Light flooded through the windows, sneaking up on Rachel and peeling her eyes open. Damn sun…As much as she tried to roll over and go back to sleep, she found it to be, well, nothing short of impossible. No such luck. Sun, you won this battle, Rachel throwing the blankets off of herself and shuffling over to the window to see if there was some way to…Blinds? Where did the…And where…Oh you have got to be kidding!
She had to be dreaming, she just had to be! Yet, as each girl slowly awoke, the reality of the situation soon dawned on her. They were…Well, she had no idea where they were, but it sure wasn't the hotel they had gone to sleep in the night before.
The room's clean, painted walls had seemingly melted away with only bare, rotting wood surrounding them, their beds looking closer to army cots than the thick mattresses they had rested on just hours before. Her mind had to be playing tricks on her, but, then why was everyone else waking up with the same sick realization? Each girl tried to find some way of waking herself up, of arising from this nightmare, waking up back in their three-star Midtown hotel to laugh about it later. No such luck.
"What the hell?" came Nikita, knowing she damn well didn't share a room with all of them the night before, let alone a room in a state like this. Were they drugged and dragged to some dingy hostel like in a gore flick? That seemed the liklier story until the very distinctive sound of hoof prints could be heard in the cobblestone streets below.
As more sounds flooded through the room, there was a mad dash to the window, several of the girls swearing up a storm at what they saw, the others looking as if they were either bordering on a panic attack or passing out. In Brittney's case, both. "This can't be happening. Umm...alright...retrace my steps..." Cassie muttered in a panic.
"Retrace your steps? Cassie! You can't just trace them back from a Holiday Inn to an attic, or whatever the hell we're in, over a hundred years ago!" Carrie snapped, Lindsay apparently trying to close her eyes and open them up several times to, perhaps, actually wake up, Sarah eventually getting tired of it and just hitting her upside the head.
"Someone's screwing with us..." was Brittney's scientific response, despite her eyes being glued to a street vendor in obvious Victorian clothing with obvious Victorian surroundings. "Someone has to be screwing with us...Someone has to...to find me my xanax!" she finished, bordering on a royal, high class, Joan Crawford freak out.
"Who the hell could be screwing with us, and why would they pick the seven of us, sneak us all out somehow, and put us in an area of town that they're doing a...You know, I can't even finish that. I'm going to...lie back down," Nikita stated, trying to work this whole thing out in her head as others attempted to do the same, either to themselves or out loud.
As Lindsay paced across the room, damn near driving the others insane, or those not doing the same, she felt something hit the side of her leg in her pants pocket. Stopping abruptly, her hand graced her pocket, her eyes widening in realization. "No way...I set this thing down!" she announced, taking the strange stone object into her hand and inspecting it, as if doubting it was the one she had looked at less than a day before. With its distinguishing marks, she found herself unable to deny it, and she soon found the others crowding around her in confusion to inspect it.
"You took it?!" Sarah accused, taking it from her, eying it as if, should she blink, it would change shape or at least give them some answers.
"I didn't steal it! I put it back when that woman started squawking about her 'Whatever you want' crap and I said...Oh shit..." she finished, the color draining from her face. "There's no way..."
"When you said what?" Rachel asked, her fingers pressing against her temples to try and quell the headache that was coming.
It took a good few moments for Lindsay to find her voice again, let alone find a way to explain, but, with the others urging her on by the looks they sent her, she figured it was now or...death. "When I said I might as well wish to be in the movie with as much as I believed her. There's no way this could be it, though! I mean, she didn't know what movie we were talking about, and this sure doesn't look like a musical! It's not my fault!" she finished, almost in desperation.
All seven females were now buzzing, talking over each other, until finally Carrie practically screamed, seeing as she lacked the ability to whistle, stomping her foot for emphasis as if she were having a temper tantrum. Hey, it worked. "We're not getting anywhere like this...We...Alright, umm, we need to get out of here and figure out what's going on. Lindsay's right...let's just figure out what happened, where we are, and how the hell to get back to the hotel and, for Christ's sake, back in bed."
"Since when are you the voice of reason?" Brittney asked after a while, realizing her medication was nowhere to be found.
"Since you're not," she retorted, Rachel clearing her throat, herheadache worsening but her senses coming back in full force.
"We can't figure anything out looking like this when people out there are...well, looking like that. It would be one thing if we were, you know...I don't even know, but it would be another if we were wherever, looking like something out of Back to the Future."
"Can I be called Clint Eastwood?" Cassie suddenly asked, before looking sheepish. "Sorry...I'll...go look for something."
As she reached for the door, she was damn near thrown backward as it opened, practically in her face, all seven girls shooting up to see who it was and if they could get any answers. And then, if possible, they became even more shocked and confused than before.
"Oh you have got to be kidding me," Nikita said, going from shocked to downright irritated. "Either you're that woman from that store and we were the millionth customers, or this is a damn joke and it's not funny anymore..."
Funny or not, the woman seemed to be smiling, and while it didn't seem evil with the fires of hell behind it, it did seem unnerving. "No. No joke. No millionth anything. You made a wish...of sorts. Only...no dancing, no singing, no...what is that charming boy's name?"
"Christian Bale?" Sarah asked, arching her eyebrow at the shopkeeper as if she had grown another head.
"That's the one. Christian Bale...No him. See, people tend to take things for granted. I know who you are, all of you, and I know how most of you see a movie such as the one you worship. I know how there's more arguments over who loves that...Christian...the most more than there are arguments over the sides of the strike, over what people fought for. Time passes after something important, people take the event itself for granted, and soon people are arguing over petty issues instead of taking things for what they were. It see it mostly revolve around films based on real events. Loosely based, I should say. You don't even want to know what happened with the Pearl Harbor group."
"So...let me get this straight..." Lindsay started. "You, who we still have no idea who the heck you are, are making an example of us because people like us get joy from a movie based around an event instead of the event?"
"To some extent. Not just that, but...well, I like having people walk around in others' shoes...get a feel for how someone else lives and how someone else has to get by. You all...well, you'll see what I mean in time. Nothing will harm you while you're here, or at least nothing serious, and there are a few things you have to do before you get back home, but you will get back home. Just think of this as an experience, or an experiment. Before you know it, you'll be back in your respective hotel rooms and no one will know you had left. But, there are some things that you all need to learn, if not for your own sakes then for the sakes of those whom you speak with, whom you argue with about the color of Spot's eyes or which small part had which lines. There are more crucial things to focus on, and your generation misses them. I'll be here every step of the way, and...well, you all might want to change into some clothes in the hall closet. You'll get noticed looking like that and, if you want to try and figure things out, it's hard to do that with everyone staring at you."
The girls had all taken to sitting down, taking the whole thing in, her words slowly processing in their minds. It was all too much to take, and, yet, here they were, being force-fed her righteous notions, being made an example of because teenage girls didn't understand historical significance or some such tripe she was peddling.
"Who are you?" Brittney finally asked, trying to keep her nerves calm, more in a dazed state now than anything.
"For now? you can call me Mr. Q," the woman laughed, disappearing out the door before anyone could respond. The whole thing seemed unreal, and yet there they were, still sitting on these mattresses, still surrounded by rotting wooden walls, still hearing the hoof prints on cobblestone outside their window. While it might have been too much to take, one way or another they had to take it. This was reality...for now, anyway. Some sort of Twilight Zone reality.
"Well, what do we do now?" Cassie asked, sitting on the edge of the cot she had awoken into this nightmare from, her chin resting on her knee.
"We don't really have a choice, do we?" Rachel asked, and, as their eyes scanned over each other, each girl began to realize the truth of that statement.