Make Willing the Prey (Dreams by Streetlight) (8 page)

Sandy sobered a little.  “Look
Jina, I’m sorry.  I’m on edge.” 

Jina shrugged.  “Fine.  Since we’re
up here, we might as well look for that antidote, like over there in that bunch
of flowers.”

They were in a small room.  The
walls were either light brown or just dirty.  A heavy clock leaned against the
wall, like an old grandfather resting his back.  The tarnished brass pendulum
ticked out the time audibly. 

A vase full of perfect white
roses and baby’s breath sat on a medium-sized mahogany table next to the clock,
with a red heart-shaped box of chocolates next to the flowers.

Sandy approached the table and
counted, just to be sure.  Twelve.  Not thirteen. 

Not that it mattered.  S.A. had
already proven himself to be insane and of ill-intent.

The clock stuck.  Noon?  She
checked her watch.  It read the same.  How could it be so late already?  The
clock stopped chiming when she looked back at it.  But it had only rung five
times. 

Sandy discovered that it had
stopped with five because it no longer read twelve.  Ten past eight?  She
conferred with her watch.  It also read ten past eight.

She shook her head vigorously. 
It had to be the poison.  It was affecting her sense of reality.  Jina, behind her,
pulled out her phone.

“Hey, Sand.  What’s your watch
say?”

“Ten past— No, now it’s
three-thirty!”

The hands of her watch spun.  The
pendulum hung in mid-swing as the hands of the clock spun in sync.  Jina held
her phone near Sandy’s wrist.  The numbers cycled back and forth, as if she was
setting the time in high speed.

Sandy felt dizzy.  She put a hand
to her damp forehead and swaggered.  Jina’s phone chirped and Sandy collapsed
to the floor.

Jina read the text out loud, “My
Sandy’s still poisoned... Soon she’ll be buried... But every girl’s happy, when
she agrees to get married. Signed S.A.”

Sandy groaned on the floor.  “No,”
she whispered.

Her world began to grow black. 
She started to lose the power of thought.  Her insides burned up as if her
belly was a furnace.  Invisible ants crawled all over her skin, under her
clothes. 

She exhaled.

“Yes, I will agree,” she
whispered.

“Now what?” Jina asked.

“What does your phone say?” 
Sandy stammered.  She struggled to maintain consciousness.

“Oh, here it is…  You’re supposed
to… eat a chocolate.”  Jina looked around the room, and spotted the box on the
table.  Most of the chocolates spilled out onto the tabletop as she yanked the
lid off the glittery heart.  She shakily pulled the gold, crinkly wrapper from
one, knelt by Sandy, and held it to her mouth.

Sandy sat up and took the candy. 
She bit it in half, and as she chewed, she noticed a glint of gold within.  She
broke the chocolate up in her hand and found a diamond ring.  It looked
identical to the one she had been offered in the entryway.

Carefully, and with difficulty,
she scraped off the bits of chocolate and pink filling that still clung to the
gold.  Looking up at the roses, she sighed despairingly, and slid the ring on
her left hand.

Relief came instantly.  She
relaxed as the tension of having to keep herself upright vanished.  Her vision
cleared and her skin cooled.

The flowers, on the other hand,
began wilting.  The edges of the petals withered.  As Jina helped Sandy to her
feet, they watched the pristine white roses curl, the heads drooping.  They
began to change color as well.  Wilting white roses became wilted red roses
became long dead black roses on dry, brittle stems.

The candy on the table began to
crumble.  The tops caved in like empty shells, the filling having already been
eaten out by rot.  Chocolate turned to dust.

“How do you feel, Sandy?”

“Much better.  But freaked out.”

“Then let’s get out this house. 
Now.”  Jina helped Sandy to her feet.

They ran back the way they had
come.  But there were no stairs.  Thinking she’d misremembered how far she’d
gone, Jina led Sandy to the next room.  But they still found no stairs.

“Jina, where are we?”

“I thought...”

There was still another doorway
to try, but Sandy saw no sense in wandering around aimlessly.  She walked up to
a dusty window in the bare room.  With the base of her palm, she cleaned a spot
and looked down onto the backyard.  It should have been the front yard.

“What the hell.  Jina—”

A sharp creaking sound forced its
way into what she had been about to say.  It had a metallic feel to it, like an
old nail was being pulled slowly out of a dry board.

The sound ended with a sharp
crack of wood splintering. 

“Ouch!  What in the—”  Jina held
her hand up to look at her finger, and an inch-long wood sliver stuck out from
the edge of her nail.   A small drop of blood oozed around it.

There was a tug at her sleeve. 
Sandy was trying to get her attention.

A man stood, arms folded, in the
corner by the door.  He wore moth-eaten wool pants and a tuxedo coat in a
mismatched shade of black.  The suit was tattered, with bits of cloth and dirty
white shirt sticking out in various places.  A top hat with a wrinkled brim
pinned down his frazzled black hair, and moist perspiration beaded across his
pale forehead.  The details of his face were difficult to make out in the
shadow that he seemed to cast upon himself.  More notably, his skin, while very
pale, also had a slight, almost bluish tint.

“It’s high time we met,” he said,
raising his cane and tapping on the floor.

“Fuck you!” Sandy shouted.  She
bolted through the next door, with Jina close behind.  A cobweb brushed against
her face.

This room was just as empty, but
there were no other doors.  A sound came from the other side.  She turned.  The
door slammed shut.

Sandy started creeping slowly
along the wall towards the only window.  If she had to, she would jump.

Something flew towards her and
stuck into the wall near her neck.  She halted, but turning to look, she couldn’t
see what it was.  Something flew towards her again, as quickly as a bullet.  It
hit above her left shoulder, and this time she felt something graze her, not
quite breaking the skin.  She turned her head the other way and could see a
rusty nail pinning her shirt to the wall.  Cold brittle metal pressed against
both shoulders.

She looked up and saw Jina pinned
to the opposite wall in a similar manner.

A tickle grazed Sandy’s face. 
She lifted her hand to brush it away.  A sticky cobweb clung to her fingers. 
Another swept over her hand.  Resolving to rip the nails from the wall or her
clothes, whichever gave first, she pulled forward.  A force shoved her back
into place as a spider web grew out of the wall to encircle her upper arms. 
More webs appeared, covering her elbows and forearms.  They were common,
inelegant webs, the plain looking ones that house spiders spin.  Funnel
spiders.  Spiders.

With panicked strength, Sandy pulled
hard against her bonds.  Her arms could still move, but as she resisted, more
webs grew, until she could move nothing.  Her arms, belly, legs, feet.  Even
her fingers were wrapped in webbing.  Her face tickled torturously.

Jina appeared in the same condition. 
Wispy, dusty webs covered her entire body, leaving only her face unburied.  To
Sandy’s relief, she saw no spiders on Jina.  Hopefully that meant none of the
creatures were on her.

Footsteps.  Sandy couldn’t tell
their source.  They had left S.A. in the previous room, but the footsteps rang
from behind her.  Or was it above?

She looked back at Jina, who was
staring at the ceiling.  A large, brown, fuzzy-legged arachnid approached her
unseen from below.  The delicate spider was nearly an inch and a half long.

“Pssst!  Jina!”

The spider put a leg on Jina’s
hand.  With the itch, Jina looked down.  She tried to flinch, but couldn’t
because of the webs.

Another spider skittered out from
under Jina’s leg.  One stood on her chest sensing the air with its feelers.

Sandy felt a tickle.  There was
nothing there.  Another tickle.  Nothing.  She could see no spiders on herself,
but Jina now had six on her and five more on the wall surrounding her.  Why
couldn’t she see the spiders she knew had to be there?

“Oh Sandy, please help me…”  The
timber of her frightened voice rose and fell.  A spider touched Jina’s cheek
and she let out a stifled scream.  Sandy felt a tickle on her cheek as well. 
Panic arose in her such as she had never felt before.  She pushed against her
bonds, pulled, flexed.  She had to run, get away, flee.

A spider stalked across Jina’s
forehead.  Another one on her neck.  Sandy’s face twinged.  Her neck itched. 
She could still see nothing, yet the need to scream filled her.  She could not
get loose.  Her breathing grew faster.  Her head got lighter.

She realized Jina was no longer
conscious.  The way things were going, the same thing would happen to her soon,
too. 

Ignoring the sensations, she took
a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tried to relax.

It will only get worse if you
faint.  Freaking out isn’t going to help.  You’ve got to pull yourself
together. 

A tapping noise started in the
room, but she forced her eyes closed and kept breathing.  She continued the
mantra.

You’ll figure it out.  They’re
only spiders.  Relax, breathe, calm.  You’ll figure a way out.

The tapping got louder but she
pretended not to hear.  She felt a presence in the room, but she ignored it.

Nothing here so far has hurt you.
 
Nothing
here can hurt you.  Relax, breathe.

Tap tap tap.

That’s right.  Nothing has hurt
you.  That sound can’t hurt you, the webs can’t hurt you.

The tapping seemed to slow and
become uneven.  Distracting. 

It’s probably not even real. 
None of this is even possible, so how could it be real?

The tapping stopped and she heard
a sharp intake of breath.  Her eyes flew open.  S.A. stood in the center of the
room, staring at her. 

She could see his face more
clearly now.  She had expected an old man, but instead his skin was smooth.  He
had a narrow face, pointy chin, thin lips, and the arched eyebrows of a
villain.  Overall they were impish features that reminded Sandy of the demons
portrayed in historical woodcuts. 

He had a puzzled expression, and
he held his cane poised halted in mid-tap.

Panic filled her.  She slammed
her eyes shut again and resumed her goal of serenity.

Relax, breathe, calm.  Nothing
here can hurt you, he can’t hurt you, he can’t hurt you, he can’t hurt you.

The tapping resumed.

None of this is possible.  It’s
an illusion.  It isn’t real, it isn’t real, it isn’t real.

The sound of tapping seemed to
grow a little more distant.

It can’t be real.  It’s all in my
mind.  It’s an illusion.  None of this is real.  It isn’t real, it isn’t real,
it isn’t real
.

With each rejection of reality,
the tapping got quieter, and soon stopped.  The thought of opening her eyes to
see that horrible face frightened her, so she kept at her mantra.  Denial
brought her a sense of calm. 

After several minutes, she
realized something felt different.  Her skin didn’t tickle. 

She opened her eyes slowly,
expecting to squeeze them shut again.  But S.A. was gone.  The spiders were
gone.  The webs were gone.  Jina lay in a heap on the other side of the room.

Sandy stepped freely away from
the wall.  The nails had vanished along with everything else.

“J
ina,
please wake up!”  Sandy shook her until Jina opened her eyes. The light held an
orange tint as the sun hung low in the sky.