Amanda Burns

EXT- WOODS

Mercedes retrieves the letters from under the tile of the rock floor in the kitchen and Doctor Ferreira and Mercedes proceed to the woods to meet up with the Guerillas.

The way is damp and dreary, though the rain had stopped a while ago. It is as if the forest is perpetually damp, no matter what little light penetrates its treetops.

Mercedes’ boots squelch in the deep mud as she tries to balance while sinking. Dr. Ferreiro trudges along behind her, seeming to lose breath over the intense trail towards the guerillas. He allows his eyes to drift upward, slightly, and takes in the gentle frame of Mercedes, held with such concentration on her mission. He is glad he has looked up, for the moment he does, Mercedes happens to step on a tree root, making her feet slip under the mire and her arms to flail as she tries to maintain balance.

Reaching up, Dr. Ferreiro grasps her arms at the elbows, firm but gentle, steadying her. As Mercedes steps onto firmer ground, his hands still around her slender arms, she allows a small smile to grace her usually stoic face. Dr. Ferreiro looks away, and Mercedes’ wary smile grows into a thoughtful frown.

MERCEDES

(Starts off again, but turns toward DOCTOR FERREIRO when he doesn’t move.)

DOCTOR FERREIRO

(Rubbing Temples)

Mercedes, listen…

(Voice trails off with a soft sigh and looks up at MERCEDES with pleading eyes)

MERCEDES

(Grimaces)

I’m not giving up now, Doctor. This means too much for me. My brother means too much to me, and I would do anything for him. You know that.

DOCTOR FERREIRO

Yes, I know that. I just…

(Voice trails off again)

MERCEDES

(Fidgets impatiently with her fingers while biting her lip)

DOCTOR FERREIRO

(Murmuring)

I don’t want you to get hurt.

(Looks away, embarrassed)

MERCEDES

(Starts to say something cruel but stops. Looks at him pitifully. Beneath it all she seems a bit pleased.)

DOCTOR FERREIRO

(Reaches out and slides knuckles across MERCEDES’ cheek)

These times- they are hard and they bring such depression to people. But, Mercedes, if we make it through this… will you marry me?

MERCEDES

(Looks a little confused at first, then subtly overjoyed. A clever smile works its way across her face and finds her heart fluttering with unexpected emotions she thought she could never have again)

Why, Doctor, I find that to be a bit forward of you.

DOCTOR FERREIRO

(Chuckles)

I hope that you mean yes, when you say that.

MERCEDES

(Warmly)

Of course.

(Nods, looks down, trying to hide the childish grin on her face)

DOCTOR FERREIRO

Ah, well. Shall we then?

(Places hand in pocket and gently lifts and shakes briefcase)

MERCEDES

(Nods)

Yes, Pedro is expecting us.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen I give you the extravagant Clarissa Wilkins!”

The crowd of the audience boomed with applause and excitement for the new celebrity in town. Clarissa was every man in the country’s dream and made women jealous out of their wits. She had a charm that lit up the stage without the blinding spotlights. Her voice had the touch of an angel that sent a drugless high to the brain. She had a faithful and loyal bodyguard named George King. He was always by her side and she was never out of his sight. There were still some pretty weird crooks in New York around this day in age that George needed to be around for. While the announcer finished his introduction for the lovely flapper, Detective Scott Long was amongst the crowd gazing upon the dream before his eyes. He was off duty and needed a place to go before he went home to his chaotic house of menace’s and nagging wife. He took a sip of whiskey with ice and enjoyed the show. Backstage, Clarissa was having a panic attack waiting to show off her talent. She was also worried for something had been off lately and she wasn’t sure what it was and she hoped it wouldn’t ruin her presumptuous performance. She slid on her stockings and fastened her character heels and headed towards the side entrance of the stage with the backstage helpers dressed in black. It was show time.

 II.

My heart was racing with fury and hysteria. Yes, my life was extravagant and luxurious but the way I made my money would probably send an orthodox catholic to the floor. This isn’t how I imagined myself to be like when i was in my twenties. I was beautiful, yes, but men never seemed to gaze upon me for my brains. I was smarter than most men in this world and just never had the chance to shine in that area. My parents didn’t have enough money to send me to college or any type of schooling but I learned off my friend Timothy when I was a teenager. He wasn’t a wealthy boy so my parents did not approve of him. He was my best friend and we were also in what you call fairy tale love. The kind of love that you couldn’t pursue in your parents eyes but became secret by night with the chances to elope. I’m not saying I didn’t try, I sure as hell could have ran away from this town if it wasn’t for my sister Elizabeth and her siding with my parents on everything. Timothy fled the town and said he would come back for me some day and I cried every night and every day wishing i had just kept running even when my sister had woken up my parents to find me running down the street and calling the cops. I’ve been waiting everyday for him to come back, sometimes I even feel like I’m with him again singing the old songs of merry go rounds and ferris wheels while running in the fields to the long nights under the stars we spent with eachother in our teenage years. When I’m asleep I dream of him and what it would be like to be with him again. Surely I have been with other men since that time. But no one has been the same as my beloved Timothy. I’ve written numerous songs down on napkins, coffee filters and any sort of paper that I can find to try and figure out if there are any clues as to when he is coming back for me. However it seems as though the harder I try to find him the farther away he is to me. But for this time being, I am Clarissa Wilkins, flapper of the century and living in a world of solitude and depression, longing just for the comfort of my Timothy and some extra change to go along with it to keep the electric bill up. 

      ”Alright, alright. I’m here and I’m ready to go. Cue the lights, do what you need. Let’s get this party started.” I proclaimed.

      ”Everyone in places. Counting… three… two…” the crew worker mouthed one and I was pushed onto the stage with a feel of stiffness in the air until the music played loudly and the room bellowed loosening up the tight thickness of stage fright. The night has started. 

      I sang my first song of love and promiscuity getting the crowd ready for a great night. It was different in the twenties. It as called “Roaring Twenties” for a reason the technology and the new age for music and the role of women were evolving into a greater obsession for the people in Harlem, New York. I had the crowd going with chants, whistles and hoots. There were even women with their husbands for a night making the most out of the stage in their lives where they didn’t have to worry about kids. That is what I want the most, kids. I really do yearn and wait for the day when Timothy comes back and we can start a family and life together. Suddenly, my body started to feel tingly. Was this normal? I had taken a shot before the show to get loose but I shouldn’t be feeling this altered. Unexpectedly, my throat clogged with frogs and my voice had escaped from my mouth and was lost above the heads of the confused men. Some of them didn’t even notice the change in atmosphere. However, I did and this was not right. My fingertips started to cringe into fists and my balance had slipped from under my feet sending me to the white glittery stage floor. I heard everyone gasp but I couldn’t see them anymore. Roses were laying next to me as the thorns pricked at my practically half naked skin. I tried to call for help but my throat was still filled with frogs jumping from my stomach to my mouth jamming my tongue from constructing any words that made sense. I then felt warmth all over my body and I saw Timothy. It was the fist time I had seen his face in so long. His face still had the same shape and structure that I had last gazed upon. It wasn’t real though. It was just a vision. His face was too perfect to even be human. It was like an angel. Was I dying? I then felt hands all over me and I was lifted towards his perfect anatomy of mankind.

III.

It was the most bizarre thing that anyone has ever seen. You’d think she fainted but the fact of the matter is. She was dying on the spot in front of her audience. No one understood what was going on and it made matters worse that 90 percent of her audience was drunk out of their minds making the situation ten times most intense then it was portrayed. The dectective in crowd was intrigued but he kept his cool. He knew this was going to be a new case and one that he got to witness. He sat their watching and taking mental notes of everything that was happening. The Miss Clarissa seemed to contain a voice crack and then fall instantly to the ground. The presumed assumption that people made was that she had fainted of embarrassment and overwhelming adrenaline. Her body seemed to cringe and twist in abnormal ways that not even a contortionist could manage. Then she relaxed seeming at peace and tranquility and that is when her body gaurd and back stage crew ran on the stage and transferred her to the end of the side stage. Backstage, George, the body gaurd tried waking her up and doing everything he could. They rushed her to the hospital for immediate attention. She seemed to be still alive but almost asleep with a pleasent dream. The scary thing about her was that she had this vibe of passing. Passing into a different world. Almost like something was taking over her unpainfully. It was something that could not be described in words or explained in any dictionary but the people around her just looked at her like she had a supernatural presence. George scooped her up and ran into the rain pouring in buckets outside of the club. He ran to the ambulance parked outside the side alley door and watched her die. He knew she had passed without an explanation and was terrified. He loved Clarissa like a sister and they had been so close for so long. He wasn’t even her body gaurd at first but almost like a little sister that he always looked out for when they were younger. He gazed at her beautiful face once more and gave her to the ambulance worker’s so she could be brought to the hospital for further investigation.

“She has passed.” George proclaimed.

The ambulance driver choked up a bit and said, ”I’m sorry. We’ll bring her to the hopsital and get doctors to check out what happened. If you want you can ride along but you’ll need to stay out of the way.”

“Thank you for the offer but I should go back in and talk with the manager and Clarissa’s agent.” George said falling short of his reply at the end.

“Suit yourself.” They replied.

Soon the embulance was roaring through the dirty streets of downtown carrying the famous Clarissa Wilkins.

IV.

“She had a heart failure!”

“NO! It was a lung failure I tell you! Her lungs collapsed and sent her to the floor and suffered while the oxygen did not reach her brain causing her to die.”

Doctors argued all night about what happened but the truth was, was that they had absolutely no idea what happened to the infamous Miss Wilkins. They needed something to explain this tragic situation and nothing was cutting it. Dectective Scott Long was one of the witnesses at the performance and was covering the case. He didn’t know what to classify it as. He thought maybe it was murder, someone could have put a lethal poison in her drink before the show but the epilepsy showed no trace of such venom that could kill a young woman in matter of minutes.

George had given Scott all of her belongings to search through and maybe come up with some clues to solve her unexplained death. He read through every song and every word of the lyrics that she had written and she seemed to write about this long beloved Timothy that was supposed to come back for her. Things didn’t add up and nothing was in a good pattern to figure out. The mystery of her death still lingers on to this day. Some say that she was found by Timothy again and she was finally with him again. However some say that it really was a lung failure and Miss Clarissa smoked too much for her tiny figure to handle. To this day people have superstitions and theories of their own. However only the woman herself will ever know.

This intriging story of a man in the midst of time travel fits under the genre of dark fantasy in numerous ways. It first demonstrates time travel through a tunnel. The indirect navigation through time gives the story more of a reality based approach instead of the high fantasy of mythical creatures and concepts. Stories like “The Third Level” gives the imagination a flowing transition from reality to reality based fantasy. The mood of putting puzzle pieces together while reading a story also has an effect on the theme. The definition of dark fantasy is “a subgenre that combines elements of fantasy, including marvelous abilities, with those of horror”. The marvelous abilities that are demonstrated in “The Third Level” is time travel and the fact that he can walk down a hall and end up in the year 1894 is an ability that cannot happen in real life. The horror in this story is shown through setting.

“The corridor I was in began angling left and slanting downward and I thought that was wrong, but I kept on walking. All I could hear was the empty sound of my footsteps and I didn’t pass a soul. Then I heard that sort of hollow roar ahead that means open space and people talking. The tunnel turned sharp left; I went down a short flight of stairs and came out on the third level at Grand Central Station.”

This paragraph describes the eerie setting of the tunnel and the navigation to the Third Level. It contains a suspensful and simple feel of horror and the fear of the unknown.

It was an eerie and desolate place that sent chills to even the toughest man alive. It reeked of death and mystery that did not want to be solved. The green paint was paler than a sick child. It chipped away with every moon that passed. Rust corrupted the metal framing and crawled into the glass of the windows. Between every crack and hole in each pane, were the truths of how haunted and disturbed this vacant hall must be. The cold concrete crackled with every shuffled step she took towards the hospital. She tried to keep her balance on the uneven tiles with vigirous weeds grabbing at her ankles to pull her back and away from this insane building. She tried to control her breathing so she could listen for anything out of the black night. The full moon wasn’t visible from the entrance and it casted a gothic shadow on her fears of the unknown.

      She broke her stare at the forlorn looking building and approached
it.  The crumbling concrete steps were more solid than they looked, and
Mordecai was perched serenely at the top of them, perilous inches from the
door that led inside.  One of the double doors swung loosely open, inviting
the cat inside.  As Susan crept slowly up the stairs, she
whispered, “Mordecai…Morty…come here, Morty,” and the cat took a step,
then two, toward her, before turning, looking back over its shoulder (almost
smiling) and entering the building. 
      “Mordecai!” Susan shouted in frustration.  She ran up the stairs to
the door and peered inside from the threshold. What she saw stunned her. 
The inside of the building was even more terrifying than the outside.
(another descriptive paragraph–what does the interior of the mental
hospital look like?)  

She couldn’t believe her eyes. She closed them and then opened again to see if what she saw was truly there. The walls of the hospital were the same color as the univiting exterior except they appeared to have scratch marks tearing at the plaster all along the halls as far as she could see. As she took a step into the nightmare she found herself screaming for she had almost stepped on a hand. The hand came out of no where. As she turned herself away from the disturbing sight, the moonlight from the caged window, shone on a dead face that belonged to the hand. She sprinted down the hall past broken doors and dusty tables with bloody tools scattered everywhere. Everything looked over a hundred years old except that body. What if that man was trying to escape? She came up to a staircase and egged on to find her stupid beloved cat. Mordecai was in a shelter one winters night and caught her attention in search for a soul mate to live with. His orange tiger fur comforted her cheeks and instantly she was attached and bringing him home where he gave Susan great company and joy.     

She climbed the marble staircase.  Halfway up, she put her right hand

on the long dusty banister for balance, and it collapsed, teetering slowly,

then splintering and breaking into two halves, which shattered on the hard
foyer floor.  Susan pressed herself against the opposite wall and continued
upstairs.
      “Mordecai, Mordecai…come out, come out wherever you are…”  Susan
thought to herself about buying a dog next time.  They were so
much more loyal, and even were trainable, so they didn’t go running off
into abandoned mental hospitals and getting their owners killed by God-knows-
what.  At the second floor landing, Susan looked down a long hallway. 
Moonlight streamed through a few windows, enough to barely illuminate the
dirty cracked white tiles that lined the floor and walls of the hallway,
enough to illuminate the featureless solid wooden doors of the patients’
rooms, enough to show Susan that no cat was worth this. 
      As she was about to turn around, a car’s headlights flashed into the
building as the car made a right turn outside and continued down the street
toward Susan’s house.  In the brief time that the headlights shone in
through the dilapidated windows, Susan caught a glimpse of the sign bolted
to the first door on her left.  It read “Shock Treatment”.  It was the
only open door in the hallway.  Against her better judgment, she pushed the
door open.
      Mordecai was atop a gurney, straddling the shrouded chest of a figure
covered by a single sheet of white bed linen turned a dusty grayish-yellow
with age.  A single fluttering flickering bulb (who paid the electric bill
on this old place?) cast a spastic light over the room.  All types and
colors of wires led from a hideous looking machine to the gurney, where they
disappeared under the sheet.  “Morty, come here, Morty, be a good kitty,”
Susan whispered.  The cat moved toward Susan, and leapt down from the
figure, but as it did so, its claws caught on the sheet and pulled it off
the shrouded figure.  Susan was transfixed by what she saw, too terrified to
even move, let alone run. (descriptive paragraph needed next¡Xwhat does
Susan see on the gurney?)

Her breath was yet again escaping from her mouth and lungs. Invisible hands seemed to choke her. This was not real she repeated to herself. As she stared at the ghastly figure on the gurney she saw a manly shape outline covered in dust and wires. His flesh was hanging by threads and his limbs didn’t even look attached to his body anymore. His hair looked like fried worms on a hot day crisped to the table. His mouth, nose, eyes and ears had hints of leeking blood from the openings and soon she smelt the awful smell of decaying carcas. It was the most mortifying thing someone could ever see. The wires were fading of their colors as dust and rat droppings covered their boldness. The gurney then started to move towards her and she was utterly frozen in place. Her feet felt like she was stuck in hard cement. It was an easy escape but Susans’ mind had left her back at the door. The gurney then stopped dead in front of her as she felt herself turning blue from lack of oxygen.

And now the figure on the table began to rustle and stir.  It rose up from its prone position like a soldier doing a slow military style sit-up, then swung its rotten legs from the padded gurney onto the cold slick floor.  Alligator clips and wires snapped off the cadaver, pulling pieces of dead flesh with them.  For the first time Susan noticed that there was a nametag hanging from the shredded and burnt lab coat the corpse wore.  

Barely legible on the melted plastic name badge was the name Dr. Alexander T. Leventhal. The doctor whose tortures had turned this place into a house of horrors had been here all these years.   He must have snuck back into this place and hooked himself up to his own shock treatment machine!  Had he committed suicide after the disgrace of having his name slandered in all the papers?  Did the loss of his ability to practice medicine cause him to lose all hope–to commit himself to die by the same method he used to treat his insane patients?

      The doctor emitted an exhalation of stale air, and the room began to stink like the inside of a tomb.  Mordecai hissed and the hackles on his back jumped to life as he spat at the reanimated corpse on the gurney.  He was then bounding by Susan, taking the marble steps three at a time, and out the door of this God-forsaken place.  Encouraged by her cat, Susan now found the strength to run, though every fiber of her intelligence said this was an impossibility, that she wasn’t even here, that the dead do not rise, that the thing on the table was not now gaining an unsteady footing, not now coming toward her with outstretched arms and rank breath that stank of sewers and decomposing flesh. 

Susan fled down the stairs miraculously trying to stay alive. She felt a tug on her shirt and she went flying against a wall. She left more scratch marks while falling to the ground. The scratch marks… That man at the entrance left the old marks and must have tried to flee also. That concluded no good ending for her and this made her even more frantic searching for ways to run. She paniced and soon felt another strong force on her back scooping her up and bringing her back the way they came from. She tried to grab onto anything but the last person had taken down all the pictures and shelves in his attempt to escape. She dug her nails into the wall and bit the doctors already dead arm. It fell to the ground leaving no traces of blood but only her own from her nails as she was released then to the ground. She bolted towards the door and in the doorway she saw Mordecai sitting fearless and calm. As Susan ran closer to the cat it seemed to disappear with every step she took until he was completely gone. She got out of the hospital and past the gates into the woods speeding between miles of trees and darkness. 

She finally approached her house and called the police. She was frantic and her words were scrambled everywhere about what she had encountered. While she was on the phone she searched the house for Mordecai but he was no where to be found. The operator on the phone just sighed and let out a chuckle and told Susan to drink some coffee and take a cold shower and hung up. Was she going crazy? Was that not real? She pinched herself to make sure she was awake and sure enough she was with a red spot on her arm. She locked all the windows and doors and closed curtains and drapes to block out everything from the outside world. She turned on every light and flashlight in the house and sat in kitchen with some food and drink but she couldn’t get anything down. The images of the disturbing setting and the close encounter to the zombie had taken a toll on her. She started to drift into a half sleep on the floor, waking up with every creek and squeak in the house. It was not going to be an easy future.

THREE MONTHS LATER…

Susan had finally gotten out of her house for the first time and decided to go back to the shelter to see if Mordecai had ended up there. When she walked in there was a huge bustle and chaos in the reception area. Women were frantically chatting about recent gossip and the news. Susan hadn’t turned on the tv or the radio in months so her knowledge of the outside world was limited. She walked up to the desk to see what was going on and the women just ignored her. She caught pieces and bits of what they were talking about and she realized that one of the owners of a cat had died and the cat was back at the shelter. She ran into the hall of kennels and sure enough Mordecai was back in the same kennel he was in when she first saw him. A polite young man came up to Susan and asked her if she knew anything about this cat. She replied with the fact that he was her cat and she had lost him and came back to see if he was here. He explained to her that someone else had the cat for the past two months but just died recently in a freak accident. He mentioned something about acres and freak accidents. She became incoherent by the time he said acres. The cats job in life was to bring people to that house. To first grow attached to them and love them and then bring them to the house to be slaughtered. What kind of cat was this? She started to move slowly backwards away from the kennel and drove back home disregarding the man yelling to her from the shelter. She needed to get away. That cat was from the devil himself and had one purpose in life, to keep the slaughter house of Dr. Leventhal alive.

Wanda, the old woman in the story, hides herself away in a shelter underground from what she calls, “Mr. Death”. Mr. Death is the man that she has seen her whole life and goes out of her way to avoid him. She is terrified at the thought of death and since they takes over her life so much she decides that she would rather live a life like the one she had at the time than die. 

Mr. Death shows up at her doorstep, disguised and contains a set plan in mind to relieve her from her stress and desolate life. He pretends to be shot and complains until she finally brings him in and nurtures him. She explains why she can’t go out into the street and how she has always been afraid of death. He ends up being Mr. Death and shows her that death is not a terrible thing but a natural part of life that has to come whether we like it or not. 

That is the problem that most people face today. The fact that death will come whether we like it or not and we don’t know when it is or how it will happen and that is called the “unknown” in life.

       It was a disaster. The room looked as if a nuclear bomb had gone off. You could still smell the blown out candles and the sticky frosting stuck in the kid’s hair. I was not looking forward to this clean up. The rectangular area of chaos was so overwhelming with streamers, popped balloons, plates, cups, confetti and paper goods that struggled to keep its original structure while dissolving under the ruins of wrapping paper. The baby elephants were all playing outside in the booming fall sunshine, protecting them from the evil in the world, letting them play innocently on the swings and sand box. As I looked around I decided to start with what I assumed were the couches. I tore off ribbons and undefined objects that contained sparkles, polka dots, hearts and googley eyes. I was guessing those materials were for the tricky arts and crafts project that only kept the young ones entertained for a short amount of time. The furniture was absorbing the childish songs, swelling with every beat. After i removed the party crafts into the trash bag, I could finally see the olive green couch sticking out in the colorful room. It was the only thing clean compared to everything else. The bright colors of the childish years lurred me into a dream of candy land. I never knew that a five year olds birthday could effect me so much.