Is It Live Or Is It Subconscious?
Part
2
"God dammit, Jerry, get off your ass and help me with this shit!" Daina swore vehemently.
"Hold on a second, I'm almost finished with this game," Jerry insisted, banging the flippers of the pinball game he was playing.
Daina sighed exasperatedly and cocked her jaw to the side. "Look, man, this haunted house has to be ready by this Sunday and I don't have time to dick around with you and this fucking pinball machine. Besides, you're supposed to be here at the daycare helping me with the boxes, not playing pinball."
Jerry frowned. The girl obviously had no sense of procrastination. He could tell she was actually pissed, however, so he tried to sound more pleading. "Come on, just wait," he said, half concentrating on the little metal ball in front of him. "Look, my score's at 4 hundred thousand."
"I don't give a shit!" she snapped, striding over to him. "Quit already!" She reached under the machine and the lights and sounds came to an abrupt halt. The ball, having nothing to stop it, slid quietly into the gutter and disappeared.
"Aww, man..." Jerry began.
"You gonna help or not?"
"Fine!" Jerry grabbed a box and began to unfold it into shape. Daina looked at him strangely and he looked up at her, feeling rather lightheaded suddenly. Her image blurred slightly, then came back to him.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, I...yeah, I'm fine," he replied.
"Good," she replied.
Jerry looked down at the box he had somehow finished folding and blinked at it disconcertedly. "You can tape this one shut now," he said to her after a moment, holding the box closed. He waited for her to unravel the tape and seal the box he was holding, but she never did. He looked up and found her playing with a roll of duct tape.
"I thought you said that stuff was too expensive to use on the boxes," he said mocking her sarcastically as she tossed it up and down.
She smiled at him for a moment with a smile. "Probably is."
Her smile was unnerving. "Wha-aat?" he finally asked. "What're you staring at me for?"
"I was just thinking," she replied, "how funny it would be if I were to suddenly, say, shrink you to about 3 inches or so."
"What?" Jerry asked, his attention returning to the boxes.
"I said it'd be kinda funny if I shrank you."
Jerry frowned. There were days when she took this sprite thing too far. He decided to humor her, anyway. "With all these tall boxes and stuff in my way so I can't see?"
"Yeah, well, I'd keep you safe in a box so you couldn't get hurt", came the reply.
"Please!" Jerry chuckled, leaning back over the box again. "Like I wanna live the rest of my life in a box. For that matter, like I'm even gonna hang around you if you shrink me!"
"What, you don't trust me?" she asked.
"Exactly, now tape the box already."
"Too bad," he heard her say, "Especially since you're going to have to trust me sometime. Sometime very soon."
Jerry was about to tell her how "40's radio show"-ish she sounded when his world began to expand without him. The box he was holding quickly went from being at his knee level to being at his eye level and continued to grow.
Or, rather, Jerry continued to shrink.
By the time the world had stopped growing, Daina was towering above him with the roll of tape in her hand. "Cool! I can go fishing for Jerrys," she grinned, pulling out a long strip of tape with an ominous rip.
"Shit," Jerry breathed, one foot already pivoting. Intuition and general panic had already told him that running was no longer a suggestion, but a foregone conclusion.
He had already reached his top speed when she casually lowered the strip of tape and gently swung it behind him. At the last minute, Jerry swerved and the tape stuck to a nearby box It attached to it and Daina's whole demeanor changed.
"Damn!" she grumbled, yanking at the super gripping tape. Jerry laughed, then ducked behind a box to hide. There was a whole maze of these boxes that Daina herself had created, so with them in the way, there'd be no way to catch him. He could hear her tearing off the used strip and pulling out a new one, so he backed up further into the boxes until he reached a huge thick one with smaller pieces of plastic and cardboard around it. She'd have to come through this way and when she did, he'd simply duck under the mountains of junk behind him.
He saw the slight shadow pass overhead and only had time to gape in astonishment before Daina grew back to normal size on the edge of the large box behind him dangling a new length of tape near him. He ran, but it attached to him and his clothing easily and stuck even worse when he tried to peel it off. By the time he was completely stuck on the end of the tape, she had lifted him and the tape strip up to peer at him.
"The sprite trick always works," said she confidentally. "Just when they think you can't get 'em, you fly in and, boom!, they're yours!"
"Naomi!" Jerry said aloud, suddenly realizing whom he was dealing with. "You're real!!! How did you...?"
"Don't strain your brain, kiddo," Naomi replied. "There's no hope of you ever understanding a plan this slick until I'm long past retribution, anyway. Oh, this is cute," she added, cooing at him. "Poor little Jerry all stuck with no hope of escape."
"Okay, look, I'm not sure how or why you're here and actually affecting me, but if this has anything to do with Daina, I'm sorry, okay? I mean, maybe I could've helped a little more on the haunted house and and I should never have said all those things about "sprite under glass" and trapped between two pillows and all that, but that's no reason to be messing with me." Jerry said grinning halfheartedly in his lost state. "I've learned my lesson and I swear I'm ready to be good. Really good."
She seemed to mull this over for a moment while he tried to extricate himself without falling to the ground. "Nah, you're too much fun this way," she decided, then she picked up a large pair of sharp scissors.
Jerry eyed her warily as the scissors came near him. "Uh, don't you think you're overreacting a little?" he gasped, his voice a mere squeak.
"Yes," she answered. "I am. But then us fairy folk are good at that." A swift movement toward him and Jerry though it was all over. Instead, he found himself falling through mid air until he landed in the same box he'd just unfolded. Painfully, he lifted himself up and partially off the tape to look up at her. "But don't worry about the boxes and things. I've decided to tape them up myself." She pulled the tape strip out even farther to compensate for the section she'd cut off with Jerry on it, then closed the flap.
"By the way," she
added, "when
"Wait!" Jerry shouted, realizing too late that he was about to be sealed inside the box. The light disappeared and Jerry's world, having expanded all it could before, began to go through a series of wild flips and stunts starring him as the untrained stuntman...
"Your turn,"
Naomi said to Alan, handing him the box casually. "Tag team abuse of body
hosts. By the way, perfect timing on your knocking Jerry out. I had just made
Alan snorted in
derision. "Beat your little moment as torturess?
I could beat that without even touching her," he replied.
"I never touched
Jerry, either!" she protested.
"No, you just let
him fall 3 or 4 feet to the ground, then you punted
his box all around the room."
"I was having
fun!"
"Watch and
learn," Alan said, blowing her a kiss.
Naomi ducked out of habit.
"Well, hold on, then cowboy, why don't we up the stakes a little. Let her
do her sprite thing and let's see how well you handle her."
"Fine," Alan
agreed.
"So this is a bet,
now?"
"It's a bet. You win, you get to pick what we do to them next. If I win, I
pick. Deal?"
Naomi searched his face
for a moment, then extended her hand.
"Deal." she said, shaking his hand. "But no
cheating."
"Cheating defined
as?" he asked.
"Anything
going too far."
"Good," he
grinned. "Gimme that roll
of packing tape behind you..."