Dedicated to my Abba, whose criticism has caused both tears and perfection. I can't thank you enough, your daughter.
RIDDLE OF THE CHAPTER: What has only two words, but thousands ofletters?
I open my eyes slowly, my head still throbbing from the hard knock, I lift a hand to my head and felt the round, hard lump that had formed on the back of my head. I wince as the tender skin on the bump screams in pain at my touch. I look around me and see a wooden wall in front of me, zinc on the left, stone on the right and cardboard at the back. I look up and see a plastic ceiling. I shake my head in confusion, giving myself a horrible headache. I sit up, holding my aching head in my hands and notice the floor was made of granite. The day keeps getting weirder and weirder.
I snap my head up in surprise as the door bangs open, my vision blurred as my head feels like hundreds of needles are being poked into it. I bite my lip hard hoping to repress tears. I hear someone's voice in the background and hold my hand up to my head to steady the pain, my senses slowly returning.
"...so you can see it's all been a misunderstanding, she thought you came in from rebel tactics, and she panicked, nothing to get angry about," a rough male voice says, my now unblurry vision shows that the voice belongs to a rugged, muscular looking man of about 30, looking down on me in a dirty white\brown vest and camouflage pants complete with black combat boots and a scary looking weapon dangling from his belt. He has his arm around a lady, as if in reassurance, of about 28, with the same outfit except she has a loose fitting camouflage top and a beige scarf on.
She looks down at me like a kid who was waiting for a scolding.
"I'm sorry," I say. "What did you say? I couldn't hear you, my head's really sore and my senses were all jumbled up."
This makes the lady look even more guilty.
"I said I'm sorry for hitting you over the head," she says and looks down at her boots."You must have been using a pretty impressive weapon, I've got a lump the size of an ostrich's egg, probably not as tasty though," I attempt a painful smile hoping to make her stop looking so guilty. She smiles back and drops the man's arm as she comes towards me and extends a hand to help me up."I'm Yasmin, this is my husband Riaaz," she says pointing to the man. "Do you know who you are?" I shake my head no, and she nods, like it's the most natural thing. I dust my clothes off and look at her quizzically.
"Where are we?" I ask. "What is this place?" I point at the strange room.
She takes a small cloth out of a compartment in her belt, and reaches out of the thin air and brings a small stream of what I assume to be water onto the cloth. I blink my eyes in disbelief, my mouth hanging open. Yasmin notices my gaping expression and she laughs, a soft, tinkling laugh."I don't understand it either," she says shaking her head. "It's one of the weird things of this place that we've come to accept as normal"
"What are you talking about?" I ask. "What place?"
"This place," she says taking my hand and leading me to the door made of paper.
She pushes it open and my breath catches in my throat and my head becomes dizzy making it ache even more. We're standing in structure about 50m above the ground, I hold onto Yasmin's arm tightly to steady myself from falling over.
She sets me back down on the floor and lifts her wet cloth up to the lump on the back of my head, I feel instant relief and sigh in happiness as I feel the large lump start to shrink until there's nothing left to show that I'd had a lump the size of an ostrich egg there just a minute ago. Riaaz, who's been standing silently until now, turns to Yasmin, smiles and helps her up, she scrunches up the cloth, and it immediately dissapears from her hand.
"If you ladies are done primping, can we go?" Riaaz asks. "The others are really curious to meet you"
Yasmin helps me up and we go to the paper door once more, I get to the door, and see there's no stairs or any means of getting down from what now looks like a tree house to me. Albeit, a really weird treehouse.
"Um, guys?" I ask nervously as I try my best not to look down. "How are we going to get down?"
"Just jump," says Yasmin just as Riaaz stands on the edge of the doorway and leans forward. I'm about to scream at him to stop when his feet leave the granite. I watch in horror as he falls, halfway down doing a somersault mid-air.
I scream as he flails just a few centimetres above the ground before falling straight through and out of sight.
I stand at the entrance of the door staring down in disbelief at what just happened.
"Guys?" Riaaz calls popping his head back through the delusionally solid ground. "Come on!"
What? Are these people psychotic? I am NOT jumping out of a 50m high door only to fall into who knows what at the bottom? No thank you, that's not for me. I start to slowly step back.
Before I have time to react, Yasmin takes one quick look at me, grabs my hand and pulls me out the door.
I don't even have time to scream before I feel my feet hitting the "ground" which now feels as soft as marshmallows, just not as sticky. When my ground finally hits the "solid" ground, I dare to open my eyes. I gasp in surprise as I look around me and realise that this day just got even more complicated.
ANSWER: Post Office!
