“Found you!” I yelled at Ravia Nyx during a game of Hide-and-Seek. She was hiding under my bed holding an old, dusty gameboard. I noticed the word Jumanji was engraved on it.
“What is that?” I asked her.
“It’s a game that you have to finish. On each step something approaches or something horrible happens,” she told me.
“Elira Serene! The game is over! Come over to my bedroom!” I yelled.
“Whoa. What is that?” Elira Serene asked me. I explained how Ravia Nyx found it and told me about the game.
“Can we play it?” Elira Serene asked me.
“Sure,” I replied excitedly. We each chose a figurine and a path, and we debated about who should go first. Usually everyone wants to go first, but this time none of us wanted to go first since it was scary the way Ravia Nyx explained it. At the end of the tussle, I went first.
I rolled the dice and said, “I got a four.” Just as I moved to space number four, the centerpiece said, “Something lurks on your path but you get to choose. So tell me, is it going to be bats or spiders?”
“Yikes!” Elira Serene yelped.
“Hmm… what should I choose? Well, I do have arachnophobia, so I’ll choose bats,” I thought to myself. “Okay, I’m choosing bats,” I told Ravia Nyx and Elira Serene.
Just as I said that, the centerpiece split in half and a cauldron of bats flew out.
“AAAAHHH!” we screamed, frightened. We took the gameboard, scurried out of the room, and locked the door shut.
“Whew,” Ravia Nyx said, relieved.
“Umm, Ravia?”
“What is it, Elira?”
“Have you possibly ever considered the fact that there is a bat on your head?”
“AUGH!!!” screamed Ravia Nyx so hard that it pierced through our ears and rattled our eardrums, leaving a faint humming sound in our ears.
“Maybe instead of screaming, we could remove it?” I said nonchalantly.
“Yeeaah, Evianna Lynxa, as if that’s going to help a lot.”
“It actually might.”
“When it said the options were only bats or spiders, I thought a projector was going to show a bat to scare us, but that was more than I expected,” Elira Serene said in a panicky voice.
“Well, now we know what to expect,” I said, ready to play again.
Now that she got the bat out of her hair, Ravia Nyx said, “I’ll go next,” in a tone between ready and frightened. We settled in the living room since my bedroom was now infested with bats. Ravia Nyx rolled the dice and said, “I got a six.”
When her figurine reached the sixth step on her path, the centerpiece immediately said, “Beware! The hunter Van Pelt is after you. Run and hide but he’ll always find you. Remember he is always hot on your trail.’’
“Oh no!” Elira Serene yelled.
“Shhh! He’ll find us,” Ravia Nyx said in a whisper. Just then, we heard footsteps coming to the living room.
“Quick! Let’s jump through the window! Ravia Nyx, grab the gameboard,” I whispered. Ravia Nyx nodded as she picked the game up and jumped through the window. Thump! Thump! Then Elira Serene and I jumped. Thump! Thump! We ran all the way to the gutter and climbed it all the way to the attic.
When we made it, Elira Serene said that she was ready for her turn. She rolled the dice, said she got a five, and moved to the fifth step on her path. The centerpiece said, “Watch out.”
“Well, that was anticlimactic. It usually tells us more than that and is less vague than that,” I said, confused and surprised.
“Maybe nothing will happen,” Ravia Nyx said.
Just then, we dropped down, surprisingly inside a Target.
“You had to jinx it, Ravia,” I said. “I swear, with you, the game might end after our sanity dies.” We all laughed so hard that we sounded like a cackle of hyenas, and our sides hurt badly.
Once we calmed down, Elira Serene said, “We each have to do two turns so this game can finish.”
I groaned. “Why did we have to start this game?” I asked them.
“Hide!” Ravia Nyx yelled. We hid under a bed that was for sale.
“Why are we hiding?” Elira Serene asked. Then she saw it for herself. Van Pelt was in Target!
“Evianna, use your turn,” Elira Serene whispered.
“Okay,” I said. I rolled the dice. “I got a six.” When my figurine reached the tenth step (four is the number I got on my first turn plus the six I just got equals ten), the centerpiece said, “Are you hiding? If you are hiding, beware…”
Just then, the floor under the bed (we were hiding under the bed) turned into a swamp, and we fell face-first into it. When we finally flipped ourselves so we could face the bed base, suddenly the bed was lifted, and we found ourselves face-to-face with the vicious Van Pelt.
“You will find yourselves in great peril,” continued the display.
“I THINK WE GOT THAT NOW!” Ravia Nyx yelled at the display, full of rage and disgust for herself that her hiding plan had caused this.
“I’ve got you now,” he said.
“AAAHH!” we yelled. Then we kicked him in the face and ran away. He fired two bullets at us which, unfortunately, hit two rolls of toilet paper. We scurried around until I got an idea.
“Guys, let’s head to the sprinkles and candy department. I got a plan,” I told them.
When we were there, we spread the sprinkles on the floor and chewed gum to mark the end of the section. When Van Pelt arrived, he slipped on the sprinkles and landed on the chewed gum, sticking to the floor. We kept running away because we knew that the plan would only stall him for a little while, not forever.
Soon, he broke free, running around. We snuck into the “Employees Only” room and hid behind a few boxes. Then we realized that we forgot the gameboard. We ran back to the bed that we hid under, which was now sinking into the swamp, and saw the gameboard also sinking. Ravia Nyx jumped in and retrieved the game. We ran back to the “Employees Only” room, and Ravia Nyx started her turn. She rolled the dice, said she got the number one, moved one step, and waited for a script. Instead, a pelican grabbed the board and flew out of Target.
“Hey! Stop!” we yelled. We chased the pelican through the streets all the way back to the pavilion. Ravia Nyx said she had a plan, and we listened closely. Ravia Nyx lured the pelican to my room, Elira Serene took it outside, and I jumped from the gutter, pulling the gameboard out of the pelican’s grasp.
“Yes!” we yelled as we did high fives.
“I’m so glad Van Pelt is stuck in Target,” Elira Serene said when we were climbing the stairs back to the attic.
When we got there, I saw that the portal was still there. “That’s ok. We can sit away from it,” I said.
When Elira Serene started her turn, we saw a gun pop through the portal, followed by Van Pelt. Before he saw us, we scurried down the stairs to my parents’ bedroom’s closet. Elira Serene quickly rolled the dice, said she got the number one, and moved one step.
The centerpiece said, “Beware: Van Pelt is never defeated. Well, unless, um, if he is sucked into the game at the end, he is.”
“Well, that sounds like a kindergartener wrote that,” I said.
“I guess so,” said Van Pelt, who had creeped all the way here and had the nerve to come inside my parents’ closet.
“AAHHHH!!!” we screamed, mortified.
“Calm down. I just want to finish the game so I can go back to hunting exotic animals! I don’t poach teenagers, so slow your roll!” said Van Pelt in a pouty voice.
“Okay, this is the last turn, and if I roll a five, I win,” said Ravia Nyx. She rolled the die, and it landed on a five, and the board said, “Okay, ur done.”
“Wow… it’s text language now,” I said, irritated.
“Not a very pleasing last sentence,” said Van Pelt, before he disappeared into a cloud of dust and got swept into the game again.
THE END
