‘Finally, a moment to myself,’ Rebecca thought to herself as she heard the bathroom door shutting behind Matthew. “Just what the hell have I gotten myself into,” she asked into the silence of the room, slowly rubbing her tired eyes. Today had been insane, and she was finding it incredibly difficult to wrap her mind around everything. Honestly, she just wanted to close her eyes, wake up, and laugh over the horrible nightmare she’d just had. Unfortunately, no matter how many times she pinched her own arm, she couldn’t wake up. As much as she wanted to deny it, she was forced to admit to herself that she really wasn’t sleeping.
More than one God? Sure, she supposed she could accept that idea. Even though she wasn’t a religious person herself, her family had raised her in an open and accepting style – to live and let live, and when it came to things like faith and beliefs, there was no right or wrong answers. If Matthew wanted to say there was hundreds of Gods, she wasn’t going to argue over something like that. He was free to believe whatever he wanted; that was one of the basic rights of a free society.
What she was having a hard time accepting was that reality had somehow became a game. Her rational mind laughed at such a prospect, and yet, she couldn’t deny it. The book really had disappeared just by staring at it and focusing on it for a few moments, and now there was a small incessant set of bars that undoubtedly measured her life and mana – just like in a game – sitting at the corner of her vision. And, try as she might, there simply wasn’t any way to rationalize what had happened after that, except to compare it to a game. She’d acquired a class, suddenly had knowledge of hundreds of dances drilled into her mind and body – as if she’d taken classes in all the various dance styles all her life and hadn’t been a wallflower with two left feet – and suddenly found herself unable to put a single piece of clothing on!
There wasn’t any way reality, or a rational mind, could accept and believe in such things! Yet, here she was, living proof that all of it was real. The headless corpse in the bathroom stall that had bled green was proof that it was real. Such things weren’t possible in reality, and yet, they were indubiously, irrefutably true.
“There’s only a couple of possible answers,” Rebecca muttered softly to herself as she sat down on the pile of clothes that she’d been wearing just that morning. “Either I’ve went completely bat-shit crazy like everyone says Matthew has, or else the rules of the world really have changed and we’re now living a video game.” For a few moments, she worried chewed on the bottom of her life as she mulled over both possibilities.
Sighing, Rebecca finally shrugged her shoulders and made up her mind. “Doesn’t matter,” she told herself. “If I’m bat-shit crazy, there’s no way for me to disbelieve these delusions on my own – but it won’t matter. I’m still in the school, Mrs. P. and everyone else will be right outside these walls, and someone will notice I’ve went insane and will send me off for treatment and medicine like they did to Matthew last year.”
“If I’m crazy,” Rebecca reasoned out loud, “then I have no control over my own mental state, and someone is going to have to help me and stop me. If I’m not crazy,” she half shuddered at the thought, “then I’d be crazy not to try and deal with the new reality I’m stuck in now. All I can do is accept how things are now and try and deal with them the best I can.”
Taking several long, deep breaths, Rebecca finally stretched and eased back up. Walking over, she stared out the window for the first time since early that morning, half dreading what she might see out it. Whatever her imagination worried about however, wasn’t there. The football field, track, and tennis court all looked the same as always to her – at least, until a quiet corner of mind began to nag her about how empty they all were. No students, no teachers, not even anyone skipping class and trying to sneak a cigarette out around the corner of one of the buildings where they wouldn’t be seen by the teacher on duty outside.
Outside was empty. Eerily empty, and sitting in the bathroom all alone and naked, only drove that feeling of utter emptiness deep into her bones and made the hair on the back of her neck stand up straight. Shivering, she moved away from the window and slowly rubbed her arms several times to try and settle the hair on them back down.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.” Repeating the words to herself like a protective mantra, Rebecca slowly paced around the room several times before finally stopping in front of the battered stall with the gibberthing’s corpse in it. Slowly, she eased in and stared at the creature. Crumpled up like it was, and headless, she wasn’t certain if it’d stand taller or shorter than a person normally would. One thing she was certain about was that it was too thin to be a human – unless maybe it was one of those dying malnourished people like you sometimes see on those relief programs for a third world country.
Bending down, she slowly tugged on the creature’s arm and lifted it to examine the tiny claws at the end of its nails. Only a couple of inches long, they curved slightly inward and reminded her of a cat’s claw, and feeling the tip and edge of them, she was certain that were undoubtedly sharp and usable. Around the beast’s waist was a dingy fur loin cloth, that hung just a few inches below the creature’s ass.
Wrinkling her nose, Rebecca stared at the tattered, dingy cloth for several minutes. “Dammit, what the hell do I got to lose,” she finally muttered to herself as she bent down and worked on tugging to several times until she could pull it from the creature’s thin frame. Holding it out at arm’s length, she gagged a few times and felt like she was going to throw up, as a retched rotten-ripe odor slowly drifted from the ragged cloth.
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“Damn. Damn. Damn,” she gagged, as she gingerly backed up and tossed it down in one of the nearby sinks. Holding her nose with her other hand, and refusing to inhale, she leaned up and quickly turned both spickets on full blast. Moving as far down the row of sinks as possible, she then turned both nozzles and started to scrub at her hands as if she was trying to wash away the skin.
“PSSHHAAAWWW!” Letting out her held breath in a loud gasp, Rebecca tapped the soap dispenser furiously repeatedly and lathered her hands all the way up to her elbows several times before she finally shook as much excess water off them as possible and tugged out a handful of paper towels to dry on. “That’s damn disgusting,” she muttered to herself, as she slowly wrinkled her nose and turned off the faucets in front of her.
Glancing over, the other sink was now thoroughly overflowing and spilling a steady stream of water into the floor that lazily circled and snaked its way to the drain in the center. “This is gonna suck.” Taking several deep breaths, Rebecca once again began to furiously pump soap out of the dispenser with one hand, while filling the other one to the brim.
With one final deep breath, which she held, she hurried over to the other sink and began to scrub at the cloth there as much as possible. When she felt she couldn’t hold her breath any longer, she rushed back away before bursting to exhale and then slowly repeated the process. Once, twice, a dozen times, and more, she repeated the process, until her fingers were all wrinkled and she felt dizzy headed from holding her breath so many times.
“It’ll have to do for now,” she muttered breathlessly to herself, as she eased up one last time and turned off the water before pulling the cloth from the sink. Moving back to one of the other sinks, she twisted the rag several times to wring the water out of it, and then she flapped it up and down as much as possible, scattering water droplets everywhere and wafting the smell of ripe rot and bubblegum soap throughout the bathroom.
Coughing lightly from the stench, Rebecca finally bent down, stepped into the center of the waistband holding the loin cloth together and tried to pull the tattered pieces up her legs. “Here goes nothing,” she murmured to herself, expecting to be unable to lift it up past her ankles like everything else she’d tried earlier than day. Much to her astonishment, the cloth slid up easily – until it got up to the point of her legs where she was simply too wide for it to fit any longer.
“I’ll… I’ll be damned!” Shocked, she inhaled deeply, wiggled and squirmed as much as possible and tried her best to worm the cloth on up her waist. Unfortunately, too fat was simply too fat, and she was much too wide to wear the same thing the emaciated creature had worn. “Dammit!” Disgusted at how close she’d came to having something to wear, Rebecca ripped the tattered cloth off and tossed it half across the room.
“Why the hell does that work,” she asked herself, pacing back and forth several times. “A damn loin cloth. What type of dumbass dancer would wear a loin cloth? An exotic dancer? A belly dancer? Is a spelldancer supposed to be something like that in this god forsaken game?”
Musing to herself, she paced back and forth the length of the room several times, before finally going over and grabbing up her old skirt. Pulling it up to her teeth, she bit the cloth and then tugged, ripping a long streak into the cloth, before spitting it out and turning it to do the same on the opposite side. “What’s a god damn lion cloth, but a skirt with both damn sides out?” Grabbing the cloth, she tugged and ripped until she pulled the rip all the way down to the bottom of the skirt on both sides.
“Here goes nothing again,” Rebecca said, as she tried to ease the torn skirt up over her ankles – only to find herself unable to pull it up. “God dammit!” Disgusted, she nearly tossed the skirt across the floor, but then stopped herself. Biting once again, she pulled and tugged, repeatedly tearing a dozen gashes or more from the waistline all the way down to the bottom of the skirt.
“Ping!” A gentle dinging sound rung from nowhere in her ears, causing her to stop and blink several times, and a small blue status window floated at the corner of her vision. “Congratulations, You’ve succeeded in creating a tattered dancer’s dress,” she read out loud, and then shook her head a few times as the box slowly faded away.
“What the hell?” Astonished, Rebecca stared off at nothing for several moments, trying to wrap her mind around what’d just happened. Slowly, she pulled the tattered, ragged rainbow skirt up around her waist and twirled in it. Almost instantly, a joyous dance sprang to her mind, and she found herself spinning, kicking, and twirling energetically across the floor. Glancing in one of the large mirrors at the end of the room, she saw herself and stopped almost as quickly as she began.
“I get it now,” she whispered to herself. “The way the dress moves, the way the strips wave, flow, and sway…. They’re almost as important to the magic as the dance itself. The clothes are almost an extension of the dancer.”
Looking back into the mirror, she was surprised to see tears leaking down the corner of her eyes and a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. Why the hell was she so happy, anyway? Her dress was ruined, ripped and torn into shreds. She was still topless and barefoot, and now dancing half naked around the boy’s restroom with a dead corpse just a few feet away. Just what the hell was there to be joyous about, Rebecca asked herself once more.
But, try though she might, she just couldn’t stop the smile from creeping back onto her face, or stop herself from spinning around another time or two for good measure.