A/N: I would like to dedicate this chapter to: my fried Sarah who took over 15 min. to tell that "A Panda walks into a bar, eats, shoots, and leaves" joke because we all kept interrupting her and telling her about her inability to finish a joke. I'm hoping you're enjoying reading this fanfic at least a fraction of how much I'm enjoying writing this because it'd be a total waste of time to read something you don't enjoy in the slightest :) And so, we shall see what magic and wonders my home slice Kallie will meet up with next in the undusted corners of my mind… Fo sho.
Jayden's hand was warm on the small of my back as he helped me, somewhat grudgingly, hobble away from the locked door. "Where are we going?" I asked, my arm slung around his shoulders for support. Eldon was the one who answered.
"To get the cheesecake."
"Okay, really, what's up with the cheesecake thing?" I demanded. They would not keep me in the dark any longer, no pun intended.
"It's a long story," Jayden muttered.
"Well, I think I've got a while," I pointed out, realizing that my injured ankle wasn't going to speed us up any.
"Right," Jayden agreed with a sigh, "Eldon, you can tell her."
"Oh no, you're a much better story teller," Eldon said, obviously just wanting to hand the task off to someone else.
"I really don't—" Jayden began.
"Just tell me the story," I interrupted; the pain I felt shooting from my ankle and up my shin was making me irritable.
"Fine." He took a breath and began telling his story into the darkness.
"I guess you could say it started when Eldon, Callie, and I began our search for the perfect window."
I took that in for a moment. "Why were you looking for the perfect window?" I asked, somewhat bewildered.
"My mother was redecorating, another long story," said Eldon, "please continue Jayden."
"Anyways," Jayden continued, "after many fruitless attempts, we heard rumors about a fantastic building made of stained glass. Well, we figured that if we found out who could make and entire mansion out of stained glass, we could probably persuade them to build the perfect window."
"Mansion?" I asked. Though the room had been large, I hardly thought it qualified as a mansion.
"Yes, there are over five hundred other rooms other than the one you went through to get here."
"Wait, this wasn't the only way out?"
"Not in the least," Jayden said, "there had to be at least three other doors you could've gone through."
Of course, I thought, leave it up to me to mess up directions that say 'straight ahead'…
"Unless," Eldon cut in, "when Callie left, she—"
"She didn't leave!" snapped Jayden.
"Well, actually I did have to leave in order to get—" I began awkwardly, pointing out the obvious can always be a little weird, but I was cut off my Jayden's harsh clarification.
"Not you, Callie La Vayant."
"What does this have to do with cheesecake?" I cut in.
"Well, that was quite a tangent," remarked Eldon.
"Will you quit asking questions and let me tell my story?" Jayden exclaimed.
"Okay," I agreed in a voice that confirmed I was all too conscious that I was the one hindering the tale.
"Anyways," Jayden began once again, "we decided to come to this mansion and inquire after who had built it, but when we got here, it was empty." I thought about the vast, mournful emptiness of the room I'd been in and tried to imagine dozens and dozens more like that. I shivered.
"It was a little spooky," he admitted, "we kept expecting to stumble upon someone or at least something else alive."
"Did you ever get lost when—" I stopped my question before I could finish. Patience is a virtue, I told myself.
Jayden went on as if he hadn't heard me, "And then we found it: the perfect window." There was a touch of awe in his voice as he recalled the wondrous sight. "Every other bit of glass in this building is tinted with color, but though those are beautiful, stunning even, this pristine panel of crystal stood leagues above them."
"Cheeseca—"
"He's getting there," whispered Eldon.
"Well, we assumed we could just take it, seeing as the great house was uninhabited. No one would miss it right? Wrong. The moment our fingers left their prints on its perfect surface, we heard something awful. A screaming and screeching like you wouldn't believe. And then, out of nowhere, we were surrounded by twenty or so people. They were all wearing fine clothing, like royalty. One woman walked towards us, her dark hair was pulled up into, I don't even know how to describe it. Everyone there was so elaborately dressed; I couldn't even comprehend all the depth and detail at that moment.
"Anyways, she walked up to us with an expression of such furry and disgust I felt frozen to the spot, even though all I wanted to do was run away. So, to make a long story short, she cursed Eldon and me to stay here (this is pretty much the dungeon by the way) and Callie was commanded to remain and guard this place for one hundred and thirteen days, after which, if she did stay for the whole time, we would all be free to go. However, if she left, she would supposedly doom us to die here. What she wasn't told was that, if this did happen and she left, we could eat a magical cheesecake and be taken out of here, but it would prevent Callie from ever moving out of the area she was in."
Jayden paused a moment, "Maybe now you can see why I'm so hesitant to try the cheesecake. If Callie is still there, she will be stuck there for the rest of her life, but if she isn't… she deserted us."
"Oh," was the only response I could muster. Seeing as I was uneducated as to the proper etiquette during a conversation about the perfect window and magic cheesecake, it seemed best to not say much at all.
"And if what you say is true," Jayden continued, slowing our walk, "it seems she has abandoned us and the only solution is to eat the cheesecake."
"But," I began, "what if she had just… stepped out of the room to get food or something?"
"All services were provided for her, as they were for us. None of our bodies need a thing as long as we're inside the stained glass building. If she wasn't there, she's gone," Eldon stated.
"But she might have—" I fumbled for another excuse. The pain in Jayden's voice was sincere and I felt a sort of sympathy towards him. There was also a slight softness when he mentioned Callie's name that gave hint that maybe it was the betrayal of more than a friend he feared.
"If she wasn't there she's gone," Jayden affirmed.
The two men waited for my answer.
"Er, there was a layer of dust at least half a foot high in there and no sign of anyone," I informed them. We'd come to a stop in the blackness.
I felt Jayden sigh beneath the arm I had around his shoulders. "Well," he said, masking his pain, "Eldon, you'd better get out that cheesecake."
"Yes sir!" the aged voice responded with an enthusiasm I hadn't expected. After being stuck in a dark prison for who knows how long, the old man was ready for a breath of fresh air and the brightness of freedom.
I heard his shuffling steps tread away from Jayden and I for a moment, the scraping sounds of cardboard against cardboard, and a grunt as something heavy was lifted.
"Here we are," Eldon said in a triumphant tone as he walked back towards us and dropped what I assumed was the cheesecake on the ground.
That was anticlimactic, I thought. You'd think a choir of angels would be the ones to carry in a magic cheesecake, not some funny old guy who probably couldn't carry a tune if it had handles. Regardless of the presentation, I was filled with wonder at the sight that greeted my eyes as Eldon opened the cheesecake's box.
Liquid-like light poured out from the box, radiated from the item of perfection inside. I'm a failure at describing perfection, dear reader, my apologies, but if Marie Callender could've made a cheesecake like that, my anti-cheesecake friends would've been instantly converted a thousand times over. We all stared in wonder at the masterpiece for a moment before Eldon took his wrinkled hands and carefully handed each of us one of the pre-sliced pieces.
The taste was—can you imagine the taste of a flawless cheesecake? No, of course you can't, you've never had one and, I'm sad to inform you, you likely never will. Again, as I'm a failure at describing perfection, you will have to live a life bereft of any sense of what the crown of the existence of cheesecake was like. Again, my apologies.
With that sweet, creamy, perfectly mixed with a hint of raspberry chocolate that cannot begin to be described, I felt a lightness begin in my toes and rush through me. The last thing I knew before darkness over took my mind was: cheesecake.