We Have Already Met With Our First Terrible Fate: Goosebumps – Secret Agent Grandma #2

Ariel has decreed that our choice is to run away from the (checks notes) rumbling train station, where we are waiting for an approaching train. Uh huh. So it is my duty now to take the reins and hope that I don’t have to recap an insta-death choice. Or hope that I do? Hard to tell what the best outcome is here. I mean, I feel like we’ve only just begun to learn about the main character of this year’s Goosebumps book: me.

The station rattles and shakes around you. Your hands clutch the information counter so tightly your fingers cramp. A framed picture on the wall behind the clerk crashes to the floor.
Get me out of here!
You spin and dash out of the station.

And I am an idiot.

Whoops! Too bad you weren’t looking where you were going. Otherwise you would have seen the garbage truck before you landed in the middle of the gunk, the goo, and the gross slime.
Eeeewwwww. Hold your nose and close the book quickly! You stink! You’ve come to a very smelly

END

GOOD JOB, ARIEL. YOU’VE ALREADY KILLED US.

SOMEHOW. I admit I am a little confused by the noneuclidean geometry of this shaking train station that I left and wound up inside of a garbage truck, the existential grossness of which killed me almost immediately, after I use my last moment of consciousness on this earth to hold my nose. Goosebumps, you son of a bitch, you’ve done it again.

Thanks for reading Goosebumps with us this year!

lol, imagine. Nah, what we’re going to try to do is just backtrack whenever we die, in hopes that we eventually get to one of the fabled “good” endings. How will we know what makes an ending “good”? Probably not because of our personal opinion of its quality, if I had to guess.

Take 2!

In a parallel timeline, I realize that the rumbling train station is probably just because trains are big and the station is old get scolded immediately by my subconscious for my impudence.

You can’t go home without your grandma.

Don’t pretend there are rules here, Goosebumps.

The station clerk tells me that the train is coming in and that “this old station rattles like a baby’s toy” every time. Technically I don’t know this in this timeline, but if this happens every time, it’s a little odd they bother putting up a new, unbroken picture on the wall every time a train comes to town.

As passengers depart the train, I look for my grandma (whom you might recall is “a lady in yellow pants and a purple shirt”, because I have never seen a picture of my grandma before, but my parents do know what she’s wearing that day) without success. My friends Chuck and Ginny run into me, on their way to a hockey game.

“Our moms are letting us take the train on our own!” Ginny adds. “Of course, we had to promise to stay out of trouble.” Ginny giggles. “As if!”

These important characters immediately leave, and my grandma finds me, calling me “Cookie!”, my old nickname that I hate! This isn’t me, IRL Matthew, making this decision. This is the book telling me that I hate this nickname. Goosebumps has already gotten impressively in our heads this year.

But something is amiss.

As you stroll down the platform, something catches your eye. Bright red letters scrawled across one of the train windows.
A message!
If your mother hadn’t made that strange phone call, you wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But now you have an odd feeling….
You gaze at the train window. You read the red letters aloud.
“EMPLEH. EMPLEH,” you mutter. What does it mean?

Why am I so stupid in this book

I unsuccessfully avoid a hug from grandma (the height of children’s horror), and as we walk towards our cab, a spark emerges from the unused corners of my mind:

On the way out of the station, you pass the train window with the message again.
I’ve got it! you think. I know what it means!
Do you really?

Nope, if I’ve learned anything about who I am so far, it is that I am a dumb ol’ sack of shit. Gotta stay in character. Sorry, Ariel, you gotta turn to page 129.