7:5
Kim
A carbon nanotube beach-tumbleweed, a kinetic sculpture that never stops shifting and changing its configuration, it is easy to get lost in the chaos of her mind. Keep your feet moving, your arms churning, and always keep a step ahead so the spun-sugar strands the color of a happy childhood don’t catch you. Keep fluid, like a great white shark who knows to stop swimming is death.
“Pulse her.”
Fluid. Fluid. Fluid!
Kim’s back arched as every nerve in her body fired at once. The resultant spasm seized her, bowed her back, clenched her fists so hard the skin of her knuckles almost split like wet tissue paper. She had to thrust her mouth open wide or crack her teeth as her jaw locked.
Her heart, its rhythm frozen a clock that no longer understood the concept of time and cast about blindly for purpose, hurt. It hurt. So much. For a span of time – what was time? Time was an illusion? Only pain was real – she forgot to breathe. And then something asserted itself. Call it survival instincts. Call it stubbornness. Call it Pure Cursed Pride. They were not going to win!
“Fuck you.” She said it as loud as her oxygen-starved lungs allowed, which was to say pretty damned quietly. Clenching her chest muscles to contain the heart that seemed determined to burst through her ribcage, she tried again. “Fuck you.” Still reedy. Still crap. “Fuck you!” Her dry lips cracked, copper seeping into her mouth. Her chest hurt. Her head hurt. And she did not give a single fucking fuck. “Fuck you. Fuck you. And fuck you.” Her volume rose with every iteration. “Fuck each and every one of you!”
“Do you curse like that because your mother was so offended by the cursing that she ran out of creative ways to punish you for them? Yet, still kept trying?”
The light tone, so gentle and sweet, might have fooled some people into thinking the female – Kim was pretty sure it was a female – who spoke was gentle and sweet and everything that voice promised, but Kim knew better. Oh, she fucking knew better! In this time without meaning, this never-ending span frozen between the tick of the hand from 11:59 to midnight, this sweet, gentle, feminine voice had become the soundtrack of her torment.
“Is your cursing a form of rebellion? A way to expression your rejection of the ideals that she insisted you adopt?”
“No.” Kim smiled, not even wincing as her lips cracked more, copper taste becoming the only one in her mouth, killing out the ozone tinge of whatever it was they kept shocking her with. She ground the back of her head against the table they had her strapped down to, glaring at the ceiling like it had done her a personal affront.
Slowly, the stiff muscles of her neck screaming their protest of the movement, she turned her head so her cheek rested against the table. The tiny strings inserted into the pores of her face tugged until Kim thought they’d break but, as they’d done as many times before as she’d sought to move against the restraints, they gave with an elastic pull that still reminded her they were there. She squeezed her eyes open, fighting through the burn of dry eyeballs, to stare blearily towards where she judged her tormentors to be sitting in their cushy chairs behind their fancy desks with their curlicue legs that lent the entire space a slightly baroque feel.
As usual they sat just beyond the glow of the glass-shaded lamps set in the corner of each desk, resting in the anonymity of the deep shadows that seemed deeper for the circles of light cast by the lamps. Like the darkness of their souls or their intent consumed the light, casting them in an eternal brutal camouflage.
“No. I simply lack the intellectual prowess to find better words to express my outrage and disdain.” Casting her bloody-toothed smile in their general direction, she let the malice inside of her loose in her burning gaze and the punch of her words. “So, fuck you.”
“I fucking hate Rapunzels.” These words in the deeper tones of a voice that often held the lilt of humor. They didn’t now. A chair scraped back. A rush of cloth suggested someone thrusting to a stand.
“Language!” The soft, light, motherfucking lilting like a fucking fairy godmother in some fucked up wish of a fairy tale voice made a mockery of the promise of warm cookies, crackling fire, and a deep lap to snuggled into it offered. It would take a lot more than the illusory promise of the perfect mother, a mother that actually liked her, who might actually – gasp – love her to break Kim.
The male voice grated out the response on the tip of Kim’s tingling tongue. “Fuck you.”
Kim would have given the anonymous dark shadow a golf clap if her hands weren’t clamped down to the table by heavy metal brackets. She’d busted loose too many times from the restraints of the strands. They stretched, sure, but eventually everything broke. Or burned.
“Fuck you,” she whispered, closing her eyes as her cheek sunk into the sturdy support of the table.
“I’m fucking tired,” the sound of a slap, something clattering as it hit the ground, metal on stone, “of this. We had a plan. It was working. Then you had to diverge from it. We should have continued to go for the low-hanging fruit but no, you just had to play with them!”
“You shouldn’t talk to her that way. She has her reasons.” This from the other voice, the one that Kim thought of as ‘the quiet guy’. At first she’d thought “the nice guy”, until he’d jerked her around by the strings inserted through her pores, broke her in ways that had almost broken her back to that sniveling, weak, escaping child she’d had to be to survive.
She’d thought she’d been thriving, not just surviving. But this man, with his soft voice and gentle manner reminded her she was just a thing, a spirit trapped in a body trapped in a place she lacked the ability to escape from. This man with his gentle fucking voice and soft manner, he was the one who made her rediscover the ability to Just Go Away. The cursing the kind, motherly fairy godmother thing hated so much was the only thing grounding her sometimes, the only thing that let her live inside the pain instead of Just Going Away.
The snide male said it for her when he burst out. “Yeah? Fuck you too.”
There was the sound of receding footsteps and then the feminine one whose voice was a lie said, “They really need to learn to control their anger.”
Kim drew a shallow breath through her nostrils, shallow being the only kind of breath she could draw without her ribs aching from having stretched to adjust to whatever that ‘pulse’ thing was they did. “I’m going to sleep now.”
She pulled nothing in around her, spinning forgetting from the spun sugar fibers of her synapses, dark bursting with the colors of childhood behind her closed lids. Her lips formed the words…
*
“And I go it’s sleepy time. This is not really, this, a-this, this is not really happening. Hey.” Patti cracked her lids to flash her gaze over the room in a searching pattern, like her eyes were the beacon in a lighthouse and she could pierce the darkness of confusion with them. “Does anyone besides me hear that?”
Turning to Patti, Gwen gave her the consideration of straining to hear then shook her head. “I don’t hear anything.”
“I thought-” Prairie tilted her head, her expression going inwards. “No.” She shook her head. “I don’t hear anything.” Her shoulders lifted until they almost covered her ears. “Maybe that’s a good thing?”
“Yeah.” Patti nodded. “I hear Kim. Pretty sure it’s a good thing you don’t.”
“You hear Kim?” Ben, who’d come around a few minutes before and had spent the time since pacing the room, turned to Patti.
Patti nodded.
“Where?”
“Here?” Patti curled her upper lip and scrunched her eyes. “Just here.” Her voice dropped along with her shoulders. She looked down and gently brushed a single finger over Sass’s head.
Ivan eyed the remaining doors. “So, no direction? Behind door number five?”
“No.”
Siobhan hefted her bag, looping the strap over her head and smoothing it to lay flat. “But she’s alive. That’s encouraging.” She shifted her gaze over the doors. “Keep going in the same manner? Next door clockwise?”
“Because that’s worked so well for us.” Ben mumbled, his gaze going back to the kitten door.
Prairie walked up to the next door. This was the one with the timber grid over frosted glass. She clasped her hands in front of her and rocked on her heels while giving it a good look. “The first door had metal tiles, possibly of Indian origin. It opened to a dining room in which there were kittens. This after someone suggested we might find tigers there.”
She ticked her gaze to the door to her left. “The next was the dark orange with the standard hardware. It opened to a living area and there were wraiths. No one made any suggestion about ghosts or wraiths before opening it so we can’t assume the tiger slash kitten connection was dictated by our saying tigers since we said nothing and there were wraiths. If there was a corollary someone would have had to say ghosts or wraiths or-” she lifted a shoulder and turned from the door, “emotions or something. Was anyone thinking those things before the door was opened?”
No one spoke up. “Okay.” She tightened her grip on her hands and tilted her head to the side. “So, we still don’t have any real way of guessing what’s behind this door nor do we have any reason to pick another. I say we open it.”
Siobhan looked around the group who had all risen to loosely cluster in an arc around the door. “Anyone have a better idea?” She waited a beat then said, “Fine. Then we’ll open this door.”
When she went to do so, Dempsey gently nudged her out of the way. She leveled a cross look at him, crossing her arms and tapping her toe. He didn’t appear intimidated in the slightest. Guess that came from being so very large. That look worked *great* on her students.
“I have a shield.” Dempsey lifted the shield, like she needed a visual. “You have a bag. I go first.”
“Grunt grunt. Me man. Me go first!” Patti snorted at Gwen’s muttered quip, then waved the hand not full of mouse when Dempsey turned to look at them.
“Nothing to see here. Just a girl and her mouse.”
Sass wriggled around in her hand and waved both of its paws in Dempsey’s direction. He raised a brow, his expression indicating cute was not going to melt him. Patti shrugged and leaned down to tug Sass in its house then hefted her punch shield and stepped towards the door.
“I have a shield. I could go first.”
“You could.”
With no more warning than that Dempsey grabbed the bronze knob, twisted it, and shoved the door inwards. The door opened to nothing. Well, actually, it opened a very long seven-story drop. There was nothing beyond the door except a fantastic view of countryside that no way could exist within The House, but there you had it. Right there. A big old view of countryside. A seven-story drop. And a fierce wind. The wind came swooping in, dancing like it had a life of its own, fierce and terrible, stomping and whomping and doing its level best to shove everyone from their feet.
Luckily Dempsey had learned from the last two doors and had not let go of the knob this time. That was luckily he did this so there was a chance of yanking the door closed. Unluckily because by not releasing the knob he had effectively made it so he was half hanging out, looking down at the seven-story drop.
So as everyone else fought to brace and not lose their feet he didn’t really have that option, being that would have involved bracing at least his forward leading foot on nothing.
“Shit!” Ivan grunt screamed, pushing against the wind to reach for Dempsey’s back.
“Crap!” Ben hollered, pivoted so his hip cut through the thrust of the wind, almost like a sailboat turning into the wind, letting him slide over to Dempsey. Both he and Ivan grabbed parts of Dempsey’s jacket in both hands and heaved backwards. It took both of them to yank his weight back.
“Physics!” Prairie shouted in a loud squeaky voice, spinning into the wall next to the door so the majority of the wind sluiced over her and pointing a finger towards the ceiling with an ‘ah ha!’ expression. When Siobhan and Gwen clutched on to each other because more weight equaled more brace and turned to look at her, she shrugged. “Kim isn’t here. Someone had to say it.”
They both laughed, then instantly sobered, as if the weight of their situation suddenly hit them.
“It’s okay to laugh,” Gwen said, though her expression held uncertainty.
Siobhan nodded and swallowed down the fist of panic that tightened at the base of her throat. “Kim would be laughing.”
Prairie did the gentle smile thing she did. “She would.”
“Little help here?” Ben grunted.
Dempsey kept a firm hold on the doorknob and reached back to dig his toe into the door jam, leaving him hanging directly over the seven-story drop with only Ivan and Ben’s grip keeping him from plummeting straight downward. Dan ran up behind Ben and grabbed the back of his pants, anchoring his lower body. Patti ran up behind Ivan, throwing her punch shield to the side and grabbed his hips.
“Sorry. Not feeling you up!” she yelled over the roar of the wind.
“You can feel me up if it keeps us all from falling!” Ivan yelled back.
“Yay!” Gwen called from where she and Siobhan had shuffled to shelter against the wall next to Prairie.
With Ivan and Ben pulling and Patti and Dan anchoring they were able to pull Dempsey back from the brink. Dempsey kept his grip on the door knob, fighting the pull of the wind that seemed determined to yank it from his grasp.
“Here!” Abe flattened against the right wall and slid their hand along the surface of the door, clamping their hand over Dempsey’s and adding their strength to his. Together they proved enough to defy the pull of the wind. Dempsey danced his feet back as the door snapped shut, just barely avoiding taking a face full of wood and glass.
Without the wind fighting their every movement the exertion Patti, Dan, Ben, and Ivan were making to pull Dempsey free proved more than required and all five of them went skittering back. Ivan heaved himself to the side, barely avoiding flattening Patti as they both hit the ground. Dan wasn’t quite as lucky, but Ben wasn’t nearly as heavy as Ivan so that wasn’t the worst. It still drove the air from Dan’s lungs on a whoof as Ben slammed down on him, the back of his head bouncing off of the front of his tac vest. If Ben’s grunt was an indication it sounded like he’d hit at least two of the pockets where Dan stashed, well, a lot of things that weren’t the best for bouncing your head off of.
At Patti’s side, Sass crawled out of the house that had fallen sideways with her. They scurried up her length to pat her face with their paws.
“I’m okay, Sass. I am,” Patti mumbled, spitting hair out of her mouth.
“I’m okay too, Sass,” Ben called, still lying prone on Dan.
“Off,” Dan said, shoving Ben to the side before rotating his head to crack his neck.
Abe clutched the door knob in whitened fingers and stared down at Dempsey who lay flat on his back, eyes closed, shield clutched to his chest. “Dempsey? Are you okay?”
“Fine.” Dempsey didn’t open his eyes. “Just need to lay here for a bit.”
Free of the wind, Gwen and Siobhan were able to run over and check on everyone.
“Does this hurt?” Gwen asked, poking Dempsey in the shoulder.
“Yes.”
“Does this hurt?” This poke was to the top of his pec just above the edge of his shield.
“Yes.”
“This?” She poked his thigh.
“Yes.” He turned his head slightly and cracked his eye open enough to look at her. “Assume everything hurts.”
“Ugh. You’re an idiot.” Concentration settling her usually animated features in still lines, Gwen ran her hand slowly down his leg, then up the other, along his ribs where she paused for a double count, then up to his shoulder. She drifted the hand gently over his face, hovering without actually touching, then made a slow circuit down the left side of his body. “You could have died.”
“Nothing new.”
Gwen sat back and swatted his shield. “No more doors. Let someone else do the next one.”
Dempsey closed his eyes again. “Anyone else wouldn’t have been able to hold that door.”
“I would have,” Ivan said, slowly rising to rotate his arms at shoulder height.
Dempsey grunted. “Fine. You get the next door.”
“I will.” Ivan squared his shoulders and walked towards the wall, his slow steps suggesting he was sorer than his jaunty smile let on. Siobhan moved over to him and handed him a potion. “Here. Drink.”
Ivan looked at the top, counted the two dots for energy, then popped the seal and downed the contents. Instantly the tension in his neck eased and his shoulders lowered a little.
“That was a close one,” he murmured, low enough only Siobhan heard.
“It was.”
“We need to be more careful.”
Siobhan lifted her brows. “Have you met us?”
“Yeah.” Ivan leaned his head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. “Can you give one of those to Dempsey. Dude fought the wind like a matador.”
Siobhan nodded then pushed off the wall to approach Dempsey with a potion. He made no noise of denial, merely popping the seal and raising his head enough that drinking it down didn’t choke him.
Abe clapped their hands together, before clasping them behind their back and rocking a bit on their heels. “That was very exciting. Another door?”
The group almost as one turned their gazes to the next door. Gwen pretty much summed it up for everyone when she muttered, “I swear by all that is dear to me, if there is something in there that wants to beat on us, rip us apart, or kill us I will start running in circles and screaming.”
Ben pushed himself up to a sit then staggered to his feet. “You and me both.”
Patti scooped up Sass from where the mouse perched on her collarbone and rose to sit. “That might be worth fighting a monster to see.”
“Hardy har-” Looking down at Patti, Ben pursed his lips and raised his brows, letting the moment stretch before finishing, “Har!”
When everyone was sufficiently set, Ivan strode over to the next door – the one of weathered wood. “Everyone ready?”
Everyone was.
“I’m going to only open it a crack, see what’s up.”
“Sounds good,” Ben said, bouncing on his feet, his daggers ready. Gaze assessing, Prairie followed his movements then pulled out her own daggers, mimicking his stance. When he looked at her, kind of funny, she gave him an innocent expression and hoisted the daggers a little higher.
Ben shook his head, said “Terrifying”, then turned his attention to the door. “Let’s do this thing!”
Ivan carefully pressed down on the metal tongue of the old-fashioned latch and pushed the door open slightly. From within the as yet unrevealed room a song poured forth, female voices overlapping so it was hard to give a guess at how many sang. At the sound of the voices Ivan, Ben, Dan, and Dempsey’s faces went slack, their eyelids lowered, and then their lips curved into smiles. In unison.
Next to the door Abe twitched. Their expression wasn’t completely slack, but it was also clear that the song was doing something to them. They raised balled fists to the side of their head, pressing their hands against their ears. Their eyes were wide, enough that the white showed all around the irises.
Ben, Ivan, Dan, and Dempsey each took a step forward. In unison. As Ivan still held the latch of the door it swung forward with the step.
“No!” Patti shoved Sass into her cleavage even as she lunged towards the door. Taking as deep a breath as the movement allowed, she let loose a single sharp note that cut through the voices drifting out the door. This didn’t completely shake the men free of whatever Magicks had seized them but it did stop their forward movement.
Patti brought her cudgel down, whack, on Ivan’s fingers, driving his hand from the latch. As soon as he released it she grabbed it and slammed the door closed. Only after she rested her back against it did she stop singing the note.
Siobhan, Prairie, and Gwen looked on, expressions ranging from dumbfounded to confused with lots of quick blinks of the eye and darting gazes.
“What was that?” Gwen asked, focusing on Patti.
“Sirens.”
“Sirens?”
Patti nodded once, emphatically. “Sirens.”
She pushed away from the door, walked up to Ivan, rose up on her toes and whistled a sharp note in his ear. He shook his head and looked around, eyes wide.
“Wha-?”
“Sirens,” Patti said in explanation and moved over to Dan, blowing a similar note in his ear.
He reared back his head and planted his feet, his shoulders going back so his elbows poked out slightly at the side. “What?”
“Sirens.”
Patti snapped Dempsey and Ben out of their whatever the same, muttering “Sirens” to each before she slowly approached Abe, her hands quiescent at her side and a respectful look on her face.
“Abe? Do you need help?”
Abe slowly lowered their fists from their ears and shook their head. Their face was stark, eyes wide, and they gulped heavily before shaking their head in the negative and focusing on their feet.
“Cool.” Patti’s smile was gentle as she stepped away from Abe and pressed a hand to the door. “We are not going in there.”
Dan nodded, eying the door. “Agreed.”
Patti slid her gaze over Ivan, Ben, and Dempsey, assessing the likelihood her Magick hadn’t freed them from the draw and as soon as she moved away from the door they wouldn’t reopen it.
Ben stooped to pick up the daggers he’d dropped at the Siren’s Call then lifted his hands in a defensive gesture at his sides. “No door.”
“Dempsey?” She slid her gaze to Dempsey who was glaring at the door like his eyes could focus ire like a magnifying glass did the sun.
“Door bad,” he muttered, never removing his attention from it.
“Yes,” Patti nodded. “Door bad.”
Prairie stepped delicately around Ivan, Ben, and Dan and moved over to the next door which was the least proposing – the one with a simple birch wood finish and a beat-up brass doorknob. This door had its hinges on their side of the wall, indicating it would swing in rather than out. She took a deep breath, then turned to the group. “I think its fair to say none of these things makes any sense and any attempt to make them make sense is just nonsense.”
Abe eyed her. “That sounded very wonderlandish.”
Prairie gave a big close-mouthed smile to Abe. “Why, thank you.”
Abe blinked twice then said, “Welcome.”
Prairie folded her hands in front of her and cocked her head. “I’m going to open this door because it’s my turn.”
Ivan shook off the last of his bemusement to turn and look at Prairie. “There’s no turns. And it could be-”
Prairie raised her brows. “What? Dangerous?” She lofted her chin. “I can handle dangerous things.”
“Of course, you can.” Ivan looked down, the image of chagrin, and rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “You just don’t have to.”
Prairie blew a raspberry and reached for the doorknob. Siobhan hurried to get her back, standing back just a little so when the door swung open she wouldn’t catch its swing. Gwen flanked Siobhan on the other side. Prairie turned to give them each a soft smile. “We’ve got this.”
“Sure we do,” Gwen said and dropped Prairie a wink.
Ivan and Ben hurried to stand behind the three. Dempsey and Dan filled in to either side. Then Patti shoved in between Ivan and Ben, flicking a glance at both of them before squaring her face forward. Abe hung to the side, like they weren’t quite certain where they fit in the formation. They curled their fingers around the strap of their bag and focused their gaze on Prairie’s hand as she turned the knob.
When no sound filtered from the room, she pulled the door open a little. No weird smoke, shadow, darkness swirled out at them. Another tug and the door was halfway open. No kittens. Everyone tensed, ready to spring into action as Prairie pulled the door all the way open, stepping back to accommodate the swing so she ended up closer to Ivan than Siobhan and Gwen who remained slightly to the left and closest to the open doorway.
After several long tense moments where the entire group stared through the door, Gwen was the first to speak. “It’s a closet?”
Siobhan nodded, confirming, “It’s a closet.”
“There’s nothing in it?”
“There’s clothes in it.”
Gwen nodded at Siobhan’s assessment. “There is.” Quietly, from the side of her mouth, she half hissed, “Do you think the clothes are going to attack us?”
Siobhan’s answer was left a mystery as Patti stepped forward, between Siobhan and Prairie and peered into the closet.
“It’s a peel out the watchword. Just peel out the watchword.” She sang quietly beneath her breath. Cautiously, one measured step at a time she moved forward and poked the laundry piled on the floor of the closet with her foot. “This is where the song is coming from. My money’s on this being the right door.”
“But, it’s a closet,” Ivan spoke from behind her, leaning over her shoulder to get a closer look.
Prairie released the knob and stepped closer to the open door. “It’s *the* closet.”
At Ivan’s odd look, she expanded. “The closet from the story.” She swept a hand to indicate the clothes hanging from the rod over the pile of laundry on the floor. “The closet from the Kim story?”
Ivan’s eyes widened and he dropped back before peering forward with a quizzical head. “Could be. But what now?”
“Now,” Siobhan said, stepping forward to poke her head into the door, ducking so the clothes didn’t wrap around her face, “we figure out how to get to Kim.”
Enter The Woods 