Marlo woke up, completely breathless.
"Jake?" She asked in a hoarse voice. She looked around and saw that she was in a large, what seemed to be, an amphitheater and to her dismay one without Jake Fisher in it.
The arched ceiling was carved from a grey looking stone, and had Cherubs carved out of the sides of the pillars. Marlo took a closer look at one of the Cherubs and immediately wished she hadn't.
The Cherub was not a Cherub, but a creature that she had never seen before. It had a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth, curling horns protruding from the middle of its forehead, and a tail with spikes up and down it. It looked almost like a small devil or a demon.
Marlo shivered and decided to look down at the floor instead. It didn't help much. The fist thing she noticed was that she was wearing a green, old fashion style dress, although she had no memory of putting it on. It was slightly torn at the edges and there were dark red spots on the hem. Blood?
She decided that this was probably the least of her worries and instead, went about studying the floor as if it held all the answers she needed. In this one instance it did.
Beneath her were a map of symbols that looked very much like the ones that were cut into her arms. They were placed in a perfect circle on the floor that went around her, encircling her in their evil grasp.
She stood up and smoothed down her skirts, and then she began to run towards the outside edge of the circle of symbols.
Crack!
Her whole body collided with an invisible wall. She slumped down and held her aching head in her hands.
She let herself cry.
"Oh, how I do love to watch you writhe with pain and misery," said a low sounding voice," But it seems that you will not survive long enough for Master to finish if you continue on, hurling yourself against the barriers in which you have been placed and crying like a lost school girl." The voice-which Marlo identified as belonging to a boy- sounded amused, if not delighted in her misery and pain.
Marlo whirled around and saw a tall by with broad shoulders. He was wearing an elaborate form of tuxedo that was a deep shade of blue with a matching hat. Marlo noticed several strands of golden blond hair were escaping from the tall hat and felt the sudden urge to push them back underneath his hat.
She continued to study his face and he did hers. She realized that he was younger than she had first perceived him to be ,though she could not say exactly how old he was. Maybe 20? He had hazel eyes that seemed lively and kind but his thin line of a mouth and tensely set shoulders said other wise about his person.
Marlo could stand it no longer. She needed to leave this horrible place in which she could hear screams in far off corridors, with this terrible boy- whose name she'd learned was Matthew- who found pleasure in her agony, and where she knew she had been taken to by the one they called Master- that repulsive creature that had been in every one of her dreams for the past two months.
Her face must have changed drastically, for Matthew smiled and gestured theatrically about him, "Is something wrong, Marlo?"
"No. Of course not. It is not as if I am in a foreign place that has strange beings lurking about it and strange noise coming from the very depths of it. Or that I am staring at a foreign face that is delighted in seeing my pain," Marlo said. He smiled at the line about him and gave a nod of his head asking her to continue, "I also seem to have acquired some strangely shaped scars that look very much like the ones carved into the floor surrounding me, which, along with these strange symbols, is foreign."
Matthew slowly clapped his hands together," That was very poetic, bit if I might make a slight suggestion..."
"And what might that be?" Marlo asked with sarcasm evident in her voice.
"You over used the word 'foreign'. Your speech became very dry with it. Do you fancy the word?" He shrugged." I suggest a bit more of a variety in your tones as well. "
Marlo just blinked at him for a moment.
She did not reply for several minutes which seemed to outrage him.
"Goodness, woman! I would have a better time trying to make conversation with a lamp .Humph", He said as he began to stalk away pouting.
He turned back and Marlo could hear his voice clearly though it was evident that he was already far down a long corridor. My he must be fast, she thought absently," I will see you again tonight at dinner if Master decides that you are worth not killing instantly."
He must have seen her mouth draw into a tight line when he said that because he gave a slight sound of contentment.
Jake, with some effort, managed to pull himself up off the kitchen floor. He had stopped weeping hours ago but felt so empty and so weak that he had not bothered to move from his position on the floor.
He looked around wearily. Everything reminded him of Marlo, Everything. He couldn't stop walking past her open bedroom door and thinking how it would never again be her room because by now she was likely dead. He couldn't stop thinking about how he had held her as she sobbed on the night she came home from work, or of the sounds he had heard earlier, and finally the girl he had met in third grade with her long brown pigtails and big brown eyes.
They had both changed so much. Both inside and out. It was all for the better though, because they had become best friends through the course of all of the changing.
Damn it, Jake thought as he passed her room for the tenth time.
He knew that this was not going to help Marlo so he silently cursed himself and , that too, he thought would not help Marlo.
