The room was dark and smoky, masked faces twirled around me, their mouths gaping black holes as they laughed. I spun away, the silken folds of a dress tickling my ankles. The white shadow of a door washed across my face and I ran. Through the door into a hallway lined with arches, shadowy recesses, voices calling from their depths.
"Sarah! Sarah!"
Some were familiar. Hoggles harsh croak, Ludo's guttering roar, Sir Didymus' exalting squeak... others were strange and haunting, leaking out of suppressed memories, wild laughter and booming warnings. I couldn't escape them. Couldn't do anything but run. Figures beckoned from the arches, reaching out rubbery green hands to grasp at me.
"Don't go that way!" some voices pipped.
"Which way?" Others demanded. "Come on come on!"
I stopped, a maze of staircases twirling up around me, the whole world spinning in time to their rising tiers. Shapes darted here and there, familiar shapes with familiar faces. There was Hoggle! And Didymus! I ran to them ,reaching, but just before I touched them they morphed into cackling goblins or stooped beggars. The ground slanted suddenly, a vast set of stairs appearing at my feet and there was Ludo standing at the bottom! I called out to him, my voice drowned away by his own rumbling bellow. I reached the bottom of the stairs and my hand buried into his red fuzz for one brief instant before he transformed into Toby, his babyish laughter ringing in my ears as he toward above me. Rocks were rumbling down the countless stairways, bouncing dangerously closer, their grey tone slowly leeching away until they were as clear as glass. I cowered, waiting for the pain and crushing weight. But it didn't come. I straightened. Staring up at the bubbles that floated around me, as big as the distant moon, edges gleaming.
I drifted through them, hands out stretched. I found my way to a garden, the bubbles growing steadily thicker as I went until they all but obscured my vision. I began to panic as the garden grew darker and more indistinct. bubbles swirling around me like a thick fog. A shadow appeared before me, dark and hunched.I made my way towards it, begging for help, for light! A dark chuckle echoed through infinity and the shadow rose, thinning and stretching until a man stood before me, facing away. I rested a hand on his arm and he turned, wrapping his arms around my waist and smiling down at me, his glittering bi colored eyes seemed to replace the sky and outshine the stars. A thin smile cracked his lips.
"Sarah." he breathed and I gasped.
Jareth.
I jerked awake, staring at the unbroken white of my ceiling, my chest heaving.
"Jareth." I whispered into the darkness.
"Sarah." The darkness whispered back.
One shot? R&R