Felixentric

Scene 35

When Felix opened his eyes again, he felt dizzy but was soon sitting up. No, he'd been sitting up the whole time. How was he sitting up? His eyes darted around.

The first instinct was to stand, but his legs wouldn't move. It felt like bricks were on his knees, keeping him - not exactly sitting, actually - kneeling. Then he tried moving his limbs with his frozen forearms, but they, too, were pinned down and at his sides.

A scream. "Help!" It was Ryan.

"Ryan? Ryan! It's Felix. Where are we?"

Quinn answered. "We're in a... We're in the laboratory, from the forest." The basement. The same dusty room Felix and Quinn had walked into a few days before.

Felix's head hurt, but his eyes were finally adjusting. Only then did he realize what was keeping them down. Vines protruded from the cement, cracking it and growing up like Jack's beanstalk. It was thick and strong around their bodies, setting them all up in a straight line and on their knees. "Bramblevine?" Felix stuttered. He was wearing the copper rings Hale had thrown down in the alley. He spun them on his thumbs out of nervousness.

The vines were there, winding up the walls and into-. They were moving actually, growing right before their eyes.

And there she was in the middle of everything. The vines did not touch her - the sweet, sweet cheeks of his dear Janette, but they all pointed to her from the walls. Like they were road signs and she was Rome.

Speaking of which, she looked like she'd just walked out of an ancient Greek or Roman textbook.

She walked down the floorboards like she was walking on water. She was Ophelia, rising from her water coffin with greyed skin, and toe nails tap-tap-tapping on the lily pads she walked upon. Her mouth was open, first like a fish, and then like she was kissing someone slowly.

Before Felix knew it, she was over their heads, touching each one of them with painted nails, longer than the tips of recently-sharpened pencils.

There were five of them on the ground. Quinn was to Felix's left and Ryan to his right. Can you hear them screaming?

Janette looked like a prostitute, and not only because she was dressed in very little. It was because her eyes were dirty and demanding, like they could take you over and make you do things you weren't supposed to. She blinked at them, bored.

"J?"

None of them could believe their eyes.

Her lips were vividly red with pomegranate lipstick - even a perfect shade on top of her dark lips. Felix was sure she could bite into their eye sockets like apples if she tried.

The soft face, that once was, was then hard and sinister and had transformed into a viper. Her once long sleeved, plaid shirts were replaced by a white, laced bra and long necklaces. Her pants were replaced with shorts and a long translucent cloth, like a bridal cover turned into a skirt.

"Oh, God. Why, God, did you do this?" Ryan said aloud, but she must not have meant to because she instantly crisscrossed her eyebrows and her head down to avoid eyes contact from the others - particularly Quinn who Felix noticed looked over immediately.

With her statement, Felix, too, began to wonder about God. What did God mean to him now that he was not Him?

"It's okay, children." Janette's voice had become woman-like. "You have the right to say how you feel. Say it aloud." She walked up to the body at the far left.

It was James. Primarily, Felix relaxed a little to see that James was okay after hearing his screams in the Seer's shop. But then he only felt worse. He was, yet again, the first to get tortured and, yet again, no one else in the room could help it.