O utside, I don’t bother finding the bathroom. I just want out to look for the children.
Among the Executioner’s soldiers, I pretend I am an airhead brat with a colorful umbrella, trekking around the vast landscape and admiring the roses.
Some of them are irritated by me, borderline offended, but none of them can do anything about it. I have the Executioner’s permission to be out here.
Flashing my stupid-girl smiles, I’m looking for the children in my peripheral vision.
Nighttime isn’t helping much. All I have for light is a small moon up in the sky. For a moment, it looks like a mushroom lighting up the world. But I know better. The coconut’s effect hasn’t fully worked on me yet.
Farther into the landscape, I am happy to be hiding between folds of darkness and even darker trees in the castle’s garden. I am like a cat now. I see everyone from my vantage point, but none of them see me. The Cheshire comes to mind instantly, but I don’t want to think about him.
Then I glimpse the children in the distance.
They’re being loaded like sheep into a barred Jeep, surrounded by machine gun men.
Like a cat, I tiptoe closer. Each child is given a gun before getting on the Jeep. Oh, my God.
I mean, I’ve read about drug lords and cartels using young, poor children in their drug business, even in war, but I never thought I’d see it with my own eyes. It seems that the words we read in newspapers, the videos we watch on news cable, no matter how atrocious and unbelievable, are never really processed by our brains. We watch these things as if they are a movie, as if they’re not real, until you see them with your own eyes.
But right now, I can’t stand it. Those children aren’t going to become machine gun drug traffickers. Their childhood isn’t going to be taken advantage of by this mean man called the Executioner. I will find a way to get them out of Mushroomland.
This means more to me than the end of the world.
Because frankly, the world will end anyway. It’s the crimes we don’t do anything about that are the real evil.