Chapter Text
“An important room, this. After all, it is a chocolate factory,” Willy Wonka said.
“Then why is the door so small?” Mike Teavee asked.
“It’s to keep all the great, big, chocolatey flavor inside!” The chocolatier giggled, then he unlocked the tiny door with one of his many keys and opened up the entire wall, leading into an enormous room. The entire tour group, consisting of five children, their five respective guardians, and Willy Wonka, entered the room and gazed at the wonderment that lay before them.
It was a large room laid with bright green grass, lollipop trees, candy cane trees, candy apple trees, candy pumpkins, cotton candy plants, ice cream cone bushes, and marshmallow mushrooms. Most amazing of all, there was a giant chocolate waterfall that crashed into a chocolate river, which ran through the entire room.
“Now, do be careful, my dear children. Don’t lose your heads, don’t get overexcited. Just keep very calm,” Wonka said.
Mr. Wonka was a strange case; he was known as the “Chocolate Magician” all over the world, and he was known just as well for his amazing and fantastic confectioneries; however, for about thirteen years, he stayed secluded inside his factory with no public appearances whatsoever. Then, in early 2005, he announced a contest in which he sent out five Golden Tickets hidden in five of his Wonka Bars. Whoever found one of these tickets was able to be his guest in his factory for one whole day. That day being today, February 1st.
He often wore unusual apparel—the day of the tour being no exception. On that particular day, he wore a black top hat, a red velvet frock coat, purple latex gloves, a golden “W” brooch, a black waistcoat, a paisley undershirt, black pants, black high-heeled shoes, and he held a glass cane filled with little candies he called Nerds. In addition to his strange clothes, he had a pale complexion, violet eyes, and a dark brown bob haircut.
As the tour group walked through the expansive room Mr. Wonka called the Chocolate Room, the chocolatier explained more about the room, “Every drop of the river is hot melted chocolate of the finest quality.” The group walked across a bridge that was located right in front of the chocolate waterfall. “The waterfall is most important. Mixes the chocolate. Churns it up. Makes it light and frothy. By the way, no other factory in the world mixes its chocolate by waterfall, my dear children. And you can take that to the bank.” As Willy Wonka let his guests pass by, he pointed toward a strange contraption moving along the ceiling of the room, which had three pipes attached to its bottom. “People, those pipes suck up the chocolate and carry it away all over the factory. Thousands of gallons an hour. Yeah.” He then pointed toward the bright green grass. “Do you like my meadow? Try some of my grass. Please try a blade, please do. It’s so delectable, it’s so darn good-looking.”
“You can eat the grass?” Charlie Bucket asked.
“Of course you can. Everything in this room is eatable. Even I’m eatable, but that is called ‘cannibalism,’ my dear children, and is in fact frowned upon in most societies. Yeah.” Everyone in the group exchanged awkward looks between each other until Mr. Wonka continued, “Hold on, guys. I wanna show you something. Follow me.”
Wonka walked over to the wall and pressed a glass button on it, causing the wall to open, leading into a glass elevator. “This is the Great Glass Elevator. This isn’t just an ordinary ‘up-and-down’ elevator; this elevator can go sideways, longways, slantways, and any other ways you can think of. You just press any button, and whoosh, your off! But we’re not here for that. I want to show you the latest function implemented into the elevator. I’ve enabled it to travel to different dimensions—across time and space itself! So I wanted to test out my new invention with all of you. How about it?”
“Is it safe?” Mr. Teavee asked.
Mrs. Beauregarde said, “Yeeaah, I’m not sure if I wanna do anything that hasn’t been fully tested yet.”
“I guarantee you all that it is perfectly safe. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be doing it with you, would I?” Wonka said. The group stared at each other, unassured. “Come on, I’ll even take the necessary safety precautions.” Mr. Wonka grabbed eleven goggles from a bin and passed one out to everyone, while keeping one for himself. “Everyone put these on. Traveling through dimensions causes very bright lights, and I don’t want anyone’s eyeballs to be burned out of anyone’s skulls.”
Once everyone put on their goggles, they all entered the elevator, which was quite cramped with everyone inside. There were hundreds of buttons on one of the sides of the elevator—each one leading to a different room in the factory. Wonka pressed one that said, “INTERDIMENSIONAL TRAVEL.” “Well, here we go!” Wonka shouted with glee. The entire elevator started to shake violently. “I’m not exactly sure where we’ll end up, but not knowing’s half the fun, ha ha!”
“You know, Wonka, I decided I don’t want to do this. Let me off!” Mrs. Beauregarde shouted.
“Well, it’s too late for that; you should’ve turned back when you still had the chance,” Wonka said. And with that, the elevator vanished in a blinding white light.