Chapter XI: Styx

i

Dr. King's cigarette left smoke trails in the air above the ashtray: spent, but still burning. It was a bit like Sarah, in that regard; she knew she looked haggard as death itself, but there was still enough left in her not to fall into the blissful nothingness that was catatonia.

Dr. King, comparatively, seemed as fresh as ever, sharp and alert. His double-breasted suit was boldly striped black-and-white. On anyone else, it might have looked garish. Loops of thick black were stacked up the sleeves, horizontal rather than vertical. If she'd been feeling more herself, Sarah might have counted them.

"Does crisis mode ever end?" she mumbled, half-slouched in her seat. Dr. King shrugged.

"Crisis mode, if you mean what I think you do by that term, lasts as long as an individual is in crisis. It is exhausting, certainly, but crisis is a matter of subjective perception. What is a crisis to some is an everyday Saturday to others."

Sarah couldn't find it in her to be properly annoyed, but she tried. "Are you suggesting I'm overreacting?"

Dr. King laughed mirthlessly. "Heavens, no. Only that if you accept that your life is in turmoil, you can will yourself to process it accordingly. Crisis is becoming an everyday occurrence for you, Williams. If you can train yourself not to panic, if you can teach yourself to accept what others might find impossible to metabolize, you can survive this."

She smiled sadly. That almost sounded like something a real psychiatrist would say, but she found it comforting rather than patronizing. Dr. King, she could admit occasionally, wasn't half-bad.

"Might I inquire as to your teacher?" he asked, leaning against the armrest on his left side. Sarah watched his body adjust in the seat, the way he seemed to mold himself to furniture like an agile and lazy cat. She cleared her throat.

"What about him? Mr. Gomez got fired for something he didn't do, end of story."

Dr. King hummed, bringing a pencil to his lip and chewing on the rubber at the tip. He didn't speak for a moment, but when he caught Sarah staring intently at his mouth, he grinned. So much for being a normal psychiatrist today, she thought.

"So, your stepmother's insinuations are entirely unfounded, then?" He spoke around the pencil, hovering just at the opening of his lips.

"Completely, yeah."

"You didn't spend extra time with Mr. Gomez?" His teeth nipped the rubber again.

"Well—I mean, yeah, but not the way she thinks." He flipped the pencil between lean, bony fingers.

"Ah," he smiled slyly, the pencil's tip now tapping against his bottom lip even as he spoke, "then you were rarely alone?"

"I…guess?"

"You guess you were rarely alone with a teacher who took an unhealthy interest in you?"

"It wasn't-not unhealthy!" she choked, trying to organize her thoughts.

"So, it's healthy to spend extra time with a student, alone, discussing…what exactly?" He flipped the pencil and began to chew on the eraser again.

"Just schoolwork," she insisted quickly.

"There weren't any special projects, then?"

"I—yes, but not—not like that."

"Like what," he leaned forward, the pencil slipping out of his lips entirely, his eyes feral, "Miss Williams?"

"He's a good guy and great teacher, okay? Just—listen, there's—there's nothing untoward," she mumbled the word, her lips feeling clumsy, her words stilted, "going on with Mr. Gomez."

"You mean sexual," he corrected bluntly. Abruptly, he straightened in the chair, the pencil firmly placed on the coffee table. Too late, Sarah realized he was intentionally distracting her, making her uncomfortable.

Sarah's face heated, her ears burning with youthful embarrassment. "Um…yes, I guess."

"You guess," he quirked an eyebrow. He'd shown how little he cared for her "guesses" thus far this session. "Do you think there was any sexual symbolism in the Labyrinth?" Well, if that subject change didn't give her whiplash… "Anything that you remember? You once mentioned a hundred pairs of hands lowering you down a hole—that must have felt violating. Anything else?" God, what was that look he was giving her? His asymmetrical eyes could take on this interrogative, mystical quality. It was as if, if she looked into them long enough, she would be forced to tell him the truth one way or another. They were a vacuum. As always, she broke eye contact. But she chose to answer the question, regardless.

"Well, there was an…incident," she began slowly. The words felt thick against her teeth, like chewing taffy.

"An incident?" he parroted back nonchalantly.

"The peach incident and the subsequent ball."

"And I'm sure that means something to someone with more context," he snapped. God, this man was mercurial.

Sarah met his gaze evenly. "A woman handed me a tainted peach which sent me into a hallucination of a masquerade ball. I danced with—the king." Sarah barely kept his name from leaving her mouth.

"This isn't in any of the notes. That's always been something of interest to the other doctors—the consistency of your story, that is." My story? Sarah thought. He seemed to be less accepting of her narrative today and she wasn't sure why. She shifted in her seat. "Why did my question about sexual symbolism make you think of this peach and masquerade ball?"

God, she didn't want to answer that. She wasn't going to answer that. No.

Instead: "Why haven't you prescribed me anything for my delusions?" It was a valid question, after all, and not entirely off topic, since they had been talking about hallucinations. She'd found it odd that he'd never brought up antipsychotics in any of their sessions. The other doctors had prescribed her a whole litany of dangerous chemicals to swallow with food, without food, before breakfast, and after dinner—not that she took any of them.

Dr. King cocked his head. The action was so sharp Sarah felt her skin crawl under her sweater. But he chose to humor her subject change as well as she had humored his.

"Your delusions aren't ongoing," he replied simply. He melted back into his seat, as if he'd seen through her and was bored by what he saw.

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "Seeing a killer faerie isn't delusional?"

Something dark flashed across his face, something angry. It lingered. "Why would I prescribe something to a patient I know wouldn't take the medication? I may as well flush them down the toilet myself for all the good it would do." It was obvious he was losing patience. "One delusion in three years after the initial fantasy is hardly enough to justify doping you up."

Sarah knew she should move on. Honestly, talking about the sexual symbolism of peaches was preferable to him knowing…but at the same time, something in her wanted to tell him. And, after what she'd heard at the high school the day Mr. Gomez left—the inhuman voice without an identifiable source—she couldn't seem to ignore the urge to tell the truth.

"I've had other delusions."

His eyes widened at her quiet admission. "What do you mean?"

"I still see things sometimes." She tucked her hands under her thighs, looked out the window to her right. She tried to envision she was speaking into thin air, that Dr. King wasn't sitting across from her, but the mental image of his face floated in front of her eyes as she confessed to him. "It's something about mirrors. I can't look into them without seeing glimpses of things in the corners. Behind furniture. In shadows. But, only in the mirrors. Never where I am. Like—it's not actually behind me, it's in the mirror." She chanced a look at his face. It was stony. She breathed a sigh. If he'd reacted at all, she wasn't sure she'd be able to continue. "I saw Hoggle and the others in a mirror, but only twice. The first time was the night I came home."

"Only once after that?" he asked.

Sarah nodded. "The morning after the crash, I woke up in the hospital, and when I stumbled to the bathroom after Karen told me my father was dead—well, I saw them in the mirror and I screamed. I told them to go away and never come back."

"What did the nurses say?" he almost sounded amused.

Sarah shrugged. "I was hopped up on pain meds and I can only remember being shocked. I think the nurses thought I was just freaking out over the crash and waking up from a coma. That, and my hair was a mess. Coma-head, you know." Dr. King didn't laugh.

"What did they look like?" There was no mistaking who he meant, but Sarah didn't want to answer. She popped her neck and rolled her shoulders, trying to postpone a reply she knew would sound as silly as it did insane.

"I can't quite…I can't quite remember. Hoggle was short, I know that. He had a sort of lumpy face. Ludo was big and ginger. He had horns. Sir Didymous had an eyepatch—he looked sort of vaguely like a mouse—or a dog?" Sarah realized she sounded ridiculous. She'd always hated explaining these sorts of details.

She was glad when Dr. King seemed done with that line of questioning. She was also perplexed when he only remained quiet for a moment, giving no indication that he intended on addressing her hallucinations following the crash. Any of the other doctors, she knew, would have pounced on it with claws distended, prepared to finally label her schizophrenic and be done with it.

"Perhaps we can shelve this particular topic," he finally murmured. Sarah nodded, grateful. Then: "Why did you never tell anyone else?"

"They think I'm crazy enough as it is," she snorted.

"Not the mirrors, Williams. The peach. The masquerade ball." Oh. At least he's not asking about sexual symbolism anymore.

"I didn't trust anyone with it. It felt…personal."

"Dancing with the monarch who kidnapped your brother felt personal?"

Sarah tapped her foot and shifted in her seat again. "It was a hallucination. It was a trick meant to make me think he was some gallant prince and not the thief he was."

Dr. King's jaw tightened. "And, pray tell, did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Think he was a gallant prince? Is that why you danced with him?"

Sarah paused. Then, with a thickness in her tone: "No. The entire thing makes me feel ashamed. I…I was looking for him in the crowd because I thought I could convince him to let my brother free if I just played a part in his little game. I wasn't even sure why he wanted Toby to begin with, so I thought it'd be an easy barter. He'd already shown me that he didn't believe in fairness, so I thought I could try letting him have his way. But I was half-awake, half-asleep, and it was just a fever dream. There was no bargain to be had. So, I forced my way out of it."

The room somehow felt warmer, darker. Dr. King's face held no hint of sympathy, of comfort or absolution. For Sarah, this moment had always been the source of great shame for her. It was a symbol of having given up on saving her brother, of feeling the keen weight of failure. And, more than even that, in the mind of a fourteen-year-old girl, it felt like a watered-down form of prostitution; she had silently said, 'I'll dance with you, I'll play your game. What will you pay to have me as your queen?' Sarah had hated herself some nights for the depths at which she was willing to lower herself for the life of her young Toby. She never regretted it, though. She would have done anything to save him, but that didn't make her feel any less dirty.

Yet Dr. King gave her no sign of a stranger's forgiveness, no indication that her actions did not disgust him. Instead, he sat still as a statue with burning eyes and a hand clenched with white knuckles around his pencil.

"So...what do you think?" Sarah finally asked.

"I'd say it's all very Persephone and Hades, honestly."

The words that instantly came to mind at that comment were "Fuck you," but Sarah held them back.

"You ate the fruit in Hell, Sarah. Surely you didn't think Hell wouldn't want you back?"

Sarah's mouth fell open, her hands going lax with incredulity on the arms of the chair. "You son of a—"

"Watch your tongue," he bit back. And then, without a beat to indicate a shift in topic, he was saying, "Your mother has invited me to dinner next week."

"She what? Why?" Why the hell was he shifting topics so often? His mood was a pendulum swing away from the proverbial deep end.

"Because of what happened, you daft girl!" he snarled.

Was he…was he angry? Sarah nearly shook her head to clear it. Dr. King was pissed with her. That's new, she thought.

"Why are you upset with me?" she asked lamely, feeling her voice taper off under his withering gaze.

He laughed. It wasn't his usual laugh. No, this one was cruel. His tone was sinister, his eyes unforgiving.

"You lied to me, Williams. Should I not I feel betrayed?"

Sarah swallowed—not with fear, but as futile restraint against the surge of oncoming fury. She hated having her validity questioned, but she hated having her honesty questioned more. Sarah felt her fingers dig into the armchair, told herself to hold it together. She took a breath through her nose.

"I didn't lie to you. I was exhausted, overwhelmed. I didn't tell you someone hurt me—but I didn't lie."

"Someone hurt you?" He cocked his head again. "Or did you hurt yourself?"

Its flippancy is what cued her in to its purpose; it wasn't that he truly believed she'd injured herself, it was that he wanted to rile her up. She didn't take the bait. She held her tongue, but he kept going.

"Why didn't you tell me you were bleeding?" he snarled.

"What would you have been able to do?"

"I told you I'd keep you safe. That you believed, but you believe me so incompetent I couldn't be trusted to get you medical care?"

"I didn't want medical care."

"No," he bit out, "You wanted to be the suffering saint, the unsung hero, the savior of little children. So self-sacrificial," he sneered. "Bleeding even as you slept in front of me, strung out on your own martyrdom."

Betrayed didn't feel like the right word for what it seemed Dr. King was feeling. And Sarah felt as if she were falling deep into a wicked nightmare, some dreamstate with Dr. King at the helm, steering her into his roiling wrath.

"Why can't you give it up, Williams? Dogs with eyepatches and swamps of flatulence and pet rocks…" He began to rub his forehead with his fingers. Sarah's throat itched.

"Give it up?" Her voice floated around her own ears. Those were old words. She'd grown tired of hearing them, over and over for years, but they felt new coming out of his mouth. The pain felt fresh¸ the insult original. She wanted to tear those words out of the air around her and string them up, still threaded to his tongue, and hang him by them from the ceiling fan as if he were a damn light fixture.

"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't—" his teeth clicked shut and open again, "why didn't you tell me you were injured?"

Angry for reasons she couldn't quite herself understand—because, really, why did she ever think he could be trusted more than any of the quacks before him?—she found herself saying, voice pure sarcasm, "Oh, but Dr. King," the false innocence left her voice and only darkness followed in its wake, "I thought you said you wanted me to 'spill.' Should I have aimed for the stomach and not my legs?"

The room went deathly silent.

He was the one who had accused her of self-harming, she reasoned to herself. He was the one who had tried to force her to open herself up to him. He was the one who had just thrown all her fears of not being believed in her face after nearly convincing her that he genuinely respected her. He deserved that comment. It was only a barbed witticism, she thought. But then why did she feel so suddenly paralyzed? His eyes…something about his eyes chilled her.

Without preamble, he went for the jugular.

"Perhaps those children weren't on the wrong track."

"I beg your pardon?" Sarah had no idea what he was talking about.

"Psychotherapy doesn't seem to pierce your particular void, Williams. Maybe four white walls would do you some good."

Sarah's limbs tightened up. He had that power. The State had given him that power. Is he threatening to institutionalize me? Her breath came out in puffs. Regret flooded her. She'd just made a terrible mistake.

"What was that rhyme those children used to taunt you with?" he mused aloud, as if he didn't know. Terror clutched at Sarah's stomach. Words have power, a traitorous memory whispered into the echo of her mind. That rhyme was worse, even, than the threat of an asylum, and he knew that. But he didn't retreat from the attack, even in the knowledge of its severity: "Sarah, Sarah, it's not fair…" Sarah launched herself from the seat and grabbed for her backpack. She didn't have to hear this. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing her react to it. He couldn't make her sit through this.

But his hand grasped for the other arm-strap. His strength was unbelievable—he sat there, seemingly making no effort as Sarah pulled at the opposite strap with such force the thread began to fray on the hems. "...A Goblin came, and you aren't right," he stood, letting go of the strap abruptly. She collapsed to the ground with the inertia. The room was spinning as she scrambled to her feet and fled the room, his voice calling lazily, musically after her through the yawning door: "Now here they come, the men in white."

Down the dark hall, the tobacco smell wafted around her, her sneakers pounding against the old carpet with muted thuds. She passed the secretary, who took in Sarah's disheveled form and tears (was she crying? Why was she always the last to notice?) with an expression of horror and unconcealed pity.

ii

Every day was a new torture, a new way to break her down.

Sarah sat down at the roots of an old tree. When she was a child, she'd referred to these huge, climbable specimens as Grandfather Trees. She didn't have a living human grandfather, unless she counted Karen's dad—which she didn't, by the way; he was an asshole.

Trembling fingers ran through her hair, the black strands feathering onto her shoulders. The backpack of books sat at her side. They'd never felt heavier than they had running out of the building. And now she found herself in that park she'd played in as a child. Again, reminiscence hit her. The sun was going down just now.

"I'll be late for dinner," she scoffed to herself, hating the nostalgia for the bitterness it brought with it.

Maybe, if Dr. King was right about anything, it was that she had to start getting used to the dramatic turns of her life and "metabolizing" them accordingly. But she hadn't expected him to be the one to deliver another blow to her. And he'd lied, she knew that much. That man didn't feel betrayed. He felt… Sarah chewed on her lip. She didn't want to consider the obvious, but the way in which that session had escalated fit a pattern. She didn't know if it was narcissistic or just delusional to think it, but part of her felt that Dr. King's behavior had almost represented a twisted sort of jealousy…or possessiveness. He wanted her to talk about her relationship with Mr. Gomez, questioned her relationship with the Goblin King, asked about sexual symbolism, made comments about Persephone and Hades…and then flew off the handle when he was reminded that she hadn't trusted him.

Maybe that's all it was, Sarah reasoned to herself. Maybe he really did just feel betrayed. Maybe it angered him that she hadn't been honest with him when she was frightened out of her mind and fatigued past the point of mental competency. Or maybe he's even creepier than Dr. Greeley, she thought as she groaned into her hands.

Snap.

Sarah froze. Was…there something in the bushes?

She heard a snicker.

Sarah's head snapped up, ears tuning in to her surroundings.

Her eyes found the bushes ahead of her, a hundred or so yards away. They almost seemed to be glowing in the light of the sunset. Wait—no. The sun sets in the West. Those bushes— Her train of thought spit out fragments when her mind caught up with what her eyes were seeing: Not glowing. On fire.

One bush went up in flames. To its left, another caught fire. And from that lesser inferno emerged a small crowd of bodies—tall, lithe, freakish, burning bodies.

And they were laughing now. Loudly.

"Ssssaarah, ssssarah," one of them started, sibilant voice, high-pitched and scratchy.

The others joined in like a chorus, and Sarah couldn't pinpoint any of those sounds. They seemed to come from everywhere around her.

"It's not fair-a…"

"Fuck." She didn't fancy herself having a dirty mouth, but the situation called for it. They're reciting the damn rhyme.

She scrambled to her feet, grabbing for her backpack and setting off into a sprint. I guess it must be an everyday Saturday, she seethed internally.

"A ggggoblin kame…," they giggled.

Sarah chanced a glance behind her, but found to her horror that while they weren't running, the fiery creatures had such long limbs they didn't really need to rush to get to her. They were striding, and it seemed to take no effort at all to shorten the distance between them and their prey. Groaning in aggravation, Sarah dumped her backpack, slinging it to the side and hoping to God the creatures would step over it rather than burn her schoolbooks with their massive feet (Your priorities are a little out-of-order, Williams, she reminded herself jadedly.)

Sarah's eyes scanned the park, searching for anyone who might see, but she knew better than to scream. It'd be just her luck that she'd screech her lungs out and the flame bastards would go up in smoke just as a good Samaritan found her. To the authorities, it'd be just another delusion, just another nail in the coffin housing her mental faculties' tarnished reputation. It'd be a good reason for Dr. King to suggest a facility, she fumed as she ran, feeling her ribs cramp and her lungs ache.

A fed-up portion of her mind wondered if anyone would believe her if they'd found her burnt to a crisp. Would they rather believe she'd been struck by a fireball from the sky? Or would they call it suicide, somehow, just to neatly tie up the narrative they'd spun for her? Her life rights, signed away without consent. The Unauthorized Biography of Sarah Williams: Selfish, childish, insane, delusional, killed herself via spontaneous combustion in a public park.

Sarah was angry. And she'd be damned if these jokesters—albeit significantly more frightening than she remembered—would be the end of her. She had too many battles left unfinished to lose the war to rookie contenders.

She headed for the river.

iii

Guillermo Gomez was out for a walk to clear his head. Since he'd been ousted from the high school, he'd been unable find a job. He didn't know how the hell he was going to pay rent. He didn't know how he was going to do anything at all. He couldn't use anyone at the high school as a reference; they'd say something untrue or at least insinuate something untrue. It'd been hard enough getting a job here before this most recent debacle. No one wanted to hire the educated son of Texan farmworkers. He sighed. The light was dimming on the horizon. He had to come up with a plan soon, or he'd end up on the streets.

He was shaken from his reverie by the sounds of voices near the river. He wasn't sure how he heard it; it was a high-pitched whisper on the wind, but he swore…he swore he could hear someone calling Sarah's name. Guillermo tried to shake his head. Was he going insane? But then he paused, and listened…and he thought for a moment that he could hear someone running.

iv

Sarah saw the bridge ahead of her and prayed to God she'd make it. Would she make it? The cobblestones of the bridge seemed so close and yet so far at the same time. Was this just a new brand of night terror and she'd find herself running for hours, inexplicably staying in place while her limbs worked themselves into bone-aching fatigue? Or was this reality, with the heat she felt at her back growing nearer and nearer?

Finally, she reached the bridge and she ran for the edge, but one of the creatures was now flanking her. She couldn't get to the left side; she'd have to head to the right.

Her toe caught on a cobblestone and she stumbled, her hands catching onto the cool side of the bridge. When she looked up, she was hopelessly surrounded. She turned just in time to see the one standing behind her as it removed its head.

No.

It spun toward her, a melon-sized flaming fastball, and she caught it, stupidly, between her palms.

An agonized scream ripped from her chest as it seared her flesh. She tossed it into the river by reflex, but she saw the flaming face cackling at her as it descended a dozen feet down into the water below. It burst into steam. Sarah watched, waiting for its cooled head to come bobbing back up to the surface, but it disappeared completely.

She aimed her attention back at her blazing ambush. Sarah was sweating from the run and the searing aura of their presence. She'd sought for an escape and instead had sculpted her own cul-de-sac.

The creatures leered, tongues of flame licking out of their gaping faces, their teeth white-hot. Their hissing laughter sang around her as they tugged off their limbs, the action making cracking and squelching sounds, droplets of something hot and gooey splattering on the stones beneath their feet, and tossed those same limbs back and forth to one another. Sarah flinched each time they threw a body part high in the air, ready to burn her hands a second, a third, fourth, fifth time if it would stave them off from merely closing in to consume her. It would be a death fit for a Salem witch.

Sarah's hands stung, and the skin was already blistering, but she wasn't crying. All she needed was a single moment, a single chance. She knew her way out.

v

He ran as fast as he could. Guillermo wasn't an old man, but he hadn't had to run in at least a decade. He had to get to the source of that scream. He told himself he was hearing things—not that the scream hadn't pierced the air, but that he had imagined it was Sarah's voice. Then again, he knew that girl. Moreover, she'd fallen asleep once in his English class. She'd had a night terror, right there in the back of the room. Guillermo Gomez knew Sarah Williams' scream.

As he found himself at the edge of the small tributary river, at the curve when it runs East after trailing South for miles, he stopped dead in his tracks.

Fire. Limbs. Sarah's raven hair blowing in the wind, her silhouette lit up in the falling darkness by glowing, looming creatures.

As has been previously mentioned, Guillermo Gomez knew Sarah Williams. And he also knew her stories.

It snapped into place in his mind like a gear had been missing, and the cogs began to turn. The thought machine was switched on with callous speed. There was no time to process, no time to adjust. Guillermo realized with a sickening internal jolt that Sarah had, at least to some extent, been writing non-fiction.

He stood there, dumbly, trying to relearn the basic procedure of movement. How was he supposed to save Sarah from this? The lightheadedness cued him in to the fact that he'd been holding his breath, and he frantically gasped for air. Did—did anyone around here own a gun? There wasn't a house in sight. There were trees to the North and at least a mile to residential area in every other direction. Would a gun even work? Would anything?

"God. Oh God," he ranted, his eyes darting all around him. No help was to be found. No, he thought, the truth sinking in, I am the help. He glanced back toward Sarah on the bridge. The creatures had her trapped. The irony of it didn't escape him: but for him, she was alone in the world.

A calm came over him. He made his decision. He filled his lungs with air and opened his mouth—he'd been a tenor soloist in college, years ago. If he knew how to do anything, it was project. And if he couldn't get to her in time, he'd just have to give her more of it.

"SARAH WILLIAMS!"

His voice—his booming, echoing voice—rang out, clear, strong, and unexpected.

Sarah's head spun, her eyes staring back at him over the side of the bridge. They made eye contact across the water, Guillermo and Sarah. The creatures, too, took note of him. And as they did, limbs disconnected and dull minds distracted, Sarah took the chance she'd needed.

She threw herself over the side of the bridge.