by Kae Bell
When the attenuator hit in front of her, she didn’t know what was happening. She thought she heard Wrangler for a moment. She suddenly felt slow and tired. Sluggish.
Slowing down, she thought. What was she doing alone in this strange place? Her body pixilated across a vast space, maybe never to be reformed.
In the distance, she could hear Wrangler calling for her again. Was he in front of her, to the left, or maybe straight up?
The weird slow feeling hit her again and the sound of Wrangler’s voice got all warped and warbled, like a record played too slow on a turntable.
All she wanted was to go home. That’s all she had wanted from the beginning. That stupid Night Prism had lured her away from her home.
Now, here she was, nothing more than sound, as far from home as she could possibly be. She’d done enough. She was going home. One way or another.
With great concentration, she slowed to a stop, feeling the silence as a standing wave. Then she pushed away from her edge, moving backward, tracing over herself. The sound that came from her was a low eerie moan. It frightened her and she moved more quickly, to escape herself.
As she pushed back from where she had been, she could feel the Night Prism at her end getting closer. She did not know what would happen when she reached it. But she no longer cared.
She heard another low sound behind her, louder than her own sound. It was not Wrangler. The sound grew louder. It sounded familiar but still faint, as if a memory of a sound and not a sound itself. It was soothing.
She listened as she doubled over herself, criss-crossing her earlier forward motion. She seemed to pick up speed moving backward and she no longer felt as tired. She reached the tail end of her wave, now a wave folded in two.
She recognized the song as her wave began to pass through the Night Prism, into the density of the Nothing.
The Dark Spectrum was waiting for her there.
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when the skies are gray, you’ll never know dear how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
Quotation/Song credits in order
Michael Jackson “Human Nature”
Rick Springfield “867-5309”
Nena “99 Red Balloons”
Sun Tzu “The Art of War”
Alfred Hitchcock
Pink Floyd “The Wall”
The Scorpions “Rock You like a Hurricane”
Mildred Jane Hill/Patty Smith Hill “Happy Birthday”
Grease “Summer Nights”
Yes “Owner of a Lonely Heart”
The Offspring “Come out and Play (Keep ‘Em Separated)”
Pink Floyd “Dirty Woman”
Willie Nelson “You are My Sunshine”
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
