Chapter Four
Susan opened her eyes and saw nothing. Not a hint of light. Was she blind? And she was freezing. She’d been to Northern Quebec during winter, but this was a different kind of cold. This one seeped all the way to the marrow of her bones and threatened to freeze her soul. It must be the shock, she thought. Cold all over, can’t see. She probably had skull fracture from that blow to the back of the head. Great, cerebral edema was all she needed on top of everything. She probably had a stroke as a result of her brain swelling and slipped into a coma.
She hoped her body was on a stretcher right now in an ambulance rushing to the hospital. She imagined Goose getting pissed that she’d given him extra work.
She wasn’t dead; she couldn’t be. She was very aware of her own consciousness. But the inky darkness was starting to worry her. It seemed to be closing in on her, a formidable entity that would soon yank her jaws open and force its way down her throat. As panic overwhelmed her, she screamed but heard nothing. She tried again and screamed herself hoarse, but no sound came out. She held her hand in front of her mouth and expelled breath, but didn’t feel anything.
There was just… nothing. Convinced that she was lying down, Susan aimed to get up, but her legs were rice noodles, and there wasn’t anything around she could use to pull herself up. Nothing along her sides, nothing above her, nothing below her. No bed. She sniffed hard but didn’t smell anything.
This place was just nothingness. She must be trapped in some kind of holding station. Maybe she was in the Sunken Place. She was definitely in a coma. Oh great, like she wasn’t already having a shitty day. What a perfect way to cap off everything. She would just bet Trudy and Jimmy were holding each other right now by her bedside, crying while Goose gave it to them straight. Knowing him, he would recommend pulling the plug because there was no longer brain activity. Damn you, Goose.
And suddenly there was sound. Fingers snapping, maybe? Without warning, she found herself thrust into the middle of a spotlight like a stand-up comedian on open-mic night. Jessica Rabbit was there, sitting on some kind of plush throne, yet it wasn’t her. This creature was a beautiful monster version of the woman. Her eyes and lips looked bigger, maybe. And yet her appearance hadn’t really changed from when Susan saw her at the bar.
When was that? Five minutes ago? Twenty-five years ago? Time was suddenly a flimsy, frivolous idea. The nails on the woman’s right hand looked longer and sharper, reminding Susan of the blades Freddy Krueger had attached to his fingers. Had her canines been filed down to pointy ends, so they appeared fang-like? WHAT THE HELL WAS THIS? She was starting to suspect that she might be dead, after all, and this was hell. But where was the lake of fire?
“Hello, my pretty little China doll,” the woman purred.
Susan’s red alert dialed itself from nine to eleven. She was totally dead. WHY GOD WHY? She hadn’t done half the things on her bucket list. Trudy and Jimmy have yet to pay for their perfidy and betrayal! WHY did NOTHING ever go her way? She was a good person.
Why would she be sent to hell? She donated to the ACLU, volunteered at the soup kitchens, did beach cleanups on weekends even though she could have used the time to sleep in. She even washed off the oil slick from ducks with dishwashing soap. She took some time off after Hurricane Katrina so she could help build houses in New Orleans. She was a good person!
Was she was supposed to save the little black kid, but failed? What if he was the Second Coming of Jesus or something?
She began to sob—really ugly crying—because life was not fair. It looked like she was about to get shafted in the Afterlife, too. She would be trapped in nothingness for all eternity and forgotten, unloved and unmourned. For sure, no one would put up her picture on their ofrenda on Dia de Los Muertos, so she would just disappear into oblivion.
“Susan, will you stop freaking out for two seconds?” snarled the supernatural creature, who was probably a demon who wants to swallow her soul. “I told you, I can give you another chance at life. You can live somewhere else, start over.” She tossed her talons in the air in what seemed like frustration and focused her emerald gaze on Susan. “A whole new place where no one knows who you are, so you can be anyone you want.”
Susan swallowed hard and hugged her arms to herself. The heat from the spotlight was kind of nice, but she’d do just about anything to get out of this terrifying place. “I’d like that.”
“Excellent.” Jessica Rabbit smirked. “Besides, you won’t want to be here when the devourers come.”
Susan woke up to the stench of rotting fish, feces, and cheap perfume—the cloying kind that stuck to the back of the throat. She had no frame of reference to tell her wherever she was. Whatever guiding mechanism she might possess was turned off. The next thing she noticed was the freezing temperature. Jesus, from one cold place to another, she mused, but the thought dissipated soon like a fart in the wind.
Her teeth chattering, she stuck out her hand in the thick fog and brought it back close to her body. She rubbed her fingers together. The moisture had a certain stickiness that made it cling to the skin like a spiderweb. When she attempted to shift her position, her limbs screamed from the exertion. It seemed she was rolled up tightly into a ball with her knees pulled up to her chest and her head tucked in between her own thighs.
She struggled to untangle herself from her acrobatic position, wincing as her muscles and joints protested against any type of movement. Once she was back in a default sitting mode, she patted around her immediate area for something to pull herself up with. Her legs felt like rubber, and she wasn’t sure she could stand on her own. She found a wooden post that seemed to be firmly planted on the ground and used it as leverage to get herself on her feet.
Not too far from her, she heard animalistic, grunting noises and slaps that she soon recognized as sounds that people make when they’re having sex. She put her hand on her chest to keep herself from heaving. Frowning, she began to pat her body down. No wonder she was freezing. She was buck-ass naked. Oh great, she woke up in a strange, dark place that smelled bad, and she was naked. She could already tell she was going to have a good night.
She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles and ventured out of her hidey-hole. With the help of a single light source, a dingy yellow street lamp, she peered into the darkness. She looked up at the sky and saw a hint of moonlight hidden somewhere up there. The visibility was not great. She strained her eyes and tried to spot anything she could recognize, but no luck. She appeared to be in some sort of back alley between two hulking, dilapidated buildings with the upper levels disappearing in the dense gray fog.
Where the hell am I? This didn’t feel nor look like anything in San Francisco. It shouldn’t be freezing right now, for one thing, because it was only August. Just before fall, San Francisco was warm and balmy. She strained her ears. She could hear the couple still going at it and smirked. More power to them. But there was no traffic, people chattering or ringing mobiles. She couldn’t hear anyone’s TV or stereo blaring out of a window. These were the familiar city sounds that comforted her.
The other sound available for her enjoyment, however, worried her a little bit. A clop-clop noise that might be a horse galloping on the pavement, a distant foghorn, and a bit of cat-calling, but she couldn’t decipher what was being said. Oh great, how did she manage to get herself down to the Marina naked? God, she hoped this was the beginning of one of those stories she could laugh about twenty years from now.
She looked down to see if she had a purse, so she could get her mobile phone and call emergency services, but what she saw instead frightened her to her very core. One, she was no longer naked. Two, she appeared to be wearing an ankle-length dress with a big, old poofy skirt and tight as hell bodice that pushed up her boobs nearly to her neck. It didn’t look like anything she owned, but the fog must have permeated her skull, too, because she couldn’t remember if she ever owned anything like it. An image of a familiar, dark-haired woman wearing jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt flashed in her mind’s eye. No, this wasn’t her style at all.
She shambled like a zombie closer to the lamp. God, how could anyone walk in these skirts? She was treading through mud. She examined the rest of herself and found her arms covered in delicate lace to the wrists. In the yellow light, her dress looked brown or the color of drying blood. What did her hair look like? She reached for the back of her head and grasped handfuls of her mane in two bunches to pull them forward over her shoulders. They went down past her breasts. She frowned. The long hair felt wrong. She usually kept it short, that she knew.
She had no idea what she looked like. Fear and panic roiled in her stomach, as her heart dropped to her knees. She was going to throw up.