Beyond the Bins | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Beyond the Bins | Previous Challenge Entry
By Lucy Steel
10/12/17
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It was a Sunday morning and Elliott and Diana were eating pancakes and Nutella at the breakfast table, which was a normal Sunday morning activity. What wasn’t normal was the knocking coming from the cupboard under the kitchen sink. This cupboard held the bins and, although the bins sometimes yawned hungrily when their pedals were pushed, they had never been known to make such a noise.

“Maybe it’s a mouse?” said Diana.

It doesn’t sound like a mouse,” replied Elliott. The knocking was growing louder and more urgent, and not very mouse-like.

Usually, the children’s daddy or mummy would investigate noises in cupboards. However, both were still asleep. So, Elliott opened the cupboard door and stuck his head in. “Anyone there?”

Suddenly, the lid of a bin flew open and with a whooshing sound Elliott disappeared into it!

“Elliott!” cried Diana, and peered in after him. Then – whoosh! Diana disappeared into the bin too.

The children found themselves somersaulting through a long, twisty, dark tunnel – much like a waterslide. Only this slide had dirty tissues and other rubbishy items swirling around instead of water.
Abruptly, they were dumped onto the ground – plonk!

Diana and Elliott stood up shakily. “Where are we?” asked Diana, brushing carrot peel from her hair.

The children looked around. To their right was a road - a very shiny road, much shinier than the one outside their house. To their left were trees. Big leafy green trees and smaller trees with sparser leaves and branches. But there was something different about all of these trees.

They walked closer to one, stopped and stared – instead of fruit, this tree grew choc-chip biscuits! They looked at the next one – this grew bunches of jelly beans, hanging like brightly coloured grapes. And yet another grew what looked like lemon sherbet lollies.

Elliott reached up and grabbed a bunch of low hanging jelly beans, picked a red one and put it in his mouth – it tasted like raspberry.
Diana took one that tasted like orange.

“Is this a dream?” they wondered.

“It seems real,” said Diana, leaning on the tree trunk. As she leaned, flaky bits of bark fell on the ground. Elliott picked a piece up, studied it for a second, then put it in his mouth.

“Diana,” he said excitedly, “this is chocolate!”

Diana took a bit and nibbled. They looked at each other. “The whole town is made of sweets!” they said together.

Just then, they spied a figure walking towards them. He was about their height but bright purple all over. And… wobbly?

As he got closer, Diana leaned over and whispered “I think he’s a jelly baby.”

Unfortunately, the jelly baby had extremely good hearing – which, thought Elliott, was impressive considering he seemed to have no ears.

“Who you calling a baby?” the purple figure said.

“I, ah, didn’t mean.… “ Diana stumbled over her words as she tried to think of the right thing to say.

“Just kidding,” he said. “Jay’s my name, jelly’s my nature. Haven’t seen you round here before.”

“We came through the bin,” Elliott said helpfully.

“Ah,” said Jay, as if that explained it nicely.

Suddenly, the gentle breeze that had been blowing increased, and the trees began to sway. Jay’s amicable face contorted into a mask of concern, and then fright.

“The Storm’s coming,” he cried. “Duck for cover!”

The wind picked up speed and began to whistle. Jay ran, his stubby jelly legs moving at double speed. Elliott and Diana looked at each other in confusion. Where should they go?

“Over here,” yelled Elliott. He grabbed Diana’s hand and ran towards a cluster of pink bushes. It then began hailing.

“Owww!” shouted Diana as a piece of hail hit her forehead.

The hail drops grew more numerous and - the children noticed they were brightly coloured. Soon it was hard to see where they were going because of the sheets of hail in front of them. Diana managed to catch some drops as she ran, and, as was becoming normal behaviour here, popped it into her mouth.

M & M’s! The hail was actually M & M's.

Elliott and Diana reached the bushes and slid underneath so that they were covered. The bushes felt scratchy and soon they realised why – they were made of fairy floss.

The children settled in to watch the storm under the safety of their fairy floss bush, and wondered what would happen next in this crazy (but tasty) world they had been catapulted into.

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