Jason found himself floating in a pit of darkness. there wasn’t anything around not even a spec of light. Everything was encompassed by endless darkness. He tried moving his fingers to grab onto the darkness and was relieved to know that he could move his body. It was wonderful to find out he wasn’t stuck in one place forever. Next, he wanted to try moving another body part his legs. He willed his legs to move from the right leg to the left leg one step at a time. With that he started walking, but no matter how much he walked he wasn’t going anywhere. In reality, he was walking in a endless loop, surrounded by the wicked night.

He decided to use a different approach. The place he was in wasn’t working by any natural laws he was familiar with. No matter how much he walked he wasn’t getting anywhere and the longer he stayed in the darkness the more nervous he became. He felt himself physically walking further and further away, but he didn’t know he was walking in an endless loop. He felt trapped and he was starting to feel a bit claustrophobic.

Jason contemplated running due to his failed attempt to walk. He figured since walking didn’t work running would have a slim chance of making an impact, but not trying would be a great injustice. Jason started moving his legs one at a time: from a slow walk, to a slow jog, to a full out sprint. It didn’t take long before Jason ran out of breath. He bent over with his hands on his knees trying to breathe. After several minutes of breathing hard, Jason finally got his breathing under control. He slowly straightened his posture and wiped the nonexistent sweat off his brows.

The second idea was a failure, so he pondered on his next attempt. After some deliberations he decided on trying to jump his way out, but at the same time he prepped himself for the inevitable failure. Jason bent his body at the knees resembling a stable squat like stance. Next, he brought both of his arms back and made them as straight as possible. Jason put as much power into his legs as possible building the force he needs to jump as high as possible. He took a deep breath, got on his tip-toes, and he jumped with his arms swinging up in accordance. This was possibly the highest Jason has ever jumped in his life. He never imagined he could jump so high.

In mid-jump Jason felt like he was going somewhere until he reached the peak of the jump. From that point there was no more going up, His feet were destined to fall back done. That was what was supposed to happen, but it didn’t. Jason only fell for a tenth of a second before he found himself landing on solid air. As Jason was about to celebrate his success, he felt himself being slowly brought back down to the ground. To combat what was happening Jason got back into the squatting stance and jumped again. Once again, he felt himself being slowly forced back to the ground.

Everytime Jason felt himself being brought down, he constantly jumped again and again while in mid-air. It worked until his stamina started depleting and his sense of fatigue worsened with every jump he made. He reached a point where his legs were on fire and his heart felt like it was about to jump out his chest. With no other option, he stopped and composed himself. His body started to sink down to where he first started. Jason felt his heart breaking. All the progress he made was going down the drain. Oh, the agony and despair he felt made him want to cry. He held his tears in because from this attempt he learned that there was a possible way out of this place and all he had to was find it. He was determined to escape.

Once Jason breathing was under control, he though back on what had caused his previous failures. When he walked or ran he didn’t go anywhere. When he jumped after a while he ran out of stamina. Though a failure Jason was able to learn one key information from jumping. It was that going up was the best way to approach the problem. It is the best chance of getting out of this god forsaken place. Out of nowhere an idea came to mind. He had to find a way to fly out. Jason didn’t know if that was possible. He didn’t have any other ideas as well as not having any tools to assist his way out. Jason started going over all the possible ways he fly. Then a funny idea came to mind. He started laughing at the idea considering how absurd it sounded.

Jason decided to follow the idea. He positioned both of his legs together, then raised his right arm up to the sky. He kept his left arm at his side. Next, he craned his neck up forcing his face to look at the dark sky above. Lastly, he got on his tip-toes and said, “up, up and away” with zealotry in his voice. Five seconds passed, with him still being stuck in that ridiculous pose. Jason blushed at the absurdity of the pose. He felt ridiculous and he knew that what he just attempted was point blank stupid.

Jason looked around to see if anyone had magically appeared to watch him make a fool of himself. There, of course, was no one present. Jason breathed out a breath of relief. The action he did now was just out right embarrassing and having people see him would make him want to bury his head in the ground. Great thing no one was there. In the moment, Jason was tickled from what he just did. He laughed so hard he had to hold his stomach.

After his bit of laughter Jason had one more gimmick he always wanted to try. The probability of it working was as slim as doing the superman pose from earlier. It was pretty simple. He just had to imagine himself with wings. Jason closed his eyes and started imagining an angel like white wings with flame designs growing out of his shoulder blades. Then he imagined working his back muscles to flap his wings. As he imagined the majestic wings he felt wind blowing pass him. The force of the wind was created by his flapping wings. At the moment, Jason was ignorant to the effects of his flapping wings. All that was on his mind was flying. After flapping his wings for the umpteenth in his imagination, he started to fly.

Outside of Jasons imagination he was actually flying. When Jason felt that he was flying he opened his eyes in wonder. He was so surprised that his gimmick worked he stopped imagining himself flying. Within the next few seconds, he was free falling to his death. The abrupt fall caught him off guard and like his predecessor Icarus he started grabbing at the empty air one hand after the other to no avail. Jason closed his eyes in despair to avoid seeing the second of his fatal impact. He started picturing himself flapping his imaginary wings again.

Jason felt his descent slowing down until he came to a standstill. He sighed in relief because he wasn’t going to plummet to his death. Jason opened his fidgeting eyes. He knew he had to keep imagining himself flapping his wings especially with his eyes open. He looked below him to still find the never-ending darkness. It didn’t bother him as much as it did earlier as he found comfort in his imaginary wings.

Jason imagined himself flying up. His body followed his imagination and chased after the sky. In the next thirty seconds Jason saw nothing other than darkness. Jason knew he had to hold on to his hope in the midst of all his hopelessness. He could not lose it. He learned that lesson from the day he was searching for Chubby when he got distracted by the trees. He must keep hope and keep persevering through the hardships.

With that small lesson in mind Jason persevered through. It took him another minute of flying before suddenly he saw a spec of light in front of him. Jason smiled to himself before flying towards the small speck of light. The more he followed the speck the bigger and brighter it became. He busted out of the darkness into the warmth of light. He spread out his arms to embrace the warmth. He indulged himself in the warm feeling for a minute before he caught his bearings.

Jason looked down to gander at the place he came from to find it closing up. The sight was both exciting and terrifying. It was exciting because he wouldn’t have to return to that gloomy hell. On the other hand, it was terrifying because it made him wonder about the possibility of not escaping on time. Would he have been stuck to rot in the darkness for all eternity or was him escaping a prerequisite for it to close. The though was terrifying.

Taking his mind off of possibilities that didn’t happen he saw a breathtaking scenery right before his eyes. There was a valley filled with flowers that had a myriad of vibrant colors. The colors resembled the brilliance of the rainbow. There were different types of butterflies flying through the valley enhancing its beauty. On the other side of the valley, an emerald colored mountain had a waterfall cascading down its side. As the water fell down the mountain the vivid sky-blue color was highlighted by the rays of the sun. The emerald color of the mountain and the sky-blue color of the waterfall enhanced each other making the entire scenery seem like the paradise of the gods. The scenery was extremely refreshing to Jason’s soul.

While taking in the scenery, Jason saw giant mushrooms growing out the ground. The mushrooms resembled the mushrooms he had eaten earlier. They didn’t have a speck of dust on them and were as white as the clouds floating in the sky. Jason watched them grow from a sprout to the size they are now. The bigger the mushrooms grew the stronger the heavenly aroma of pineapples permeated the entire valley. Inhaling the scent of the mushrooms had the same effect on Jason as the first encounter. He remembered that heavenly taste and the comfortable feeling he felt afterward. His mouth started to uncontrollably water and his posture started to visibly sag. He wanted to taste and fell that feeling again.

The mushrooms kept growing until they were ten meters long. The luster of the mushrooms was out of this world beautiful. Jason couldn’t help himself anymore and flew to the closest mushroom to take a bite. No matter how much he flapped his wings he could never get close to them. Something that was so close to him was unattainable. This feeling compared to staying in the endless darkness was the true hell. Jason subconsciously inhaled the aroma renewing his will to eat. He kept flapping his wings to get to what was rightfully his.

When he finally felt like he was making some progress towards the mushrooms something weird happened. A giant bodiless head rose up out of nowhere. The giant head was an exact replica of his head but thousands upon thousands of times bigger.

The giant head turned its eyes towards the mushrooms Jason was coveting. Jason felt like the head was looking at him. It wasn’t until he saw the heads mouth watering as it stared at the mushrooms before he got scared. The giant opened its gigantic mouth to devour the mushrooms. The head did a swallowing motion and all the flowers, butterflies, the fully-grown mushrooms, the majestic mountain and waterfall was being sucked into his mouth. The beautiful world was being swallowed whole and Jason wasn’t excluded.

Feeling his impending doom Jason flapped his wings to the best of his abilities to fly the opposite direction of the head. That didn’t have any effects. Jason was instead being slowly dragged into the mouth.

“NOOOOO don’t eat me,” Jason screamed as he was swallowed whole.