The Jadedvisalian

As the light started to come back, a muffled voice seemed to be desperately apologizing to me. I didn’t understand what was happening at the time, but everything came back when someone started examining the side of my head and white hot pain shot through my skull like lightning through a punk with a coupon book for piercings at Skin Lab. My eyes popped open and I swung at my assailant. Luckily I noticed that Collette was my assailant, and managed not to hit a lady. She said she didn’t know it had been me until it was too late. I gave back her glasses. They were a bit crooked, but they just made her look cute. I stood to my feet, slid back down the wall, then managed to slowly stagger upright, leaning on the wall.

“So much for this hard hat,” I says. “Didn’t seem to work.”

“It might have,” Collette says. “I hit you on the side of the head. If you didn’t tilt it sideways like a fedora … but it blocked some of the blow.”

“I came to rescue you,” I says.

She points out that if I wanted to rescue her, that I shouldn’t have closed the door behind me. I looked and saw that the door would not open from this direction.

“How do they go out after they come in?” I ask.

“They never close the door.”

I stared hopelessly at the blocked doorway. Hope flooded in like the tide when I saw the door open. Hope slid back to the sea when I saw a giant of a man standing in the doorway.

“Let me,” Collette said.

Before I could stop her, she stepped from behind me. The huge mountain started forward. He started downward after Collette smashed his head in with the same rock she’d pummeled me with.

“You’ve got a lot of strength for a librarian,” I says.

“I read lots of encyclopedias.” she said, grinning.

“Do you know what’s going on here? Why did they kidnap you?”

“Because only I had access to the books, the ones I’d let you read, the ones that revealed the secret to this underground mausoleum.”

“There’s a secret? What is it?”

She looked at me for a long moment, like I had just said something so stupid and it actually caused her brain to have to restart.

“I don’t know the secret, you were reading the books. Didn’t you find the secret?”

“No, I didn’t see anything about a secret. How do you know there is a secret?”

“I asked why I’d been kidnapped, he told me there was a secret.”

“I guess I’m not as good at using a library as I thought.” I says.

I headed out the door.

The remaining goons in tights came rushing from the left.

“Come and catch me!” I yelled at them.

I stepped back in.

“Stand here, by the door.” I says.

Each and every one rushed in after me. They grunted and cried out when they ran into the back wall and each other. I pulled Collette with me back out, then I shut the door behind me.

I tried the door across, but it didn’t budge. The center door did. It appeared to enter into a burial chamber. We stepped inside.

Stan Prolongo by David Avila is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.