The door to Sarah's house flew open as she irritably stampeded through it and moaned.
"Sarah what's wrong, did you and Lysander have a fight" said Karen who ran to the door.
Sarah snivelled and her eyes watered.
"Oh Sarah" said Karen as she gave her a hug. "I'm sure it was just a stupid argument, you'll sort it out."
"I just wish that people would stop treating me like I'm a just a kid" she cried. "it's not fair, I'm not a kid, I'm not!"
"I know I know Sarah, it's okay, you just need something to take your mind off things. Here's a thought. Why don't you come with me to my work party tonight. Its my friend Kathy's birthday."
"Oh, I don't know, I won't know anybody" said Sarah.
"Of course you will. You know Mary and Susan, and you'll be with me."
"Well what about Toby?"
"I'll arrange for a baby-sitter okay?" said Karen.
"Okay" Sarah said unenthusiastically.
"Good, now go and get yourself ready. The taxi will be here at seven."
Sarah went up to her room and dressed in a stylish black dress. She brushed her hair so it hung loosely over her shoulders, she put on a bit of make-up and some hooped earrings. Of course she didn't look as glamorous as she did at the masquerade ball but she was passably attractive. She stared tiredly at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were flooding with emotions; sadness, lust, anger, betrayal. She couldn't believe how much had happened to her in the past two weeks. She thought of what the Wiseman said to her.
What did he mean by this, she had lost her mother so how could she find her?
"Sarah the taxi's here" shouted her stepmother from downstairs.
"Okay I'm coming" she said taking one last longing look in the mirror.
Admittedly, Sarah did feel a little better at the party. She gladly congregated with her stepmothers friends and seemed to have forgotten about her mother, Lysander and Jareth, at least for a little while anyway. She drank champagne and she even danced for a while to the classic 80s music that was played.
"I'm just going to the ladies room" she said to one of her friends when the song had finished.
She walked out of the main hall and down a small corridor where she finally found the ladies bathroom. She walked in closing the door behind her. Whilst in the cubicle she began humming to herself, a familiar tune which played from her old musical doll and also a tune which Jareth had sung to her all those years ago, but she soon stopped when she heard a creak in the door realising that someone else had entered the bathroom. She walked out of the door and went to wash her hands. A beautiful brown haired twenty-something woman was also there fixing her make-up in the mirror.
"Hello" the woman said smiling at her.
"Hi" said Sarah.
"Are you Sarah?" the woman asked.
"Yes I am, do I know you?" Sarah asked.
"I'm Angela, I know your stepmother, she was telling me that you used to do a bit of acting."
"Well, I was only in my school drama group, it wasn't really acting" said Sarah.
"Oh, you see I was just wondering because I have an audition and I wanted some advice on the monologue that I prepared but seeing as you don't act anymore I won't trouble you" said Angela.
"Oh no it's no trouble, I could give you advice if you wanted. Let's hear it" said Sarah.
"Alright" Angela smiled. "Here it goes." She cleared her throat and began to speak.
"A curse to you is what I bestow,
To salvage the lives of the ones I know
As you are the one that we all fear
A maiden so fair should ne'er interfere
I give thou the gift of the Midas hand
Since power and peril, you seem to withstand
For gold shalt not spring from your sacred touch
But danger will come to those you love much"
As she spoke these words she threw her hands about and shouted the like she was one of the witches from Macbeth. She was not good. Sarah tried her best not to laugh at the woman.
"That's only part of it" said Angela, "do you wish for me to continue?"
"No!" retorted Sarah. "I mean, I've heard enough to know that you're...going to be great."
At that moment Lysander burst through the door looking exhausted.
"Sarah!" he shouted.
"Lysander what are you doing in a ladies bathroom!" she shouted.
"This is urgent Sarah!" said Lysander. Then he paused to look at Angela who was shocked at what was going on. "Who is she" he asked.
"She just a woman, her name is erm…"
"Angela" said Angela.
"Yeah that's right" Sarah said.
"You mean you don't know her" he said.
"No not really" said Sarah. "I was just listening to her monologue because she's auditioning for…"
"Oh no you've already listened to her!" Lysander interrupted and gave Angela a mean stare. "What did you say to her?!" he shouted.
"Lysander leave her alone. What's the matter with you!" said Sarah. "I'm so sorry about him" she said to Angela.
"It's fine" Angela said looking pretty nervous.
"No it's not fine!" shouted Lysander.Sarah had never seen him this angry.
"I'm not listening to thisLysander, you have gone crazy!" said Sarah as she stormed out of the bathroom.
"Sarah wait I need to tell you something!" shouted Lysander who tried to run after her but as he reached for the door an immense force jerked him back. That was when he realised that Angela had grabbed hold of him.
"You're not going to tell her anything" Angela said evilly with her vicious glowing red eyes staring into his. Then she punched Lysander's face which left him unconscious lying on on the floor.
Sarah angrily stomped back into the main hall.
"Drink miss?" said a bartender holding a tray of champagne-filled glasses.
Sarah smiled and took a glass of champagne from the tray, only the glass broke in her hand and the liquid spilt all over the floor.
"Oh I'm sorry" she said.
"That's okay" said the bartender who took the broken glass off her. "Have another one."
Sarah went to take another glass from the tray but as she did, she accidentally knocked it over which then knocked all the other glasses over. Champagne was suddenly flooding the bartenders tray until he could no longer control it so he dropped it. Everyone turned their heads around as the tray and the glasses crashed to the wooden floor. All Sarah could manage was a silly little giggle to save her dignity. The bartender dismissed her so she quickly walked over to her stepmother and her friends.
"What was all that about Sarah?" asked Karen.
"Oh nothing I was just being a little clumsy" Sarah said.
"Typical you" Karen laughed. "Have you met Jonathon yet? He's been wanting to dance with you all night." A young dark haired man cheekily smiled at Sarah.
"Hey" he said. "I was watching you move earlier and I thought to myself, I'd be a fool if I didn't ask you to dance by the end of the night" Jonathon said arrogantly grabbing Sarah's arm and walking her over to the dance floor.
"Look, it's not that I'm not flattered but I don't really feel like dancing right now" demanded Sarah.
"Aw come on, don't be cold" said Jonathon who started dancing and pulling Sarah's hands in rhythm with the music.
She pulled away.
"I said I don't want to dance!"
Jonathon put his arms around her waist.
"I know you do really" he teased. "Don't be shy."
Sarah pushed him and started walking backwards.
"No I don't!" she shouted as she bumped into a young girl.
"Hey watch where you're going" the girl shouted at Sarah to which she responded by rolling her eyes. "Don't you roll your eyes at me" the girl said. Sarah tried to walk away but the girl grabbed her arm. "Don't walk away from me either, freak!"
Sarah pushed the girl away and tried to leave but the girl pulled her by the hair. Sarah also grabbed the girls hair as they scrambled around with everybody staring at them, some cheering them on and some yelling for them to stop. They slapped and kicked each other screaming and calling each other names and shouting out profanities. Mothers had to keep their children away or cover their ears. Karen stared at Sarah in shock, what had come over her? The girls started pushing each other and kicking moving closer and closer to the buffet table. Sarah stumbled over a loose cable on the floor and stumbled over into the large birthday cake. The entire room gasped. The music stopped. Sarah looked up at everyone with white icing all over her face. The other girl had cunningly moved into the crowd so it was just Sarah against the whole room.
"My cake!" a woman shouted, supposedly Kathy, the woman whose birthday it was. "You've ruined it you stupid girl!"
Every looked in Sarah at shock, even her stepmother. She heard some people whispering utterances like "she's usually such a quiet girl", and "her mother died last week, it has obviously traumatized her."
"I'm sorry...I...I'm really sorry" Sarah said before running off outside with tears in her eyes.
She ran off into the dark of the night hoping that the ground would open up for her and drag down into another world. She had never felt so humiliated. It wasn't like her to start fights with strangers and be so clumsy with glasses. What could she have done to deserve such a heavy cloud of rain over her head? And what's more, her stepmother had seen it all. Sarah would never been seen as a mature adult ever again!
She had no idea where she was running to, but the sky was dark and if Lysander was right about Sarah being more vulnerable to otherworldly threats then the shadows of the night were the worst place to be alone in.
But Sarah was not alone. Because suddenly she could here someone chasing her. Someone's rapid footsteps were pelting on the ground behind her. As much as she tried to scurry her legs were tired and frail and her intake of oxygen had already been used up. She knew that whoever was chasing her was going to catch up with her.
"Leave me alone!" she screamed in a last attempt to salvage her capture, but the hands had already seized her body. She screamed as she was pulled back by the chaser.
"Get off!" she yelled, frantically trying to struggle out of the tightly-gripped hands who were grasping her.
"Sarah" the catcher said, who was now identified as being male.
She thrashed her arms and legs about to try and escape.
"Sarah stop it" he said as he shook her to calm her down, "it's me" he said.
She stopped struggling and looked at the chasers face.
"Lysander?" she said.
"Yes" said Lysander. "Look I need to tell you something. I saw what happened at the party…"
"Oh so now you're gonna take a stab at me too…"
"No Sarah I know it wasn't your fault." he said.
"What are you talking about?"
"That woman in the bathroom. She was one of the threats I was telling you about."
"What?…No, she was just an ordinary woman she wasn't threatening" she said naively.
"Sarah I told you they disguise themselves as ordinary humans. What exactly did she say to you when she read out that monologue to you?"
"Erm…I can't exactly remember, something about the Midas touch and erm a curse."
"Oh no!" he said putting his hands on his head. "She used the anti-Midas spell."
"The what?!"
"It means that you'll bring destruction to the ones you love. That's why all that bad stuff happened to you at the party."
"But it was Kathy's party, I don't love Kathy" she said.
"No but you love Karen, and it was her best friends party."
Sarah frowned confusedly. She had never realised that she actually loved Karen like she loved her mother.
"Well what am I going to do" she said.
"There's nothing you can do, not until I go back to underground to find a cure."
"Well can I come with you?" she asked.
"No!" he said. "Not now everyone knows who you are, there are much worse curses than the anti-Midas curse, much worse…The best thing for you to do is to go home. You used up a lot of the curse on the party so you should be safe at home, for tonight anyway. I'll go to the Underground try and find a reverse for the spell."
Lysander kissed Sarah's forehead.
"Good luck" he said before running off leaving Sarah alone, cursed and forlorn as the howling winds swept her hair off her face revealing her deep childlike eyes, more fearful than they had ever been.
I know that some people who read this can't be bothered to review, I mean it is easy just to press the cross button on the top right corner of the screen. But I'm tellin' you - please please review. I'll love you forever plus you will get eternal happiness. Honestly you'll feel much better! Okay I'm done. See y'all at the next chap.
P.S. While I'm gone here's something to think about - Jareth with pigtails.