They all popped out of the glowing portal one after another, landing not on snow or ice, but...pillows.
"Where are we?" said Perky, looking around in wonder.
It seemed to be an endless landscape made of pillows, big pillows of all colours. Above them was only a white nothingness. To the sides was also nothing, but both the ceiling and walls, if they existed, were so white and formless and vague it was hard to focus the eyes. So they all just looked at the pillows instead.
Cyril's wife of course tried to bite them, but they were too big and she ended up just sort of banging her head against them. Billy Bob carefully poked one, but nothing happened. Cyril pulled a pencil from his pocket and also tried to poke a pillow, and nothing also happened. The pencil didn't make a mark. He hmmed.
There was a faint but insistent sound, like a low humming but much softer, like a wind. At first they were so startled by their surroundings that they didn't notice it, but after a few moments it began to fill their ears and brains.
Reginald Runt groaned. "I can't stand this! What is it? Where is it coming from?"
Cyril pursed his lips and frowned. "I do believe the sound is coming from the pillows themselves. All of these countless numbers of pillows are rubbing against each other."
"Whut, like some sorta orgy?" said Billy Bob.
Reginald looked shocked, Perky looked confused, and Cyril's wife rolled over.
"No, no," said Cyril in irritation. "Just the soft sound of a pillow touching another pillow, multiplied by possibly an infinite amount of pillows...it all sounds very....peaceful..." He drifted off and his eyes lowered to half mast.
"Don't fall asleep!" exclaimed Perky. "I don't like this place." She poked Cyril on the arm. He awoke with a grunt.
"Yes, quite," he said. "This place may be lulling, but I do sense a sinister undertone. We should endeavour to find a way out."
"How in tarnation do ya reckon we do that?" asked Billy Bob. "Ah look around and all ah see is nothin' but these dang pillows."
Cyril looked thoughtful. "I don't believe in endlessness, so there must be a way out of here. After all, we got here, so there must logically be a way out. Some of us could try and make our way across the pillows, and some can try to dig their way down."
Reginald looked worried. "But we could easily get lost if we spread out."
"All right then, we'll all try to make our way at the same time," conceded Cyril.
They got together and all tried to make their way across the pillows, but it was very difficult. Everyone kept slipping and sliding. Perky felt herself sinking between two pillows and screamed for help. Billy Bob grabbed her and drew her back up, but all of a sudden, he was hit in the head by a blinding blur.
"Whut th'!" he yelled.
There was a moment of silence, and then they were all being attacked by the blinding blurs. Reginald, in his panicked thrashing, managed to reach out and inadvertently grab one of the blurs. He yelped and tossed it to Billy Bob, who looked at it curiously.
"Looks like a sock puppet. A snake sock puppet."
The snake puppet wriggled in his hands furiously, trying to bite him. He handed it to Cyril. "Whut do yuh think of it, doc?"
Cyril examined it. "Well, it certainly does seem to be a, er, sock puppet, but one that has achieved animation. Curiouser and curiouser. Look, it even has little fangs." He poked a fang. "Not sharp, but it does seem vicious." He looked up. "They seemed to have stopped attacking us."
He was right. All of the other snake puppets were lying on the pillows facing our group, just staring with their little black button eyes. They were all made of different kinds of socks, some plain and some colourful, but socks is what they were. Some even had darned holes. Cyril looked into the eyes of the one in his hand.
"Do you understand what I am saying?" he asked. The snake puppet didn't do anything for a moment, then nodded. "Can you speak?" he added. The snake sock puppet nodded, but slowly.
Cyril looked at the group, then the puppet. "Why were you attacking us?"
The sounds that came out of its mouth were fuzzy and a little hard to understand, as you would imagine a sock puppet to sound if it could talk, but they more or less got its meaning.
"Weee thought....youuu...put....usssss.....here."
"Oh, good lord no! We only just arrived here ourselves and are desperate to find a way out."
"Well, we've gotta work with these critters and see if they know more than us," said Billy Bob.
The snake in Cyril's hand hissed. "There isss...door....but...weee...can't....reach it."
"I guess they're not flying snakes," said Reginald. Cyril's wife looked at him. She had one of the snakes in her mouth, which she spit out. She laughed.
"Not now, dear," said Cyril.
With the snakes wriggling ahead and showing the way, they all managed to slip and slide their way to a large black pillow not too far away. The pillow was propped upright, as if someone had been leaning against it, maybe reading a sexy book about piranhas or something. All the snakes arranged themselves into an arrow that pointed behind the pillow. The humans all joined together and pushed the big black pillow aside, revealing a small door embedded in a smaller black pillow. There was a white doorknob in the middle.
"Ah see why them snakes had such problems," said Billy Bob.
"Lazy snakes," muttered Reginald. A snake puppet nipped him on his calf.
Cyril stepped up and turned the knob. It opened easily, but a big puff of air blew out and whoofed in their faces. It smelled strongly of baked apple pie. All the snake sock puppets quickly slithered through the door to the other side, not seeming to care if it was safe at all, and Reginald followed right after, desperate to escape from his escape from the evil penguin castle.
"How bad can a place be if it smells like apple pie?" asked Perky. She scuttled through, short enough that she didn't have to duck, even though it was not a big door.
"Well, it could be an oven!" exclaimed Cyril. He looked at Billy Bob, who looked back, and they both grabbed Cyril's wife and they all hunched through.
Even thought they had been on many bizarre adventures, nothing prepared them for what they saw on the other side of the door. They all stood stock-still. Their eyes were wide and their mouths were open. It was almost indescribable. Almost.
Reginald was the first to speak. "It's so....so....boring!"
He was right. Expecting maybe apple pie turtles, or cotton candy flamingos, they instead saw a dull, grey street full of dull, grey buildings. The structures themselves were a little crooked, and the street was pockmarked, but that made it ugly, not interesting. It still didn't explain where that initial smell of baked apple pie came from. Surely not from this land where joy died? They looked around, hoping desperately to find something that wasn't depressing and awful, but there was nothing. All of a sudden, though, they heard a sound from inside one of the buildings. Eagerly they all trotted over to it and went inside.
The inside wasn't any more beautiful then the outside, but there were people. Crooked, wonky people, but people nonetheless. About twenty of them. None of them paid attention to our group, because they were all crowded around something. Our group moved closer and wiggled through the crowd. They couldn't believe what they saw.
They saw a very fat man with his pants down, perched over a bucket, which was attached to a large plastic tube that ran out through a hole in the wall. The man was taking an absolutely gigantic dump, an enormous brown snake of excrement that was being sucked into the tube. It didn't seem to stop. He kept shitting. What made all of this so unbelievable was that instead of smelling horrible, it smelled of baked apple pie. It seemed so wrong, to connect a lovely smell to an unlovely movement, but there it was.
Perky wrinkled her nose. "This is a disgusting place."
None of the crowd that was there watching this noticed them in the slightest, they were so fascinated by it all. The fat man kept grunting out his apparently eternal delivery, but our group had had enough. They left the building and were on the street again, and wandered around for only a minute, even though it seemed like an hour in that awful place. Cyril's wife grunted and then started running. Cyril took off after her, trying to catch her, but she had a fire in her legs, and so everyone else started running, too.
At first they didn't know why she was running. She seemed to be running to a shapeless grey mound, but when they all arrived there, they realized it was a large object draped in, of course, a grey tarp. She started nibbling on the tarp. The group pulled the tarp off, annoying her, but even she gasped as they saw what was beneath.
"A car!" said Billy Bob.
"Now we can get out of here!" added Reginald.
So they all piled inside, and since he was the only one who knew how to drive, Cyril took the wheel. "Where to?" he asked.
"Anywhere but here!" exclaimed Perky.
So the car leaped forward and Cyril kept a heavy foot on the gas pedal. The further away they got from that horrible town the better.
They were feeling happier than they had for a while, but they really shouldn't have. Because you see, something was clinging to the underside of the car.
Something even worse than the town they were leaving.
Something much worse.
....to be continued.
