The Nightmare Game

by Martin, S. Suzanne

  “They sense that you’re coming to join them, Ashley. It’s making them restless.” Arrosha said before she mused, mocking me, “Let’s see, now, where should I put Ashley for her eternal rest? It’s such an inappropriate term, you know, since no one around here ever gets much rest.

  “Should I put her next to Virginia? Or should I move Marcus and put her next to Zachary? What would be best? Girls on one side, boys on the other? Or would girl-boy, girl-boy be better? Chronological order? Oh, decisions, decisions! What to do, what to do! You know, my dear, this really is a matter of the gravest importance.” Arrosha sighed deeply. “You know what?” She said, brightening up. “If I don’t like the arrangement, I can always change it later. This is what I’ll do. I’ll stick you next to Virginia for right now. If I find I don’t like it that way, I’ll just move you next to Zachary. Either way, it’s a better arrangement than what I have now. At least you’ll all be even and that’s always so much nicer. Edmond’s helpers flanking him, extremely near, impotently unable to help him, more trapped even than he. So fitting, dear, don’t you think?

  “Now this is how it’s going to pan out, darling Ashley,” she said. The low, dangerous quality in her voice indicated she was through playing. “First, Max will remove the amulet from about your neck. Then, making you watch, of course, I’ll destroy your friends one at a time, turning them into nothing more than essence and ghouls. Not to worry, I won’t let them get you, though, because that death would be far too easy for you. No, I’ll restore Max a bit and have him take care of them the way he did that first fellow because he’s very good at getting rid of zombies or ghouls or whatever you want to call them. In between, Max will have several really good goes at you, torturing the amulet’s remaining protective energy out of you, using the implements I showed you a little while ago. Poor Max. He’s been so very frustrated for such a long time that he needs to take out his frustrations on somebody, don’t you, Max, sweetie?”

  Max didn’t look up, he just nodded his head.

  “Oh, come on, Max, try to show a little more enthusiasm than that! Oh, well, the torture will cheer him up, I’m sure. No matter, though, it’s not like he has a choice about it, do you, Max? Once he has made you vulnerable and touchable, I’ll let my friends out of the floor again. Without that pretty little necklace you’ve been wearing, you’ll truly be able to experience the full extent of their, for lack of a better term, unnatural appetites. It’s at that point that you’ll find out the negative aspects of the necklace, for it will take you far longer to die for having worn it. Then I’ll let you rest for a short time while I let you wonder just what I could do to you that could possibly be worse than what’s already happened to you. It’s only then that I’ll let them finish off what little will be left of you.

  “Before I do so, though, let me take some safety precautions.”

  When she waved her arm this time, it was Max that began to change. His arms shortened, his body became even more deformed.

  He looked up, a baffled look on his newly-hideous face. “Why?” he asked, hurt and confused. “What did I do to deserve this now?”

  “Oh, don’t fret so much, Max,” she said. “It’s is only temporary. Remember that. I need to be able to trust you with the necklace and this is my insurance policy. Besides, it’s not like I haven’t done this to you before.

  “I doubt you can throw far in your current state. Once the amulet necklace has disappeared back into its box, I’ll change you back so that you can kill off what’s left of the group after I’ve turned them into zombies.”

  “But you promised!” he complained.

  “My promise is for after you complete your task, not before. Don’t gripe again, Max, I’m warning you, or I may just forget all about that promise.”

  Max became silent once again, staring at the floor as if he could destroy the room with his very eyes.

  “So, my dear,” she said, returning her attentions back to me. “Now you know how you are going to die and just how futile your efforts were, that you made no difference in or to the world whatsoever, except, perhaps, by inadvertently helping my own cause, the cause you fought so hard against. In the end, your efforts only helped toward enslaving your own kind. But c’est la vie, the time for talk is over and now it comes time for you to die. Max, take off her necklace, remove the amulet.”

  For a few seconds, Max hesitated.

  “Now!” she ordered.

  Max glanced up before quickly looking down again. He waddled up to me, looking down at his feet the entire time. As he stood next to me, he made eye contact again for only a fraction of a second. There was shame in his eyes. As he reached behind me to undo the clasp, he whispered in my ear. “I am so sorry. I hate that she wants me to do this.” Then he added, “By the way, I want to thank you for kissin’ me earlier. It’s been such a long time since any woman’s kissed me and I really appreciated it,” he said. I realized then that he was the false Edmond that Arrosha had sent to try to trick me.

  “Did you say something to our Ashley, Max?” Arrosha asked as more of an accusation than a question.

  “Just tellin’ her everything’s over, that she needs to get ready to die,” he lied.

  “Good. Do you have the necklace now? Do you have it, Max?” Arrosha asked excitedly.

  “Yes.” he answered flatly.

  “Show me, Max! Hold it up and show me! Let me see it clearly before it disappears again!”

  He held up the unclasped necklace with his left hand, the amulet dangling.

  “Ah,” Arrosha said admiringly. “It is beautiful, isn’t it. Why did they have to make a weapon for my destruction so incredibly beautiful?”

  Max said nothing. Still holding the necklace, he started to put his hands down.

  “No, Max, no. Keep holding it up. This is the only time I ever get to see it when it is not worn by an enemy. It will disappear in a few short moments and I want to enjoy my victory as long as I can. I’ll make you beautiful for this, Max, I will. You’ll be so very beautiful that no woman will be able to resist you. You’ve served me well over the years, Max. I’ll let you have lots of fun with our little captive because you’ve been a good boy to me, Max. You’ve been a loyal servant, my faithful dog.”

  The expression on Max’s misshapen face changed. It went from being the submissive, fearful face of an abuse victim to one so guarded that I could not read it at all. His was now a perfect poker face, completely inscrutable, but his eyes were truly awake for the first time since I’d met him. He began to meander away from me casually, still holding up the necklace.

  “Have I really been your good boy, Arrosha? Have I really been your good dog?” he asked, still nonchalantly and absentmindedly shuffling away from me. He seemed so apparently lost in thought that he was not paying attention to his movements.

  “Of course you are, Max. Keep helping me with this one, help me destroy her, and I promise you that I will make you the most beautiful youth that has ever existed in the flesh.

  “Wow,” he said, less enthusiastically than I would have expected, all the while still wandering very slowly and aimlessly away from me. Then he stopped. “That sounds like a lot of fun.”

  “It’ll be more than fun, Max. You’ll be wealthier than you can imagine. And I’ll make you charming as well. There’s not a woman out there that you won’t be able to have.”

  “You mean, you’ll bring back Gizelle?”

  “I can’t bring Gizelle back. You know that. She’s dead. But I can make a perfect ringer for her. I’ll make any woman you want look just like her, walk just like her, talk just like her. I’ll change another woman to be just like her for you, Max. She’ll be someone that will make you forget all about her. She’ll be even better than Gizelle.”

  “Better than Gizelle?”

  “Yes, Max, she’ll be exquisite. I promise you.”

  “That sounds … interesting.” He cocked his head to one side and stabilized his stance. He glanced at the necklace he held in his
left hand. “My queen,” he said flatly, “the talisman feels like it’s getting ready to vanish.”

  “Yes,” she answered. “It’s beginning to fade. Such a shame that I don’t have a power field strong enough to hold it. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. As it is, I’ll slowly have to drain Edmond’s stasis chamber for a few decades and wait for him to die before I can discount that amulet as an issue. Pity, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, my queen. It really is. Which is why I think I’d better do this right now!”

  On the word “this”, Max, despite his deformities, pitched the amulet and its chain toward the stasis chamber with the swiftness, sureness and power of the professional baseball player that he once was. Time seemed to stand still.

  A shocked Arrosha wore a look upon her face that relayed that she could not believe that Max was still capable of betraying her so. I knew that not only had she thought that Max was completely broken in spirit, she thought she had deformed him to a point past which he would be capable of such a pitch. The amulet flew through the air until it began to lose momentum and started to fall. At that point, Arrosha smiled and I thought all was lost. However, by then it had reached a point of no return as a magnetism grabbed it through the stasis field, not allowing it to stop, not allowing it to fall. As the amulet was absorbed by the chamber, the chain broke off and hit the ground, metal on metal causing an audible “clink”. Arrosha was speechless, fear now in her eyes as she visibly, silently, mouthed “how?”.

  “You thought you’d deformed me so much that I couldn’t do that, didn’t you?” Max said angrily, finding his voice. “But like you said, it’s not somethin’ you haven’t done before. You’ve deformed me this bad too many times. And I practiced every time you did, when you weren’t paying attention to me and that was most of the time, you evil witch.

  “I played along with it, every time makin’ you think that I was a lot worse off than I was. You see, you could deform me, but you couldn’t take away my talent. I’ve got talent and I always will! You hear that, you bitch? I’ve got talent!” Max screamed at her, years and years of pent-up anger and hatred now released.

  Time seemed to start again, but with a different aspect, for everything appeared to be in slow motion. At first, Arrosha was as a deer caught in the headlights, stunned beyond reaction. When she came back to awareness, it was in fury. Screaming that she was going to kill Max, she waved her arm violently and the table that held the instruments set aside for my torture flew towards him, but he managed to dodge it. Arrosha’s aim was off, due either to her rage or, more likely, the amulet’s activation. She shrieked that while he may have killed her, she would still destroy him first, that he would not live long enough to enjoy his victory. He ran away from her, toward the stasis chamber, desperately hoping she could not attack him there because of the amulets, both contained now within the chamber.

  For some reason the amulets did not repel her as the necklace had earlier, so she followed him near to the chamber. Max cowered, for he had not counted upon this new development. Now no longer trusting her supernatural aim, she picked up the table, its instruments dropping to the floor, and raged towards Max, holding up the heavy table as a weapon with a strength that belied her delicate form.

  “The amulet hasn’t reappeared yet,” she shrieked her gloat after him. “I suppose we were wrong all of these years. Apparently, the bulk of their power cannot reach me out here. The stasis field must be protecting me from both of the amulets. That’s bad news for you, Max. You betrayed me and you’ve outlived your usefulness to me as a pet. I’ll kill you, Max. I swear I’ll kill you!”

  With a force, she lowered the table, striking out with it at Max, landing only a glancing blow to his right leg. Despite her smug threats, she was definitely off her game. Max screamed and started running away from her again, slowed down and limping. Within seconds she had gained on him, raising the table once more, this time with cold deliberation, this time to land the death blow.

  As Max and Arrosha fought, I watched them, my attention split between their activities and the events unfolding in the stasis chamber underneath its clear crystal cover. While Edmond had not moved, unbeknownst to Arrosha yet, other incidents were taking place. Both the headpiece of the cane and the amulet, now free of the necklace, had come alive. The little amulet dragon nestled itself next to its mate, which had left its own confines of the cane. The two merged into one dragon with two heads. This new creature began to grow larger and larger, bursting out of the stasis chamber and breaking the chamber’s clear cover into a thousand pieces. Emerging as a beautiful, winged creature, it flew gracefully about the room, continuing to grow larger and larger until it outsized a blue whale.

  Once it left the stasis chamber, Arrosha took notice. She stopped attacking Max and lowered the table, finally dropping it to the ground while the graceful two-headed creature zeroed in upon her. Screaming “No! No!”, she cringed as the creature made of living crystal hovered over her in the air, flapping its huge wings. One of the heads opened its mouth and began to sing a beautiful melody without words. While everyone else in the room was calmed by the music, Arrosha was paralyzed, cringing, covering her ears as she screamed in agony. It was then that the second head of the creature joined in harmony with the first. The voices sounded not as if they came from two, but seemed to be originating from the many throats of a chorus. So complex was the music, so beautiful, celestial and sweet that it sounded like the song of a choir of angels.

  Arrosha, still screaming, now began to convulse, straightening up into an unnatural position in these convulsions before freezing there. As the song continued, getting sweeter and more beautiful with each note, she slowly turned into a crystal statue. The two-headed dragon settled to the floor, stopped singing and became inanimate again. As those of us remaining looked on, it shrank down to its original size before dividing once again and returning to its original state as two amulets.

  With Arrosha now destroyed, the landscape of the room began to change. The metal walls and floor became nothing but a cave filled with skeletons, most so old that they immediately crumbled into dust while others lost their cohesion as skeletons, simply falling to the ground as individual bones in a clatter. The chains holding what was left of the group disappeared, allowing them to rush over as fast as they could to help to free me. While my arms were now liberated, the ground that had come up to trap my legs was still there, but it was now as brittle as dry mud and crumbled even more easily. The hardest part of working myself free was dealing with the extreme stiffness, soreness and exhaustion which now suddenly consumed my entire body. With the sudden appearance of these symptoms, I now realized for the very first time just how much the necklace amulet protected me and kept me going.

  We all hugged, ecstatic to be unbound, but we were left wondering how to get out and get back to the real world. As the others began to look around for an exit, Ben and I rushed over to what was left of the stasis chamber in order to rescue Edmond and drag him out of his long-time prison.

  Max looked around as well, just as amazed at the change in the surroundings, but only for a minute, for he had something else on his mind. He walked over to the crystal statue that was now Arrosha and began to scream at it.

  “You lousy bitch,” he yelled. “Did you think I liked being your ‘good dog’? There’s not a dog alive that would want to belong to you! Besides, witch, I’m a man, you insane hag, not a dog.

  “What did you think? That you would make me one of your pretty boys? I was handsome, you sow, damn handsome before you got your filthy hands on me. I never wanted to be pretty. I never wanted to be beautiful. I looked like a man, damn you, not some young boy. I just wanted to look like myself again.

  “And when it comes to Gizelle, you dirty, evil bitch, you killed her and there was only one Gizelle. Nobody could ever replace her. Nobody.”

  He then walked the few steps over to the tipped-over instrument table and, with great effort, picked it up. With all of the
strength that years of frustration and swallowed anger gave him, he swung the table at the statue and everything that was Arrosha shattered into a million fragments. He was so filled with decades of rage that he could not stop, and continued swinging blindly. His aim wild, he accidentally swung toward the stasis chamber, from which Ben and I had just rescued Edmond. I cried out “No! Max! Be careful!”, but it was too late. He had hit the side of the already damaged chamber and cracked it. My worst fears were confirmed as sparks flew from the damaged chamber before it detonated in a huge explosion.

  EPILOGUE

  I didn’t remember anything after the explosion until I came to in a hospital room. I awoke to soft voices and the comings and goings of hospital staff and visitors. I didn’t realize where I was at first and for a groggy second, wondered if I was dead. When I tried to move, my left arm and leg were immobilized. I opened my eyes to see those appendages in casts. I’d made it out after all. Had everyone else?

  “Hello?” I said, not as loudly as I’d intended. “Hello? Hello!” When no one answered, I pressed the call button for the nurse’s station.

  “Well, well, well,” said a middle-aged nurse. “Looks like you’re finally up! Let me get a doctor.”

  “What happened?”

  “Let me get the doctor,” she repeated. “He can tell you what happened. You’re lucky you regained consciousness now because, he’s doing rounds on this floor. I’ll let him know you’re up and he’ll be in here in a few minutes.

  I waited for what seemed like an interminably long time until a youngish doctor showed up at last. He looked like he came from India, but his accent suggested that he was from New Jersey.