Is It Live Or Is It Subconscious?
Part
3
"God dammit, Jerry, get off your ass and help me with this shit!" I 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.
I sighed exasperatedly and cocked my 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." I was wholly pissed off by now. We'd played around for a while, just kinda letting time go by while we played pinball, but now he was totally glued to the machine and I needed his help.
"Come on, just wait," he said,
barely concentrating on anything I said. "Look, my score's at 4 hundred
thousand." God dammit!,
I thought to myself. I'll end this shit right now...!
"I don't give a shit!" I snapped, striding over to him. "Quit already!" She reached under the machine and the lights and sounds came to an abrupt halt. I felt a mild sense of satisfaction as the ball, having nothing to stop it, slid quietly into the gutter and disappeared.
"Aww, man..." Jerry began.
"You gonna help or not?" I demanded.
"Fine!" Jerry grabbed a box and began to unfold it into shape. Finally!, I thought, then suddenly, I felt strangely lightheaded. I looked down at Jerry and he was looking up at me strangely. His image blurred slightly, then melted into a complete darkness.
When I woke up, it was to one of my least favorite sights--the sight of my entire world being completely out of proportion.
This essentially narrows down to my waking up the size of Thumbelina.
I could tell I was still in the daycare; in fact, I was lying face up on one of the cardboard boxes I had been taping up. Part of that aforementioned tape was strapping me down to the box.
My first thought on my situation was of how bad the removal of packaging tape from my frail little bare arms was gonna hurt.
My next thoughts were a
flurry of reporter's basics. What's going on? Who taped me to this box? How
did I get this size? How am I gonna get out of here
and back to my normal size? Where in the hell is Jerry?
The last panicked query was answered by him walking in the door, cigarette in hand. "Jerry!" I yelled so he could hear me. I heard a faint voice say, "Daina? Where are you?", but since Jerry's lips weren't moving except to inhale smoke, I ignored it as my imagination. "Thank God you're here! I have no idea what going on, but you gotta help me!"
He paused between the door and me, looking away with an odd smirk. He took another drag on his cigarette and exhaled before turning back toward me. "Do I?" he said, as if this was a fairly ridiculous assumption.
"Well, yeah, man, I..." I paused, then groaned. "Look, this is not the time to go into this. Were this a fairly non-urgent situation, I might not worry about going into long drawn out apologies for anything you wanted me to. Can we just suffice it to say that I'll do anything, just get me outta here?"
"Actually, we can't," he replied, walking toward me. "However, you can spend some time entertaining me and I might think about changing my mind." He stopped in front of me, the grin still on his face, then inhaled and blew smoke in my face. Since my face was considerably smaller, as was the rest of me, I was enveloped in a noxious fog of cigarette smoke and recently eaten pizza breath. My eyes watered from coughing so hard, but I could still see him standing there, waiting for me to recover.
"This entertains you?" I gagged, trying to maintain my cool.
"This kills me," he answered. "And this," he added, lifting up the box I was on, "will kill you." Everything spun as he quickly turned my end of the box to face the floor. I stared wide eyed at my destination.
If I was lucky, the box would only be heavy enough to maim me for life when it (and I) hit the tile.
In that horrible instant before my would-be death, I realized I was no longer dealing with my cuddly gay pal Jerry. As he dropped my box, I screamed out the name of my assassin:
"Alannnnnnnnnnn!"
The box halted it fall abruptly at about 6 inches above the ground and I panted with relief. The box turned back up again and I closed my eyes to keep the rising nausea from flying out of them.
"Oh, good," said Alan. "You remembered me. For a moment, I thought I have to kill you just for having a bad memory." I felt the box drop back to the box it had apparently been sitting on top of with a jarring thud.
"Killing me," I said, opening my eyes, "is bad."
A knife materialized in his hands as he asked, "For who?"
I was too used to shock to be shocked by now. "Oh, shit," I sighed. "You can't possibly have done this to me. You can't shrink me, you just can't."
"Sure I can," said he, examining the blade of his knife intently. "You're sprite size aren't you?"
"Yeah, but..."
"Please!" he said. "You're breaking my concentration." He lowered the knife with the precision of a surgeon and I could almost feel my arms separating from my body. To my surprise, he sliced the tape around my body, including my individual arms and legs, coming as close as he could to my skin and clothes without cutting me. Then he waited patiently as I sat up slowly and pulled the remaining tape still attached to my clothes off. The only part of my skin that was actually on the tape was my arms, but with a quick yank, this was over, too.
"Okay," I said, standing up and feeling ridiculously like the heroine of some low-budget Disney sequel to "Honey, I Shrunk The Kids", "where's Jerry and what's the deal, here?"
"Hold that pose," Alan said, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a rubber band. "If you stay that stiff, I can slingshot you across the room."
I had no interest in splattering against a far wall, so I did the next dumbest thing; I ran. Alan laughed as I came to the box edge and realized the magnitude of the drop I was facing. I was almost trapped.
Almost.
A safety conscious person might've been in a supreme bind. I, however, was a desperate person, so jumping from my box to the lower one was already in effect before I wondered about my chance of survival.
My chances were pretty slim even with my wings.
Wings???
I was flying upward long before I realized what was going on. Alan, who had wholly expected to look on the other side of the box and find me lying dead on the floor, leaned back in complete surprise. I flew past him, laughing my head off as I soared past him. "You fucked up big time, asshole!" I yelled back at him as he started after me. "The day you can outrun a sprite is the day I keel over and die!" I turned back around, searching for a high spot to use as a base until I figured out what to do now that I had the upper hand.
I've always liked the colorful ceiling hangings in our room until the moment I flew head first into one. It stopped me like a net, then pulled out from the ceiling and fell with me entangled in it. Me and the hanging fell right into Alan's hands.
"Start keeling," he said to me, then taking no chances, he closed the hanging around me like a bag. He carried me a few feet like this, then I heard him slicing something else. A box opened and Alan said, "You've got company." Suddenly, he let go of one end so that I fell straight down. I caught myself before I fell too far, but it was too late. The flaps of the box closed above me, sealing me inside the box.
"Alan, you son of a bitch, you let me out of this box or I'll...!!!" I paused, musing momentarily on the effectiveness of a 3-inch winged person with no weapon except her vicious tongue.
"Daina, is that you?" came a weak voice from below me. "I mean, really you?"
"Yeah..." I said, not sure whom I was speaking to. I floated down to the floor, then ventured to say, "Jerry? I mean, really Jerry?"
"Yes, Jerry," came his reply. "Really-in-pain Jerry."
It was dark, but I could hear him close to me. I moved around, hands out trying to reach for him. "Where are you?"
"On the floor, so don't..." he began, but I had already tripped over him. "...go any farther," he finished with a whimper.
"Oh, Jerry, I'm sorry, I didn't see you!" I said, crawling over to him.
"Then why'd you keep walking?" he whined.
"I couldn't find you...hey, is that tape on you, too?"
"Yeah, but don't try to take it off," he sighed. "I've grown rather fond of it; attached to it, if you will."
"Ha-ha," I replied, grabbing an end of it. "Hold still."
"No, don't, Daina, I'm tangled..."
Jerry's arms were bare, too, along with his face and neck and even his hair. I realized this after his bloodcurdling scream.
"Shut up in there!" Alan's voice echoed through the box, nearly deafening our mini-sized ears.
"Is that Alan?" Jerry whispered.
"Separate from you," I nodded, "and looking exactly like you, as usual."
"I thought I heard him and you talking, but I've kinda been in and out," Jerry said.
"You could sleep through this?" I asked.
"No, but being dropped from a height equivalent to that of the oil derrick at Six Flags..."
"Jerry!"
"...will do that to you," he finished wryly. "I think my everything is broken."
"I think you're lucky to be alive!" I gasped. I took his head and placed it in my lap, then began healing him before I really knew I was.
"Hey, I'm healing you!" I said excitedly, stopping my magic for a moment. "If I can heal you, then maybe I can get us out of here!"
"Been there. Done that," Jerry replied. "Any time I try to use any spells I know to escape, my head starts pounding unbearably and I collapse. No doubt this will happen to you, too."
I wasn't listening to him. Again, I was acting before thinking and having to suffer the consequences. "Why is it I can heal you and not get us out of here?" I grimaced, stopping my attempts to form a magic powerball. The pain went away slowly as Jerry sighed.
"Because healing is not escaping and this box has somehow been magicked to detect escape maneuvers," he said.
"Then let's not use magic!" I exclaimed. "It's only cardboard, right?"
"And we're only 3 inches tall," Jerry reminded me. "It's like solid brick to us; believe me, I've tried. I've also tried healing myself, but I've been in too much pain lately. Now, can you finish, please?"
"Oh, I'm sorry!" I replied. I'd completely forgotten his pain in my thoughts.
He was back to normal in no time, so he laid there while explaining what had happened to him to get him in the box. Then I explained my half of the story and he snorted at my running into the ceiling hanging.
"Admittedly, it was a slight error in judgement on my part," I said, looking down at Jerry.
He looked up at me and said, "A slight error in judgement? That's like saying The Chicago Fire was a slight error in fire safety! You fucked up big time, so admit it."
"The smell of cardboard is actually pretty stifling in here," I said, trying to change the subject. "We'll probably keel from that long before we get battered to death, anyway."
"Don't talk to me," Jerry replied darkly, giving me a "how could you talk about something that dumb at a time like this" look as he spoke.
"Jesus, Jerry, don't brat out on me now!" I exclaimed. "We gotta figure some way out of here before Alan decides..."
"I already have," came Alan's voice. "You two can die inside the box. You don't mind, do you?"
"Would it make any difference if we said 'yes'?" I asked.
"No," came the reply.
"Well, we wanna go on record as saying 'yes', anyway." Jerry replied.
"Duly noted by the court stenographer," said Alan sarcastically.
"I won," said
Alan to Naomi, strolling into the hallway where she stood waiting irritably.
"Bullshit!"
Naomi snapped. "You cheated! You had her taped down before she ever woke
up."
"That wasn't going
too far," Alan said calmly. "Besides, I let her go."
"Yeah, and you
nearly lost her."
"But I
didn't."
"Only
because she fucked up!"
"Your
point being?"
"You weren't in
control!"
"I was in as much
control as you were when you lost him in the boxes," Alan said. Naomi
opened her mouth to protest, then stopped.
Alan grinned down at
her.
She frowned heavily. The human did have a point. "Fine," she growled. "You win. What's the plan?"
"I say we kill them
both," said Alan brightly.
"Ex-squeeze
me?" Naomi gaped.