Well, here's another preface. Here's finally th beginning of the first part of four, Preparation. Any readers have probably been waiting a long time for me to finish the next chapter, so here it is. I wrote the first part ("1") before I went on a vacation about a month ago, and have finished the last few parts this week. This part is cuss-laden, just to prepare you. Terabithia is changing, so is our world, and Jadis is all behind it. You'll find out more about it as you read. I hope you like it! Please R&R (read and review). Thanks! Keep writing, reading and reviewing WRR!
ΒΌ
PREPARATION
A Movie With Maybelle Part 1
1
She at first didn't like looking at Her face. It was all white, and her blonde hair just creeped her out. For some reason, it creeped her out, and she knew immediately that she was a hypocrite. Stop being a coward, Maybelle Aarons, she said angrily to herself. She's not at all creepy, she's just a woman like you and Momma and Ms. Edmunds and Leslie...
She fell apart when she thought of Leslie. She put her face into her hands and sobbed quietly, letting her tears fall to the ground. She hadn't always been friends with Leslie, but when she was curious (kurious killed kat) of where stupid (stupid isn't smart) Jess went, Leslie would fill her in, Leslie would tell her what was going on, Leslie would...Cry. That's all she did, was it, when it came to Leslie, cry her soul out.
2
"Um...baby?" Josh asked quietly and uncertainly. He wasn't really good at this interrupting kind of thing; it made him slightly nervous and confused when to stop his girlfriend from kissing. But this almost snapped in, his inner mind had stopped him from what he called "eating tongue" and check on Brenda's kid sister.
He didn't know why he had to check on the girl. She had seemed important the first time that he saw her, some important little girl, but he couldn't figure out why. Why does he have to interrupt this one sexy moment and look at some stupid little girl? Some stupid damn important little girl?
Brenda looked at him almost unhappily, as if someone had walked in on them. She didn't care if people in the theater looked at them while they kissed (who would? Most of the people watching movies at this time of night weren't watching gay movies like this, they would be kissing), but when her own boyfriend stopped something was wrong. "What?" she almost snapped.
"Its..." he hesitated. Josh tried thinking if Brenda ever did really care for Maybelle. When would she hug the girl if she was crying? Josh couldn't tell; probably never, her treatment of that kid brother (Jamie, James, Jake, Jess, Jesse, Jesse Jr.) explained that. Brenda and her sister Ellie were always telling him how much of a hillbilly he was (they aren't hillbillies, they are, they aren't) and how much his stupid imagination made him a nerd and an outcast and how he's turning Maybelle into a damn droid or zombie or something. Josh winced whenever he thought of that relationship. Why would he interrupt their relationship with something like Jamsie (Jesse, Jesse!) and April (May, Maybelle! How dumbass are you?!).
Luckily, and unluckily, Brenda already knew what was going on. "Maybelle!" she screeched quietly. "Maybelle, what's up, what's up?" She looked at Josh exasperatedly, as if he was the sister and was expecting him to shut her up. "Maybelle, what's up, it's okay!"
Josh looked up at the movie. Edmund had just lied to Peter and Susan about him and Lucy going into Narnia. Josh wondered why he knew this, having never seen the movie and had been eating Brenda's tongue when Lucy talked with Mr. Tumnus (how did he know that?), but then he realized that his older sister Cora always watched the BBC version watched it every time she babysit when they were much younger. He figured that this was what was making Maybelle upset. God, these Aarons were overemotional.
"It's okay, Maybelle!" he said, hopefully convincingly. "It's okay, Edmund is an asshole, but it-"
"Asshole?!" Brenda whispered suddenly and angrily. "You don't exactly call a six year old an asshole in front of another six year old!" She gave Josh a brazen look, a look that almost said Do this kind of thing again and you're endangering me and you. And Josh definitely believed it. "Sorry," he said. "Just...just, uh, slipped out, right?"
"Whatever," Brenda replied, getting up from her seat and walking softly to Maybelle's seat, three seats off. That's what late tickets get you, Josh thought. That's where bad dates start, and that's where I stop eating Brenda's tongue. Then, in a Gollumesque voice, he thought And Brenda's tongue is delicious, isn't it, precious!
Brenda gave Maybelle a hug that she hoped was big sister-like. She didn't usually give hugs to anyone but boyfriends, this was pretty special occasion, she was in front of Josh and she wasn't sure if Josh thought she was an angel. Gotta make it up, she said to herself as she said, "I'm sorry, May, I'm sorry, but it's alright, gotta show him that I'm not a bitch- whoops. Father Crisfortt said no more cussin' like a gangsta.
"No, it's not okay!" Maybelle cried. "It's not okay, it was all my fault, Leslie wouldn't be-" Brenda groaned. "-dead if I hadn't given Mom those pills-" What pills? What pills? What pills?! "-she fell asleep, she didn't talk to Jess-" Jess wouldn't have stopped it, May. "Miss Edmunds wouldn't be able to invite him and-" Miss Edmunds? The music teacher, the real bitchy one? Father Crisfortt, Father's Crisp Fart, remember what he said! "-Jess would get help! Jess would get help, and Leslie wouldn't be-" Dead.
Dead. Brenda knew it every time. Every stupid time that Jess would cry, it would be about stupid Leslie, that stupid girl that was always talking to him about Tara's birth and a or something like that, something always about the kingdom of Tara's birth or something, and Jess would always say after that Dead.
Dead. She couldn't take it much longer, to tell the truth. Always having her mom and dad talk about Grandpa with the bone cancer and crap, and Mark Johnson saying how the algebra teacher Mr. Daggoet had gotten in a car wreck and died suddenly, Ellie crying over her boyfriend's aunt's wreck with Mr. Daggoet, and Grandpa and Ellie's boyfriend's aunt and Mr. Daggoet all having something like bone cancer, and all dying, now Maybelle saying that Jesse's stupid lesbian friend Leslie was, because it was all her fault,
"-DEAD!"
"Would you shut up?" Maybelle's neighbor, a rather muscular despite elderly looking man with balding blonde hair and clothes that a middle schooler would wear, snarled. "I didn't spend about three hundred dollars just to hear a bitchy little girl cry about other bitch that we all know-"
Josh had suddenly gotten out of his comfortable arm chair, and approached Maybelle and Brenda in quite a hurry. He almost glided like a vampire, except his smile was not a charming Dracula's. It was the deepest frown of anger that he hoped he could muster. "What did you say?" he said quietly, hoping to sound dangerous. "Who are you talking about, this girl right here? Maybelle Burke?"
"Aarons," Brenda whispered, although she knew that Josh couldn't hear her, nor did she care. "Our last name is Aarons, not Burke, that was Leslie's last name."
"Wrong person!" the man boomed back to Josh. "I'm not talking about the Queen of Bitches Leslie Burke, I'm talking about this Princess of Bitchopia, little..." He looked at Maybelle and gave an evil grin with yellow and brown teeth that had rotted over the years. He looked into Maybelle's eyes and that was the first hypnosis. It's all in the eyes.
3
Greg Adams wasn't a hypnotist, but merely a victim of hypnosis. Being a victim of hypnotism enabled him, if wanted by the hypnotist using hypnotism upon him, he could use hypnotism upon other people. This was how most sinister hypnotists work. Use other people for the dirty work. That's what most villains in the world do, manipulate the weak for use.
Greg Adams had awoken that morning, greeting his wife from the other side of the bed and opening a birthday present. It wasn't his birthday, but Julie Adams would go on a book tour that afternoon, and wouldn't make it to Greg's birthday in two days, August 4. Therefore, she would give him the present now, wish him a happy early birthday, kiss a little bit, maybe make love, but that was it.
Thing was, Julie was hypnotized that morning. She had been hypnotized when she called her agent last night and said that she would go on book tour all the week, leaving the next day. Her agent easily arranged that within the hour. She had also been hypnotized when she ordered a very special book, while she hypnotized the person she was ordering from to run across the street to a rare child bookstore and steal an original copy of The Magician's Nephew, written by C. S. Lewis, deliver it to Julie herself, about three miles away (by foot) then to get all of his colleagues attention while he jumped into a busy street.
She had wrapped the book with a special kind of wrapping paper that you couldn't get at a Sam's Club, one of those special kind that tear apart your mind and don't let go. The kind that gets into the dreams and hopes and your mind, the kind that lulled you into doing something that you didn't want.
There are five steps of hypnotism: first, Preparation, which is laying down somewhere and getting comfortable. That was being in bed with Julie, and sitting in the theater with Brenda and her boyfriend. Then, there was induction, which was lulling you from your normal state into a different, sleepy state. That was the wrapping paper and the movie itself. Third, there was deepening, in which Greg read the book, and later talked to the little girl. Fourthly, there was purpose, which was what you did. And Greg and Julie and Maybelle were only getting started.
4
"What was your name again?" Greg asked. "Huh, honey? What was it again?"
"What are you doing, looking for someone to rape or something?" the boy said angrily. "What are you doing, you crazy ol' bastard?" He looked down at Greg's eyes and gave him a small glare. It was the kind of glare that the Witch would find interesting. The boy's eyes were special within themselves; they seemed Terabithian, and most inhabitants of Terabithia were born with eyes able to repel hypnotism. No wonder he wasn't under Charm like the rest of the audience.
And the girl. The older one, the one who was faking her love to the boy with kissing. Greg smiled at how he used his new powers given to him by the hypnosis and found people's memories and thoughts. He could easily know that the older girl was like her father, giving a partial protection from hypnosis. The littler one, May or something similar, was more like the mother, the mind with no protection, but the intelligent kind of mind.
He didn't answer the boy, who didn't seem important to the Queen's orders and plans despite his unusual telepathic abilities. He would talk to the girl, try to lull her, maybe let the little girl, Maybelle return. He licked his lips as Maybelle, her eyes getting more green (success, the mind control, the hypnosis is a success, a SUCCESS!), said without control of herself, "My name is Maybelle Aarons." She gestured towards the older girl. "This is my older sister, Brenda, who seems to take care of me but would rather make love with a boyfriend or something." (Brenda was stunned that Maybelle thought that, although in her mind she automatically knew it was true. She didn't care much about her siblings, maybe even six-year-old Joyce Ann more. She noticed that Josh turned a heavy red and by that point she knew that it was over. Stupid Maybelle had to ruin her and Josh.)
But Maybelle wasn't over. She was far from over, Greg made sure of that. He delighted in hearing her say things about this. "Is that true?" he asked the older one, Brenda. "Are you willing to give up your virginity because of your siblings?" He laughed heavily. In Terabithia, anyone would kill for that virginity.
Maybelle continued before Brenda could protest, could lie any further. No more lies anymore, Brandie, Greg thought excitedly. Brenda, I mean, wrong name! He giggled. Oh goodness, I'm getting the silly stupid names wrong, am I? Getting all of these names wrong wrong wrong! Miss of Charn won't be happy with me! He giggled some more, knowing that he had gotten that name wrong too, the Queen didn't really like being called Miss of Charn; she didn't like remembering her home world.
"Ellie is the oldest girl in my family. She says in her IM's that she also wants to make love, except with different people with Brenda. Ellie had James Dixon's dick enter her when she was only fourteen. She has never told my parents because she knows that they will get extremely angry with her. They would, absolutely, my father doesn't get angry with me, but is always yelling at anyone else, Jesse especially. He hopes that Jesse would be a farmer like he is, not a stupid drawer or imaginary friend Creator."
"Let's talk about Jesse now. Jesse is is a very smart Creator. He was almost more creative and smart than Leslie, but that was just about it. Leslie, of course, knew that if she let Jesse have control of Terabithia, it would be more bloodthirsty than any other world. It would make him crazy, and she would go with it. She decided that she would only let females be creators. She made men worship their wives, all over Terabithia, so Jesse wouldn't have much power. He could summon armies, and him and Leslie would have imaginary wars, but no one would die. Leslie didn't really like Jesse much, but lusted for his imagination. He was such a good creator, also being such a brilliant artist that she had to do this. Jesse didn't know that she would hide the Key with the Keymaster on the Other Side. She knew that the Dark Master was after her."
Greg was getting delighted. Oh boy oh boy! So the Key is with the Keymaster! The Queen is going to find this delectable! And isn't the Other Side of Terabithia just a little bit away from the Ice Palace? Greg was already feeling the excitement go up his heart and soul, and he was going to show to the Queen that he wasn't like the prostitute, the gigolo Morgenar, a traitor to the good cause, and a servant to the disgusting Creators!
"What are you talking about, Maybelle?" Brenda asked slowly, worried. "What are you talking about? What's Terabithia? What are you talking about, honey?" It worried her, to have her sister talking about things like this. Never before had she spoken about this kind of thing, some deranged creepy crap that seemed to be true. She didn't realize that it wasn't her sister Maybelle speaking, but someone far more sinister. In fact, she hadn't realized that it wasn't Maybelle, hadn't noticed the green eyes, dark green to be more exact, she hadn't realized any of this because she didn't know that watching Greg wouldn't let her.
Greg knew this as well. And he laughed about it. He giggled but didn't really care if people in the back row said, "Will you guys chill the shit out? It's getting to a good part!" Neither did the boy, who's glare was getting harder, but more wary (what an oxymoron! What a stupid oxymoron) and a little frightened, Greg knew that and would know that the Queen would like that. One of the Repellers were falling, easily, the Queen would love that, giggle giggle gi-
"Would you fuckin' stop laughing?!" the boy said angrily. He looked immensely frightened, and Greg knew that this was good. Very good, keep frightening the poor little boy, the poor little bastard, the boy who's virginity is Eternal, the bastardly, frightened poor little Immortal Virgin. He didn't realize it, but his giggles had stopped, and he realized that the Queen wouldn't be happy at all. "If the Immortal Virgin were to be frightened of Greg, would he join her Majesty?" Greg said quietly.
There were more yells of discontentment. "Would you fucking get down?!" "Please, sir, sit down, we can't see." "Get down you stupid clown!" "Mikey! Don't talk to that man like that! I'll be telling your father!" "Get down before I get the staff!" "Lucy! Someone pause the movie or something, these guys-" "Charlie?! Are you recording this on your computer!?!?!" "GET DOWN YOU DAMN MORONS!" "We're missing the show, Grandma!" "It's okay, Libby, don't act like Mikey, be patient." "Get the damn staff! Get someone to kick those guys out!"
Get someone to kick those guys out! Get someone to kick those guys out! Get someone to- He had to stop this. The Queen had told him to find the Creator, and to hypnotize her, to keep her under control, to get her to recognize her from the film and to keep her in the theater for one whole day. Or else the hypnotism wouldn't lead to the possession, that would be bad...
"I'm sorry!" Greg said abruptly and he sat down. He looked at the boy and Brenda, trying to look normal, and to sound normal, and he said, "If I were you, I would sit down, or risk getting kicked out of the movie. I really wanted to see it and I think you did too. Am I right?" He looked at the boy, then the girl, hopefully normal, and smiled, although he knew it was the creepy smile that the Queen loved, he did it anyway. He did that smile that the Queen loved, and everyone else hated, and he said, "See ya."
Josh didn't know why the guy said that, but then he heard a squeaky, but loud and stern voice say above him, "Madam, mister, is it true that you've been asked repeatedly to seat yourself so the audience directly behind you could not see?" The voice didn't seem sinister, not to mention hypnotized, but neither did the grandma taking her grandchildren Mikey and Lucy to this, nor the lawyer Marius Crispin, who was famous for suing big movies like this for copyright infringement. All of them were hypnotized, but the Hypnotist, the Necrologer, the Queen, the White Witch, whatever you wanted to call her, was good at that kind of thing.
Once the boy and Brenda were escorted out of the theater and onto Main Street, Greg made everyone have an almost hearty laugh, and a thoroughly creepy smile that made Maybelle giggle. "Can you do that all the time?" she asked the man. "Can the Queen control you and others that much?"
"Oh, yes," Greg said easily. And he laughed, long and hard.
And Maybelle joined him.
