The Staircase

I continued traveling up the staircase that had appeared just when I’d needed it and that had provided for all of my needs thus far.

There would be shelves with food and whatnot, toilets, and even beds that I could sleep in.

Before I’d hurried up the stairs that had appeared before me, a bunch of pirates had been starving me to death. They’d said that the only way that I would be given any food would be if I got frisky with them, and I’d told them exactly where they could shove that idea, which had meant no food for me.

Luckily: the stairs had appeared, I’d eagerly began walking up them, and the ones that I’d already walked up had disappeared before the pirates could follow; which had made them very angry and blah blah.

I hadn’t actually encountered any people or animals on the stairs yet, and I think that I’d been walking up the stairs for about a week or so.

You might ask, “But, Kena, wasn’t that boring?” and I’d reply, “Have you ever been starved by a bunch of perverted pirates? Didn’t think so; but, I’d wager that if you’d been through what I’d just been through, you’d be pretty cool with getting a bit bored.”

I kept on going up the stairs, and sipped on a stevia-sweetened soda as I did. They’re actually pretty good, I promise. Or, at least, I like them anyway.

Suddenly, I saw that there was a door up ahead, which was something that I hadn’t seen thus far. “Should I open it?” I wondered, as I continued walking towards it on the stairway.

I stepped up to the door, and decided to knock instead of simply either opening it or walking past it.

There was no answer.

I knocked a few more times.

Still, no answer.

And, so, I decided to simply continue walking up the stairs without trying to open the door or waiting any longer for someone to answer.

Then, I saw a window up ahead, and this was the first time that I’d encountered a window since I’d first began heading up the stairway.

I got to the window, and pulled apart the curtains that were blocking me from seeing what was past it.

There was a garden with all sorts of fruits, vegetables, and animals such as bunnies that you might expect to see in such a garden.

I opened the latch of the window, and decided to go through the window and climb down the tree so that I could enter the garden. I could presumably always just climb back up the tree and back through the window if I ever wanted to get back to the stairs.

A sign said that I was allowed to eat from certain parts of the garden but not other parts, and I was careful to make sure that the grapes that I was soon snacking on were from a part of the garden that I was allowed to eat from.

Suddenly, another person came through the window that I’d arrived in, and I hid behind a tree so that whoever it was wouldn’t see me right away.

“Arrrr! I saw that the latch was open and whatnot, which means that ye be in here can’t hide for long!”

Great. One of the pirates who’d been starving me must have managed to get onto the staircase somehow. Interesting that he happened to get to the window just a short while after I had.

He read the sign that said what he was and wasn’t allowed to eat, and promptly began munching on some celery that was in a forbidden area; defiantly yelling, “Rules are for fools!“ as he munched.

I wondered if there would be some sort of consequence, and sure hoped so; for, I didn’t want to have to possibly try to fight him or something and it would be great if him having defied the “fools’ rules” would lead to my problem being taken care of for me.

Suddenly, a giant celery person charged past where I was standing and towards where the pirate who’d eaten the forbidden celery was standing, declaring, “You have eaten the forbidden celery, and now you shall be eaten by celery!”

“What the f-“ the pirate began, but the third word (whatever it may have been) remained uncompleted, because the pirate had been gobbled up by the celery person mid-sentence.

After the celery person had finished devouring the pirate, they turned to me and said, “Glad to see that you’ve been following our rules, unlike that dim-witted oaf. You’ll continue to be fine, so long as you don’t eat any of the fruit and/or veggies that the sign says not to.

Oh! And, you’ll want to check the sign again if a fog goes through the garden, because that’ll mean that what you are and aren’t allowed to eat has changed.”

I thanked the celery person for the very important information that I was quite glad to have, and they gave me a salute of sorts and dove straight into the ground that was underneath where they’d just been standing!

Wow! I sure was glad that the celery person had solved my pirate problem for me, and was now wondering how much longer it would make sense to stay in the garden.

I supposed that some people might choose to stay here forever, since their needs were met and it was a very nice place, but for some reason I was kind of itching to get back to walking up the staircase.

As I was pondering whether to head back onto the staircase within the next hour or so, I heard some jolly and energetic singing coming from nearby.

🎵My lovely fruits and veggies! They love to be eaten and eat.

I’ve got potatoes and blueberries!, tomatoes and turnips and peas!

The dull and dastardly pirate, ate what he wasn’t allowed to eat.

And so he became a yummy meal for a hungry celery.

Who will arrive at my garden next, and when’ll Kena leave?

The staircase’s window’ll only stay open for about a week!🎵

While the voice had been merrily singing, I’d walked over towards where it’d been coming from, and now saw that the singer was a gnome!

I gave a round of applause for the very clever and fun song that he’d just sung, and he summarily beamed and bowed!

“Thank you!, thank you!, the pleasure was all mine!“ he said modestly, and asked, “How do you like my garden?”

“It’s wonderful!” I praised, “How did the celery person talk and run and eat and whatnot? I’ve never encountered a celery who could do those things before.”

“Aha!” the gnome answered, gleefully, and I saw a tiny lady flying towards me!

“This fairy brings them to life with magic!” he declared proudly, “And they’re always happy to do as we suggest.”

The fairy suddenly pointed towards a bunch of strawberries who were charging towards us, and the gnome jumped up and declared, “Well, they were until now! Those strawberries look hungry! They’re gonna eat us! We’ve gotta get through that window and close it before they can follow!”

Hmmmm… and here I’d been assuming that the rules of the garden would remain intact and that if I did as the sign said I could just hang out here for a while. Apparently not…

The three of us dashed towards the window that would get us onto the staircase, and barely managed to climb up the tree and through it before the strawberries could eat us.

We closed it immediately, but one of the strawberries managed to get through and began eying us hungrily.

“Now, listen here!” the gnome warned the strawberry, “The three of us combined are more powerful than you are, and so you’ll be better off siding with us than trying to eat us!”

“Fine!” the strawberry said grumpily, and immediately grabbed a soda from a nearby shelf and began guzzling.

The four of us decided that we may as well all travel up the staircase together and see what might await us.

And, so, we all began to travel; up, up, and up…

I quickly learned that the fairy’s name was Sparkles, the gnome’s name was Elvis, and the strawberry’s name was Date.

We continued traveling up the staircase for about a day and a half without anything eventful happening, and suddenly we saw that about 15 stairs were missing, though we could see that the staircase continued on normally after the 15ish missing stairs.

Sparkles quickly flew up to the next stairs, found a rope, tied one end of it to a shelf, and threw the other end down at us.

Date speedily climbed up the rope, and Elvis and I had soon followed them up.

I was very fortunate that I hadn’t been alone for this part of the staircase; because, without Sparkles being able to fly up and get the rope down to us, getting up to the next part of the staircase may have been impossible.

“Thanks, Sparkles!” I said, “I don’t know what we’d have done without you!”

The others thanked her too, and we all continued to make our way up the staircase.

Suddenly, we encountered a couple of dragons who said that if we tried to get past them then we would be fired upon.

“Why don’t you want us to get any further up these stairs?” Elvis asked, to which one of the dragon’s replied, “Because y’all were supposed to go through the door.”

Date, Sparkles, and Elvis all looked at each other in confusion, and I hurriedly explained to them that I’d passed a door (that I’d knocked on but hadn’t tried to open) on my way up to the window that had gotten me into the garden where I’d found them at.

The dragons looked at me approvingly, and one said, “Yes. If you enter into wherever that door leads to and then come back onto the staircase, then we’ll allow you to pass us unharmed when you return.”

The four of us groaned, and began heading down the stairs and towards the door…

When Elvis, Date, Sparkles and I had FINALLY reached the door, we tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge.

Sparkles said that she’d try various spells that she knew on it, and began to try to open it that way.

“If those rotten dragons sent us down here just to not even be able to get thr-“ Elvis began, but stopped speaking when the door suddenly opened because of a spell that Sparkles had just tried.

“Weird.” she mused, “That one doesn’t work on most doors, but tends to work on doors that lead to really dangerous places, so we’d better be really careful.”

“Careful is for carrots!” Date jeered, and dashed through the door at top speed.

We were about to slowly follow them through when we heard Date’s voice screaming, “Ahhhhhhh! Stupid me! I should’ve listened to the warning that Sparkles gave! Ahhhhhhhhh!”

Now, we were all very wary about entering, but then we heard Date laughing uproariously, and saying, “Just kidding, guys! It’s great in here! Come on!”

We all rolled our eyes, and followed Date in through the door.

I saw that there was a giant bookcase, and then heard the door behind us close!

“Did you guys close that?” I asked the others, but they all swore that they hadn’t, and we all looked where the door had been but it seemed to be gone!

“Don’t worry about that door!” a voice said, “It’ll be back once each of you have read three full length novels out loud.”

We turned to see that there was a worm who was nestled on top of an open book, and we wondered how such a little worm could speak so loudly.

“I know, I know. How can I speak so loudly?” the worm continued, “I’ll reveal the answer after you’ve all done your reading for me.”

The four of us shrugged, and began selecting which books we would read to the worm. What choice did we have?

The books were all pretty long, which meant that each of us was going to be reading out loud for probably about 50 hours or so, which was something that I kind of wished that I could’ve gone my entire life without ever having to do.

Sparkles, Date, Elvis, and I finally got all of our books selected, decided that we’d take turns by doing a chapter at a time before switching people, and I began to read a book that was called Don’t Wake Up the Monsters.

“Don’t wake up the monsters,” were the words that’d been repeated to me many times throughout my life, and I hoped that nobody would ever be terrible enough to disobey them.

The monsters were currently in statue form, but if one were to simply kick a monster then it would no longer be a statue and would begin a rampage of destruction against all of us.

It’d been thousands of years since the monsters had been frozen into statues (and nobody knew how it’d been done), and not a single monster had been woken up yet.

This was actually a pretty impressive thing on humanity’s part; for, humans are very curious creatures and I would’ve expected that thousands of years would’ve been enough time for somebody to break the rules and doom us all.

It had to be a human who kicked the monsters, too; for, plenty of non-humans had collided with them and nothing had happened.

Some people noted this and argued that a kick by a human wouldn’t actually wake up the monsters and that we were all believing a bunch of malarkey.

Those people didn’t have any interest in testing their theory out, though, and so the monsters remained unkicked and still in statue form…”

…

“…How could this have happened?!?!? You will all pay dearly for this when I return and resume ruling over this planet once more!” Plex snarled, as he fell into the inter-dimensional prison that the seven of them had managed to cast him into.

“Do you really think that he’ll end up returning?” Daisy asked, worriedly, to which Mazz replied, “Perhaps. Nobody has ever broken out of that prison before, but if anyone might be able to pull it off it’s Plex.”

“No sense worrying about that now, though!” Raze interjected, “It’s out of our hands. If it holds him, it holds him; and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”

The others agreed, and went off to tell the fantastic news to everyone that Plex had been defeated!

Meanwhile, Plex was already trying everything he could to break out; and knew that no prison could ever hold him, no matter how impressive it might be…”

Annnnnnddddd, that’s the end of that wretched (okay, fine, perhaps it was actually kind of alright) book!” Date announced, and Sparkles, Elvis, myself, and even the worm cheered that all 12 of the books that we’d been required to read had AT LAST been completed.

“Nice job!” the worm praised, “Y’all can leave whenever you want, since you’ve completed the task that was required in order to bring the door back.”

The door was indeed back, and the four of us dashed through it before the worm could have a change of heart and decide that we needed to read more books!

They’d all actually been decent books, but it’d taken days and days for us to finally complete them! It’d been crazy! Insane! Bonkers! Bleh!

ANYWAY, now we were finally heading back up the stairs, now that we’d completed the door challenge that’d been standing in the way of us being allowed to travel past the dragons without being fired upon…

“Did you all have a fun time with our book-worm friend?” one of the dragons cackled, once we’d finally traveled back up to where they’d prevented us from passing by them before.

“We were able to watch and listen to your performances through our screens,” the other dragon added, laughing even harder than the other one was, “and at least 4 of your readings will make decent audiobooks for us to sell once we’ve edited them a bit.”

“Yes!” the first dragon added, “You’ll be famous! Whoopee!”

“This IS the part where you actually let us pass this time, right?” Elvis questioned, in a disgruntled tone.

Date was a bit less unhappy about all of this, though, and asked, “For real? We’ll be famous and listened to by a lot of people?”

“Of course!” one of the dragons declared, “A big yes to both questions!”

“You didn’t think that we’d just have you read all of that for no reason, did you?” the other one smugly affirmed to Date, “Of course we’d sell your readings as audiobooks if you did sufficiently well, which you did.”

And, with that, the dragons gave very courteous bows, and allowed us to continue past them up the stairs.

Soon, we were well past them, and wondering what exactly might await us next, and we soon found out because there was a giant bomb with a timer on it that said there was only about an hour before it was going to explode!

We tried to get away from it as quickly as we could, but the stairs below and above us all disappeared, and we were all stuck in very close proximity to the very scary looking ticking time bomb…

“Don’t panic, guys,” Sparkles quickly said, “I know my way around bombs pretty well, and should be able to dismantle this one.”

As Sparkles got to work on the bomb; Date cried tears of doom, I peered intently at what Sparkles was doing, and Elvis began SINGING A SONG?!?!?!?!

🎵Don’t panic, friends, it’s just a bomb; and we’re all gonna die!

I do not think that Sparkles will dismantle it in time!

Knowing all three of you has been oh so mighty fine,

and there’s still so much left for us to do… in the afterlife!

So, when the timer hits zero, should we be here by its side?

Or would it be better to take our chances and jump into the sky!🎵

I was about to give Elvis a piece of my mind, when I realized that Sparkles could just fly away and be fine, even if the bomb didn’t get dismantled.

“Sparkles!” I whispered, when it looked like she wasn’t doing anything where interrupting her would accidentally cause the bomb to go off early, “If it gets down to like 3 minutes or something, you should fly off so that at least one of us survives!”

Sparkles gave me a very warm smile, and responded, “That’s very kind of you to think of, but I think that I’ve just dismantled it!”

I looked at the bomb, and the timer was now stuck on the same number and not moving anymore.

Sparkles and I showed Date and Elvis, and Date noted that, “It’s very impressive that you’ve managed to stop the countdown, but the stairs are still gone. How do we get anywhere?”

This was a good question, and the four of us immediately got to trying to figure out the answer.

Sparkles said that she’d fly around a bit and see if she could find anything that might help us out, and she was soon out of eyesight.

The rest of us kind of boredly racked our brains for what to do, but we couldn’t think of much.

Suddenly, the stairs going upwards reappeared, though the stairs going back down remained gone.

We began walking up the stairs, but left a note near the bomb saying what’d happened just in case Sparkles came back and wondered what’d happened to us.

We could have waited for her, but we didn’t know if the stairs might disappear again and there was always the chance that the bomb would resume its count and go BOOM.

After we’d walked for a while, and passed a very nice kitchen that had excellent refreshments for us, Sparkles zoomed into view and said that she was glad that the stairs had reappeared because she hadn’t found anything during her flight.

Soon, we’d reached a HUGE treasure chest, and Date rushed forward to open it but the rest of us managed to hold them back from actually managing to do so.

“What madness is this! Let go of me! I wanna know what’s inside!” Date wailed, as we tried to explain that we were just trying to be careful and make sure that we didn’t trigger any traps or anything since we were all still a bit spooked after the bomb.

As soon as the word “spooked” had left our (well, my, to be exact) lips, the chest flew open!, and a GINORMOUS ghost began to rise up out of it.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” the still emerging ghost began saying, as we all stared in amazement, “but the stairs aren’t in good shape right now. Maybe evil magic? I don’t know.

The POINT is that y’all are going to have to leave the staircase and jump into this treasure chest that I just finished emerging from.

The treasure chest will serve as a portal of sorts, and take you somewhere other than here. I’m not sure where, mind you; but, trust me, it’ll be better than how here is going to be in just a very short amount of time.”

“Was that bomb (and the disappearing stairs) a part of what’s going wrong with the staircase?” Elvis asked, curiously; and the ghost shrugged, and replied, “I don’t know, and whatever the answer is or isn’t won’t change that y’all gots to jump into this treasure chest pronto.”

Date hurriedly dashed into the treasure chest, and the rest of us reluctantly followed.

Then, we heard laughter from outside of the treasure chest, and the ghost happily bellowed, “Fools! There’s nothing wrong with the staircase! And that’s no portal! Have fun being trapped in there until someone frees you! Muahahahahahaha!”

The ghost was correct. We were all in a dark room, and Sparkles quickly did some lighting magic which revealed that it was pretty boring and bland, though it thankfully did have a bathroom in it.

There was no food inside; but, luckily, we’d grabbed lots of food and drinks from the kitchen that we’d recently passed, and thus wouldn’t run out of food and drinks anytime soon.

“How long do you think it’ll be before someone frees us?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Sparkles answered, “but I’m going to try some spells that’ll hopefully cause me to be that person, and to be that person soon!…”

As Sparkles tried various spells to try to get us out of the treasure chest, Elvis began (you guessed it!) singing a merry old tune.

🎵A bigly ghost tricked us all into entering this chest!

And it’s so boring in here that I’m kind of impressed!

It’s so bland that there ain’t even pictures on the walls!

Could some get magicked onto them by our good friend Sparkles?

Thank the stars that at least we’ve lots to eat and drink.

Though, if we’re in here for too long, this place is gonna stink!🎵

Date was doing a little dance to the song, and I supposed that it was good for us to be able to at least enjoy ourselves somewhat while we remained captives in this wretched chest.

I wasn’t able to muster up the enthusiasm to sing or dance, though, and so I just kind of continued to watch Sparkles attempt to use magic to get us out.

“Oh yeah!” the ghost added, after not having spoken for a while, “I almost forgot to turn off the ability for magic to be used in there. Can’t have your fairy friend using some spell to break you out!”

Suddenly, Sparkles was disappointedly stopped mid-spell from completing whatever she’d been attempting.

“Don’t worry!” the ghost said, through annoying bouts of laughter, “Whatever spells she’s already completed will remain, which means that you’ll at least have lighting. Toodles!”

Well, it was good that at least we wouldn’t be spending however long we were going to be stuck in here without lighting, but I was not looking forward to waiting until salvation might happen to come our way…

As we waited, Elvis sang song after song after song after song after song, our food supply dwindled down, and the fact the the bathroom didn’t have a flushing toilet made things begin to get pretty smelly; I grew angrier and angrier at the ghost who’d trapped us in this treasure chest.

My anger did no good at all, though, and (because I was reasonably good at not allowing innocents to be used as whipping people) I didn’t lash out at any of my friends or anything like that.

Suddenly, the chest flew open, and we saw the ghost peering in at us and saying, “Oh me, oh my. I’d have thought that someone would’ve saved you by now. I guess you’re just a lost cause!”

And, with that, the ghost slammed the lid shut, and we felt the treasure chest lifted into the air and flung off of the staircase!

We all tumbled around in the chest, and were lucky that the walls were all pretty softly padded.

Almost too softly padded…

Almost as if this had been that degenerate ghost’s plan all along!

We continued falling for a very long time, before SPLASHing into what I immediately determined must have been water.

Then, we kept on sinking!

The chest wasn’t letting any water in, but how low exactly were we going to sink, and how exactly would we ever get out of this wretched treasure chest?!?

Elvis (naturally...) began singing, 🎵At least we’re falling slower, and not crashing around!

But, I have a feeling that we’re all gonna drown!

Don’t be sad though, my friends, here’s some consoling words!

Ummm… actually, I forgot ‘em, but I’ll remember ‘em later I’m sure!

I wonder how long it’ll be until we run out of air!

This singing must be speeding that up, so I’ll stop now to be fair!🎵

The rest of us agreed with that final line, and we all tried to not do anything that would use up our limited oxygen supply anytime soon.

Suddenly, I noticed Sparkles causing some air canisters to appear right in front of us, and she beamed, and said, “There may be hope yet!; for, now that we’re far away from Mr. rude-ghost-dude, I’m able to use magic again!…”