Having A Rotten Time; Wish You Were
Here
Part
2
Christine sighed and
flopped on her bed in Daina's subconscious with
boredom. Here she was, nearly two months away from being 8 years old and the
biggest thing she'd done since she was 7 was get a cold for a week. Naomi was
out flying in the forest avoiding trees (and Christine) and Joshua was playing
with Nina and Nicky at their house. No monsters, no magically evil sorcerers
trying to take over her sister's brain, nothing at all to prepare a pre-teen
future fairy empress for anything but a life of boredom. Something interesting
had to happen soon or she knew she was going to die.
A knock came at the door
and she jumped up. Maybe Naomi had changed her mind and decided to let her come
flying with her. "Who is it?" she asked, throwing the door open
before she found out.
A boy about 17 or 18
stood looking down at her with an odd smile. "Christine," he said,
shaking his head. "I should've known. Naomi is next door to you,
right?"
"Yeah," said
Chris, feeling oddly uncomfortable.
"I guess you'll
have to do, then," he said, with a sigh. "Although making her do this
would've definitely made my day complete..."
"Who are you?"
Christine asked frowning suspiciously.
"You remember me,
kid," he said to her, moving into her room and shutting her door behind
him. "I'm a friend of your sister Daina."
"If I knew you, I
wouldn't ask," Chris retorted, going around him irritably. "I'm gonna tell her you..."
"Just a
minute," he said, stopping her from leaving with a firm grasp. "You
can talk to her later, if I let you."
Now Christine was
beginning to panic. "What do you mean, if you let me? What did you do to
her! Where is she?"
"Safe, if you do
exactly what I tell you and keep quiet," said the man, twisting Chris' arm
so that it hurt.
Chris held back a wail
and glared angrily at the man. "I know you," she said, wrenching from
his grasp. "You're that ghost Alan that Daina
hates. A lot." Chris said that with such
emphasis that even she believed Daina just hated him,
as opposed to half-feared him.
"And you're my
bargaining chip, so be quiet and follow directions so she doesn't have to
suffer," he said, grabbing her by the shoulders. "You're going to
pretend to be a toy for somebody until I come get you again."
"A
toy?" Chris frowned.
"A toy," Alan
repeated. "You're part fairy, right? Get as small as you can." Chris
kept glaring at him and he snapped, "Now!" Christine jumped at his tone, then shrunk down to her fairy height of 2 and a half
inches. "Good," he said, looking around furtively, before picking her
up. "Uh-uh, no wings, Pink Ranger. I'm not explaining another added
feature to that stupid kid." Christine looked confused, but made her wings
invisible. "Better. Now, I'm only going to explain this once, so listen
and listen good..."
Daina,
You're not gonna
believe this, but Alan is gone! Yes, gone!!! I've been searching my head for
him for weeks and there's not a trace of him. Stevie
is still here and he says Alan just up and left to find the Pink Ranger's
friend or something. Either way, the boy is long gone.
Sorry so short, but I gotta get to work. C-YA!
Love,
Jerry
Yeah, rrrright, I thought, reading Jerry's letter with great and routine skepticism. The man had told me at least twice before that Alan was out of his life when all the trouser snake had really done was hide himself from Jerry's senses. For that matter, when I first met Alan, Jerry didn't know he was around. More than likely, he'd gone underground again to plan something nasty.
Of course, that left a reporter's flurry of basic problems. Who was he gonna bug, when was he gonna do it and where the hell was he now?
Not that I cared. I had
lots more to do than sit around worrying about Jerry's ghostly pain-in-the-ass,
like sleep. That sounds cold, I thought to myself as I settled back in
my papasan chair, but I have no morals, I
chuckled mentally, and I'd say it again!
Actually, my plan was to start work on another Daina-n-Jerry story, which meant I either sat up and thought about it or I went to sleep and let the thoughts come to me through my subconscious. I crossed over from reality to my subconscious and sat down in my desk chair to get busy. If I could access my ideas files on my computer, I could probably come up with a decent plot line for our next unwilling-but-able adventure.
I was just accessing my system with my password when a knock came at the door. Without looking up, I gave my new customary greeting.
"If you're Christine or Robin, come in; if you're Naomi, injure yourself first; if you're anybody else, this better be important."
The door burst open and Alan filled my doorway with the kind of evil you can only get from a vengeful, murderous, already dead gang member type of guy. "Oh, it's important, alright," he grinned, right before he rushed me. We both slammed into the far wall and I felt myself blacking out from the pain.
I needn't have bothered trying to pass out on my own, however. Alan was kind enough to bring his own sawed off stick to whack me with just for such an occasion...