Escape from Binkoid Village: Ch 6 Meet the Swampters

When I woke up again, it was morning. The sky was a pinkish blue, and I got up slowly, letting out a big yawn, and grateful I wasn’t dreaming those horrific dreams.
I was happy, at least because it wasn’t nighttime.
I wondered where Edwin was. I rather be with him, then be alone, well at night I rather be with him and not alone. But still, I still wondered.
Then, I heard rustling in the bushes, just like when those toe creatures were attacking me.
Edwin popped his head out of a bush. There was a leaf in his mouth and he spit I out with disgust.

“Where were you?” he demanded, acting like my father.

“Excuse me? When did you become my father?” I asked annoyed, and wiping off my dirty shirt. I rubbed my stomach. It had now been two days since I had eaten, and I was starving.

I saw a nearby bush, full of delicious looking berries. I eyed Edwin to make sure he wasn’t looking at it too, because I wanted it all to myself.
Unlucky for me, he was, and he was thinking the same thing I was.
At the same time we lunged for the berries, and bumped heads, leaving us on the ground, and moaning.

“I deserve the berries! It has been TWO DAYS since I have eaten! Now leave me alone and don’t come back!” I said with a splitting headache.

“Um? What?! I deserve them! You wished the genie to be somewhere else, and now we are here! If we were at my lab, you could have gotten some food!”

“Yeah… dead frogs you would use to dissect!”

“That is so not… heh heh… yeah…” he said admitting to his own fault.

I lunged for the berries again, this time, catching him off guard. I picked them all of with my hand, squishing a few, and shoved them into my mouth.
The bush had thorns on them, and three were protruded into my finger, but I did not care, because I was still hungry, and needed some more food.
I saw a beetle, stepped on it, and mindlessly shoved it into my mouth.
I wanted to spit it out, the taste was bitter, and it crunched in between my teeth, which made me want to hurl, but I didn’t because it felt like there was a black hole in my stomach.
A quarter of my hunger vanished, and I realized fruit filled me up more than anything.
I saw a funny looking tree. It was pink with yellow and red stripes.
It had little banana looking things hanging from each limb, so I picked them, one by one.
Strange enough the tree was pink, but the little things I picked turned out not to be fruit, like I thought they were.
They were little bananas, but with eyes, and a mouth.

“Please!”, it said in a tiny voice. “Please! Please don’t eat us! We are the Nanaboids! We are alive, and don’t want to be eaten! If you don’t eat us, we will give you three wishes! Please! Please! Let us go! We are not to be eaten, we are NOT food!”

Hmm… I thought, three wishes. I could wish to be back to the way my life was before, before I even walked into Edwin’s lab. No, it could get me into more trouble.

“No way! I am starving and I need some food! Too bad little suckers! Say bye to the world!” I laughed, rather intimidating.

I peeled them, and watched their little eyes get wider in horror as I shoved them one by one in my mouth.
I felt sorry for what I had done, but it needed to be done. I had to eat them. It was my last choice.
I burped, and I was finally satisfied with my hunger. It felt so good to have food in my stomach again.
I turned around to see Edwin, looking at me narrow eyed.

“You disgust me.” He spat through his teeth looking straight into my eyes.

“Oh yeah, like you don’t disgust me! First, you locked me up-“

“QUIT IT ALREADY!!” he cut me off. His yelling made me jump.

“You don’t need to yell,” I said calmly

“I can see you are upset, but listen. I know we have been having trouble, and you have been making me terribly guilty for doing what I have done to you, and sorry if I scared you when I yelled. I mean, it’s just that, I hate my life. I always have, ever since I was a child, and well, I am jealous of you. And that is why I locked you up. Because you have had the life I have always dreamed of. Your friends, family, pet. I mean, even pets don’t like me. I have had three dogs, and they all ran away. I am just a lonely, and very wicked man, and I am sorry for what I have done to you. It is my fault we are here, not yours, sorry I accused you of it. I ruined your life, and I can never fix that, we will never get out of this place. The genies wish is done, we are here already.” Edwin said kindly.

“ Wait! The genies wishes! I had three! I had three wishes!”

“What do you mean Jolie?” Edwin asked.

“I mean… I only wished one!”

“That’s- that’s- that’s great! But… where are we going to find that same exact genie?” he said, kicked dust with the point of his shoe.

“We will find a way. I mean, we are here aren’t we! I mean, lets start fresh. Like we have been friends forever. And no leaving me, and I can’t leave you. We stick together, considering; you are the last thing I have. The last thing. Come on; let’s go get you some food. Okay?”

“Okay… sounds good! You are a great friend Jolie. It’s good we have been friends forever… hee hee.” He giggled.

I looked to my left, then to my right. And then something wonderful came to my sight.

A tree, labeled:

“All Around Tree-ba-doid.”

I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but I had a pretty good idea.

“Okay Edwin, I’m not quite sure, but I think this means that this tree will supply food all the time, like I saw in this movie once, some girl discovered this muffin tree, I don’t know why it was a muffin tree, but every time she picked a muffin, another one would grow back on the spot, right in front of her very own eyes!” I said, with a little bit of hope.

“ Could be. This might be our last hope. Go ahead, ladies first, pick one!!”

“No, you go first Edwin. You’re the one who hasn’t eaten in a day.

“Oh okay. Thanks Jolie.”

Edwin picked one, and like we had planned, another colorful little fruit grew back.

“This is great! You are so smart Jolie! Thanks for recognizing this!!” he said taking a big bite.

“Mmm, you’ve got to try this… its delicious!” Edwin said, smacking his lips together.

I pulled the one that grew back, off, and another appeared.
I took a big bite also, and my taste buds danced.

“It is delicious! This is great! But we need a source of protein. I don’t want to get sick, and I especially don’t want to die and leave you here all alone. Say, did I tell you what happened yesterday when I went into this forest called Hairy-Toe-Poid Forest?”

“Um, no you didn’t Jol. Can I call you that as a nickname now?
“Sure Edwin… can I call you Eddie?”

“Sure Jol” he chuckled.

Life wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t horrible. Edwin… Eddie and I were best friends; well at least on this planet, and we had a good source of food. We still needed to find some water, but for now, the juice from the fruit helped a bit.

“Okay Edwin. We need to establish our own little part in this village. Either we find a nearby house to live at until we get outta here, or we build a fort out of some kinda material we can find.”

“Okay Jol, and I want to be the leader. I’m great at this kinda stuff.”

“That’s okay Eddie. We’re a team, we work together, we stick together.”

“Okay Jol. I say we make a fort. That way, we don’t have to go door-to-door asking people to live with them. It is a lot to ask for, plus, like you told me, they don’t speak English and they could be harmful creatures… or… well we don’t really know what they look like. I am kinda curious. For all we know, they could look like aliens!”

“I am kinda curious myself.” I said eyeing him.

“Yeah… but we don’t wanna find out. Trust me.” He said, looking sure.

I started to gather some big leaves that had potential to be part of our fort.
While I got some leaves, Edwin went exploring.

About fifteen minutes later, he came running up to me.

“Jol!! Jol!! Jolie!! Jolie! I-I-I!” he said, breathing heavily and fast.

“What? What Edwin? Are you all right? What happened?”

He started to slow down his breathing, and I noticed there was a cut going through his shirt, with blood seeping through it, followed by a twig in the left side of his hair, and dirt stuck to his chin.

“Oh my gosh Edwin! What the heck happened? Your-your bleeding!”

“Well I was getting to that. It all started when I was walking by this like… hmm… what would you call it. Oh! A swamp. Yeah, well I was just walking by, and I saw the water in the swamp bubbling, then some kind of like… zombie looking thing rose out of it. Its-its face was green and...” he stopped and rolled his eyes back as if to think hard about what it looked like.

“Oh!” he said, “its face was decaying, and looked dead, but alive and moving. Strange moaning sounds came from its… well I wouldn’t call it a mouth… but what used to be a mouth. And it started to walk faster and faster towards me. So I started to run and… well I ran into a thorn bush because I didn’t see where I was going… I was looking back at him to make sure he didn’t catch up. And that’s what happened.” He said, folding his arms together.

“Oh. Well that explains the blood and twig. And… a zombie? Gosh, this place is crazy!… OH!! The swamp you passed must have been called ‘Sulky Swamp.’ I know because I passed by it last night, and fell asleep right by it under a tree. When I saw it, there was a zombie thing, but I was too tired, I just didn’t care. Hm… weird.” I said.

“Yeah… it is. Well, let’s start gathering sticks and such. We’re buuurning daylight!” he said.

I giggled and went off to go get some more of those giant leaves.

I found a sharp stick that had potential to be a knife. I used it to cut my way through the long grass, until I saw more of those leaves.
Soon, I found what I was looking for, and pulled six down. My hands were full, so I went back, dropped off the big pile of leaves, and came back to get more.
Pretty soon, I had a big pile, probably full of two-hundred leaves or so, and I was too tired to make a thirty-second trip, so I crashed on the ground, and took a ten minute nap.
The nap was refreshing and energized me, so I could take over Edwin’s shift for now, while he took a breather too.
When I finally found him, he was at the top of a massive tree.

“Hello!” he yelled down to me, taking one hand off the trunk, and waving to me.

“Get down from there! It’s too dangerous! Your going to fall down and kill yourself!” I bellowed.

“Okay!” he yelled, and slowly but carefully inched down the tree.

When he was finally on the ground, I told him my plan.
We were each going to work for three hours. Then, I get my nap first, which was ten to twenty minutes, while he kept working. Then, when I am done, I work for him, while he takes his nap. So, every three hours we get a refreshing nap. When the sky is dark, really dark, and when there are one hundred stars in the sky, we sleep till the sun rises.
Each, day we got plenty of sleep, and my plan was beginning to work.

“Okay, sounds good to me. Well, lemme show you how the fort is working out so far.
He walked over to a big hut and gestured for me to follow him.
“It’s amazing!” I gasped.
It was probably fifteen feet tall, and was made with branches bent over, and tied together. It looked stable, so I touched it. It was! We had finally gotten somewhere.

“Oh it’s wonderful!” I beamed.

“Go inside.” Edwin smiled, and pointed towards the big hole he called the door.

I walked through the entrance and my heart skipped a beat.
There was a chair made of leaves and branches, and a coffee table sort of thing made with the same supplies.
It was wonderful, and Edwin was right, he was great at that sort of thing.

“Edwin, I… it’s wonderful! How did you do it? It’s so big, and spacious in here, and my- how long did it take you do this? We have only been working for two hours!”

“Well Jol… it took a lot of strength, and smartness.” He laughed and tapped his head with his finger.

“Come on Eddie. To celebrate, lets go get some water. I figured out, the swamp is okay to drink out of.”

“Sure Jol. Let’s go.”

We skipped merely towards the swamp.
Sure enough, the swamp was called “Sulky Swamp”.
As we kneeled down to drink, out of the corner of my eye, bubbles started to appear as they did when Edwin was attacked.
Oh no I thought, but it was too late.
A powerful hand pulled me by my head into the water. My back hit the surface, as I flipped over into the swamp. Water splashed everywhere, so Eddie could barely see anything.
In a blink of an eye, I was fighting for my life underwater, and was doing summer salts in the swamp as I hit the zombie as hard as I could with my fist.
All of the sudden, it was over, and I bobbed up at the surface, gasping for air, and spitting out the water that was drowning me.
Edwin leaped up, he was obviously stunned, and he pulled my up by the arm.

“Are you okay? It got you! What happened? Do you need help?” Edwin babbled.

“I’m, I’m, I’m. I think I’m all right. But… I’m not quite sure what happened. It all went so fast, it was kind of a blur. But, I think my arm is broken, the zombie hit it really hard, and I felt it crack. Oh… ouch!”

I just realized the pain in my arm increased, and soon I was squirming on the floor, and my face grimacing in pain.

“Jolie! Jolie!” Edwin screamed, shaking me to wake me up, as if I was dead.

“Edwin… get… a… doctor.” I moaned.

“Um… Jolie… WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!!”

“Edwin… try.” I begged, “Find one.”

He ran off, and I was alone. The pain died down a little, when I lay on my arm. I wasn’t sure if it was broken anymore, but it still hurt.

“Edwin!” I called, “I feel better!”

He came charging back, clasped his hands together.
“Thank heavens!” he cried.

I started to get up, and my arm went limp, but I didn’t tell him that it still hurt enormously.

“That was a close one. Hey.. Jolie. That signs say ‘Sulky Swamp, Home of the Swampters.’ I guess that they are called Swampters.”

“Weird… let’s get outta here. I’m scared.” I said.
The pain was not as bad; I guess it was a five-minute thing. Strangest things here.

We started to head back.
We noticed the sky was dark, really dark. One hundred little stars were shining in the sky, twinkling ever so beautifully.
We found a safe little shelter. A ditch, covered with those soft leaves I used the night before.
As we crouched down to sleep, we heard a noise.
“What was that?” I asked in surprise.

“I don’t know, we better got away from here.”

We both jumped up and darted away before the thing that was in the bush even came out.

“Phew! That was close. Good thing I heard it, or we could have been meat.”

“Yeah. Good job Jolie. You saved us!” Edwin said, giving me a pat on the back.

I loved having Edwin as a friend. It really felt a lot better than to have an enemy. It was like we had known each other since childhood, and never had any problems, though we had known each other about only five days or so.

“Well, goodnight Edwin. Sweet dreams, don’t let the Swampters bite!!”
He laughed, and we both lay on our backs, looking at the beautiful sky through the tiny hole in the fort Edwin made. The same sky we would have seen in Wacksville, my old city, which we may have never returned.