I thought it was too long to post, but abe complained, so here you go
***
Their eyes met in a desperate moment as the earth rocked around them.
She screamed his name and clutched at his wrists, trying desperately to hang on. Her arms and shoulders burned in agony, but she had to hold him, or…
“Just let go!” his voice was almost lost in the din of rocks grinding against one another, but she saw his lips move, his eyes lock with hers in hopelessness. Of course he would say that, the idiot; it was just like him. She dug her toes into the earth at the edge of the cliff where her body was stretched out, but still she was pulled and scraped towards the rim. His body dragged until it was hanging completely over the edge and her arms were the only things holding him up. These stupid weak things, why weren’t they stronger? If they couldn’t save someone she loved what use were they? She cried, sobbed, but it did no good; they both continued to tilt slowly down. She felt the edge give under her and with a gasp she looked at the valley so far below him; a river looking almost like a thread from this distance. She looked from the river into his eyes and knew what he would do. Growling, she dug her fingers into his arms to try to hold onto him, but it was too late.
“Goodbye.” He whispered, and fell.
She screamed, long and wordless, reaching out to where he had been as she watched him plummet into space.
“Nooooo!” She screamed and thrashed.
The world was white. Her breathe came in tiny, rapid gasps that seemed to be getting faster and more panicked.
“Sedate her!” A voice called from her left. She tried to sit up only to find that her torso was strapped down. Sobbing, she yanked at her arms and kicked out her legs, but they wouldn’t move. She looked through blurred eyes at a wrist to see that it was belted to her bed with more white straps. Was this a dream? Where had her world gone?
“Doug? Where’s Doug?” She asked the man next to her.
He put a hand on her forehead, “We’ve told you this before Meredith, there is no Doug.”
She gasped, heart stopping. She must have misheard, “What?”
He sighed, “These fantasies must stop if you ever want to return home. You have to be stronger than your mind’s tricks Meredith.”
“Who is Meredith? What are you— ”
“Look around, this is the real world.”
She craned her neck to look around the room. Whitewashed walls, white linoleum floor; the man next to her wore a white lab coat and had a tired look on his face. The entire place smelled acrid, clinical; sort of like a hospital, and the bed she was in wasn’t a bed, but a gurney, with the straps that restrained her built into it. The room, the people, it…
“You’re in a Neuropsychiatric Institution in Utah. We provide some of the best mental care—“
“What!?” she nearly screeched in panic. She tried again, trying to be calm, reasonable, “I’m in a mental hospital? Why am I—“
“All in due time,” the doctor said as he beckoned a physician’s technician forwards, “Let’s give you something to help you calm down a little, and then you’ll get your answers later. You appear to be displaying a good deal more conscious thought then you have previously, which is an excellent sign.”
“I don’t want a shot; I want to know—“ But the technician stuck the needle in her I.V.
“You will,” The doctor smiled reassuringly, “In time you’ll know everything.”
“You don’t know anything! You think that you know everything in the world but you have no idea what you’re talking about!”
“I don’t think I know everything.” She said quietly
“Just like that; you know you’re such a brat sometimes, I can’t deal with it. You always have to have your way. Well guess what? The real world doesn’t work that way. Do you treat your teachers this way? Do you treat your friends this way? You’re such an arrogant snot to your parents, but other people aren’t going to take this shit from you.”
She stared at the spot slightly over his shoulder and to the left of his blotched, angry face, and tried not to think about the words that he said. The words that slashed across her skin and burned into her heart; always always bringing the hated tears to her eyes. Ever since she was little she cried easily, with the onset of any intense emotion. But she knew it only brought the anger down harsher, “Stop crying.” He would shout over her sobs, only to make them louder. When she was little she would curl up into a little wailing ball, only to be yanked up by a skinny arm and dragged over to a chair for another lecture. Now she let the tears roll down her cheeks as she stared at ‘the spot’ with a blank expression. If she moved, if she breathed, if she spoke, he might take something else away from her; something else she loved. That little crying child had once loved this angry man, but then she grew up. And as her heart was broken again and again, she thought that maybe the world was wrong. The world always told you that you had to love your parents, like it was a part of nature. If you hated them there was something wrong with you, something innately evil. Everyone said that they hated their parents, but then they laughed and said that deep down they there was love. What if deep down, there was just…more hate? Every law in the modern world screamed out against it, but it wasn’t what her heart told her. What her heart told her; what she needed to say was—
“I hate you.”
The shouting man’s voice stopped in his throat and he stared at her, “What?”
“I hate you. Are you listening now? I despise you; you make me sick.”
She felt free, she felt light, it was like she had been bottling the words for months, years even and to let them out was like letting her soul out of an iron cage
“I HATE YOU!!!!” She screamed at him
“I HATE YOU!!!”
“Meredith, we’re only doing this for your own good.”
She blinked away the fog of the drugs that hazed her system and tried to sit up only to be yanked back down by the restraints. “Wha—wha—“
“Try to remember Meredith,” A soothing voice told her, “Where are you?”
“The—the hospital?”
“Yes, excellent. You’re doing much better. Now there’s someone here to see you Meredith,” the doctor waved a man and a woman forward that had been waiting by the doorway, “This is the first time in a long time you’ve been awake enough to talk to them.”
Her eyes widened in shock as they rested on the couple next to her bed, “Mom? Dad?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
“Yes Meredith, we’re here.” Her father said in his own shaky tones. Her mother just stood there weakly, crying.
Meredith focused shaky eyes on them, “I have something I have to tell you.”
“What is it?”
“Dad, I—I—“ tears started pouring down her cheeks and her voice was hitching in her throat. Not now for Christ’s sake! Not when she only had a precious moment to tell these people something that mattered so much to her.
“Dad—“
“It’s okay Meredith, I know that you love me. You don’t have to say it.” He put a hand on her forehead, “Don’t overexert yourself. I know what you want to say.”
She screamed her fury and thrashed against her bonds. No, no, no! He didn’t understand, he didn’t understand anything! He saw his little girl, the one who curled up against it all, too helpless to do anything but love those who the world told her to. He couldn’t, wouldn’t see his real daughter, the broken girl who was now strapped to a hospital bed; raging with hate in her eyes and fire in her heart.
“Prepare the injections!” The doctors shouted. “Hold her down!”
The iron door slammed shut.
And she was floating, floating away from that terrible place.
And into another.
She scoured at the flagstones at the foot of the staircase and thought about nothing in particular. It was better to think about nothing. If she started to think then she would remember that she was wearing a filthy dress and a filthy apron and her filthy hair was held up by a filthy rag. Oh, and that her castle had been stolen from her by an evil sorceress, but really, when one had such a long list of grievances against the world, things like that seemed miniscule. She picked up her bucket and went through the kitchens out into the gardens, at least there she could sit on the giant pumpkins and no one would bother her.
“Cinderella.”
Or not.
It was Jasmine, the Sorceress’ stepdaughter. She leaned on a pumpkin nearby, looking like a porcelain doll in her green dress. ‘Cinderella’? Is that me?’ the scullery maid thought. Wait, wasn’t there a story about a—
“There’s a ball tonight, are you going to come?” Jasmine asked, turning a piercing stare on her.
She looked at the girl in confusion.
“It’s at the prince’s castle.” Jasmine supplied. Oh, a prince. There was always a prince.
“I guess…” She said carefully. However she had the distinct feeling that something would go wrong, horribly wrong if she tried to go.
“But I don’t have a dress, or any way to get there.”
“That’s okay, you can borrow one of mine.”
‘Cinderella’ leaned her face on a hand, “I don’t know… I have this bad feeling—“
“Fine!” ‘Cinderella heard the sound of a small explosion next to her and turned to see Jasmine, but now she had fairy wings and a wand.
“Buh-buh-buh—“
Jasmine twirled on a pumpkin, dust glittering down from her wings, “I am your fairy Godmother.”
‘Cinderella’ just stared.
Jasmine-the-Godmother stopped twirling and looked at ‘Cinderella’s wardrobe critically, “No, you can’t go to the ball like that.”
“But I’m not going to the—“
But Jasmine was already waving her wand. ‘Cinderella’ was engulfed in a cloud of electric lights and when they dissipated her rags were gone and she was wearing a cherry red ruffled dress whose skirt barely hit mid-thigh.
“Isn’t this a little…”
“It’s perfect! Let’s go.”
They both walked back to the castle, Jasmine carrying a small pumpkin.
Inside they met with the sorceress, her red robes and long black hair flying out behind her as she strode out to meet them.
“You want to go to the ball?” she sneered, “With a face like that? What prince would want you, you monster?”
She pulled a scratchy, woven bag from nowhere and cut two small holes in it.
“You think that you can impress a prince Dearie?” she jammed the bag on ‘Cinderellas’ head, drawing the strings around her neck painfully tight, “Let’s see you seduce him with that on your head. A monster like you shouldn’t be seen.”
The laughter got louder and louder as the strings pulled tighter. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe, SHE COULDN’T BREATHE!!!!
“Clear!”
Her body arched as an electrical current tore through it.
The doctors swarmed around her bed, all talking to each other in clipped voices. The screaming, the screaming.
“I can’t get a pulse.”
“Is she breathing?”
“I can’t—“
She whined deep in her throat, eyes rolling back to the whites. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t see, she could only hear the panicked voices of the people around her. Was she going to die? Why couldn’t she die in a place that she loved, in one of those amazing ‘fantasies’ as the doctor called them. Not in this hell, no, please, no…”
“Again!”
“Clear!”
Her body rocked violently again and as her head slammed back onto the mattress she fell; down, down, down into a river of ink.
She dipped her paddle into the river to pull her canoe along the giant pipeline. Where was she? She had no idea. Underground somewhere, judging by the circular waterway and the hollow plinking of water. The sounds of traffic couldn’t be heard, but she figured that she must be under a city somewhere. She tucked her cornflower-blue dress under her thighs so that she could sit more comfortably then dug her paddle into the slow current once more.
“Hallo over there!” a voice called further ahead, “where are you headed?”
It was a young man in a raft made of logs lashed together with twine. He poled it along skillfully with a long stick. He wore loose, comfortable-looking clothes and a straw hat on his shaggy blonde head. He grinned at her and she grinned back.
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, if you have nowhere in particular to go, why don’t you go to the MainStream?” He said cheerfully, “That’s where all of the dreamers go.”
“The dreamers?”
“Yep, you’ll find some interesting people there, if that’s what you want.”
She looked down the tunnel, “How do I get there?”
He laughed, “Just follow the current, all of the waterways lead to the MainStream.”
She waved to him, “Thanks!”
“No problem.” He replied as he poled down a connecting pipe
Almost as soon as she set her mind on her destination, she was there; her boat drifting amid throngs of others in what must have been the MainStream. The passengers shouted and talked to one another as their crafts tried to find their way through the chaos. She thought her eyes would burst from seeing so much, so she gently nudged her boat over to a side bank and tied it ashore. She hopped out and found herself in the middle of a street market. Merchants bartered, traded, and talked while a general mass of people roiled through it all. She walked through it with her mouth hanging open; spices, magnificent rugs, street performers, exotic fruit, woodwork and metalwork. And the people; they were of every different shape and color and their clothes ranged from the normal to the exotic to the downright strange. She saw someone wearing swirling robes and jewels and another wearing what she swore was a tweed suit. Of course people might have thought her simple blue sundress and bare feet that repelled the dust from the street strange as well. She felt a tug on her dress and turned around to look into the smiling, chocolate-brown eyes of a boy exactly her height. He had dark brown hair that hung into his eyes and he wore nothing but a pants and a vest. She snorted; next thing you know and he’d have a pet monkey named Abu and ask her if she wanted to fly on his magic carpet.
“Are you bored?” he asked, a glint in his eyes
She grinned, “Yes.”
“Do you want to have fun with us?”
She shrugged, “Sure.”
He whistled and three other boys appeared from the crowd, one eating oranges. They tossed her one.
“Do you want to see the place?”
“What place?”
They tittered and laughed, “She doesn’t know the place.”
“Really?”
“She must be new…”
“Tell me about it, I want to see it!”
They looked at each other and nodded, “Well, you take your boat and you go down the river.”
“For a long way.”
“loooooong.”
They all nodded in agreement, and she looked at them, grumbling, “And then?”
“And then you’ll know.”
“You’ll see the way to the place and you’ll know.”
Before she knew it she was back in her boat and paddling along the MainStream once more; the boys disappearing into the crowd. So she was supposed to find the place? All right, she would find it. She dipped her paddle into the blue waters again and pulled herself along. The current sped up and the amount of people in the tunnel decreased as she went down it. She went around turns and corners until she reached a long crossroad. It seemed to stretch on forever, with different tunnels leading off in various directions, all connected to the main corridor. Almost as many boats as were in the MainStream paddled in the waters here, whizzing in and out of the entrances. She slowed her canoe and looked at the slimy, dripping, brick ceiling to see hundreds of signs, marking the entrances to the side tunnels. She gaped in astonishment at some of them. A few were regular, boring iron pieces swinging from hooks in the ceiling with names like “Cerella” or “West Point” painted on them. But a few of the signs were wreathed in flowers and held to the ceiling by vines, or simply words spelled out with lightning bugs. One sign looked like an old bar sign, glowing neon green and pink in the semi-darkness. She looked around; when had it gotten so dark? Some of the boats were lighting lanterns and hanging them on the fronts of their crafts. Children sent out tiny glowing lanterns floating into the water. Glittering insects floated through the air. She laughed as they flew around her, landing on her boat. She paddled farther down the stream as the insects left her. Waving goodbye, she noticed that there weren’t any other people around. She looked downstream, where was she? She looked at the signs above her head and didn’t recognize any of them. Looking further ahead she saw a sign that was different from the rest, not on the ceiling but mounted on a pole to the side of the passageway it marked. She paddled her canoe up to the sign and saw that it was made of clear glass, and actually a hollow box mounted on a pole with a small stuffed toy inside. She pulled her canoe up parallel to the sign and stood, clutching it to hold herself steady. The doll was a little panda bear, sitting in the corner of the box. She felt sorry for it and wished she could get it out. The panda tilted its head to look up at her and she almost fell over into the water. It waved a paw towards the passageway next to its sign and she looked at it, confused. It gestured again.
“I should go there?” she asked, pointing. It nodded.
“Is that the secret place?” But it was just a stuffed toy again, sitting in the lonely, dusty corner of its sign.
She smiled and patted the box gently, “Thanks.” Then she slid back into the canoe and paddled down the black tunnel.
“I think it’s time that we consider our options.” The doctor said in his cold (but not too cold), clinical voice. The parents clutched each others' hands and prepared to hear him out.
“What are our options, Dr Edwards?”
He sighed; he hated giving this talk. “Your daughter flat lined three months ago, and she’s not getting any better, in fact she’s getting worse. I know we’ve all hoped for the best but I think that we have to be realistic in these circumstances. Meredith has been with us for… seven years?”
“That’s about right.” The father sighed
“She’ll be what? Eighteen this fall?”
“Yes—“
“Nineteen,” The mother said in a small but strong voice, “She’ll be nineteen.”
“Oh, of course; I’m sorry.” The father stumbled.
“Well.” The physician paused, “I can only imagine what a financial burden that’s been on you, what with you putting your son through college at the same time. With her recovery unlikely, this is the time to think of…Other options.”
They all sighed as the words hung in the air with a mixture of horror and relief. To put this institution behind them, move on with their lives, it seemed like an impossible dream; unattainable. But that was their child in there wasn’t it? They were supposed to keep it and protect it and…love it. No matter what. But somehow ‘no matter what’ had become ‘as much as they were able’. Which turned out to be…not enough it seemed? But at least they’d succeeded with one, they told themselves. They had a fine smart boy in college, ready to do great things with his life. If someone asked them about their daughter they could tell them that she had died. That was all anyone needed to know. Maybe someday it would be like there had never been a daughter, the slate wiped clean. That was what the parents hoped for in the dark corners of their hearts as they considered the doctor’s offer.
“We’ll need some time to think.”
“Of course, take all of the time that you need.”
“You’ll tell us if anything changes?”
“Yes of course.”
And so they left, each of them thinking, ‘I’m a monster. But is it so bad to do something that I want for a change?’
She sighed, leaning on the counter in front of her and tapping it slowly in a lazy drum beat. It sure was a slow day, not even one customer. Bob had taken off for the afternoon, the lazy bastard, leaving her to mind the beasts. She sighed and stretched luxuriously; not that she minded of course, God, but she loved this job. She tugged at the company apron that protected her jeans and t-shirt from…stray debris, and left the counter to watch itself. There was a bell if someone needed her, in the meantime she would do the rounds, checking to make sure everything was still running smothly. First: the labs. She flicked on bright halogen lights and got answering rustles from the small cages that lined the shelves next to the computers. She walked among them, checking to see that they were closed and knowing better than to stick any fingers in. She was miraculously unscarred for her profession and she planned to keep herself that way for as long as possible. Then she climbed the rickety iron stairs to stand on the small suspension bridge that hung over a murky green swimming pool in the back of the room. She stuck her hand in a bucket that she’d left there earlier to pull out a wiggling fish.
“Jaaabaaaa!” she called. The surface of the slimy water started to gurgle and roil. She tossed the fish in, watching as Bob’s resident pet, Jabba the Hutt rose from the water like some small island. He was a muddy green, almost indistinguishable from the water and algae around him. His squat face looked almost frog-like it was so wide, but his body was long and huge in proportion so when he was on land he looked like what he was, a gigantic, prehistoric alligator. When the company had found out that Bob had manufactured Jabba’s egg in his home basement they had made the scientist bring the newly hatched dinosaur to the labs. Bob ranted continually about the unfairness of it all, but she loved having the resident titan.
She flipped him another fish then left, calling “Bye cutie!” over her shoulder. Jabba was dangerous as hell, but there were far worse things in here, and compared to them he was a big sleepy teddy bear. With big teddy bear teeth.
After locking up the lab she went to the separate building that housed the museum. Seeing the plastic dinosaurs that roared in mock ferocity at the entrance, she rolled her eyes; tourists. She did a quick visual check on the skeletons and visual exhibits; all there, good. As were the gems and ancient rarities. Now the fun part. She went whistling through the cages, checking food, animals, and people. It was usually the people you had to watch out for. Once she’d found an old man trying to sneak a goat in, saying he wanted to ‘ease their suffering’. She leaned against the high wall that surrounded the raptor’s cage, absently counting them. One, two, three, four…And the worst were the ones who thought they could commune with them, that these weren’t dangerous giant lizards…five, six, seven…that the intelligence in their eyes wasn’t killing instinct it was…Wait. Seven? She thought back. Weren’t there supposed to be--?
A scream interrupted her thoughts. Damn it! She thought as she pulled open a hidden compartment in the wall and lifted out a semi-automatic rifle, It’s always, always, the fucking raptors! She slammed a clip in angrily as she ran towards the screaming. Why couldn’t Jabba break out of his cage? He’d just roll around like a big cow, scare the public a little. But noooo. She continued to mentally rant and rave as she ran, but when she reached the end of the hallway, she quieted her mind and crouched. If she was stupid, she would die, plain and simple. She looked around with her weapon and saw that the main entrance hall, the one filled with pretty dead bones, was deserted. Smart people if they ran, dumb people if they ran toward the things trying to kill them. Of course she was running toward them, so what did that say about her? Hmmm… She started to run again, trying to look everywhere at once. These things could jump like nothing else and she didn’t want one landing on her from the second story. The panicked screams had come from the little theatre, the one that showed nice quiet dino movies to the kiddies. She only hoped that she got there before they started killing.
She ran into the open door and took in the scene with a glance. It was only two of them; Jiva and Benedict, but two was plenty. Jiva was tearing into the throat of a bald, middle-aged man that she had pinned to the floor; her vicious claws sunk into the mans ample belly. His glasses (she assumed they were his) lay broken and spotted with blood only a few feet away. Benedict stalked a sobbing woman and was slowly backing her into a corner. His shining teeth were displayed in all their carnivorous glory.
PWEEEEEET!!!! She whistled, so loudly that it bounced off of the walls. Jiva barely glanced up from her meal, already bloody and close at hand but Benedict, the flightier of the two, glanced at her in surprise.
“BENI,BENI,BENI,BENI,BENI!!!!” She called as she sighted down the rifle at him, “LOOK AT ME YOU SON OF A BITCH!” She shot him with three of the knock out darts that the rifle was loaded with. He swayed dangerously and then tilted to the ground, unconscious. The things were fast acting, they had to be. “Thank you love.” She cooed to him, then she turned to his mate, “You have been a bad, bad, girl Shiva. What have I told you? WE DO NOT EAT PEOPLE!!!” The Raptor lifted her bloody muzzle from her prey and looked at the girl in front of her with cold reptilian eyes. She stared at the dinosaur with an equally frosty gaze, sighting down the gun at her. But just as she pulled the trigger, the darkness opened in a pool at her feet, and closed over her eyes.
“No!” she screamed into it as it closed over her head, “Take me back, take me back! I have to—“
“We’ve decided.”
“I see.”
“It’s what’s best for Meredith, best for all of us.”
“Of course.”
They were the right words, the perfect words. Set down time and time again by everyone before who had ever ‘lost’ someone. And after she was gone, kind strangers would tell them how sorry they were for their terrible 'loss'. But really, as her heart and lungs were unplugged from the machines that kept them beating and pumping, it was she who lost a life and they who gained theirs back.
She hummed a random tune as she arranged chocolate chip cookie dough on a pan. Bright sunlight filtered in the kitchen windows along with birdsong and summer air. She breathed deep as she checked the temperature on the oven; one of the best things about summer was the smell. She slid the tray into the heat to bake and went over to lean her palms on the counter, staring out into the street. Arms encircled her from behind and she leaned against his chest, smiling. She felt safe, she felt loved, she felt happy. What more could she ask for?
