Wicked Hungry

Chapter 36: THE EMERGENCY STAIRWAY TO EVERYWHERE

Everything goes dark and then explodes with a bright green light, and then we’re standing in the midst of nothingness, on a great green disk.

In the middle of the nothingness, there is a little table. On top of the table is a piece of paper.

“This isn’t right,” Nye says.

“I want to go home,” says Rewsin. “Why am I still in this dog skin? Where are we?”

“Yeah, where are we?” I ask.

Karen walks forward and grabs the paper. She reads it, then hands it to me. “They’ve put us in a trap,” says Karen.

The letter is short: “Welcome to our trap! I’m sorry it had to end this way, but you’re better off here than out there — at least once the ceremony starts, which should be any moment now. (I can hardly wait — soon we’ll start over with a clean slate!) All the best, Zach.”

“Zach,” I say. “It figures.”

Nye nods. “It appears we are stuck inside the gateway, instead of having gone through it.”

“Like a fly in amber,” Karen says. “We could stay here a million years.”

“Wouldn’t we starve?” I ask.

Nye shakes his head, sadly. “We’re stuck in a moment in time inside the gateway.”

“What’s that mean?” I ask.

“That means it’s 11:52 forever,” Karen says. “Until we get out of here.”

“Which could be never, I’m afraid,” says Nye.

“There must be some way out,” Connor growls.

I just close my eyes. I’ll never see Meredith again, or Carolina. Or my family. Or Enrique’s family. It’s all this Seelie queen’s fault. Or is all my fault?

I open my eyes to see my companions pacing around aimlessly. Everyone except Karen, who’s just standing there.

“I’m sorry, Karen,” I say. “I should have listened to you.”

She shakes her head. “You did listen, Stanley. There’s no way you could have imagined all this. And I never could have imagined what happened to me. I still don’t understand.”

“There has to be some way out,” I say to myself, but maybe she hears me, because suddenly Karen is right next to me. I can feel her pale, cold skin close to mine; her blood red lips whisper into my ear: “Maybe there is, Stanley. Let’s close our eyes and concentrate, and maybe we’ll see something besides this green nothingness.”

“Together, then, Karen?”

“Together, then, Stanley, now and forever,” she says with a cold little laugh, and she grabs my hand.

My body is wracked with cold pain and pleasure, my senses overwhelmed with the taste, the color, the fragrance — everything is blood red rose. There’s no way to overpower it, so I ride it, floating on waves of sensation. I need to focus on something else. What are we doing? I want to pull Karen to me, but no, that’s going about it all wrong. Should I knock her away from me? No, not that, either. We’re trapped, and I need her help. We need to get out of here.

Meredith. I need to get to Meredith. But most of all we need to get out of here. There has to be some way out, for emergencies like this. I mean, if people get stuck on an elevator, there’s a way out; if you get stuck in a tunnel, there’s a way out; and if you get stuck on a bridge, you can walk off too.

When I open my eyes there’s a really thin string hanging in front of our faces. At the end of the string there’s a tiny tag. I let go of Karen’s hand, reach out and grab it, and hold it close to my face.

PULL ONLY IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.

“Watch out, Stanley,” Karen says. “It could be—”

“We’re already in a trap,” I say. “And we’ve got to get out of here.”