The Onset of A Panic Situation
A
Fifth Daina-n-Jerry Story
One tends to learn a lot of things the hard way when one spends enough time in direct contact with one's subconscious. Number one on that list is this:
Story writing is not as easy as it reads.
There isn't a thing in the world that I can imagine happening that won't materialize somewhere in my subconscious. Luckily, I've learned how to make most of those things go from being a physical creation/nuisance to being technical data on my mental hard drive. That way, I don't wake up in my subconscious after a hard day's reality to find weird creatures and murder scenes running through my head.
This was not always the case for me.
It has yet to become the case with Jerry. He has an incredibly vivid imagination, too. In fact, his years of roleplaying games and the like have spurred this vivid imagination to great heights...and frightening depths.
This is a bad thing.
Jerry also has more than a hand in matters of the occult, which means even his reality can lead him and those around him in the potentially dangerous world of magic, white and black.
This is an even worse thing.
Jerry, like me, also has the ability to use his conscious and subconscious mind as one reality; one that affects him no matter where he is, whom he is with and how real that setting and its components are supposed to be.
This is where this story begins...
"Damn, I'm
bored," Jerry groaned, lying back in his recliner with the lost air that
the bored tend to have.
"I'm
tired and bored," Daina mumbled, eyes closed.
She was lying in a small ball on the sofa, something she tended to do a lot of
as of late.
"So what do you wanna do?" Jerry asked, turning the chair to face her.
"What I'm
doing," she responded, opening her eyes. "You?"
"I'm thinkin' of buggin' the hell outta you," Jerry grinned.
"Why you wanna go there, man?" she asked, sighing deeply.
"You know that's my job and I do that shit to you."
"Your
point being?" Jerry asked, arching an eyebrow.
"That I don't wanna be bothered!"
"Your point
being?" he echoed.
"That I'm too tired
to be bothered."
"Your
point..."
"My point being fuck off!" she said exasperatedly.
"Besides, you gave me your word that you weren't gonna
bother me for the rest of the month."
"That's right, I
did," Jerry agreed dejectedly. "Of course, I'm the one who gets to
decide what 'bothering' actually entails..." he added slyly.
Daina
groaned. "Whyncha go pick on somebody your own
size!"
"Nobody's that
all-encompassing," Jerry said proudly.
"I'm talking about
body size, not your ability to annoy others," she retorted. Before he
could style a comeback, she said, "Why don't you go do what I do when I'm
bored? Go clean out your subconscious."
"What?"
"Yeah, like get that file room in order. There's always something to do and
you might run across something you'd forgotten from way back. It's actually kinda cool."
"Yeah,
well..." Jerry shrugged noncommitantly.
Daina
grinned knowingly at him. "Not scared, are you?"
"Bitch,
please!" Jerry snapped.
"Alright,
then," she murmured,closing
her eyes again. "Go do it."
Jerry paused, almost
watching the challenge float through the air. "Fine," he said.
"Meet me there." She snorted as if to say, "yeah, rrrright" and he added, "Not scared, are
you?"
She paused, too, her
challenge successfully thrown back in her face. "Fine," she said.
"See you there."
Jerry's subconscious
mind was, like most creative minds, cluttered and endless. It was an enormous
file room stacked high and wide with every memory he'd ever made or had. The
cabinets and stacks of reference material were in no particular pattern, so
odd, winding corridors had formed that wound back on themselves
and some wound on interminably. In unexplored regions, the lighting grew worse
until finally the passage would end in impenatrable
Darkness.
"Daina?" he called out. "You
here?"
No answer.
"Chicken," he
said aloud, looking around him. Actually, Jerry thought, I think we're both
scared to death of what might be in here. Regular darkness was no problem, but
the Dark Recesses of his mind, of anyone's mind, were another thing entirely. Everytime he had gone into that Darkness, he'd been
attacked by something or someone. The first time, he'd met Stevie,
or rather, tripped over Stevie, who'd immediately
assailed him with wails the pitch of a teakettle whistle. The next time, he'd
found Alan and fought him for his life after Alan had leapt out of the dark
with a knife to kill him. Jerry'd been able to
assimilate both ghosts into his life without too much detriment to himself, but
he still had lasting scars from the experience: a knife gash on the arm from
Alan, a knick in the shin from falling over Stevie
onto a filing cabinet and a fear of the Dark that was making his heart pound
furiously even as he looked down the passage in front of him...
He wasn't really that
anxious to take on another surprise boarder just yet. And it does take a bigger
man to just walk away, he thought weakly.
The challenge was out,
however. Could he face his own inner sanctum of dreams, memories, even
nightmares?
"Yeaaaah!" he snorted confidentally,
strolling down the nearest passage. If he hurried, he could hide somewhere and
scare the hell out of Daina when she came over...