Wake Up

Chapter 3

Trixie kicked a can down the street as she looked for something to do. She'd given up using the playground as the metal equipment burned to the touch from the relentless sun. She found Stephanie wandering around in the shade of the park.

"Hey, Pinkie, want to go for a swim?" Trixie called.

"I can't right now," Stephanie said. "Have you seen Ziggy? He was supposed to meet me in the garden but I can't find him anywhere."

"He's probably taking a nap so he can be hungry for lunch," Trixie said with a snort. "Let's go see him."

The girls let themselves into Ziggy's house when he didn't answer the door. His bedroom looked as though all of the dressers and waste baskets had been dumped out. They waded through discarded bed sheets and piles of wrinkled clothing, heaps of crumpled candy wrappers and half-eaten lollipops. The largest pile rested at the head of the bed and appeared to be trembling.

"Ziggy? Are you in there?" Stephanie prodded gingerly at the sheets. Trixie stepped up beside her and grabbed the corner of a blanket.

"All right, Ziggy, rise and shine!" Trixie snapped the blanket back to expose the boy. Underneath there were even more sheets and shirts and wrappers. Somewhere inside of it a muffled whimper tried to get out.

Together the girls pulled apart more and more layers from the fabric and wrapper cocoon. For all the trash and laundry they threw aside they still had to dig in far deeper than seemed possible before Stephanie let out a yelp of, "I've got him!" and they managed to unearth Ziggy. The little boy gasped and his eyes flew wide open, locking onto Stephanie.

"I saw him!" Ziggy cried. "The man, he tried to get me!" Stephanie's eyes widened to match his stare.

"Are you sure?" Stephanie brushed a few clinging candy wrappers out of the boy's hair and off his shoulders. She paused and stared at the collar of his cape. Sooty black marks discolored Ziggy's cape on either side of his head, a matching set of singed fingerprints. "Ziggy, what happened?"

"I was dreaming about my garden," Ziggy said, "and he grabbed me! He pulled me in and...!" He stopped, craning his neck down to look at the singes on his clothing. He slapped at his cape to brush off the marks but they were burned into the fabric. "It really happened!"

"This can't be possible," Stephanie said.

"What are you guys talking about?" Trixie asked.

"Stephanie dreamed about this scary guy," Ziggy said, "and he melted her shoes! And now I dreamed about him and he burned my cape!"

"Seriously?" Trixie looked between Ziggy and Stephanie, arching an eyebrow at their pale faces. "You think I'll fall for a joke like that?"

"It's not a joke!" Ziggy said. "This guy's really bad!"

"Do you think Pixel or Stingy dreamed about him too?" Stephanie wondered. She looked at Trixie. "What about you, Trixie?"

"Get real!" Trixie laughed. "The heat must be getting to your heads. You'll have to try harder than that if you want to fool me."

"But we're telling the truth!" Ziggy shouted. "What if he comes after you too?"

"Nobody's coming after us," Trixie said. "If you were really in trouble, Sportacus would have come and saved you, right?" Ziggy and Stephanie glanced at each other.

"I guess that's true," Ziggy mumbled.

"Well there you go," Trixie said. "Now how about we all go swimming? I think you both need to chill out."

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Trixie rolled out of bed early. It was hard to rest when the air was so stifling and the sheets were clammy against her skin. When she opened her window a temperate breeze whispered in from outside, the sun only just starting to rise. She sneaked out into the quiet dawn to take advantage of the milder weather while it lasted.

She already knew where she wanted to go. Ziggy's house was just a block or so away. The windows were dark, Ziggy asleep inside. He wouldn't be for long. Trixie snickered under her breath as she crept up underneath his bedroom window.

"O-o-ooh, Zi-i-iggy," Trixie put on her eeriest voice and tapped his window. She moaned like a ghost and scratched her nails against the sill. "Look o-o-out, the bad man is coming to ge-e-et yo-o-ou!"

A short gasp came from inside the room. Trixie tapped and rattled the window again before ducking down and scuttling away with her hand over her mouth to stop from laughing. The window scraped open behind her.

"Who's there?" Ziggy called shrilly. Crouching against the side of the house Trixie wailed again.

"Zi-i-iggy, you have to get o-o-out!"

The boy squeaked and the window slammed shut. Within moments the front door opened. Trixie darted behind the house and looked for somewhere to hide. She took the lid off of the large garbage can sitting there and crawled inside, smothering her laughter as she fitted the lid back on over her head. The air inside was stale and quickly grew warm from her body heat but she ignored the sweat creeping down her scalp.

It was the perfect setup. Ziggy would come investigating, and when he came around Trixie would pop out and scare him. If only she could keep quiet long enough so that he wouldn't catch on. Her giggles echoed all around her in the can.

Another voice giggled with her. A deep, raspy cackling rose up and reverberated off the metal siding until it was deafening. There was only black that Trixie could see and only the cramped confines of the can that she could feel but the presence of the other voice was undeniable and it made the hair on her neck stand on end. No joke was worth this ordeal. Trixie tried to throw the lid off of the can to get away.

She managed to raise the lid up enough to see a sliver of rosy dawn sky. Then a dark shadow cut off her view, someone tall and skinny looming over her. The man laughed as he jammed the lid back down.

"Tell me if you've heard this joke before, Loud-Girl, if you can."

Trixie felt the trash can lurch and crash onto its side, throwing her roughly. She bounced and banged against the metal as the can received a shove and went tumbling and careening over turf and concrete.

The sweltering air churned around her tumbling body. The temperature kept climbing with each passing moment, so thick with heat that she could barely breathe enough to shout. The disembodied cackling kept echoing around her and drowned out her own grunts and cries. She tried to pound against the lid of the can but it held shut tight as though welded in place.

"And now," the horrible laughter declared, "for the punchline!"

The trash can leapt off the ground and Trixie almost floated weightless, her stomach rising towards her throat until gravity reclaimed her and hurled her back down. The can smashed against something solid with an earsplitting crash and the darkness exploded into sizzling hot colors.

The force of it jerked Trixie upright in bed. She clutched her head while her room spun nauseatingly around her and she panted for breath, the air humid and sour.