The Purchase, Part II

A deep ravine ran down from the grassy knoll into the woods, cutting into the forest and down the valley where a river must have once flowed. After a few hours hike, the going started to get slower as the ground beneath me grew softer. Weeds and roots snarled the surface and each step I took started to sink deeper down, making impressions that filled with water. Where was I?

I took out my cell phone again to check the time. 27:98. Of Course.
WAIT! I get a bar of service!!. I scrambled up the side of the ravine, clawing away at the muddy plants with one arm, my other held the phone up like holy grail itself. Two bars.....three... and then...

BOOOOMMM.

An earth-shuddering thunderclap tore across the jungle. And at once, it started to rain, but not like any rain I had ever seen before. The raindrops came down in behemoth size, some as large as Buicks, crashing down and punching craters in their wake with a heavy thunkkk. Panic struck as a rain'drop' pummeled down the branches of a nearby tree, taking the leaves and smaller limbs with it. I was frozen in place, there was nowhere to hide. Putting a newspaper over my head wasn't going to cut it here.

BOOOOMMM.


Another round of thunder made me jump and run towards a thicker grove of trees, when thunkkk, I was swatted to the ground. A giant bathtub of cold water crashed me back down the ravine, sliding woozily down the the muddy bottom. There was now a slight current running by my wrists and ankles as I tried to prop myself up for a breath. The rain was crashing down all around me. Where was my.... THUNKKK.

I felt weightless as I drifted in and out of consciousness. Where was this river taking me? And more importantly, did I leave my lights on in the parking lot? I did, didn't I. Damnit.

Opening my eyes in a groggy haze some hours later, I sat up on a sandy bald spot on a river bend. The rain had stopped and the water was already receding from the ravine. BEEP BEEP! I heard a strangely familiar noise by my side. I looked down, and saw an alarm clock on the beach. It had a large face, with the numbers 88:88 blinking at me in irregular intervals. It beeped once again, and then shuffled forward and poked me with its power cord tail. Beep? I jumped. It scooted back, pulling in it's 120V tail. After a moment's standoff, the Timex creature turned and faced the underbrush, beeping incessantly.

The lower leaves scuffled around me, and other nightstand timepieces waddled out cautiously, beeping and buzzing curiously. Before I knew what to do, I had been circled, and in once swift and uniform movement, the clocks wrapped me up with their cords. The clock then, somehow, lifted me off the ground. Like Gulliver himself, I was prisoner to a Lilliputian army that never slept in.

As I was carried at a painstakingly slow pace down a narrow ingrown path through the jungle, I saw the plume of smoke ahead of me. We are going to a village! Maybe this wasn't that bad after all. I could catch some Z's while bumming a free ride there. Well, maybe I could if those clocks would just be quiet for a second.

Final chapter tomorrow...