The Onset of A Panic Situation
Part
5
No big deal, I
thought, twisting my hands nervously as I began to walk through Jerry's
subconscious. I am not afraid. Jerry's here and he's
got a perfectly good explantion for all this. He's
probably just hanging around somewhere...
I was immediately aware of the incredible silence I was experiencing. Usually noises were present in Jerry's head, just like mine. The sounds of little children playing magic games or Naomi cursing her luck over something were common enough in my head. Here I expected to hear at least Stevie making Power Rangers battle sounds or Alan yelling at him to "knock off that fuckin' noise"...
But then I remembered Alan and Stevie were gone and the memory of them both, even Alan, stung my eyes hard. His death had been so horrifying that I doubted Stevie's had been any more pleasant. I had no idea if we could ever get either of them back. For that matter, I thought, I had no idea where to even start trying. I was already coming upon a dead end in this corridor as it was.
"O-kayyyyy," I said aloud, looking about me. "Ollie ollie oxen free. Everybody out of the pool."
I really wished immediately thereafter that I had simply kept my mouth shut.
A big hairy paw grabbed me in a crushing grip around my waist from behind me. I actually screamed, I was so surprised, but had enough presence of mind to recognize a werewolf's arm when I saw one.
It grabbed me up and did the All Slamma Jama with my body in a move reminiscent of my first werewolf encounter; first the wall...then the floor...then the nearest cabinet...and then he threw me over the top of the cabinets behind us so that I landed in another corridor entirely.
"Oww, mannnn..." I groaned to myself, the pain from body slamming into the floor clouding my very senses until I suddenly realized I didn't need to be suffering this way. I actually had the power to defend myself!
"Son of a bitch," I said to myself, jumping up and switching on my laser sword. A yard of solid blue laser light shot out and I immediately felt better. I slashed through the cabinet I had just flown over and pushed the mangled pieces aside just in time to see another cabinet hurtling at me. I slashed at it as it came toward me and the two separate pieces flew past my body as if I'd cut a sheet of paper.
I grinned at the werewolf eagerly, bloodletting definitely on my mind, and realized that he had become three. And those three, as I looked behind me, had become three more.
I quickly thought over my biggest option; fighting like I'd never fought before. Killing the one or two I might get on my first pass was not going to help much, however. In fact, it was liable to excite the other four or five into a feeding frenzy.
The grin disappeared immediately.
However, there was always Option Two.
I ran like hell for a full 60 seconds, the wolves in a dead heat on my tail. I swiped blindly behind me at them with the sword and the ones I did kill slowed down the ones behind them. That gave me enough time to detour down another corridor and continue until I reached another dead end.
"Oh, damn!" I said, smacking my palms flat against the wall and leaning against it in despair. Suddenly, I looked up, struck with an idea.
The walls were thick, I knew.
They were not permanent.
I cut through with the laser sword quickly, then jumped through the hole and shoved over a nearby cabinet in front it. "Ha!!!" I laughed, strutting proudly. "Bring y'asses on now!!!"
Again, if I could have just shut up, I probably wouldn't have turned and walked into the large ogre waiting for me.
I was really not liking Jerry's subconscious mind at all.
Jerry was getting bored.
He'd already found two of the five obstacles and he hadn't even gone that far.
The computer graphics were really awful, too. All he
could see was a maze pattern with a star marking the beginning, another for the
end and the small square dot that was supposed to represent him. It was like
watching an old Atari game.
The game obviously had
some glitches, too. After finding the first obstacles (big red squares compared
to his little blue one), his square had flashed suddenly, then appeared in the
corridor next to the one it had been in. It had come back again through a hole
that seemed to appear out of nowhere, but by then, there were six red squares
instead of one.
"What are
those?" Jerry had asked.
"Werewolves,"
Julie had replied.
"So how do I know
if I kill them?"
"You've got a sword
you're using; if they die, they'll disappear," she explained.
Nothing had disappeared
except his own blue square, which had begun to move quickly back up the
corridor. The red squares immediately gave chase and began to close on him.
"Aww, man..." Jerry grumbled, working the joystick back
toward the wolves. Some disappeared at that and the ones left began to slow
down their pursuit, but his square continued to run until Jerry finally
wrenched the controls to force it down another corridor. It kept going until it
dead ended again, but once again, the square glitched
into the corridor on the other side of the wall through a hole.
"What are there,
secret doors or something?" he asked. Julie had shrugged, even looked
slightly angry for a moment, until the next red square appeared in front of
him.
"These graphics
suck," Jerry said. "I can't even tell if I'm fighting. Couldn't you
get a better system?"
"What kind?"
she asked.
"I dunno...Nintendo or something," he shrugged.
The controller in his
hand changed and the screen showed him a big monkey attacking Princess
Toadstool. She was wielding a sword with a sort of mechanical movement that
made Jerry laugh. "Okay, Super Nintendo," he suggested.
Now the Princess became
darker, almost brown-skinned. Her clothes became more up to date and her
movements more finite. The monkey was now a large monster with an ape's face
and was holding her over its head as she tried to swing at it. Jerry could see
an actual background now and even had a fight button to push. This he pushed
with incredible urgency until the Princess sliced through the monster. Another
crashed through the cabinets behind her and a computer generated squeak came
from the Princess. But Jerry was too surprised to play for a moment. Cabinets?, he thought to himself. Oh, no...
"Sega
Genesis," Jerry said, staring intently at the screen.
The Princess became a
girl, definitely black and her sword became a laser beam of light. The monster
became an ogre and as he threw her into the wall nearest them, the sound from
the girl's mouth became a full fledged scream. Jerry watched in horror as the
ogre grabbed her up and began to choke her against a cabinet.
It was as if someone had
taken a picture of the inside of his subconscious and given it a video game
overlay.
"Shit!" he
gasped, suddenly realizing that all along, he'd been using Daina
as a video game. In fact, if he didn't help now, he thought, regaining his
senses and playing the game again, she was going to continue to sit there and
let herself get choked to death. "Come on, Dain, fight back, do
something!" he pleaded, jamming the buttons on his controller desperately.
She finally kicked the
ogre solidly in the stomach, then as he let her go, she roundkicked
him in the head, then sliced neatly through him with a yell of victory. Jerry
looked down at the controller in his hands in shock. "Cool!" he
gasped. On screen, Daina looked impressed with
herself as well.
"Cool!" she
said, at almost the same time as Jerry himself.
He whirled on Julie with
a vengeance. "You told me...!"
"And you haven't
gotten hurt at all," she reminded him. "You never asked me about
her."
"Get her out of
there!" he demanded.
"It's too late;
she's already in. She's determined to find you and save you from me," Julie
replied with a sarcastic smirk.
"Then I'm not
playing," he said, shoving the controls away. On the screen, Daina sat down stubbornly, as if deciding she wasn't moving
either. "No wonder you wanted me to win!"
"Okay," Julie
shrugged reaching for the controller. "I'll play. I bet I find more
obstacles than you would, anyway."
"No!!!"
he said, snatching the controller away from her. "I'll play."
He looked at Daina, who was staring uncertainly
around her now. "I just won't win," he added softly.
"That'll work,
too," Julie agreed. "Then I win."
"Bitch...!"
Jerry snapped, realizing she was right.
"You agreed,"
she reminded him.
Jerry sighed. The
important thing was to get Daina out of the maze so
they could take Julie on together. "The end of the maze; where is it?
Like, where will she end up?" he asked.
"She'll be here
with you," Julie said.
"Then that's the
plan," Jerry said, making Daina walk forward.
"Of course, with
this game, you don't get to see the whole maze," Julie reminded him.
Jerry groaned and
stopped again. The only way to lead Daina through
safely was to play the old Atari version, but then he couldn't see what she was
up against. I gotta risk it, he thought to himself.
Or she might die right in front of me. He touched her face on the screen for a
moment, then closed his eyes in quick and silent
prayer.
"Atari," Jerry
said, opening his eyes again. The maze and the blue dot appeared again and he
began to play...