Benjamin in Blunderland - Part 1

Benjamin sat on top of a huge mound of dirt. It was large enough that he could slide down it on a flattened cardboard box. It was a free cardboard box that he had helped himself to from the back of a Dollar General store.

“Almost everything costs money! Except for this box...”

Benjamin was the only child so he’d developed a habit of talking to himself quite often. He didn't have an imaginary friend or anything like that but he knew how to entertain himself quite well. His dad always talked about how much things cost. Why did everything have to cost money? His dad made sure that he reminded him of how expensive he was to take care of. It was unfair, but also it was all he’d ever known too.

Benjamin didn’t like being home. Even the word home caused him emotional pain. He asked aloud,

“Why does my life have to be like this?”

He always found some way to be gone or outside on the weekends. Honestly, he did everything in his power to just disappear. His single parent father didn’t seem to care either. Unfortunately, his dad spent a lot of time drinking too much, watching sports, and complaining about the economic decline of America.

Sadly, his mother had died right after childbirth, while giving birth to him. Ever since her death, his father blamed him. He also was blamed for everything else that seemingly went wrong in life. Benjamin really didn’t exist at all in a way, at least in the mind of his father.

“He blames me for everything and I hate!”

He yelled angrily as he slid down the dirt mound. He rolled and got dirt all over his clothes. Once the dust settled, he looked up to see a vertical concrete structure. It had chips in it that made just the right footholds for him. Naturally, he thought it would be interesting to climb it and see if there was anything in the inside.

“Huh. Wonder what this is for…?”

Climbing to the rim of the concrete fixture, he peered in. It was too dark to see to the bottom. Leaning further in, he plummeted down.

He kept falling and falling and it got darker and darker. Oddly enough, he started laughing. It didn’t feel scary or terrifying in the least. It was thrilling...

“This is amazing!”

Yelling, his words echoed off the sides of the concrete tube.

“Echo… echo… echo!”

He mocked the echoes while holding his exhilarated-flip-flopping stomach. Finally, he hit the bottom which was not concrete at all, but it felt like a grassy hill.

Rubbing his eyes, it felt as if he were in a dream. The light around him was as a radiant turquoise. It didn’t feel like morning or night but somewhere in the middle.

Standing up, he took it all in, stating,

“I’ve fallen into another world…”

To his left there was a playground of sorts but the top part of the playground was actually an upside down train track. Each of the train carts had groundhogs peeking from the windows. In the windows there were little signs that they had taped to the windowpanes that said,

“We’re on strike!”

Or some of the signs said,

“We have rights too!”

It was quite an odd sight because the train was upside down but hat groundhogs were right side up with their signs.

Benjamin was in awe, wondering aloud,

"I wonder why they're on strike..."

Below the dangling train track were dozens and dozens of cardboard boxes of various shapes and sizes. Each box had the words written on the sides which said,

“FREE BOXES!”

There were, what appeared to be, metal dandelions. Gusts of wind blew them, and they lifted lazily into the air. A pack of children each had, what looked like, a type of umbrella in their hands, which they used to push the metal dandelion puffs away from them.

“Woah! This is bizarre!”

Benjamin exclaimed as he was flabbergasted by all the wild sightings that he was now seeing. He didn’t notice the cute furry round creature that looked up at him with very green eyes. The creature appeared to be a cross between a sheep and a cat, with a recently trimmed silver mustache. It also wore half of a top hat. The right half to be exact. The rim of the top hat appeared to have a half circle of mini-marshmallows glued around it.

“Are those marshmallows?”

Benjamin asked.

“Marsh-what?”

The creature asked back.

“Oh never mind! What is your name?”

“My name is No-name! Because I’m not about fame and I lead new people like you to the start of the game!”

“What game?”

“You’ll soon see… but before you see soon, you must carry this small silver spoon and you must agree to be in a certain kind of boot camp!”

Benjamin just snickered at the goofiness of his situation.

The creature nodded with a serious face, saying,

“Laughing means you agree... so come this way…”

Benjamin followed the furry little creature who had legs so small that they couldn’t really be seem at all.

Several kids that appeared to be Benjamin’s age were playing a game of what seemed like tick-tack-toe. They were using ginormous bullfrogs for the O’s and spiders that only had four legs for the X’s.

“That game is quite alive!”

Benjamin’s eyes grew even wider. There was a random little boy with a wooden sword who ran past them, pretending that a war was occurring. Ironically, the warriors that the crazed boy swore were there, didn’t seem to be there at all.

“Here we are!”

The furry creature ushered Benjamin to the boot camp area but it didn’t look anything quite like an army boot camp. Everything seemed to have quite the quirky twist…

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author's Note:

To read part two, which was written by Sibley Shamra. Follow the link below:

To read part three, which was written by Colleen Walters, follow the link below: