To Be Insane
Chapter 4
Spandex and Insults
(Ok the real titles is… Umm undecided…)
"Robert help me clean out the shed, it's a sunny day, so let's stop stalling! Get down here!"
"I'm coming Karen!" Robert sighed and patted Lance on the head, "Listen, your mom and I will be cleaning up in the backyard, you going to be good and play in your room?"
"Sure." Lance nodded and Robert smiled, and then left. A minute after he left Lance hopped off his bed and raced down from his room down the stairs as fast as he could without slipping and breaking his neck. He made his way to the front door and to the spot where Sarah had told him the key would be. After a few minutes of searching he finally found the little crevice in which the key was hidden. His hand had reached in and he had felt something cold, long, and thin. As he pulled it out he saw it was brass, like the lock, old fashioned, and quite pretty, for a key that is.
As he half ran back in he heard his mother, "Hey! What do you think your doing?"
Lance's heart was pounding, he had almost made it to the stairs, he gripped the key tightly and placed it in his pocket discreetly, "What do you mean?"
"You left the door wide open, you weren't raised in a barn you know." She walked past him and shut and locked it. "I came in for some cleaning supplies, you're behaving now aren't you?"
He nodded, "Yes mama." He slowly backed up the stairs. "I'm gonna go read now." He then half dashed upstairs and after a moment she heard his door open and shut.
"I swear he becomes more like Sarah day by day… He's spending too much time with her. I've got to put a stop to this or I'll lose him to the looney bin." Had she been any other parent she would have said the word 'too' after 'bin', but in her eyes, Sarah wasn't her child, she wasn't anything to her. Just a spoiled little brat who never got what she deserved, a severe beating in her case, and was just now paying for it. She opened the closet, grabbed her supplies and went out to her husband.
As the door downstairs closed, Lance sighed. His bedroom door was closed and he was resting against it, and had been waiting in baited breath. As soon as he was sure he was alone he turned down the hall that veered off from his parents and Sarah's room and went to her door. He looked at it for a moment, silent, then slid the metal key into the lock and opened it. He heard the lock turn and he put his hand to the knob that was at throat level and turned it.
Only to find it didn't give. "What the… I unlocked you." He put the key in and tried to unlock it again in case it hadn't unlocked all the way and tried again. Turning the knob he tried again, and then thinking it was stuck pushed against it as hard as he could. After the third shove it gave in. "You think they had sealed you with glue." He spoke to the door despite its silence, and walked in.
What might have been a pretty room was still in ruins from the last time it had had someone inside. The mirror was still broken and on it he saw a statue of a man and a music box. He went over to it and as he neared the vanity he felt his sneakers crunch as it hit shards of glass.
His mother had tried cleaning up in here, he had been told by his father and Sarah. When Sarah had been taken one of the things she had ordered was for her room to be left alone. She wanted no one to touch it, especially Karen. Since Sarah had specifically said 'don't' Karen decided to spite her and was going to, Robert didn't know this until it was almost to late, he saw her going into her room with a broom, bucket, rags and various cleaning supplies and was caught just as she was entering her room.
"What are you doing Karen?" he was upset, how could she betray Sarah like this?
"I'm cleaning up this mess. It's filthy and dangerous." She replied as if she was in no wrong in how she was acting.
"Sarah nearly begged us not to touch her room and you were going to?" he frowned, "Karen, we should respect that wish, it's the least you could do for your step daughter."
"She is in no way a daughter of mine!" she snapped this out before she could stop it.
Robert stared at her in dawning horror, "You are to stay away from her room, Karen. It's the least we can do for her! When she comes back she can take care of it herself!" he went over and went into Sarah's room, above Sarah's bed was a bronze key, he took it, walked back out with Karen, and closed the door and locked it shut.
Karen was nearly fuming, "She won't be coming back! This is your fault! Letting her read those useless books and letting her live her fantasy stories! It was no wonder she was failing school! You've spoiled her and because of you-"
"Karen!" his voice was sharp, he put the key into his pocket and turned to her, his eyes brimming with tears, "I'm going out, without you, I need time alone. Do what you will, but leave her room alone!" he walked back down the stairs with his suitcase, pain in his heart, keys in hand, and shut the door behind him.
Lance picked up the small little music box and as he did broken shards fell from it, he carefully wound it up and set it down, closing his eyes as the music played, it was very pretty music. He placed it down and looked at the statue, the man looked so cruel. He reached out and opened the right drawer and in it found on top, the book of the Labyrinth.
"YES!" he grabbed it and turned around nearly slipping on the glass. As he walked to the door he could see she had shelves of stuffed animals. His eyes followed around the room and his eye caught sight of something brown. "What are you?" he went over and picked it up, a stuffed teddy bear that had been hiding in the sheets that had been torn from the bed. He sat down on the messed up bed and grabbed the patchwork dinosaur from the head of the bed. On impulse he hugged it to his chest and felt something hard within in. His hands searched it and on the back of it was a slot, he reached his hand into it and pulled out what looked like a journal.
As his hands reached to open it he heard his parents come into the house. "Lance? You doing all right?" he jumped from the bed and taking what he had in his arms ran out of the room. He closed the door as quietly as he could and quietly tried re-locking it. It let out a solid noise as the lock slid into place and picking up journal, pillow, and book in hand ran to his room and opened the door. "I'm fine!" he hid all of the things under his bed and stood back up. "I was just playing with my Lego's!" he quickly grabbed the bucked of said toys and dumped them out onto the floor quietly as he could. His half made plane where was it…
As he grabbed that into hand his father walked into his room, "Oh wow, what you got there?" he went over to him.
"Oh just a toy."
"I see… well why don't I join you?" so he sat down with his son and for a couple of hours enjoyed their own world.
* ~ & ~ *
That night when his parents were asleep, Lance turned on his light and began reading the book thoroughly; never skipping a page or word, by the end of it his eyelids were drooping and he was exhausted. The book was helping him understand the basics but it didn't give the words to wish things away. Sarah had been very careful not to tell him how to say it. He looked to the diary; there was a very slim chance that it was in there. From what he heard the night she came back she was so busy tearing up her room and getting dragged to Archam Asylum, that if you thought about it, she probably didn't have time to jot down a little good bye to her book.
He opened up the book and skipped through it, just the last pages. He didn't want to be snooping through her private life. Nothing… nothing, nothing, and a bit of more… You guessed it; nothing. He flipped to the very last page to the hard back of the book and on it were letters in a weird order:
I E G W O E A M E G T
W H O S U M N E A I N
I T B N L O D K W R O
S H L I D C T A A Y W
"Sarah… what were you trying to write?" an hour later his wandering eyes began to make sense of the nonsense and soon his eyes noticed… :
I
W
I
S H
His brain did a jump start, " 'I wish' ?!" his eyes then followed back up… "I wish the…" his eyes followed the paper trying to find the pattern to read the words… "Gobl…ins…. Would come… and take me away… right…" he cut himself off. He couldn't finish that. He didn't want that. But he had found it… Why had she written the words though?
He couldn't figure it out… but why look a gift horse in the mouth, tomorrow he might be able to do it… Fight dangers, go through the Labyrinth, run from the Fireys get beaten by rocks… tossed down shafts of hands…
Maybe it could wait till next week… Or … Month… or maybe when he'd grown taller then three feet tall… "I'll think about this tomorrow… I'm beat." He then placed his head against the book and nodded off.
* ~ & ~ *
"Lance! What are you doing lying down like that?" Karen walked into the room and looked down at her son, "Young man, don't tell me you stayed up reading some book!"
"I didn't stay up to late-" he said groggily. He sat up tired and Karen leaned down to pick up the book he had fallen asleep on… Which was his sisters… "HEY!!!" he tried to grab it back but she stepped back and flipped through it. Had she found it on her own she would have read through it, Sarah's or not, Sarah was insane, she had no say in the matter, and the reason she'd read it would have been to spite her. But no, Lance had found it, and for some reason he adored Sarah.
"How did you get this young man?!"
"I found it…" he trailed off.
"WHERE?" He gulped, he hated lying, he refused to do it, and so he just went silent. "Fine, you're grounded. You stay on this bed and don't touch you're toys until you tell me. And you're not to be visiting you're sister now. She's too much of a bad influence on you! I'm doing this for your own good, I just wish you and Robert could see that!" she added that as his tears began to show.
"GO AWAY! I HATE YOU!!! LEAVE ME ALONE! YOU ARE A WICKED STEP MOTHER!" he shouted at her, angry beyond belief. Karen's eyes widened and then narrowed.
"You will stay silent young man or sitting on the bed will be a sore idea once I'm through with your behind." She left his door wide-open and stalked out; sure that Lance's normal obedience was being swayed by her husband's daughter.
"I hate you!" he shouted after her one last time. He then stomped off the bed and shut the door and locked it. He wiped his tears and sat on the floor, a headache coming on finally. At least she hadn't found the book… He sighed, his privilege to see his sister gone along with her diary. "Oh forget it!" Lance snapped to no one. "I'm going to just try and fix it all now!" he jumped off his bed and then began to pack for his journey.
He packed his red canvas kid backpack with a riddle book, some candy, his first aid kit he had made in kindergarten when they had been teaching safety, tied a jacket to his waist and leaving said bag on the bed snuck downstairs, and listened quietly, waiting for his chance. When he heard nothing he ran to the kitchen and found it empty, he then proceeded to ransack the kitchen for food. Which he then took upstairs with him.
By the end of the hour he was holding the 'Labyrinth' book in his hand and his backpack on his back.
"Lessee, what were those words?" he paused trying to remember, "Goblin King, Goblin King? Nah can't be right… who would be dumb enough to think THOSE were the words… Hmmm I wish I could remember… That's it! But I have to change that or I'LL be taken away… I wish the Goblin King would come and see me and accept my challenge… Right now!" a dog barked out side and ten minutes later he was growing bored. His mind willed it to work. His sister COULDN'T be insane! The magic had to be real!
"Man if you do exist, and you heard me, and you still aren't answering, you suck!" he sat himself on the bed pouting all the way and stayed there for another three minutes. He sensed something within the air, amusement, curiosity, but he couldn't see anyone… It was as if something was reacting to his words of anger… "It figures! You come when SARAH wished Toby away," the air seemed to stir as if startled by a name it had refused to hear for years, "-but you can't answer to her little brother!" the wind outside his window raised a notch, "Do you only play favorites… Jareth?" the wind blew strongly causing the trees limbs across the street to blow violently in the wind. He knew the Goblin Kings name, he had to answer to that. Didn't he?
"If you're listening to me you might as well come and accept my challenge, because I'm not wishing myself away. That'd be stupid. I want to fix what YOU messed up!" the wind outside died instantly and his lights flashed out, then back in for a minute, then behind him he heard the high and mighty voice.
"All right, you spoke of a challenge. Deliver it, though, I can't imagine what kind of a challenge I would get from a four – year old boy."
Lance jumped off the bed and spun around to see Jareth, in his all and mighty glory, leaning up against his power rangers poster which was tacked to the wall. He frowned, not even two seconds into meeting this guy and he was all ready being insulted. "You're not the first to underestimate me."
Jareth raised an eyebrow, "Well I suppose no one should ever underestimate a person, age be damned. But in your case I don't think I'll worry too much." He lied easily; this boy was highly intelligent, especially for his age.
"Do you want the challenge or are you going to just stand there in your spandex throwing insults at me?"
Jareth frowned, "As if you aren't throwing your own."
Lance sighed, "I want to run your Labyrinth, if I win, I get something, if you win, you get me as another servant, or goblin, or whatever."
"Same old challenge… Well what is it you want IF you win?"
"Sarah's past."
Jareth's eyebrows raised and he quickly regained his composure, "Explain."
"She lost to you, but she shouldn't have, she was the hero, you the evil person. She should have won. If I win, I want you to turn back time, change things, set right the persons life you destroyed."
Jareth frowned, "Do you realize what you're asking?"
"Yes. I'm asking you to use your fae magic, and turn back time on earth, to undo what has all ready been, and make it what it was supposed to be. I'm SURE she was supposed to win."
"How would you know what 'should' have been?"
"Because this is wrong! My sister is in an asylum with bars and flowers as her friends! Being fed drugs because she HAS finally gone delusive after all that time in there! She has been paying for her mess up for five years! That's not fair-" Jareth's face which had been frowning, allowed a small smirk to come across his face, "And as much as you're going to hate it, if I win, I want you to use whatever power it takes to change time."
"I see." He went silent. "What makes you think I want to accept this challenge, Sarah means nothing to me, to me she's just another person to have failed my Labyrinth."
"Liar."
"Excuse me?"
"I said, 'Liar', are you deaf as well as…" Lance held back the snide comment, insulting the king would not be a good thing, considering he could always just refuse the challenge and just leave. "Listen are you going to accept or not?"
"Fine…" his mouth had tightened, and with the whirl of a magic crystal they were both in a glade, twenty feet from the nearest labyrinth wall.
"You have thirteen hours to solve they Labyrinth, and reach my castle within it, or, the price you shall pay will not only be your freedom, but you're sisters sanity and life. Despite what others think, I know the both of us know she is no more insane then you and I, she just loses herself sometimes because of unhappiness. And were she to stay, she WILL be insane, but I can only erase the memory of you from others who knew you, not Labyrinthinian travelers. Because of having traveled through my labyrinth, to forget spells, she is immune to. Were you to lose, she will have lost another brother to me, and that would be causing more pain then helping."
"Understood." He set his jaw determinedly. "Well you enjoy those goblins I got a puzzle to solve!" he then began running towards the wall.
"Such a pity." The voice echoed in the empty air.
