Population Control

Camille VI

Jayus – a joke so unfunny and poorly told that you can't help but laugh

0o0

Whatever I was lying on felt like a bed of clouds. Wow was it comfortable. Grunting, I stretched out my legs before opening my eyes, feeling them being pulled apart. Then, I slotted my arms underneath the amazing pillow stretching my shoulders. Before my eyes shot open and I sat up quicker than a jack-in-the-box.

Looking around the room, it was like I'd been put in a Barbie Movie with light pink curtains and flowery walls. Even the bedsheets were a dusted pink at the top with the frills. That's when I looked down, seeing my clothes were different. I was wearing a dress, one with a green flower pattern over white and a thick, green belt in the middle. It was sleeveless, like a tank top. My clothes. The note!

"What the fuck is going on?" I gasped, feeling my clothes to see if this was real.

"Did you talk to your parents that way?" A woman's voice made me jump. The woman was smiling, minimal wrinkles on her face, dressed in a similar dress to me but a different colour and pattern. Don't get me wrong, I like them, but someone had to change me, to dress me.

"Sorry." I blushed, "Where am I?"

"You're in Gemstone, dear." Said the woman. Looking to her neck, there was a bright, glistening ruby hanging from it, and a ruby ring on her ring finger. A gemstone: fitting. "Here dearie, put this on." She handed me a quartz necklace, but it was a piece of quartz wrapped in string like the heart necklaces from that Barbie movie.

"Where are my friends?" I asked, sliding off the bed and seeing a pair of slip on shoes by a pair of ironed white socks.

The woman stood with one hand cupping the other and her back straight. So, I put on the socks then the shoes, pushing the socks down. Politely (yet patronising), the woman coughed and I straightened the socks back up. "You will see them in just a moment, don't worry."

That's when I noticed my backpack was missing, and so was my bow, and my arrows, and my cassettes and the cassette player, "And my stuff?"

"Being held by the Chief while we were waiting for the four of you to wake up, they haven't been touched, I promised."

I was about to question how she knew, but the door was opened revealing the outside world. A man stood in the entrance, bearing an opal necklace like my quartz and her ruby one.

"She awake?" He asked, and didn't look at me. He should really look at me to see if I am awake or not.

"See for yourself." The woman gestured to me, and I weakly smiled at the man.

"The chief would like to speak to the five now." He told the woman who sighed.

"Really." She rolled her eyes, "The girl hasn't eaten yet! I'll be having a word with Mary afterwards, mark my words." She ran a hand through the thin brown hair. "I suppose you need to get out of bed, dear."

Everyone looked so... happy. Deliriously so. When I caught their eye, they smiled at me, and I saw the glow from their jewellery: either opal, amethyst or quartz. Only the woman was wearing a ruby.

It was like they boxed in an entire strip of shops and houses and made them an end-of-the-world style for the shops, but perfect and utopian for the houses. There was farmland, too, that seemed to stretch on for a while but was cut in half by the make-shift metal fence. At the end of the strip was a lone house, larger than the rest and more modern with white, smooth walls and black accents. There was a drive, but it looked like a red carpet entrance.