by T K Foster
Cetra laughed.
Then she laughed some more.
She laughed so much she was doubled over. She laughed so much she intermittently snorted. She laughed so hard she had tears dripping down her cheeks. She slapped her knee, she skipped in a circle, she kicked the air....
“You are funny Billy,” she screeched, “You make me laugh”.
Billy felt the blood on his lip from where his face had impacted with the stone pillar and wiped it off with his finger. He could see the humour in the moment, envisioned himself on the other end, laughing hysterically just as Cetra was now.... at him. Yet Billy chose not to laugh, being the butt of the joke certainly had its problems, for one, it was undignified and darn right embarrassing, and two, it gosh-darn hurt.
“I knew you would fall for that one,” Cetra rattled, her voice crackling with the delight of it all.
“You know, Billy,” she continued, a little more serious now, “the door opens outward. I pushed on the handle, Billy. I have to pull the door open, not push it open”.
Of course you do, Billy thought.
With that she pulled on the handle this time to open the door. “See, Billy. Easy”.
Billy looked on indifferently. Again Cetra had done nothing, the pillar remained sheer, unbroken.... solid. Did she really think he was that dumb? Expecting him to fall for the same trick twice?
“Do you really expect me to fall for the same trick twice?” he said with a look of disgust on his face.
Cetra winked at him. “You are standing at the wrong angle,” she said, grabbing hold of both his shoulders and moving him to stand directly in front of the open door.
“Whoa!” was his reaction, “That’s unbelievable”.
Indeed, there was suddenly a doorway, and beyond that a flight of stairs leading down into darkness.
“So where does it go?” Billy asked.
Cetra looked puzzled. “Down there,” she said, pointing her exaggerated arm, hand and finger into the black opening.
“So where and what is down there?”
“That is the way out.”
“Out of what exactly?”
“Here.”
“Here.... what?”
“This place.”
“What’s this place?”
Cetra placed a skinny finger to the corner of her mouth and looked into the sky. “This is the place I come sometimes to pray.”
“Pray to what?”
“To my God,” she said incredulously with the hint of a duh! “Silly Billy.”
Cetra leapt past the stone and skipped to the centre of the cobblestones. She spun around with arms outstretched and raised them high above her head, all the while continuing to skip and jump. Now she gazed up into the sky and let out a high pitched squeal followed by a sweet, timid giggle. She was beaming, she was glowing; she was altogether lovely. As odd as this girl appeared in every sense of the word, Billy wanted to be her friend.
The girl skipped back to the doorway and grabbed Billy’s hand. “Do you want to go now?”
Billy shrugged, “Ok”
Although the stairs had appeared to descend into darkness from the other side of the doorway, now, several steps down, Billy’s senses were suddenly flooded with bright white light. The stairs led down to a circular room, a room which was an exact replica of the cobblestones and pillars above, with a ceiling that could not be seen for the glare.
Cetra caught the look of amazement in Billy’s eyes. She smiled and said, “Up there is a big magical mirror, what you saw at the top of the stairs is not real, it is just a reflection of what is down here.”
“Really?” Billy gaped.
“No. I am just fooling with you.”
“Huh?”
She giggled.
At the far end of the cobble floor, between two of the fourteen identical pillars, was an archway; this also led into darkness. This time the darkness opened up to show a very real and visible wooden door. Although the ornate carvings in the wood panels were obscured in the dim light, Billy was still able to discern just how remarkable they must have been from the different contrasts of shapes and shadows upon the door’s surface.
Cetra raised her eyebrows and grinned. She opened the door into the hall they were standing in and stepped through.
Hesitantly Billy followed.
CHAPTER FIVE