Jasmine listened as Giles told the audience the story of all his adventures, including driving home jumping into another reality to save Jasmine’s butt from the demons. She nodded: she thought she’d felt him up on the red rock mountain. He told of reaching the festival grounds and tying up the doofuses and getting caught by Roger and Jerry and, and…
Jasmine made the connection as soon as she heard the names. Root-i-ger was Roger and Gare-old was Gerald, Jerry! Old Rütiger and his son (she knew she’d been spelling it wrong) had somehow transformed into Roger and his son Jerry. And as Giles tried to piece together the story of the demons and their wacky doings, she understood something else.
She could save things, right now. This was what she’d been born to do!
She stood, brushed her hands together with a cloud of red dust, and walked into the house.
“Mrs. Benz?” Her voice was quiet and shy, even when she commanded. The old woman’s dark eyes watched her.
“Mrs. Benz, will you come with me and trust me? And not be scared no matter what?”
Silence stretched out for a minute. Then the old woman held out a leathery hand and Jasmine took it.
“We’re going to go into some dark tunnels, Mrs. Benz, and there’s gonna be demons but you look real close at them, okay?”
There was no change in the quiet face but the old hand trembled. Jasmine squeezed it. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”
She really didn’t have to try very hard to get back into the corridors. She’d felt the dark tunnels and the two demons lurking behind every chair, rustling in the corner of the bathroom, crouching behind the rocks like the ghosts in the Haunted Mansion that popped up from behind tombstones and weren’t scary at all. Now she stopped clinging to this reality. Maybe the tablecloth was plastic after all…
The darkness oozed into every nook and then there was no house. There was just the old woman looking at her, eyes glinting in the jeweled lights that stretched away and away. You could wonder anywhere, all the way to Ireland maybe.
The two demons were caught so off guard it was funny. They were suddenly like Laurel and Hardy playing soldiers who were supposed to be on guard but had fallen asleep. They scrambled to their feet and the bigger one slapped the smaller one.
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Then they were all menace and hissing. “What a delightful surprise, my little dear,” crooned the cold-voiced one.
But the smaller one gasped, “Aw gard,” as if his stomach and his heart had been plucked right out. “Dilly.”
When all was said and done it was very simple. The smaller demon looked at the old woman and recognized the young woman he’d loved and Dilyéhé looked at the shaggy demon with the horns and the deformed face and knew her man. Jasmine had brought them together and it didn’t matter if this was future or past or how everything tied together.
“Old bear,” whispered Mrs. Benz. Jasmine had a happy smile: for sure Mrs. Benz had long ago turned “Gare-old” into “bear old” and then into “old bear.”
Popster never used a word processor in his life. He had an ancient Smith-Corona that he typed on and when he started a new line he pushed that big silver lever over, ding ka-chnk, zip!
On the time line which was our universe, reality went ding ka-chnk, zip! They were on a new line of the long scroll which stretched to infinity above and below.
The big demon slowly faced his “son” and his son’s beloved. The face of Rrrrr radiated ice and hate but Grrrr looked at Dilyéhé and his eyes melted like fudgsicles in the sun.
And far away Killington turned from Giles to glare daggers at Jerry who stood, stocky body moving clumsily in his constricting suit, and stretched out his arms.
The beefy creep with the star on his shirt was still holding Giles down but his hands trembled as he watched his bosses go nuts.
Jasmine willed Giles to tell a new story, a brave story. And yay for Giles, he twisted forward, spilt out of the guard’s hands onto the floor. The guard snarled something like “faggot” and grabbed at empty air as Giles surged to his feet.
Muttering like a wizard casting a spell, Giles made a fist and put every kilogram of the skill he didn’t had into swinging at Killington’s hated face.
The nose crunched, spurting horrible blood. The big man bellowed a monstrous storm of anger and ice and collapsed.
Giles stared. “Just like I told it,” he said in wonder.
The icy demon now lay on the floor of the corridor where Jasmine stood, roaring and raging. The smaller demon moved clumsily with outstretched arms toward the old woman, eyes as soft as perfect chocolate chip cookies. Its monstrous claw touched the leathery old hand.
The next instant they were holding each other and kissing. Jasmine had never thought kissing was icky. She just cooed, “Awww.” The demon (or was he a bulky bearded man who could have lost a few pounds?) kissed the goddess who had kissed Robby Baker and driven him mad with passion.
The once-happy couple started down the corridor, away from Jasmine and towards a lifetime where they had never parted. But the demon Rrrrr put out a claw. This was not to be.
The red letters writhed on the walls and Jasmine could read a few lines at last. “The beloved, long mourned as lost…”
What a thing for a little girl! These words, quivering and coming loose, could maybe change the world, put things right. But she might have only a minute at the center of all this power.
It really really mattered what she did in the next few seconds.