Chapter Five
"Puck!" she screamed. She scrambled and scraped at the trash that led to his throne. Each time she moved one away, another fell in its place. Eventually the throne itself began to fall. It slumped over with the trash, and Puck went with it. Sabrina ran to catch him before he could hit the floor.
He was still warm.
She could hardly see him. Everything was blurry. She wiped the tears from her eyes, but new ones formed in their place. She wasn't even crying silently. It was loud and obnoxious, like the sound an animal makes. She thought about what Puck would say if he heard her crying like that. "What are you blubbering about now, you little…" Even thinking about his rudeness made her cry.
She stared at him. He was so still. She combed his long, shaggy hair away from his face, which was red with a festering poison ivy rash.
She continued to watch at him, then carefully grabbed his shoulders."Puck!" she cried, shaking him lightly, like she would if she was trying to wake him up. "Puck! You can't leave m—us. Who's…who's gonna help me take care of Daphne? You can't go off and die. Granny Relda…left you in charge."
She thought she saw him smile. Great. Now she was hallucinating.
She stopped shaking him, noticing that it was doing no good. She bit her lip and closed his eyes. She choked back another round of tears."Man, you're such a…a stinkpot," she sniffed. "A stinkpot. You know we were even supposed to get ma…never mind, it'll torture you just thinking about it, even if you are dead." Her voice cracked when she said the word 'dead.' "It tortures me, sometimes, too, you know?" She laughed pitifully. "What am I talking to a dead person for?" She sniffed again and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "You never cared even when you were alive, anyway."
She looked down at him again. It was getting darker, and he looked colder. She couldn't just leave him here.
"One more thing, Puck," she whispered. She lifted him up awkwardly and, when he was sitting upright, hugged him as tightly as she could. A billion words rushed into her head at once, an infinite amount of things she wished she would've said to him…but the only one she could think of at the time was, "I…I lo—"
Puck's eyes suddenly shot open, and he pulled away from her. He stuck his tongue out at her, then laughed. "Hah!" he cried. "Even when I'm dead you can't resist me."
"Puck?" Sabrina said, sniffing. She had to be hallucinating. He was dead. She saw him...
"Are you still confused? You sure are slow, Grimm." He pulled chalk out from his pockets. "You wanna look dead, too?"
She sat there silently, putting it all together. Puck had rubbed chalk all over his body. He wasn't breathing on purpose. He had been…acting? This was all just another...prank?
Slowly, anger and fury built up in Sabrina, growing larger and larger. He was still alive? That…that sicko! She could feel her hands balling into tight fists. He had been awake the entire time. And he'd almost heard her tell him…!
Her hands were shaking, she was so angry. She couldn't even hit him.
Sabrina calmly turned around and began walking back toward the house. She said nothing.
"I've won! Wouldn't you say, Grimm?" the fairy boy announced triumphantly, flying just behind her. "I beat you! There's nothing you could do to top that!"He giggled mischievously. "I've never seen you so scared in your life before, either! That was hilarious!"
Sabrina fought the growing urge to tackle him and stuff his fat mouth with sausage.
"How about you just declare your stinkpot-iness? It's not that hard. Just get it over with."
Silence.
"Grimm? I'm waiting."
Sabrina turned around suddenly and faced him. Tears were streaming down her face. She didn't know whether or not they were out of anger or relief.
"You were dead!" she yelled.
"I know. It was really believable, wasn't—"
"I hate you, Puck."
Puck stopped. He lowered himself to the ground. He appeared to be shocked for a second, then forced an unsure smile.
"A Trickster King lives to hear those words," he said.
Sabrina gritted her teeth. "You've gone too far this time!" she screamed. "I wish you really had been dead!"
Puck didn't try to hide anything with a smile this time. He stared at Sabrina, a look of regret clear in his face.
"Sabrina, I'm…"
"Don't talk to me," Sabrina whispered, her voice empty. "Ever again."
She walked back to the house alone.
...
"I think he's going to live!" Daphne cried when Sabrina entered the room.
"Were you in on this, too?"
"In on what?" The little girl was tickling a pixie, who was wrapped up like a mummy. "Gootchie-gootchie-goo!" she giggled.
The pixie gave a muffled groan.
"Puck's…fake death," she said. She heard the front door slam. Puck had returned.
"Puck, can I keep him?" Daphne begged, ignoring Sabrina.
"Do whatever you want," Puck said. Sabrina could hear him walking up the stairs. She never heard his bedroom door slam.
Daphne beamed and squeezed the pixie. "I'm going to name you Bobble!"
The pixie groaned, louder this time.
"Oh, I knew you'd like it!" she exclaimed.
"So you were in on it," Sabrina said.
"In on what?" Daphne cooed.
"Puck's prank!" she yelled.
Her little sister stared at her, stunned. "I wasn't in on any prank, Sabrina. I've been working on the case, remember?"
"But you went with Puck last night!" she fumed. "And the pixie!"
"Bobble," Daphne corrected.
"Whatever!" Sabrina cried.
"Actually, Puck wasn't much help then," Daphne said, placing Bobble back down on the table. "He said he had to work on something more important. And the pixie was my fault. I accidently…stepped on him when I was going to open the door." Her face flushed red, as if she'd done something wrong.
"I didn't mean to."
Sabrina smiled and looked at the pixie. "Okay. Just as long as you weren't involved with that ogre and his sick, demented plans," she said.
"Its okay, Sabrina. Fiancées are only scary for a while," she reassured.
"That pig is not my fiancée!" Sabrina roared.
Daphne giggled. "You cannot deny your destiny, young one."
Sabrina ignored her. "Whatever," she said.
She heard Daphne cooing to Bobble the entire time she stomped up the stairs. She went to Mirror's room and walked over the door that now lay flat on the floor, and it cracked in the middle.
"WHO HAS THE GUTS TO EVEN TRY TO BREAK—"
"Can you be normal, Mirror? Just for a little while?"
Mirror stared at her, surprised. "Are you alright, Starfish?"
Sabrina shook her head. "Just leave me alone," she whispered. She curled up into a tight little ball in the corner of the room, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs. Tears were dried on her face. She was tired of crying.
After a while she began to doze off, her eyelids becoming heavier and heavier. But before she was completely unconscious, though, she thought she heard Mirror whisper, "Don't worry. I'll be normal before you even see it coming, kiddo."
...
Sabrina woke up right as the moon was fully up in the sky. She yawned, stretched, and stood, shaking out her legs, which had gone numb from being folded up for so long. She had to go tell Puck that…
Oh, yeah.
A frown reappeared on her face. She glanced across the room, noticing her sleeping parents in their bed. She had the dying urge to go over to them and vent. She tiptoed over to where they were lying. She had to tell somebody how she felt.
"When you fell in love with Dad, was it easy, Mom?" Sabrina whispered, smoothing back her mother's raven hair. She kissed her once on the forehead, then went around the bed and kissed her Dad on the cheek. They were still as ever, unmoving, unfeeling.
They were lucky.
Sabrina sighed and left the room. She stood in the hallway for a while, just combing her hair back and out of her face, letting herself feel nothing. A shiver ran down her back, and she stuffed both hands in her pockets. Her left hand squished against something, and her face curled up. She pulled out a bag with something brown and squashy down at the bottom and examined it.
It was a bag of sausage.
A sinister smile crept up Sabrina's face. Puck's trick may have been evil, but hers would be eviler still.