Disclaimer: I do not own PotC. It's Disney's. I apologize for the ugly names of my characters. Their ugliness is for my own amusement.
Thanks for the reviews! And keep them coming…
I have discovered the horizontal line. Took me a while...
Twigg spotted the mutton bone in Jack's hand. "Gimme that," he growled, grabbing it and stalking back to where Koehler continued to struggle with the dog. Twigg raised the bone and struck the dog in the back of its head. Its jaws went slack, and Koehler took the keys, dropping the limp body on the floor.
Sushmita watched in horror. "But you cheated!" she cried.
"Pirates!" Jack piped up happily. Everything, every last little thing, was going according to plan.
Her last defense had fallen. Now Sushmita would have to fight for herself. Twigg giggled as he opened the creaky door. Outside, the chaos continued. They would have time to do whatever horrible deed they had planned.
Sushmita looked around. No platform, but it would have to do. "Five, six, seven, eight, and one…" She began with the T-step. The pirates stopped, momentarily stunned. Slowly, they started to laugh, rushing towards her.
Suddenly, everything froze. The lights in the jail dimmed down even more, if that was possible. A very familiar podium appeared, then a single light bulb dangling from nowhere. The man had returned as well, dressed in jungle-exploring attire and great yellow galoshes. "Sorry, just some insurance business we forgot," he shrugged apologetically. "I had a lot on my mind this morning. Baby Noreen's got the mumps."
Sushmita stared at the fat stack of papers on the podium. "I have to sign all of those?"
He looked down at them, "Oh, no. No, no, goodness. No. If you did your hand would cramp up so much you couldn't fight these pirates!" He gestured behind, whacking Twigg in the face. There was the crack of cartilage. "Oops, sorry," the man said, turning around and attempting to fix it. Sushmita waited patiently.
"You're not going to help me? They could be about to rape me, for all I know."
"Yes, well, your friends clarified in their survey that you were to have, what was it, 'no help whatsoever'. They also checked off that they were 'under the influence of cherry tarts'. But that was just the survey writers amusing themselves. Please, just sign. Then I won't have to make a second trip. Actually, it's policy that I cannot leave until you sign this." Sushmita looked dubious, so he began a new angle. "Please. If you don't sign this and you die, I get fired. And if I get fired, baby number 25 dies of the mumps." He widened his eyes, hoping they were glistening, but in fact he looked like a species of tree lemur whose exhibit Sushmita avoided at the zoo.
Sushmita moved to read the papers. She reached out to flip a page, but with stealthy agility the man caught her hand in the air. "I'll flip, you read." He said solemnly, and began to do so, checking his watch every 6 pages.
At the 46th page, Sushmita stopped him abruptly. "Wait! Charged by angry hippos? Is there a possibility that I could be charged by angry hippos?" Her voice grew shrill.
"Not if you don't make them angry," he answered.
Sushmita sighed, refusing to read anymore. "Can't I fast-forward or something? To a happier time?"
"Sorry, 'no help whatsoever'."
Sushmita moaned in desperation. Live a little, her friends chanted in her head. As if knowing what was going on, the man smiled, pushing the last piece of paper at Sushmita. "What could it hurt?" Sighing, she took the pen that had magically appeared from the man's hand.
In a little suburb of Toronto, Canada:
A boy of ten sits at his desk, doing his homework.
"Geoffrey!"
"What?"
"Do your homework!" Thus, Geoffrey returns to his assignment, but his pen has gone missing. He frantically searches through stacks of paper, flipping through his books, ducking under his desk.
The only sound in the jail was the scratching of pen against paper. "Thank you!" the man snapped his finger, and he, along with everything else he had brought, disappeared.
Geoffrey smiled, holding up his pen. It had been under his math book the whole time.
Remembering the liver incident, Sushmita realized that she too could perform magical happenings with a snap of her fingers. She snapped them, but her fingers merely slipped past each other.
Magdalena awoke. God, that dream had been vivid. Chocolate cake, frozen cream puffs, a gallon of ice cream just for her, the squirrel had said. What had been his name? She tried to remember, but the more she thought about how she was trying to remember it, the more she forgot. Magdalena lay in her bed feeling her dream slip away. There was the creeping black in its place. It was futile to struggle against it, which would only speed up the process. As she slipped back to sleep, Magdalena heard loud drilling, and attributed it to her noisy neighbors listening to Armenian music at midnight.
Sushmita stepped back into a carcass. But she didn't stop there, falling into a dark, black, hole. A motor started, and the world of Pirates of the Caribbean was back in action.
The pirates looked around for Sushmita, grunting that they could not find her. From the hole, Sushmita remained silent, not wanting to be found. Finally, Twigg and Koehler left, but not before threatening Jack for fun. It was enough, however, for Jack Sparrow to see that the curse was real.
Ping. A light bulb that was not her own went off in Magdalena's room. She awoke again, groggy and slightly exasperated.
"Hello."
Magdalena's eyes burned, but she strained to identify the intruder. His voice grated on her nerves. "Who are you?" she croaked. "Get out of my room."
"Ah, I can't do that, sorry." He snapped his fingers, and a whiteboard appeared, complex diagrams helpfully included. "If you remember a while back, you may remember a certain day at your friend Fay's house…" He snapped again, and an old junky television landed in Magdalena's lap. She shrunk back, visions of "Nightmare on Elm Street" crawling through her head. She decided against going back to sleep.
What she saw next had the nature of a PBS documentary. There she was, with Fay, Ismene, Georgina, and Juanita, but it wasn't quite them. For one, Fay's nose was too large, something Magdalena noticed immediately.
"Hey, this isn't me. Why am I white?"
The stranger coughed. "Caucasian, would be the correct term. Unfortunately, the Asian actors were all participating in a Chinese nature documentary, and it is technically illegal to recruit characters from fandoms to be actors for 'recap videos', although we do have that power.
"Is that why Juanita is Mexican?"
"…Is she not a Mexican?"
"No. She's Chinese. Her parents…they never fully grasped the English language."
"Well, it's too late for that now, they wrapped up production months ago."
Magdalena set her grievances aside and watched a "Caucasian" version of herself stare into the camera. "What is this?"
"Listen."
"Under the influence of cherry tarts? What the heck does that mean?"
"I think whoever made this survey must have been really bored or something." The stranger coughed uncomfortably.
"Check yes!" Magdalena saw herself say.
"Why? We're not under the influence of cherry tart…"
"Check yes!…get it? Check yes? Heck yes?…"
The stranger checked his watch, and the TV turned off. "That was just starting to get interesting." Magdalena muttered.
"You may scream if you wish." He said simply.
"Why would I do that…?"
"Out of shock that a man is in your room, out of shock that we have knowledge of your past, just…out of shock."
"Wouldn't the neighbors hear?"
"No, we have taken the time to install soundproof walls in your room. No one can hear you scream."
"Did you just reference…?"
"Did I? I didn't notice. Your friend Sushmita has been sent to the world of Pirates of the Caribbean. She is currently in the jail scene, which I am sure you recognize."
Magdalena grinned. She looked around her room. "Am I in some weird fanfiction or something? The ones where fangirls go into PotC?"
"…No."
Having been fed up with her, the stranger snapped his fingers hard, thus breaking them and rendering himself useless for his job. His wife consequently divorced him and they both became homeless. You may have seen them in Santa Monica. Bart and Marie currently occupy opposite ends of a bench by the beach, never speaking to one another.
Off Magdalena went to join her friend Sushmita. Unfortunately, the stranger had not finished briefing Magdalena on why she was going into "Pirates of the Caribbean".
Somewhere in a high-rise building, a bearded executive sat in his chair sobbing for his recently deceased mother. In a fit of compassion, he had broken a rule, and had allowed help for Sushmita. He would come to view this as the point when all the crazy stuff began to happen, and would become a cold man. In the last years of his life, he took a job as Santa Claus at the mall because of the warm jackets he got to wear.
Seeing no hope of ever escaping, Jack Sparrow began to whittle a bone down so that he could pick at the lock with it. He sat back, expecting it to take a while. Hearing a noise coming from Sushmita's cell, he got up to take a look, but he could see nothing.
Magdalena appeared in the hole beside Sushmita. Her fingers gripped the top of the hole, unlike those of her Indian friend. "Magdalena? What are you doing here? Oh, did you fill out that stupid survey for yourself as well?"
"No, Fay's Internet died right after we finished yours. Lucky, right?"
Although Jack could see nothing, he could certainly hear this strange conversation.
"Gah, why did you guys do that to me? What did I ever do to you?"
Magdalena ignored Sushmita's whines and got to the point. "Why are we in this hole?"
"I fell through a soft carcass." Jack winced. That was not a good experience.
In front of them, in the darkness, psychedelic colors flashed and swirled. The beautiful display blew Sushmita away. As she flew farther into the darkness, she heard Magdalena yell, "Where are you going?"
Soon enough, Sushmita stalled, floating softly downwards. She realized that this all seemed a bit too much like "Alice in Wonderland".
Magdalena took one last despairing look down, then decided that it was best not to dwell on the strange demise of her friend. She pulled her way out of the hole, grabbing various squishy bits of carcass on the way. When she had climbed out, Magdalena proceeded to pick sinew out of her fingernails.
"Oy."
"Yes?"
"Are you going to help me out of this cell?"
Thinking quickly, Magdalena replied, "Only if you don't leave me behind."
"Do we have an accord, then?"
"We have an accord." They shook hands. She picked the keys up off the floor where the pirates had dropped them and turned the key in the lock. Jack Sparrow was free.
