By D a short story
(The means look at the bottom for an explanation) I don't own the nightmare before charismas Pirret, Ameri, Ciello, and her father are mine.
The night began; young again the sun fell to the west and the silver moon rose like a mirror in the east. Dying light colored the ground red, it touched the hem of a slightly pink Victorian dress falling softly; it touched the face of a mutilated toy. But even the harsh, glaring light could not pierce the darkness of the hooded figure.
"Are you sure you want to give me the present?" the Child asked.
"Of course. Where I come from, every one has one you should too." he began to move forward they where walking the twisted streets of the frightening town.
"As long as it doesn't hurt Pirret," she swung around, irritated.
"Of course not. What would you do without him?" she shifted uncomfortably she wouldn't last long without him or he nor her.
Pirret, or the said doll hung over her shoulder, his nose lightly touching where piano wire, contacted her soft, bruised flesh.
"Amerie, wonder" a voice in her head advised.
"Yet, where do you come from?" her clouded eyes scanned the figure.
"A beautiful world filled with ivory palaces, golden archways, and I miss it so" Amrie turned in wonder to him.
"Iz this Babylon?" but they both stopped here, the streets twisted cruelly, and the walls partially colored a sickly gray color, shadows clustered in the wake of closed garbage cans and broken gates. Here shadows ruled. The figures had finally happened on the spot, an empty allyway. In the center a large present stood, the size of a small coffee table, tall and proud in the low light.
"Oh how...eh nice" it had two ribbons on it. The wrapping paper was a scene of churning ocean on it, angry at the word. The street lamps snapped on suddenly. Light flooded the area, and the shadows sharpened, twisted and contracted in pain, but Amarie really didn't notice their presence.
"Don't open it" Pirret hissed to her, but she had already ripped the paper off the large present. When the paper was gone she paused. The lights flickered on and off amusingly.
"…Misur where?" Ameri searched her voice like a lost kitten's
a small impulse in her mind told her "open the box" she turned and stared at nothing sensing … "Danger?"
She played with the wire that ran across her throat, stiffening at the feeling.
She ran circles around the present, piano wire following her like useless antennae.
Pirret stood staring into the box, he once a teddy bear, although a friend had "improved" him, they had giving him eyebrows and a long tail. Ameri looked at the box it seemed...bigger? (or maybe the world had just gotten smaller). She climbed to the edge and looked in.
"It is painted black inside..."the present shook and Pirret fell off the present.
"Come on we must go home," she said, catching him as he fell.
While reaching her neighborhood she ran into a friend to all residents. He was shaped like a flask, and had an infamously stubborn bow tie. Although he had no name, yet anyone could say as long as the town had existed he served as the often-exhausted Mayor.
Ameri stared home, although the steps at the town square where a constant bane to his existence he could almost never walk up them with out tripping.
"Ask!" he screamed and tumbled blindly. Ameri stood laughing at him,
"Are you heheeh, all right?"
"Now, now dear don't do that." He had gotten up in a mad scramble, and chaise Ameri for playing with the wire around her neck.
"I need more to fix Pirret though." They walked off together Ameri skipping and the Mayor trotting quickly after her, and Pirret being held by the hand and flying by dangerously.
scolding
A lone crow hobbled along the crooked road trying to keep up with them a bright red present tied securely to its neck and a look of eagerness in its eyes.
They had reached her home, a tall Victorian manor.
"Good bye", the Mayor's face quickly turned from concerned to cheerful, but it didn't last long: it turned to dismay when he fell down the steps leading into the house.
She ran to her sitting room immediately, she thought that she had left the window locked and she had the only key.
Over her windowsill a crow stood and pecked at the wood. It began to rain outside "Carrw Cak Cak." he stood regally for a second.
"Moussure?" Ameri realized that the crow had a present; she watched the crow hobble noiselessly. He stared at first with his left eye, a bright amber color, which quickly darkened to a dark wine-stain red, then the other eye, a startling electric blue.
Ameri walked as if in a trans she grabbed the crow around the neck and held tightly she began to remember her own death:
Her real mother died of an accident that no one wanted to mention, her father remarried .A piano was the first thing that came to mind ahem not just any piano her stepmother's grand master piano, with ivory keys and gold inlaid through like vines and ending in mother-of-pearl flowers, but it was overly done and Ameri didn't care much for it.
Slowly and carefully, Ameri climbed out of the piano she then closed the lid without a sound. Her pockets where obviously filled with something. Imidiatly when her stepmother walked in she knew that something was wrong-especially when she tried to play the multi million-dollar piano and the fingerprints on it. The second that Ameri walked in her stepmother (by the by her name is Ciello) grabbed her by the collar of her dress and carried her to her room. Ciello jammed the key in and locked Ameri in, her piano wire missing and Pirret too.
It had a balcony and she doesn't like locked windows. She was taking the piano wire and was inside it. They're the old-old locks :you can't open the door with the key jammed in it
After an hour or two of complete silence her father wandered to Ameri's room.
"Ameri, Ciello?" he called politely, Ameri stumbled into the door
"Daddy Daaadddddd!"
"What's wrong are you in trouble again?" He leaned in and said to the door.
"Pirret! Pirret!" she hopped up excitedly, he replied knowingly yet unaware of the tragedy that was about to befall him and his family,
"Oh." he took the key out and Ameri said quickly,
"Byedaddythanksyouvery, verymuchbyebyeloveyou!"and ran.
Now it being severely popular to wear old Victorian dresses that required high maintenance in the higher classes. Ciello wasn't going anywhere soon; it took forever to just get dressed. Ameri climbed back into the piano and waited until Pirret came for her.
"Kid don't go out now" he sensed their impending doom.
"Why not we need wire." And still she saw nothing wrong
"No, don't." Ciello walked out and Ameri followed her quietly. Snow covered the grounds of their house cough manor chough. Ciello took the wire and put it "hopefully" in a place where Ameri could not get it. Ameri ran out in her white tinted pink dress she loved, but she put boots on, black ones. Ciello hid the wire on a fountain it had branches like a tree and put it up. Ameri circled the fountain until she spotted the wire she tried to grab it, but it wrapped up quickly in her bows (Ciello made her wear hem constantly). She ripped out the bows, and got her head entangled. The wire wrapped around her neck eventually in her struggles. Her body relinquished its hold on her conscious first…then it died a slow, painful death. Still franticly trying to, with bloody hands, get the wire off.
The present shook under her fingers a small black animal appeared as if a part of the darkness. Pirret (who had left and was drinking some tea now while Ameri zoned out) watched as the critter seemed to bubble and more and more swarmed nearby, he noticed how the crow watched Ameri intelligently. Pirret switched him and Ameri. Ameri stood, scared… "The bird!" she grabbed it by its neck and held it, slowly the darkness waned, the bird was half dead, and so Ameri took it to the good doctor: he could fix anything that she broke.
"Hmm a good specimen leave it with me and I'll find what's wrong." He gave her a wide grin and laughed broadly, holding the crow in his lap.
Ameri searched for the man it was a bad present. She headed towards the forest.
The forest starts once you pass the last fence and it starts immediately. After wandering into a fork in the road that had never been there before; Pirret bristled at that,
"He's out there" he wondered if they should have smothered the bird when they had the chance. Ameri followed the unfamiliar path,
"One two cast?" said a cat, it was on a log singing, Ameri reconigsed it as Sally's." Two ways back or forward" Ameri walked on. It seemed once they passed the tallest trees she reached a turning point, a big field appeared. The ground moved as the nightmares took shape they withered under the grass like worms under someone's skin. A sign, hung very obviously said: Nightmear Field. A juggernaut of a tree stood seemingly dieing before their eyes; its companion, huge rock dominated the landscape. Out of the darkness the creatures appeared. They came from the shadows in the archways letting the putrid, green water seep in, but oddly enough the sewers fed the giant tree. Suddenly the nightmares gathered at the tree, its roots came out and stretched quickly. Black and purple crystals fed the animals of darkness and the tree. It (the tree) shivered and slowly walked, Sally's cat ran .In the gorge a giant keyhole appeared in the earth and Ameri ran to it the, ground bubbled and a click was heard. Ameri was gone Pirret turned around the air was still he climbed to the top quietly and cried…he was …….
Alone.