Golden Ticket

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Spring has passed and Summer is gone, the cold rains of Autumn have returned and Winter is not far behind. Already the Ometto and L'Omino, twisted little dwarfs with comical faces, criss-cross the countryside in their gaily-painted little coaches. They always know where a Golden Ticket might have been found. Perhaps their tiny capuchin companions whisper each such location to them as they careen and dash from isolated hamlet to nearly-deserted village through the desolate wilderness surrounding Wermspittle. Many believe this to be the case, though some few claim it has something to do with the bats instead, that the little people have some sort of treaty with the bats who flutter through the might skies bearing the infamous tickets in their little rodent-feet.

Wherever a Golden Ticket is found, the coachmen are not long absent. They offer each child Hard Candy, Turkish Delight, mugs of warm nutmeg-laced Korova Milk (liberally spiked with bandy), and other treats with which to tempt and to trick their intended passengers into coming along with them to visit the Land of Toys. It is a fabulous place, a wondrous space, where all manner of toys are to be had, and all the lucky children chosen to come there always have plenty to eat and never have to do chores ever again. All they need to do is leave behind their familiar beds and ride along in the little coaches and everything will be taken care of forever after.

Once long ago, before the bombs and the wars and the plagues, or so the old ones claim, there really was a Land of Toys and it truly was a fantastic, phantasmagoric place filled with toys and candies and all good things...but those days are gone now and the Ometto who were raised to serve the old factory-owners, those funny little people who were grown within urns and deliberately shaped in such curious ways now serve less-agreeable masters who are best not named.

Some children who receive a Golden Ticket run away before the little coachmen come for them. Those with families and kin to defend them might refuse the summons of the child-takers. But those who are alone in the world, who have been left behind by parents who have succumbed to the plagues or whose families have been driven off by roving bands of mercenaries and brigands (nearly all the same thing really), those poor lost ones who cry themselves to sleep with no supper, who shiver in the cold, in the dark...they can't help but to wonder if such a thing might be real...if perhaps there was a better place waiting for them if they only dared to use their Golden Ticket...

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