(A/N): Hello everyone!

Well, now comes the CHAPTER RUSH! I've got this chapter and the next three finished, and then there will be a little break while I write another chapter emphasizing Coraline's Houdini skill (hehehe...), and then a few more chapters will come in a rush again.

Well, if you look at it right (or at least, I look at it right), I'm going to be finishing this thing a lot sooner than I'd expected, at probably just around thirty chapters.

So we're more than half done already and it isn't even the end of the first plotline (The next chapter is. WHATEVER! I don't like saying 'Close enough'!). Dammit!

Okay, just read on now!

PS: If this seems rushed, it is. If it doesn't, I'm happy. I'll call you a big fucking liar for the rest of your life (I have a LONG memory, people!), but few other side effects should occur.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: ESCAPE

We didn't guess this, the magic book (or the single page she had of it) told Coraline. But... this might work...

Coraline continued walking along the halls, unhurried, as she already knew where her keeper was waiting for her.

You're going to need all the help you can get, child. So we will lighten your load.

The books' spines ripped apart and pages flew everywhere, blinding Coraline to everything going on outside a small area. When she could see properly again, there was a stack of pages sitting on the floor in front of her.

She recognized a drawing she had seen only once before; she knew that it came from the pages of the book that had warned her.

This warning had yet to come true.

Place us inside the cover of the album, the book wrote on its remaining page. We will be safe there.

And so Coraline placed the pages gently inside the cover of the photo album, and continued her walk down the hallway, with each step bringing her closer to her true home.

When she opened the door to the room with the passage, she found her Other Mother standing there, crying.

"You monster!" the Other Mother shouted at her. "I loved you, and what did you do to me? You rejected my love. You killed my daughter. You stole the ones I had saved from awful lives. And now you're here, wanting to get a free ride home!

"I'm afraid it's too late for that. So you're going to stay here. The door may be open, but you are never going through it again."

Out of the air appeared a wicked blade which fit itself into the monster's fierce grip. The floor shook and rattled, eventually forming itself into a circular arena with cliffs on all sides. The door to the Real World remained near an intact section of floor, seperate from the arena.

In an instant, Coraline thought of a plan, and she knew that she only had one shot at it.

She circled the arena, opposite the button-eyed creature, until she was almost right in front of the door, which was when she pretended to trip.

The Other Mother ran at her, blade high in the air, ready to strike -

- when Coraline sidestepped and jumped across the trench to the little door.

Pulling it open, she crawled for her life. She heard things collapsing behind her, but continued until she was home.

Locking the door, she smiled, feeling joy - more than just her own - as she waited for her sister to return home.

(A/N): Oh, yes. A taste of fate right there. And then a - oh my gawd - happy ending? *GASP*

I think that turned out a bit better for quality than I had expected... I think. MAYBE I won't call you a big fucking liar for life anymore.

So, enjoy the next few express-delivery chapters!