AN: This is an experimental rewrite of a story I really enjoyed writing a few years ago that had a lot of problems. I am totally open to comments, critique and suggestions! Enjoy.
Chapter One
As she sucked on the needle prick on her forefinger, Kitty found herself thinking about fairy tales that dark night. Maybe she wished that she could fall into a deep sleep for a hundred years. It was the night before her eighteenth birthday and she was not spending it with friends or with family; she was skittering down a rugged, overgrown hill somewhere by the Sussex Downs in a terrible choice of shoes, face flushed, breath curling in the cold air, limp ragdoll flapping under one arm: her ever-staring, sharp-toothed Rumpelstiltskin.
She skidded to a halt at the bottom, still under the cover of a dense copse, breathing hard and rearranging the awkward wood and cloth puppet, making sure not to look at its face.
It had the creepiest face that Kitty had ever seen. That was, of course, why she had lifted it from the charity shop it had hidden in for the last few years, at least. Her narrow thickly lined eyes had connected with its glassy, bulging ones and the shudder that had rippled under her skin for the next few hours had delighted her so fully that she had dug around in her pocket for change, turned around a half mile away and strode back to buy it. If something could make her feel a chill like that in the drowsy daylight of a South East England village, imagine what it could do to an unsuspecting citizen one dark evening.
She just had to figure out who would receive this haphazardly planned prank, and how.
Queen of pranks, Kitty had gained quite the reputation throughout school for her increasingly ruthless and yet surely harmless punishment, some that seemed to defy laws of time and space and physics. It was truly her greatest skill, unmatched thus far.
Teacher had given her consistently bad grades in chemistry. She and her friends broke into her house using a hairpin - thank you, grandma's old kid detective novels - and squeezed two and a half bottles of Fairy liquid into the cistern of her upstairs toilet. One hour and one flush later, they had watched from low branches across the street as bubbles poured out of the windows and her teacher's screams rang with the church bells.
Her favourite: classmate had tried to bully her group of friends, calling them nerdy, geeky, pathetic losers. Kitty orchestrated the perfect punishment. At her suggestion, Charlie had called her parents pretending to be the teacher complaining that student could not read the board. Parent forced her to wear her glasses at school. Easy. Her friend Matt slipped birth control into her cafeteria food and weeks later her face blossomed with angry red spots. Then, coup de grace, Saxen had told the local psycho violence junkie that she had called him fat. After a swift punch to the teeth and a trip to the dentist, student sported beautiful cyan braces for the next two months. Kitty stapled pictures of her like this all across school. Below, in bold black capitals, was written 'NERD'. Simple. Beautiful.
School had finished now, but she decided she wasn't done with the only thing she was good at. The thing that made her friends adore her, her enemies fear her. When she felt the rush of adrenaline as she locked eyes with the creepiest puppet she had ever seen in that shop, it wasn't just fear she felt; it was pure excitement. The rush of a half-formed plan.
Now all she had to do was wait for someone to wrong her.
Over a month passed, the puppet shut in a box in her attic, and she would have forgotten about it if she hadn't seen a flyer on a window in the village advertising a job going.
Now, she had a pretty good set-up. Her grandma didn't ask for rent and wouldn't in the future, she was sure. She did all of Kitty's cooking and all of the cleaning, too. It must have given her some sense of purpose after grandpa passed away, to look after somebody again. The point was, Kitty had inheritance and a good home, she didn't need a job, but a casual Facebook browse of her old gang had chilled her to her core.
Charlie. Smart, loyal, sweet Charlie had left college straight into a law job at his uncle's firm that would soon pay more a year than Kitty had left of two parents' worth of inheritance.
Stoic behemoth Fred was getting out his pent up emotion as a drummer in a heavy metal band that was actually doing shockingly well for a group that, in Kitty's opinion, sounded like a garbage truck falling down a mountain.
Adorable, ditsy Adam had a job and a new cat; Saxen was starring in awesome local plays, Elliot was doing an MA in the autumn.
Even Matt. Always partying, womanising, drug-loving Matthew had gained a place in an incredibly prestigious music school that she hadn't even been aware he had applied for. And apparently according to the comments on the status online that told her this, a girlfriend...though one who couldn't spell 'knew' and was too liberal with the letter 'x' as a sign-off, clearly.
She closed down her laptop and massaged the bridge of her nose. She wasn't going to university; she had deliberately bombed her A Levels so she wouldn't get in, and told everyone that she just wanted to focus on her life now, instead of endless education.
The truth was, she wasn't good enough at anything. She had been pretty good at school, at writing essays and stuff, and she had been fabulous at harmless vengeance, but she couldn't play the guitar and sing like Matt could, she wasn't effortlessly likeable like Charlie, or eye-wateringly smart like Elliot, or even just incredibly lucky like Adam. At school they had all been happy losers, into trading cards and playing Pokemon and going to comic-cons in London. In the real world? The only loser was her.
So when she had seen that sign printed in garish Word Art on a tree in a forest of identical ones just outside the village, she had not hesitated to call.
'Lab Assistant Needed. Safety Not Garanteed. No Experience Necessary. Pay Is Very Good. Bring You're Own Goggles.'
Whoever it was couldn't spell but it was too tempting. She chatted with the voice at the other end for twenty-five minutes and they met up the next day in his home.
Martin Glass was cute in a spectacled, nervous-around-girls sort of way. If he had been ten years younger...
"So, um, do you have any interest in scientific, sort of, experiments?" he had asked, sipping on his too-hot tea and letting it dribble back into the cup again, turning bright red.
"Mmhmm," she'd said, running her fingers through her blonde hair and smiling, almost mockingly, but she wanted this. For some reason, she wanted this. "What is it you're working on, then?"
"Oh, erm." He lifted his finger to tap his nose conspiratorially - very awkward, very cute - but on the way up banged the table quite hard with his arm and spilled tea all over his crotch. "Oh, bother," he mumbled, which made Kitty laugh as she had never heard anyone say that before, but she got up to get him a cloth from his tiny dusty kitchen that had clearly never been used.
When he had awkwardly dried himself off as she stood with arms folded and a half smirk he explained to her that her role would be very important. Very important. She could start tomorrow. He would show her his lab if all went well, too. She wouldn't admit it to herself, but when he said that she felt a tingle of pure excitement rush from top to toe.
Now, this dark night, as she picked her way through the undergrowth with the puppet she passed the job advertisement again, now browned and curled from rain and hardly legible, though the blue and green word art still stained it brightly. This would be great, she was thinking. Convince the mad scientist that he was actually mad. That would show him. She stopped to suppress a pathetic shuddering snivel, and then continued on towards his house.
He wasn't a professor, he told her, when she arrived at his house for her first day of work and she had allowed him to make her tea before she started. He had dropped out of his PhD course, in what subject she hadn't asked, at Cambridge university at the instruction of his tutor, because the research he had begun to involve himself in was far too risky and they refused to be linked to it. Before that, he had studied abroad for a long time, which explained the slight, slight accent. His teachers over there (wherever it was; she couldn't remember even seconds after he had said) had sent him over to England for a higher class of education as his research was astonishing. Her heart had quickened as she listened, eagerly, laughing at every attempt at a joke to make him feel more at ease with her.
"So to answer your question over an hour ago, no, don't call me professor."
"Mr. Glass?" she had asked, rotating left and right slightly, childishly. "Sir?"
He swallowed. Adam's apple bobbed. "Martin." He took his glasses off to polish them as the bridge had become sweaty.
"What should I get started on, Martin?"
"I don't think I'm ready to show you the lab yet. A, erm, a trust thing. I hope you understand. my last assistant didn't work out and I now regret sharing so much with him." He combed through his wavy jet hair with a nervous, apologetic smile. Kitty couldn't help but feel a little hurt, and showed this with a stage pout before wheeling on her feet and beginning to pace.
"I need something to do," she said, facing away from him with her hands on her hips.
"Ha. Erm. Let me show you some of my past projects and you can tell me what you think of them. We can see if we have any cohesion, if you will. Er. Mm."
She followed him to the computer and sat on the edge of the sofa beside his chair. "What would your girlfriend think of you hiring a young girl to help you?"
"I, uh, you sounded much older on the phone, so, I, well. I have to say, I... Huh. Hmm." Incredibly flustered, he tried to shake off the question by shaking his head. She laughed, not unkindly. "And I don't have a girlfriend."
"Why not?"
"Personal, don't you think?" He turned to actually look her in the eyes, light blue, darting left and right to see into both of hers. She blushed a genuine pink.
"Sorry."
A mannequin head, grey and covered in triangles, flashed onto his screen. "I know what you're thinking: argh, uncanny valley!" He laughed. She nervously laughed too, lost already. "But this was one of my first projects. An advanced AI with voice emoting and something of a sense of humour. Try him. I called him Razor." He held down the control key. "Hello, Razor."
There was a pause, a click, then the face came alive with movement, and it was frightening. It was human, but not at all.
"Hello."
"Try it, go on."
Kitty cleared her throat. "What's...up?" Martin actually looked disappointed for a small moment. He pointed at the control key. "Oh." She held it down. "What's up?"
A pause. "If you're talking about what's above me, it's the sky!" he replied. Out of the corner of her eye Kitty saw Martin mouth along with him and then smile wide.
"Go on, have a proper conversation with him."
"I'd rather see your lab," Kitty said honestly.
Martin's smile faded and he shrugged. "Like I say, I want to see if we have any sort of a connection first. You know? It really is very, uh, delicate information."
"Oh, a connection," Kitty repeated, and then smiled, eyes unmoving. He continued to click around, exploring the virtual spiderweb of his past work, completely oblivious to her.
"Gosh, I'm going mad, where is it all?" he was muttering. Kitty sighed, crossed and uncrossed her legs. It rubbed her the wrong way to be ignored.
Now, almost at his house, she could see a faint flickering orange glow from her spot among the trees outside. He was probably sitting by the fire like they used to do together. He said he had never lit the fire on his own before. He had another girl in there. Her fingers tightened around the doll's neck and she almost lost her footing for a second and managed to right herself before slamming face-first into rock. She took a breath and relaxed again when she saw a cluster of familiar faces.
She had called Charlie first. Out of habit he was always first on her mind, as they had known each other the longest, but he probably wasn't her best friend of the group. They all had their purposes within the organism of their little gang. She would go to different ones for different things.
Nostalgia called her to summon each one for this last prank, though. It hadn't been easy to convince them all to join her, which had really truly hurt, but clearly they had given in to the reunion. Before her in the dark stood their shivering, jacket-padded forms, illuminated from the left by the faint firelight through his window, and from the right by the full moon. Matt grinned toothily when he saw her, hugging his own arms. Steam clouded from their mouths as they acknowledged her.
"Oh, I could cry," she said, voice low. "It's been too long."
"So what's the plan?" Adam asked.
"What the hell is that thing?" Saxen jabbed an accusing and horrified finger at the puppet loosely dangling from her arm.
"My comrades," she said, delight hard to mask, "this will be the final touch on a spectacular plan. Convince the scientist that he is going mad. I have hidden a tracker in this puppet. Every time he finds it somewhere he throws it out, and every time he does that, I find it, patch it up - I have spent fortunes on doll repair - and put it back somewhere. Finally, now, we put it on his precious secret project in the basement. This will really, really freak him out."
"What's his secret project?"
Kitty looked at them all. So grown; adults, almost. All taller than her. All wider. They were no longer equals, were they?
'So sorry, Kitty.'
She winced at the unwelcome memory. "I don't know," she admitted.
"You were working with him for months and you don't know?" Charlie asked with an amused smile. She had forgotten telling him she worked with this guy; that would mean she'd have to come up with a reason for torturing her ex boss. Not the truth, of course.
She shrugged. "He was private. And mean, you know. Bad person. Let's get him."
"Alright, let's do it."
"What do you need us for, exactly?" Matt said far too loudly, as usual, as he loped after them.
"Shush. I need to break into the basement," she hissed over her shoulder. "Fred, Adam, Saxen - you try to get in through the outer door." She pointed at a pair of small wooden panels without handles that leaned against the house, used for transporting items in and out and airing the room out, as far as she knew. "The rest of you, we're going through the house."
"How?" Charlie was aghast. They had unlawfully entered plenty of properties, what was he being so antsy about? She sighed.
"Just do your thing, all of you. Come on."
The rest of them followed slowly, exchanging looks that she pretended she didn't see.
The kitchen window was always open a crack to circulate the smell. A sulphur-based experiment gone wrong that had made both her and him bend double with laughter, and then cough and cough until tears streamed. She gritted her teeth and yanked, and it opened just enough to allow her to squeeze tightly through after a boost, and land head first half on a counter and half in the sink. She rolled and kicked her legs over the side and landed silently. From the inside she took a deep breath and unlocked and pushed the lower window that swung out. Charlie, Matt and Elliot clambered through one by one, Matt kicking a glass with the very tip of his toe as he swung onto the floor, but Elliot caught it inches from the ground, and they all exchanged a silent look of relief.
She motioned for them to follow, and they tiptoed single file through the door, around the corner, and belly crawled across the doorway to the living room. She hadn't seen or heard anybody else in the house, but the fire wouldn't be on if he wasn't in there. With some girl.
At the doorway to the basement she stopped the boys with her hand and stood staring at it for some time. She had been longing to go down there for so long. The hints he had given; the research she had read that she shouldn't have. Whatever was down there was something truly incredible.
'I'm so sorry, Kitty, it's just...'
She shook the memory out of her head and tried to remember the mnemonic she had created in order to recall the six digit code to open the door without tripping the alarm.
4...8... Now was it 6 4 or 4 6? She clenched her jaw so hard it hurt.
'Kitty, it's just...' So distracting. "Stop breathing so loudly," she shot to Matt, who shut his bewildered open mouth with a click. 'I just don't think we ever did find...'
8...she shut her eyes and rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. K.
K for Kitty. Her mnemonic, not his. Never his.
She was in. For the first time. She ushered the boys in and shut the door again with a click, and they all fumbled for a light switch.
The dark room was suddenly flooded with light, and Charlie stood flinching in case the switch he had just flicked was for something bizarre instead.
It was a normal dusty basement. Mouldy rafters and a smell of mothballs and wet wood.
Disappointment pulled her down to the bottom of the stairs and she wheeled in circles. Where was it? The thing? Whatever it was? In the blueprints it had looked like a giant metal rabbit head with curved scissor-like ears.
She would see it. She had to see it. He couldn't dictate what she was worthy of seeing.
'I'm so sorry, Kitty, it's just...I just don't think we ever did find that...connection. You know?'
She looked around wildly, desperately, for anything that could have been it.
'But I...it's not just about the experiment crap for me anymore. Martin, please.'
A cloth-covered contraption caught her eye in the corner and she ripped off the fabric.
'I should never have got involved with someone so young. Kitty ... This might feel like the end of the world right now, but it's not.'
This was it! Yes! The metal scissor bunny. Her heart was pounding in her throat. Her plan had just been to leave the puppet on top of it. She could curl the fabric in its fist as though he had unveiled it.
'Don't patronise me. I am not a child. We had something more than an assistant/employer relationship. We did.'
But she hadn't anticipated how strong the urge would be, on finding this thing, to turn it on.
At that moment there was a scraping noise on wood just outside, and a curse. The others were almost in. The plan was about to come to fruition.
She clicked on the first switch, then the second, then prayed silently to the ceiling and clicked the third.
"What are you doing?" Charlie hissed. "Just leave the doll, don't destroy his stuff."
'In all honesty, Kitty, I'm just not convinced you're...smart enough...to understand it all. I don't think you could help after all.'
Kitty turned to face them and smiled, unsure what had possessed her to do that, but knowing it couldn't really have gone any other way. The other three burst in just as a flash of whiter than white light shone through the basement and an earsplitting whirring shrieking noise began.
Six boys stood staring at their childhood friend bathed in painful white light and laughing like it was tickling. The bunny ears opened wide and then, SNAP, shut again.
It had cut a hole, they realised, as the light and noise faded. A rip big enough to fit a horse was hanging in mid-air. Through it they could see bright blue sky, rustling trees, chirping birds.
And they knew exactly how big it was, because at that moment a horse burst through, black as a void, skin hanging like an old coat on jutting bones. Above it stretched two huge black wings. It let out a screech and beat its feet on the floor and wings slammed into everything around it, shattering glass and knocking over shelves. Feathers blew everywhere and the seven of them shielded their eyes.
"No! What have you done?"
From behind her fingers she saw Martin Glass at the top of the basement stairs, trembling with horror and pointing.
"Do you know what that is? Do you know what you've done? This world isn't a game, Kitty, this world is real! You are a child. What have you done?"
She was too scared to be angry. The horse whinnied piercingly, kicked back in its panic, and the metal bunny exploded in a flurry of sparks and fell, dented, to the floor.
"No, no no!" Martin Glass flew down the stairs, and tried to raise his arms to frighten the horse back through the rip, but instead he seemed to enrage it. With a gargling whinnying scream it extended its wings to full length and launched itself up, through the ceiling, through walls, out into the cold English night. Stunned by falling wood, Glass shielded himself and panted for a few seconds before pointing at the rip.
"It's closing. We're all going to die."
The rip was very, very slowly sealing itself up. They all stared at it, brushed wet splinters and plaster dust from their clothes, and tried to think of what to say.
"Kitty. Go through, that's our only chance. Listen to me!"
He yelled the last bit so loudly that Kitty jumped and turned to pay close attention.
"Fix this. Go through, talk to Professor Redwood. He's been my contact on the other side. He'll explain how to rid our world of Morbidark. We can't exist here with him. Hurry. You have to hurry. You have to HURRY."
They all jumped. He was pushing boys towards the tear in the air.
"Take this, it'll help." He handed her a little tablet. "Now. Now!"
Panic overtook her and she regained control of her legs. Wordlessly, she stepped through, pushing shoulder first through to the other side, and, amazingly, her friends all followed, dumbstruck, bewildered beyond all hope.
The rip sealed completely as they watched, the dusty basement disappearing. They were now standing on spongy grass under a pleasant sun. There was no sign anywhere that they had been anywhere else just moments ago and inches away, except for the dusty white debris coating them all, and the need to shield their eyes from this too-bright sun.
"Um," Charlie said, looking around at the green trees and winking in the sunlight. "What...what just happened?"
They all stood, blankly, dressed for a nippy autumnal night in England, and they looked around.
After a few moments, Elliot slowly lifted a forefinger and pointed to a tree in the distance, and then wandered over to inspect it more closely.
"Hey, look -that's a house," Kitty said, when her vision adjusted fully and she noticed the red brick outline through the trees some distance away. "Let's go ask them where we are."
"I'd guess America," Charlie said, face set in seriousness. "I think these trees are indigenous to-" But he was cut short as a small sharp-beaked bullet shrieked over his head.
"Jesus, was that a..." Saxen gasped, but he couldn't finish his sentence.
"No," Kitty said, uncertainly, eyes on its retreating silhouette. "Let's just get to that house. Where's Elliot?"
"Who's seen Elliot?" Charlie said, louder. "Matt?"
Matthew turned to look at him, face pale and shocked. "Unh?"
"What are you staring at?"
Elliot returned through the undergrowth, eyes wide and mouth stretched wider, hands cupped like he was carrying a small pool of water, and he showed his find to the group.
"Guys," he said, voice full and rustling like the trees. "Guys."
They looked at the little half-hatched squeaking bird/dinosaur creature he had separated from its nest.
Elliot looked at them, lips wet and hands trembling. "Guys. It's a Spearow."