"Death is Not An Escape"
II
Someone's crying.
It's a girl, I can tell by the pitch. She doesn't sound too far away but it's dark and I can't see. "Hello?" I call out but get no response. I reach my hands out, feeling nothing but air, and begin to use her sobs to guide me. The closer I seem to get to the voice, the colder it feels. My hands begin to shake, and I rub them together as I continue forward. A sudden wail from the distressed woman sends a chill down my spine, and I break into a run.
"NO!" she shrieks, clearly in pain. At this point, her voice sounds familiar. I keep going. In the distance I see a light, or rather, a part of the room slightly brighter than the rest. I think I see two dark shapes. One a figure on its hands and knees heaving. The other, a motionless blob on the ground.
Once I get to her side, I rest a hand on her shoulder, but she doesn't react. She's shaking. Her clothes are torn and bloody and her golden hair is knotted. "Hello?" I try again, but still nothing. "Hey, can you hear me?"
"You're not dead. You're not dead. You can't be dead." She whispers this, but the words echo loudly within my skull, and it feels like she's talking to me.
"I'm not dead. I'm right here," I say, kneeling next to her. For the first time I get a good look at her face. It's dirty and soaked with tears but I do know who she is. "What happened?" She sobs harder, making the whole room rumble. The ground shakes and I hear parts of the ceiling crack from above. We need to move.
Glass shatters and wood splits. Shards and splinters fly through the air in a whirl of smoke. I close my eyes and try to tug her to her feet, but she won't budge. "No," she yells. "I'm not leaving you here!"
The first piece of ceiling falls to the ground, then another, then another. A chunk of concrete lands on my foot and I scream. She screams, too. A blood-curdling scream. It forces me to open my eyes, and amidst the room collapsing and the sharp pain radiating from my foot, the only thing I can focus on is the girl clinging to the motionless blob. Only it's not a blob anymore. It's me. It's my body. Lifeless and pale, and cold to the touch.
I jolt awake. It's chilly and dark, just like in my nightmare, and at first I think I haven't woken up yet. But as my eyes adjust to the dimness of the room, and I notice a spikey-shelled, red haired koopa in front of me, I know I'm back in reality.
"Morning, plumber," Bowser chuckles, standing at the door of my prison cell. I'm still a bit shell-shocked from the dream but manage to answer him with my usual nemesis glare. "Miss me?"
My face softens a bit. In a way, I had missed him, but 'miss' wasn't the right word exactly. It's nice to know I wasn't crazy for thinking Bowser has been up to something these past two months. He's still bad, still set on tormenting the Mushroom Kingdom.
"I'll take the silence as a 'yes,'" the Koopa King remarks, crossing his arms over his chest. "You've just been waiting for the perfect rescue opportunity to get back on Peach's good side, haven't-cha, chump? Too bad you won't be getting one!"
I ignore his taunts and stand up, "What are you up to this time, Bowser?"
"Funny you should ask, plumber."
"It's not like you've ever been shy about sharing your evil plans before."
"No," he responds. "I haven't been." He's always brimming with confidence but there's a fire in his eyes that I can't place. He takes a deep breath, puffing out his chest, before letting the air out and speaking. "I've got a really good feeling about this plan actually. It's one of the best schemes I've thought of in a long time." He huffs a small plume of smoke, I guess a bit disgusted to admit that, "The princess kidnappings have gotten old."
"Not to mention they've never really worked," I mumble, loud enough so that he can hear. But the remark doesn't bother him like it usually does. He doesn't even seem to register it.
"All it took was that bratty princess refusing both of our advances for me to think of something new. A game-changer."
I shuffle in place. It's uncomfortable to hear him refer to Peach like this. He's never talked about the princess in a negative way. Never. But the toads were right all along. Peach's refusal was what made Bowser change, stop and rethink things.
"I felt so cruddy after what she did, after I planned such a great wedding for the two of us."
I don't even try to make a jab this time. There are far too many flaws in his logic to point out. But he's getting heated now, nostrils flaring.
"I spent days in a rage. Doing nothing but pounding walls, spitting fire at any minion that looked at me the wrong way." He pauses, looks almost, in pain, "I was even shouting at my son."
I step closer to him. I'm one to bottle up my feelings. Every once in a while, the emotions spill out like an overfilled glass, and I end up taking my anger out on someone. It happens to the best of us from time to time. But Bowsers not the kind of guy to bottle up anything. His cup is always spilling, boiling with emotions. I can't imagine how bad of a mood he's been in these past few weeks. How angry he's been around Junior, and how bad he's felt about it.
"And then I realized."
He uncrosses one arm and points to himself. "Peach has always hated me. But you," he points at me and I follow his finger, "she likes you. Trusts you, feels safe around you, bakes you cakes and gives you 'thank-you' kisses. Albeit not real kisses but—"
"What are you getting at, Koopa?" The question comes out softer than I want it to.
He grips the bars and exhales quietly. Looking up, I see the grin has returned to his face. "Of course, she would say no to me. But you?" he emphasizes. "Her knight in shining overalls? The man every fungus freak believes Peach to be in love with?" He blows out some smoke again. "If I her refusal was tough on me, it must have really sucked for you."
I want to yell and tell him that he's wrong. That Peach's refusal hadn't been that big of a deal. That things were fine between us now. But it would all be a lie. It didn't take long for me to realize the pushy proposal had been a bad idea. I had panicked, and just followed along with Bowser. Talking things out with her on the way home was awkward, because of course it would be, but she'd admitted that after the entire wedding fiasco, she didn't want to talk about relationships for a while (as much as I believed she owed me an explanation of her true feelings towards me). She wanted to get out, explore the world.
She deserved some down time, and I wanted to ease the tension. I wanted things to be able to go back to the way they were before the moon, so I told her I was happy for her. I let her go.
It hurt, a lot. A part of me felt the pain was justified, Peach and I were close. But another part of me felt like I was making a big deal out of nothing. It's not like we were ever official.
When Peach got back from her two-week trip, we spent our time avoiding one another. Now that I think about it, the only thing that got me to stop thinking about Peach was the paranoia of 'when will Bowser attack again.' It's funny, in a cruel sort of way.
"Why are you bringing this all up?" I ask.
He reaches one hand through the bars and grabs me by the shirt. I'm lifted off the ground in an instant, my face squished against the metal bars. Bowsers sneers, his sulfur breath almost making me gag. "Because," he finally answers, "it made me feel good to know you were in pain. Better than good. Great. Fantastic." My mouth opens a bit, but I can't speak. His eyes are ablaze and I can't look away. "And if a little heart break from your 'Peachy' can make you hurt that bad, imagine what real agony could do?"
He drops me. My tailbone hits the ground first, but the pain doesn't register. Bowser laughs his evil laugh and it sends a chill down my spine, which it hasn't done in a long time.
"Congrats, plumber. You're my favorite little prisoner now, and I cannot wait to watch you suffer."
Thank you, thank you for reading chapter two. Reviews for it are more than welcome. Hooked? Be sure to follow :)