Fantasy fiction; Science fiction; Subconsciousness -- Fiction
Marc stirred. He inched his hand forward tentatively over the cold
relentless surface of the floor and opened his eyes. For a moment he
couldn't think where he was, then the dull grey walls and the barred-in
opening that looked out on the passage brought it all back to him. He
raised himself to his knees and crawled forward. He grasped the bars
and dragged himself partially upright. Then he froze, staring fixedly
ahead.
At first it seemed only that his sight had dulled. Then slowly, out in
the passage, the haziness before him began to take form, languidly,
easily, gathering itself into a dismaying solidity. A bit at a time,
Toffee, working from the toes up, appeared in all her vivid aliveness
on the other side of the bars. Standing there against the background of
iron greyness, she seemed even more outrageously alive and lovely than
she had in his subconscious mind. And also more naked. She turned to
Marc and regarded him quizzically.
"Oh, no!" Marc wailed. "No, no! You can't be here!"
"But I am," Toffee said brightly. She studied the bars between them
with an air of bafflement. "What are you doing in that cage? Why don't
you come out?"
"I can't come out," Marc said. "This is a jail. I'm locked in."
"And I'm locked out," Toffee observed without favor. "We'll never get
anywhere that way. Where do I go to get the key?"
"You can't get the key," Marc said. "The jailer--or somebody--has
it--out there." He made a vague gesture toward the iron door at the end
of the passage.
"Then, I'll go ask him for it," Toffee said blandly and started away.
"No!" Marc yelled. "Don't go out there! Not like that!" He pressed
urgently against the bars. "Come back here!"
Perhaps it was the effort or maybe it was the awful thought of Toffee
loose in the jail, but suddenly it was all too much for him. Marc's
knees buckled and he slid toward the floor. Slowly he crumpled and
sprawled backwards. With an anguished murmur he passed out.
At the end of the passage, reaching for the door, Toffee quickly faded
and vanished into thin air.
It was only three minutes later when Sergeant Feeney, absorbed in a
copy of Shocking Stories, looked up apprehensively over the edge of the
magazine and turned a ghastly white. If he had not been mistaken--and
he certainly had not--there was an odd sort of fuzziness in the air
just beyond his feet at the other side of the desk. As he watched this
clouded bit of atmosphere, it alarmingly solidified, a bit at a time,
and became a strikingly beautiful redhead, clothed merely in what
appeared to be a pair of translucent kitchen curtains. The sergeant
gulped, and the magazine, which was already trembling like a leaf in a
wind storm, dropped from his nerveless hand.
"Here, now!" Sergeant Feeney gulped. "What do you think you are up to,
you?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account