Candy Crushed

A Story on a girl who loves to play Candy Crush

Buzz, buzz! But I was too engrossed in the Candy Crush Saga game to care about the phone. I could always call the person back later, I thought to myself.

I thought nothing of the buzzing as my fingers swiped across my iPad tablet, matching together more and more candies with each move.

Finally, my phone stopped. The caller had finally given up, I thought. I could concentrate on my game again.

But the next thing I knew, I heard footsteps stomping hastily towards me and these were getting louder by the second.

I sensed a familiar presence in front of me. Then my ears picked up the sound of an all-too-familiar, scathing female voice.

“Candy Lee! Why are you playing Candy Crush Saga on your iPad now?”

The sharp, female voice pierced through the air and into my eardrums. I knew my supervisor was standing in front of me now, but I completely ignored her. I had been playing for two hours straight, but that was nothing to me.

For Candy Crush was the only thing that mattered to me right now.

After all, I was already on Level 300 of the popular Facebook and smartphone game and I wasn’t going to stop. My progress was going very well and I didn’t want to lose my winning streak by pausing the game. I had never done this well before, as I had already blitzed through more than 30 levels of the game in one go.

The female voice spoke sharply. It grew louder and shriller with every word: “Candy Lee Mei Ying! What are you doing! Why didn’t you answer my earlier calls? I want to know how your report is progressing.”

I turned around – to see Ms Tan, my immediate supervisor staring at me intently, with an annoyed and irritated look. I had been caught playing Candy Crush at work, red-handed. Gosh, I had never seen her looking so mad before!

But then again, this level was almost complete! I screwed my face in frustration. I was going to finish it before I tended to my phone calls and emails. Yes, Ms Tan had been asking me about my progress for the auditing report all afternoon, but Candy Crush was more important right now. After all, the report was only due tomorrow at noon. So I still had time.

I looked down at the game board again. I knew exactly how to complete this level. I could even see the moves I would make.

Yes! Sugar crush! I’d done it! I felt an extreme rush of exhilaration. That was Level 300 completed.

I debated whether to begin Level 301 or not. But I couldn’t pull myself off the game. My supervisor was still staring right at me with those piercing eyes of hers. I knew that my client needed that report, but my work was the least of my worries right now.

Looking at me straight in the eye, Ms Tan commanded, “This evening before five, I want your report on my desk.” Then she walked off, in a huff.

I watched her go. Then I returned to my game. I would just play Level 301 and then I would really stop playing Candy Crush for the afternoon.

But the moment I touched the button labelled, play Candy Crush game, that was when I felt a slight tugging sensation pulling me towards my iPad.

The next thing, I felt my world spinning all around me. My head started to grow dizzy. Completely confused and totally disoriented, I closed my eyes, not daring to think about what was happening to me.

The spinning feeling felt like forever and I kept my eyes shut tightly. I didn’t want to see what was around me, in case it gave me the fright of my life. My imagination began to run completely wild now.

I gingerly opened my eyes and looked all around me, and what I saw made me blink. I couldn’t believe it. I was surrounded by all sorts of colours – many bright, vibrant ones.

I saw trees that bore colourful candies, such as red jellybeans and orange hard-boiled sweets. Brushing against my knees were small bushes with colourful wrapped and striped candies, comprising of multiple colours and shades, such as purples, reds and yellows. Speckled round chocolate sweets and donut-shaped pink candies smelling strongly of coconut, floated down the small stream just in front of me. It was really beautiful and I felt I could probably stay there forever. I allowed myself to close my eyes and relax in the harmony of these colours and sweet scents.

Suddenly a thought occurred to me. Hang on. Was this the Candy Crush universe I had somehow stepped into?

My mind started buzzing. I tried frantically to recall everything about the Candy Crush game that I could think of. It sounded so ironic, but my very life could depend on it right now.

When out of the corner of my right eye, I saw a gigantic square of chocolate slowly sliding towards me from the right hand side of this candy jungle – a colourful forested area.

I took a second glance. This particular chocolate square was literally twice my size! And it was literally sliding towards me by multiplying itself, so that meant one square of chocolate became two, and so on. And what feared me the most was that this was taking place within mere seconds.

I quickly realised that this meant I would have a whole wall of chocolate lining up directly in front of me.

And from my experiences with the Candy Crush chocolate, it was very tough to clear this chocolate once it started multiplying.

Did that mean I had to pluck and eat the candies – at least gobble down three candies of the same colour in a row, right? And from what I knew about the smartphone and tablet game, I had to eat the ones from the trees adjacent to the chocolate, in order to get rid of some.

I decided to climb up one of the candy trees. Treat this like a massive game of Candy Crush, I told myself.

I scaled the tree quite easily because strangely there seemed to be plenty of footholds and large branches for me to hang onto. I also had a little bit of rock climbing experience, from those numerous adventure and school camping trips that I had been forced to attend.

From my bird’s eye vantage point, I was able to see the full “board.” Yes this was nothing more than a simple Candy Crush Saga game. I could see chocolate covering about one row on the right hand side of the board. There were also a bomb maker and two candy bombs with the number “10” on them on the two left hand corners of the “board.”

I could also see that each tree resembled a different colour of candy and the various colours were arranged in random order.

To kill the chocolate first, I decided that I would need to pluck and eat the three green candies about two trees down.

I proceeded to head there.

But as I was preparing myself to move, I heard a sugary sweet female voice telling me, “You have 120 seconds to score 100,000 points. Go!”

I wondered if this voice belonged to Tiff. From what I knew, she was the cute blond girl, who was the main character that popped up whenever I played the Candy Crush game. I’d always thought she was sweet, but now I wasn’t so sure anymore.

But 120 seconds to score such a massive amount of points. I had to work fast. I thought about how I would scramble across the trees in such a short space of time.

Until I saw the almost invisible rope bridges connecting all the trees together

Why hadn’t I noticed these before, I wondered. But they would certainly be of massive help for me to get around the board quicker.

Using the rope bridges, I scrambled towards the green candies and pulled them off from the trees.

Then I put them into my mouth and quickly chewed the gummy sweets. Surprisingly, they tasted extremely delicious.

Once I’d got the hang of it, somehow it became easier to spot more and more candy combinations to match together. I even managed to see several four and five candy combinations. Gleefully, I rejoiced as I created striped candies, wrapped candies and those special chocolate spotted balls that I totally loved. These special candies always appeared where I had created them, and the trees actually changed colour to become a tree growing the special candy that I had just created.

I thought everything looked so brilliant and magical. And I was really getting into the game, I thought. The candies were also becoming more and more delicious, with every sweet that I gobbled down.

Eager and excited as ever, I analysed the board again, as I could barely wait to get my teeth on some more candies.

Ah, I could create a special combination there. The red striped candy together with the spotted colour bomb. I had one more move left before the two bombs exploded. But this move could clear the red bomb and cause a line explosion to kill the other bomb too. It was the perfect move.

So I clamoured towards the two adjacent trees where these two special candies were growing from.

And I grabbed both, almost at the same time, and chewed them.

The speckled colour bomb was really delicious. It tasted a little like the dark chocolate I love, with hundreds and thousands plastered all over it. I relished the bittersweet chocolate together with the crunchy, sweet topping. I licked my lips.

The red striped sweet was a jellybean, which I loved too. Strawberry flavour was my favourite. I savoured this one in my mouth for a short time longer before I eventually swallowed it. Yes, I had such a sweet tooth.

But no sooner had the jellybean slid down my throat then the ground started trembling.

How had I forgotten? The chocolate bomb and the striped sweet causes a massive explosion.

Sure enough, the explosion came. I tried hanging onto the rope bridge for dear life.

But it was no use. I was blasted off the bridge. I felt myself falling several feet through the air. I closed my eyes and blamed myself for my stupidity. I had been so much into the Candy Crush game and trying to rack up the points that I had not bothered to think about the after effects. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that I wasn’t playing on my iPad or iPhone this time.

I landed on the ground with a huge bump on my bottom. Ouch! That hurt! I clenched my teeth in agony and then I tried to get off the ground.

But I couldn’t move.

My legs were frozen! I wriggled my fingers – but they were somehow stuck too.

I began to panic.

That was when I suddenly noticed the colour of my skin. I was becoming a chocolate brown. And my skin was getting rougher. Just like a tree bark.

And some twigs and leaves suddenly started sprouting up too. I felt myself shooting up, high into the air.

It just felt so strange, to be growing so tall. But to be able to see from such a height did feel exhilarating.

Was I a tree now?

A thought suddenly occurred to me – all the other trees here must have been people before, just like me, Candy Crush addicts!

As I shot up high into the sky, I suddenly spied a handwritten note pasted on the rope bridge that I had been standing on earlier. It seemed to be written in a little girl’s hand.

Strange I hadn’t noticed this before.

I read what was written on the note. It said:

Thank you for creating that candy explosion and joining our magical forest, Candy Crush player. That was the final stepping-stone to you becoming a tree.

When you decided to play our ever-inviting game, you accepted our challenge. Of course, no Candy Crush addict can resist it.

Did you know that the yummy sweets in our forest all contain a special potion that triggers a person to become tree-like?

And secondly, of course none can resist that big points move we give you intentionally. Yes, we purposely create this little game that way, so that you’ll be able to create plenty of special candies and think you are doing very well and on track to claiming the reward.

But you are just falling into our trap. So welcome to our beautiful forest, your brand new home. You will live here for eternity… and you won’t ever be able to leave… until we find someone who actually beats us at our LIVE Candy Crush game…

Love, Tiff and Mr Toffee

If trees were able to scream, I would have yelled at the top of my voice, but nothing came out and not a single soul could hear me.