip of his spade in against the biggest looking carrot and smacked his lips, already tasting the sweet flavor. This one was ready to harvest.

Setting the spade aside Ziggy gripped the leafy stalk protruding from the dirt. With a cheer he pulled it up out of the garden box— except the vegetable held fast to the soil and refused to be uprooted. Not to be discouraged Ziggy wrapped both hands around the stalk this time. He yanked and tugged as hard as he could and the carrot started to give way at last.

A low rumble emanated from the garden box and all of the vegetables trembled in the dirt. Ziggy could feel the vibrations traveling up the carrot he was trying to pull out like a small scale earthquake. It managed to dislodge the vegetable and he almost had it pulled free.

Something beneath the soil grabbed hold of the other end of the carrot and dragged it back down. Ziggy yelped as he was nearly pulled off his feet. He managed to brace his feet on the side of the box and pulled back harder, fighting to keep the carrot from being sucked down into the dirt. But the garden continued to shudder and rumble until the whole town felt like it was being shaken up and down.

Another vicious tug below the soil yanked Ziggy off his feet again and sent him toppling head first into the garden. The carrot was sucked down with a rapid shoosh and spat dirt into his face. He grabbed hold of the edge of the garden box before he completely tumbled head over heels into the plot and stared with wide eyes at the huge gaping hole where the carrot had been moments before.

It was a black pit that descended down far beyond the dimensions of the garden box, a yawning mouth full of gnarled roots and rocks for teeth. The rumbling came out of this hole that extended all the way down to the center of the earth where a tremendous heat roared up into Ziggy's face in fiery bellows. Clawing up from the bottomless depths there appeared a gaunt and angular man, his eyes and teeth flashing like embers in the pit.

"You know what they say, Candy-Boy," the man leered as he reached up and grabbed Ziggy by the collar of his cape. His fingers burned like hot coals, sending up a smoky hiss from the fabric where he took hold. "When you plant a seed in the ground, what goes down, must come up."

Ziggy tried to scrabble backwards out of the garden box, to pull out of the dark man's grasp, but he couldn't break free. He coughed in the dirt and cried out as he was pulled down into suffocating heat of the pit.