Make Willing the Prey (Dreams by Streetlight) (13 page)

“What are you doing?” she asked
sleepily.

Sandy stuck out her head.  Dust
covered her face and a tattered bit of cloth clung to her shirt.  “Fighting for
our team.  Looking for a way out.”  A pair of socks and a fishing pole
skittered across the floor.

Jina shrugged, slid off the
chair, and curled up on the ground.  Lewis opened his eyes to slits when a
basketball landed on his chest.  He tossed it away and groggily stood.  The
ball bounced off the floor and hit Jina. 

About that time, Jina gave up on
sleep.  But futile searches held no interest for her. 

“What’s the point Sandy?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I tried your reality bending
trick.  It didn’t work.  He won again.”

Sandy stepped out of the closet
and walked over to Jina.

“What the fuck are you talking
about?  He’s a child with a temper problem.  Easy to control.”

“No, I did everything you said,
believed none of it was real, but he still won.”

Sandy glanced at the table.  “What’s
this?”  She held up the remains of the joint.

“Uhh..”

“No drugs.”  She tossed the roach
away.  “How can you have any willpower if you’re not sober, Jina?  Don’t you
value your life?”  She looked over at Lewis.  “Same goes for you.”

Sandy looked back at the desk and
paused briefly when she saw the pillars of ash in the place of candles.  Gently
she touched one.  It collapsed with a puff into a powdery mound.  Then the rest
fell, one right after another, like a well-coordinated demolitions team had
been assigned to four buildings.

Shrugging, she regained her fury,
and yanked open the first drawer.  It held nothing but blank parchment paper
and jars of crusty dried ink.

Jina slipped past her and picked
up a piece of paper from the table.  Sandy ignored her and riffled through
brittle papers in the second drawer, tossing old letters with three-cent
stamps, brown-and-white postcards, and scrawled ledger pages to the floor.

When she reached the third
drawer, Sandy shouted a triumphant, “Ah-ha!”  In the dim light, she held up a
faded blue roll of paper.  Pushing aside the ash, she spread the sheet on the
desktop and examined the sketchy markings.

Jina leaned over one shoulder
while Lewis scanned over the other.

“What is it?” Jina asked.

Sandy ignored them and continued
to concentrate.

“They look like blueprints,”
Lewis muttered.

“You don’t think S.A.’s just
gonna let us walk out, do you Sand?”

Sandy turned her head, looked at
the door they had entered by, muttered something under her breath, and returned
to the map.

Jina shrugged.

“Look!” Sandy exclaimed.  “Here
we are!”  She jabbed her finger near set of dusty white lines.  Hastily, she
rolled up the floor plan and charged toward the next door leaving Lewis
scrambling to get the candle and Jina rushing to gather her things.

Sandy stepped into blackness. 

She stopped for a few moments to
let her eyes adjust.

A tiny yellow-green light blinked
into existence before her.  It hovered in the air, wavering around in tipsy
circles.  Another soon appeared beside it.  Then three more at once. 

Fireflies.

“Pretty,” Jina sighed.

“Not pretty.”

One landed on her hand.  She
flicked it to the floor and stepped on it.  It left a smear on the wood that
shone like glow-in-the-dark paint. 

The room suddenly filled with
glowing insects.  One exploded in midair, and she watched the phosphorescent
drops fall in slow motion. 

Another burst further from her. 
Before the body hit the ground, it was flung against the wall.  An invisible
hand traced out a one-foot ‘B’. 

“Don’t pay attention, you two. 
Come on.”  Sandy tromped towards the next door.  She glanced back to see if
they were following, but they stood transfixed as more fireflies were
sacrificed to create a luminescent graffiti.  The door slammed behind her.

“Uh-oh,” Lewis softly muttered,
staring at the wall.

“Lewis, Jina,
come on
!”

At that moment, the fireflies and
the candle simultaneously blinked out.  The glowing graffiti was the only thing
she could see, and she could no longer ignore that it spelled out a word... “Bad.”

Sandy found it hard to breathe. 
A familiar force pushed her back.  The room lit for a second.  The three found
themselves pinned against the same wall, unable to move.

The lights were off again, and “Bad
Girl” pulsed on the wall, pounding into Sandy’s head.  She struggled to think,
to concentrate.

Flash.  When the lights came
back, the blank wall appeared as though nothing had ever been written there. 
Darkness returned completely, the writing had vanished. 

Proof it wasn’t...

Flash.  The lights had come back
on sooner this time, and the wall they were forced to watch was covered with
millions of twisting centipedes, all competing for space.  Those who lost, fell
writhing to the ground.

The lights remained on for only a
second.

...real.

Flash.  The centipedes were
gone.  A chalk drawing of roses reminded Sandy of the one she had drawn eons
before on the brick side of a bar.

Illusion.

Flash.  Rats covered the floor,
their pointy noses sniffing the air out of sync.  Lewis’s scream was silenced
during the following moment of darkness.

By now light was throbbing onto
the room.  The pulsating matched that of Sandy’s heartbeats.  It distracted
her.

Flash.  The room was upside
down.  The light fixture hung from the floor.  The radiator clung to the
ceiling.

Not..

Flash.  The wall crawled again,
this time with flies.

...rational.

Flash.  Buzzing filled Sandy’s
ears.  The flies were everywhere, as if a carcass rotted in the center of the
room.  Several tickled Sandy’s face, and she just had time to think about
blinking before they were lost into the darkness.

Focus.

Flash.  Fuzzy, long legged, black
and orange striped tarantulas clung to the wall.  Sandy’s scream carried
through the next flash.

Flash.  The wall stood
refreshingly clear, the room comfortingly empty.  Jina struggled.

A bright light immersed the room
with strobe-light pounding.

Get ahold...

Flash.  A hole in the wall
revealed the room behind.  Naked wooden slats barely held crumbling bits of
plaster.  Jina managed to free a hand from the invisible bonds that held her.

...of yourself.

Flash.  The wall bled.  Jina
grasped Lewis’s hand and whimpered. 

What is that all about?
Sandy
thought in the second she had.

Flash.  Buzzing again.  The room
swarmed with thousands of yellow-bodied flying insects.  Jina yipped, and Sandy
had just enough time to see the three wasps planting stingers into the face of
her friend.

During the darkness, the words “Bad
Girl” glowed at them again.

Flash.  A knife pinned Sandy’s
floor plan to the wall.

He has...

Flash.  Flame engulfed the blue
paper.

No power...

Flash.  The flames continued.

Why is it so...

Flash.  A lone scrap of ash
floated to the floor.

...much harder now?

Flash.  Thousands of spider webs
of all kinds decorated the walls, floor, and ceiling.  Some were beautiful,
ornate, while others were those of a common house spider, plain, dusty layers
of silk.  Sandy gasped, her lungs tightened with panic.

Flash.  S.A. stood against the
wall.  His face held a calm, a knowing.  For him, everything was under
control.  His keen eyes slowly scanned each of them in that instant before…

Flash.  Sandy saw the room from a
strange perspective.  Jina and Lewis were pinned against the opposite wall, her
place empty.  Her feet weren’t touching the floor, and she felt an odd, erotic
thrill.

Flash.  She stood next to Jina
again.  Red roses hid the wall. 

Flash.  Fear.

Flash.  Anxiety.

Flash.  Paranoia.

Fuck...

Flash.  Paralysis.

You...

Flash.  The knife that had
earlier held the floor plan now held nothing, its tip firmly embedded in the
peeling wallpaper.  It moved, digging a gash, scraping along the wall.  A
hollow sound echoed through the room.

Three flashes.  The knife reached
the corner.  The pulse slowed. 

Flash.  It turned at the corner
and proceeded along the wall next to her.

Flash.  Blood began to drip from
the gash, staining the dirty white with a red that matched the decorative
wooden handle of the knife.

Flash.  It grew closer.  The
flashes grew longer.  Sandy struggled.  The invisible grip on her grew firmer,
almost to pain. 

Flash.  As she struggled harder,
her muscles ceased to cooperate.  She stood unable to move at all.

Flash.  The blood fell slowly to
the floor.  An eternity passed in one long, slow beat, and the knife met the
next corner.

Flash.  Sandy could see the blade’s
edge now, as it cut towards her.  Her back vibrated slightly as the wall was
marred.

Flash.  Two feet away.

Flash.  A foot.

In the darkness between the
flashes, she felt cold steel press against her upper arm. 

Flash.  Her skin tingled at the
sharp edge of the blade.  The knife stopped, quivering.

Flash.  The blade sunk a little
further into the wall, and shook, as though it were fighting against itself. 
Then, trembling, it lifted.  Lightly tracing over her arm, it quivered, as if
it wanted to press harder, to draw blood.

It passed over her breasts and to
her other arm.  The shaking increased, and the knife fell from her arm into the
wall with an angry force.  It dug twice as deeply towards Jina.

Flash.  Breathlessly, Sandy
turned her head.  The blade grazed Jina’s arm, and with that, she fell suddenly
to the floor, grasping at her throat and coughing. 

The flashing grew in speed as
Sandy’s heart began beating again.

Flash.  The knife continued while
Jina gasped for air.  Sandy still could not move.  What was she supposed to be
doing?

Flash.  Lewis’s contorted as the
knife nicked his arm.  His terrified face suddenly broke into a smile.  Oh yeah...

No, S.A. You will not...

Flash.  The knife began carving
an intricate pattern over old scars. 

...win this. It’s not real!

Flash.  Lewis’s left hand jerked
away from his side.  He snatched the handle and grappled the blade to the
floor.  The knife fought against him with great force.

“Ha!” she shouted aloud,
gathering all her strength of disbelief, “It’s not fucking—”

Flash.  Lewis screamed.  He
released his grip on the knife, and his hand smoldered.  The knife dived
towards his head, missed, and stabbed into the wall next to his head.

“Real!”

The lights remained on. 

“Fuck you S.A.!  I’m more
powerful than you!  You’re a cheap magic show act!”

The knife quivered, then relaxed
and fell to the floor, lifeless.  Sandy felt a physical release from the wall. 
She stumbled a bit but remained upright.  Jina stopped choking, and she wheezed
to fill her lungs.  Lewis lay on the floor weeping or sleeping, she couldn’t
tell.  Jina rushed to his side, and examined his wound.  She gently wiped away
the blood with her shirt.

“He’s insane, Jina.  Don’t go
tripping and falling all over him like you do with every other crazy you meet.”

“What do you mean?  I’m not
falling for him.  You’ve gotta be nuts.”

“Whatever.  I want to go, Jean. 
Is he awake?  Can you get him moving?” 

Jina cooed at Lewis and tried to
rouse him.

Sandy needed Jina’s help if they
were going to get out of here.  It was too hard to do this on her own.  She had
repeatedly defeated S.A. with her resistance, but Jina didn’t believe. 

While pacing, her toe stubbed
against on something.  A floorboard had come loose.  She pried at it.

The nails screeched with the
pull.  A small space lay below, and it was filled with little boy treasures. 
Bits of string, a top, marbles, a wooden yo-yo, a matchbook, a pocketknife, gum,
two screws, and a kaleidoscope.

Lewis stirred with the sound.  He
sat up.  Jina felt motherly and attracted all at the same time, and she leaned
in to kiss him lightly on the forehead.  He smiled and leaned toward her while
she stood.  She smiled back and wiped the blood from her hands.