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It took a few floors, but I soon managed to find where Mikey was being held.
The first thing I noticed was Mikey was still half-way through transforming. It was gross. There were baggy, flabby flag-like skin appendages coming out of his back, like he had some kind of radioactive back fat in addition to chopped tentacle-arms. His head looked better, only slightly inflated ... but still. It was, in true Sinister-evil tradition, disturbing.
I started to grab at the fatty arms(?), thinking I would need to tell Mikey to go on a diet when he woke up. I cursed myself momentarily for sending Elysian out with Starry Knight; he would have made this job much easier, for once.
Mikey’s body was very cold. And it was sort of hard to get a good hold onto, almost like silly putty that lost its silliness. Almost like he was ...
“Come on. He’s not dead. He can’t be,” I told myself. “Can’t you remember the movies? The FBI doesn’t tell the truth to its prisoners, and SWORD probably doesn’t either. I need to get him out of here so we can get him back to normal.”
A few heaves, some inappropriate comments which were just too appropriate at the time, and a second reminder to tell Mikey to go on a diet later, I was ready to give up. The flabby, gushy, goopy body was just too slimy, too inconsistent, and too huge to move.
I flung him on the floor, in half-resentment, half-frustration. I didn’t know what to do. What was I going to do? There wasn’t much I could do, according to the laws of physics. I need a miracle, I thought.
A miracle.
I looked down at my warrior suit and reached up, tracing the feathers of my wingdings as they curved their way around my ears. Was it possible to get another miracle for today?
“Okay, Prince, man, I need you to change Mikey back. Can you help me out here?” I asked, feeling like an idiot. I don’t care if Elysian said he existed outside of time and space, if he wasn’t in time or space and I was essentially talking to no one, I felt like an idiot.
I especially felt the humiliation of an idiot when I didn’t hear anything back.
Ugh. Really?
I scrapped through every corner of my mind, trying to think of what I knew that could help me. Think, I commanded myself. Think! I knew I couldn’t shoot Mikey full of energy beams like any other demon monster; that would probably destroy him, which was bad.
Frustrated, I dropped my head into my hands and fell into a sitting position on the floor. This wasn’t working. Anything in the world would have been better than going back to Starry Knight and Elysian and telling them I couldn’t do my job. I could hear Elysian’s comeback already: “At least it’s not a matter of you refusing to do it this time ... ” That smug turd.
My foot toed some of his extra tentacle appendages as I continued to sit there. I was trying not to worry about time.
“Hey, Mikey! I know you’re in there! Stop this, and return to your normal self!” I called.
Nothing happened. Maybe I needed to ...
Ugh, I needed coffee. I was definitely going to Rachel’s after this, I thought. I hoped it wasn’t too late.
Oh, great. And then there was Cheryl and Mark to worry about. There was no telling how much later I would be, or even how much time had passed since I’d been transported here.
“Okay, that’s enough. Focus.” I shook my head. Think!
An idea popped into my mind and I stood up. I looked down at the mark on my wrist. The one time, I’d grabbed onto it and used some kind of power inside of me to get inside my heart.
Power. That was it! Starry Knight had told me herself: “All Stars have a special power, even fallen Stars.” I had a special kind of power, since I was a fallen Star. Recalling the other times I’d felt that particular inkling of power—feeling Gwen’s emotions as I held her hand, Adam’s feeling of contentment as I’d carried him, even my own tumultuous turmoil—a sense of certainty overtook me. I was able to discern other people’s feelings.
With a renewed sense of hope, I picked up one of Mikey’s many mangled extremities. I closed my eyes and tried, feeling stupid and unsure, to see if I could sense Mikey’s emotions.
A whisper of otherness whisked up beside my power. It had to be Mikey! I silently cheered to myself; no matter how much Mikey had changed, he was still my friend, and I was glad he was alive.
Closing in on the flouting foreignness, I pushed through with my power. And then, all of a sudden, I was transported into another world.
*☼*
Even though I was in a different world of some kind, I could still see into the one I’d left behind. Later I would liken the experience to being inside a negative of a photograph. I could still hear the alarms running through the SWORD black site, and I could feel the chill of the physical world. But for the first time, I noticed the warmth of my spirit, the engulfing waves of contentment. Straining my ears to block out the physical world, I even thought I could hear some kind of symphonic welcome song.
I could see a flaring aura around Mikey’s body, which was beckoning my curiosity.
I turned my attention back to the pit of blazing aura before me, where Mikey’s mind must be firing. Entering into the green-tinted flames, I gasped.
I looked around at the mess before me. It was a cityscape, covered in greenish goo-looking glop; Apollo City in apocalypse form. There were strands of the ooze all around me, all backdropped by the grayest skies I’d ever seen.
So this was Mikey’s heart. I grimaced; I’d never wanted to see inside of anyone’s heart, unless I was getting to perform open-heart surgery with Mark. And there were reasons I wanted to be a lawyer more than a doctor. “Mikey?” I called into the unreal city.
I took a few cautious steps and grimaced; trash was everywhere, and I saw no end to the ugliness. And a bunch of slimy stuff, too. Great, I thought, more ooze for me to fall into. Some things never change.
Walking gingerly through the shadow streets, awed and disgusted by the destruction and garbage everywhere, I continued to look for Mikey. “Mikey, where are you?”
I skidded to a halt when I at last saw my friend.
There he was, bound up in the heart of a spider’s web, covered in green threads of ooze. Mikey was asleep—or at least his eyes were closed. His body was also very still, almost like he was dead, or getting there. “Mikey!”
I was about to ask him if he really wanted to miss out on next year’s football season when a sparkle caught my eye.
“Huh?” All around me was a glitter-like shimmer, spreading all around. “What is this stuff?”
A shifting sound caused me to jump. It’s poison.
I looked up to see the same blank expression on Mikey’s face. “Was that you?” I asked.
There was no movement, but the words were not to be mistaken. Yes, it’s me.
“Can you turn back into a normal person?” I need to work on my tact, I decided. Oh well. It would have to wait for now. I had to hurry.
I want to be normal again. But I am afraid.
“Why?”
Because I ruined my life. I made bad choices. I hurt people.
“What?” I was surprised to feel sympathetic towards Mikey. It was true he had committed crimes, and bad ones; I recalled quite clearly how I had burned with rage towards Mikey after getting Martha in dire straits.
But one look at the sad, teary-eyed figure, wrapped up in his own despair, and I couldn’t bring myself not to care. One glance at the mark on my wrist, and I knew I could appreciate rightfully the value of a second chance.
“Look, it’s true that you’ve done some bad things. But it doesn’t have to end with that. You wouldn’t want it to. There’s still a chance for you to do some good. You can’t give up just because it’s hard.” Or because it’s not fun, or because you have a loud-mouthed dragon hounding you day and night, I added to myself.
I yanked at the thread, trying to pull him from the deadly-looking trap. “I’ll help you!”
“Leave me alone!” Mikey’s eyes now snapped open, glowing green. “This is my home now.”
“No!”
“I want to be alone!” Mikey yelled, this time with enough force to send me slipping backwards. Strands of the green thread began to creep toward me, intertwining around my feet and arms.
“Stop this!” I called out, this time a hint of desperation in my voice. “I know you’re not like this! You don’t want to be alone or hurt anyone!”
The words had no effect.
Maybe there was something I could do as myself. It made sense, after all. Mikey didn’t know me as ‘Wingdinger,’ but he knew me as his best friend. “Mikey, it’s me. It’s Hamilton. Hamilton Dinger. I’m your best friend. You’re like my brother, man.”
I untangled some of the spidery thread as more whip-like web strands assaulted me. “I know you’ve been going through a rough spot, and I haven’t made it any easier. But I’m here for you! I am. And I’m sorry, Mikey ... I’m sorry!”
Mikey stilled. The eyes burned with a fierce green before began to darken to their usual brown.
I sighed with relief. It’s working. I was getting through. “Please, Mike, trust me. Fight this. You can trust me. I’ll help you. Just like I did when your dad left.”
Suddenly, Mikey struggled as he began to wake up to the world.
A flash of light flickered, bubbling up all around, like a top-rated bathroom cleaner in a gas station restroom. I felt a wave of relief and satisfaction wash over me as the unreal city around slowly started to change and then fade away.
I was returning. No, we were returning.
☼22☼