was awakened with a shock, so sudden and severe that if I had not been lying on a soft bed (somehow?) I probably would have banged my head and knocked out a goddamn tooth or something. First off, there was a gross, wet dog nose in my face, whimpering.
Holy shit. “Toto?”
Sure enough, the dog leapt off the bed, hopped up and down on the dirty wooden floorboards, and barked. It was a small black terrier, and looked exactly like the dog from the movie. I started to remember where I was—or, at least, where I was supposed to be—but having an actual dog in the room with me seemed over the top. I mean, whose dog was it? Did the saleslady take it with her to work every day, just in case somebody chose The Wizard of Oz? What kind of livestock did she have back there for the sorry sons of bitches who picked The Jungle Book?
I clawed at my face briefly, but there was no virtual reality headset or anything. Apparently, the dog really was there. The inside of the EDUTAINMENT! booth turned out to be a dingy room done up like a wooden farmhouse with two beds (bow-chicka-wow-wow), a rusty wooden stove, and not much else. At least it was bright now, with what looked like sunlight flooding the room through a small window. I walked slowly over to it, with Toto yipping at my heels the entire way.
The window showed a surprisingly realistic, overwhelmingly colorful nature scene, complete with green hills, lush trees swaying in the breeze, a babbling brook—the whole deal. So, a video screen to watch the story through, built into a generic, dingy room that could be in just about any book written a million years ago. The setup was actually somewhat charming in its way, I had to admit, but it was hardly “total immersion.” That was the second criticism I’d put down on my $20 market research form, I decided, right after KNOCKING ME OUT AND ALMOST KILLING ME.
I’m not even sure what I thought when I opened the door expecting the interior of the mall, only to discover more majestic wildlife. Before I could even marvel at the scope of it all—seriously, it was a 360 degree, panoramic view, I didn’t even know they made video screens that big—I noticed a group of weird little people approaching.
And by little people, I mean like human beings with dwarfism. They were roughly as tall as your average ten-year-old, three men dressed all in blue from their pointy hats to their polished boots, and a little old lady in a sparkly, pleated dress. The men stopped short and looked a bit scared of me, but the woman marched right up close.
“You are welcome, most noble Sorceress, to the land of the Munchkins,” she said in a sickly-sweet old lady voice. “We are so grateful to you for having killed the Wicked Witch of the East, and for setting our people free from bondage.”
“Oh, shit,” I said. “We’re actually doing this. Are you people actors? Do they hire actors for this?”
It didn’t make any sense. A dog was one thing, but how many public domain books could possibly have little people in them, that they would have four little people actors just hanging around on call?
Or did they specifically knock me out so they could call the casting agency and set all this up? Jesus, how long had I been unconscious?
The old woman basically ignored me and continued her speech. “Or your house did, anyway,” she said, “and that is the same thing.” She pointed to the corner of the house behind me. “See! There are her two feet, still sticking out from under a block of wood.”
I turned to look, and actually screamed. Just as she had said, two feet were sticking out from beneath the house. The shoes on them were silver rather than sparkly red like the ones I remembered from the movie. But what really shocked me was all the blood. Blood was everywhere. And, like, sinews and stuff. Pretty much what you’d expect to see, I guess, if an actual person had been crushed to death by a falling domicile.
“What kind of fucked up Wizard of Oz snuff flick is this? Do you let children come in here?”
“She was the Wicked Witch of the East,” the old woman said calmly. “She has held all the Munchkins in bondage for many years, making them slave for her night and day. Now they are all set free, and are grateful to you for the favor.”
“Right,” I said, regaining a bit of my composure. “Of course. You’re a Munchkin.”
“No, but I am their friend, although I live in the land of the North,” she said. “When they saw the Witch of the East was dead, the Munchkins sent a swift messenger to me, and I came at once. I am the Witch of the North.”
Hmm. Maybe the casting agency was short on 1930s glamor-types, but had plenty of extra little folks. At least it subverted the whole good-witches-are-beautiful, evil-witches-are-hideous-crones trope. This woman was not cute.
“Look, I get that you went to a lot of trouble for this,” I said. “And hopefully you’ll still get paid. But seriously, get that saleslady back in here. I’m done.”
“Who is the saleslady?” inquired the old woman.
“Enough! The saleslady! At the crappy video book store, in the mall!” I made a complete circuit, walking all the way around the crashed farmhouse, and didn’t see an exit door anywhere. How big was this place? Could it all be behind the storefront? Holy shit, had they transported me to a second location?
The Witch of the North seemed to think for a time, with her head bowed and her eyes on the ground. Then she looked up and said, “I do not know where The Mall is, for I have never heard that country mentioned before. But tell me, is it a civilized country?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“In the civilized countries, I believe there are no witches left, nor wizards, nor sorceresses, nor magicians,” she continued. “But, you see, the Land of Oz has never been civilized, for we are cut off from all the rest of the world. Therefore we still have witches and wizards amongst us.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“You’re going to make me go see the motherfucking wizard, aren’t you.”
“You know of Oz, the Great Wizard!” the Witch said. Then she sank her voice to a whisper, like she was scared even to mention him in conversation. “He is more powerful than all the rest of us together! He lives in the City of Emeralds.”
I was about to register another complaint, but suddenly one of the Munchkins gave a loud shout. The three of them had been standing there so quietly the whole time that I had assumed they were being paid as extras and weren’t allowed to talk.
“What is it?” the old lady asked. Then she looked at the house and started laughing. The feet of the dead witch had disappeared entirely (along with, thankfully, all the blood and gore). Nothing was left but the silver shoes.
“She was so old,” explained the Witch of the North, “that she dried up quickly in the sun. That is the end of her. But the silver shoes are yours, and you shall have them to wear.” She reached down and picked up the shoes, and after shaking some dust out of them (a nice touch), handed them to me.
“The Witch of the East was proud of those silver shoes,” said one of the blue guys. It turned out he had a speaking part after all. Maybe SAG rules were different for back room mall theater productions. “And there is some charm connected with them, but what it is we never knew.”
The slippers! Of course! Now I knew how to put an end to this charade. I kicked off my shoes and put them on. They fit surprisingly well, but then again, considering how elaborate this whole thing was, it wouldn’t have been that much extra trouble to measure my sneakers while I was unconscious. As soon as they were on, I stood up straight and clicked my heels together three times.
When I opened my mouth to speak, however, no sound would come out.
What the fuck? I knew the words well enough. Everybody knew the words. I tried again, and my lips moved just as expected, but once again, silence.
I stopped for a moment to think. All of this was clearly from the Wizard of Oz book, rather than the movie. There was no bustling Munchkin township, or creepy candy union representatives, or elaborate dance number. You’d think the movie would be the one to skimp on all this stuff, since a novel didn’t have to pay actors and costume departments and all that, but whatever. The thing was, the book was at least a century old, but the movie hadn’t come out until 1939. The movie stuff wasn’t in the public domain yet.
Was it possible that I wasn’t allowed to mention anything that was still under copyright by MGM? How could they physically prevent me from doing so? This was my first hint that I had gotten myself involved with something much, much worse than a goofy-ass hybrid of virtual reality and community theater.
It made the notion of a quick exit all that much more appealing. Perhaps I could paraphrase? “There’s no… location… that approximates… the place where you live?” I clicked my heels again.
Nothing. Of course, if the classic line wasn’t from the original text, there must be some other password altogether. Hmm. What would the moral of a hundred-year-old children’s book be? “There’s no place like eugenics and racism?”
Historical figures from the previous century were always into eugenics and racism. If I knew as much about L. Frank Baum then as I do now, I might have said, “There’s no place like LITERALLY ADVOCATING GENOCIDE” (it’s a real thing, look it up!). Regardless, however, I did not manage to end the simulation, or whatever the hell was going on there. The Munchkins and the old lady just looked at me like I was crazy.
“Fine,” I said miserably. “How do I get home?”
The Munchkins and the Witch first looked at one another, and then at me, and then shook their heads.
“At the east, not far from here,” said one of the Munchkins who hadn’t spoken yet, “there is a great desert, and none could live to cross it.”
“It is the same at the south,” said the other one. At least they were all getting a line in, which hopefully meant they would be making more than TWENTY FUCKING DOLLARS for suffering through this indignity. “I have been there and seen it. The south is the country of the Quadlings.”
“Sure. Quadlings,” I said.
“I am told,” the original Munchkin who had yelled about the Witch said, “that it is the same at the west. And that country, where the Winkies live, is ruled by the Wicked Witch of the West, who would make you her slave if you passed her way.”
“The North is my home,” said the old lady, “and at its edge is the same great desert that surrounds this Land of Oz. I’m afraid, my dear, you will have to live with us.”
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” I moaned. This wasn’t like the movie at all. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”
All this cursing seemed to concern the Munchkin guys, who all pulled out their handkerchiefs and kind of just stood there fretting. As for the little old lady, she took off her pointy hat, balanced the end of it on the tip of her nose, and counted to three.
The hat disappeared, and was replaced with a small chalkboard in the blink of an eye. The whole thing was goofy as hell, but the special effects were amazing.
She took the slate off her nose and read it aloud. “Let Dorothy go to the City of Emeralds,” she said. “Is your name Dorothy, my dear?”
I sighed. “Absolutely.”
“Then you must go to the City of Emeralds. Perhaps Oz will help you.”
“Yes! Oz! The wizard! Was I not making myself clear?”
She ignored my tone. “It is exactly in the center of the country, and is ruled by Oz, the Great Wizard I told you of.”
“Ugh. Okay.”
“You must walk there. It is a long journey, through a country that is sometimes pleasant and sometimes dark and terrible. However, I will use all the magic arts I know of to keep you from harm.”
“You’re a hundred percent sure that you can’t just, like, teleport me there?”
“No, I cannot do that,” she replied, “but I will give you my kiss, and no one will dare injure a person who has been kissed by the Witch of the North.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” It wasn’t that I was freaked out just by the idea of kissing a woman. Madeline and I had actually tried making out once when we were thirteen, just to see if either of us was gay (it didn’t do much of anything for me, for the record, but Madeline liked it KIND OF A LOT). Remember, though, this wasn’t the overly made-up but vaguely attractive 1930s glamor model Good Witch of the North. This was a wrinkled, gray-haired old lady witch, and I was a fifteen-year-old girl. “What exactly do you mean by ‘give me your kiss’?”
She came close and kissed me gently on the forehead, which, I would later discover, left a round, shining mark.
“The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick,” said the Witch, “so you cannot miss it. When you get to Oz, do not be afraid of him, but tell your story and ask him to help you. Goodbye, my dear.”
The three Munchkins bowed low to her and wished her a pleasant journey, and then just left, walking away through the trees. The Witch gave me a nod, whirled around on her left heel three times, and straight-up disappeared into thin air. Toto started barking like crazy. To be honest, it freaked me out a bit, too. That didn’t seem like an effect you could manage with a community theater actor in the back of a mall store.
What the fuck had just happened?