CHAPTER TWELVE - Breakfast on the Beach of Deception (pt. II)
I tear through the rest of my pancakes quite viciously. If this were any other breakfast, I’d want to savor it, but since I’m so desperate to wake up all I can think of is finishing everything on my plate as fast as I can. It also doesn’t help that I’d worked up a major appetite… I set down my fork and knife and look around, to my dismay everyone else isn’t even close to finishing their meals. I sigh, kicking my feet impatiently under the table. Anton was right after all, if we hadn’t spent so much time talking we’d probably all be finished by now.
“So now what?” I ask Maggie, squirming in my seat uncomfortably, “I have to wait for everyone else to finish their food, huh?”
Her eyes meet mine shyly from across the table, and she nods. I guess she’d been staring at me the entire time– it makes me feel embarrassed. If I’d known she’d been staring at me I would’ve eaten more gracefully. I also take a second to fix my posture and stop fidgeting so much.
“Well, yes. I can see you’re anxious,” she says, “I know you want to wake up more than anything, and you will soon.”
I notice she is the only one who doesn’t have a plate of food.
“Hmm, interesting. You don’t have to eat anything to wake up since… Well, you can’t wake up. This is your reality,” I muse aloud, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, “Must be interesting living in a dream all the time.”
She frowns contemplatively, her white hair blowing gently in the breeze.
“It has its moments, I guess. Honestly, I’ve always wondered what it’s like to live in your reality, Hong. I’m sure it’s much different than this dream, and all the other dreams I’ve visited.”
“Really? Well, I guess the grass’s always greener on the other side… The real world can be quite boring, if I’m being totally honest, but it’s not all bad! I’m always able to make things fun, even without the freedom that dreams grant me. Do you wanna know the one thing that I like about reality the most?”
“What?”
“It’s forever. It’s always there when you wake up in the morning. No matter where I go in my dreams, I still wake up in the same bed every morning, and no matter who I dream I am, I still wake up in the same body. In dreams, it can be fun to be someone else and do crazy things for a while, but I like the sense of self that reality gives me.”
“That sounds incredible, it really does. Having my own identity, having real life experiences and memories… Those are some of the things I cannot do here, in this dream. It would be nice to one day experience that, I think. I wish that…”
She stands up abruptly, her face growing serious and her hands balling up into tight fists at her sides. Everyone stares at her, Tim nearly drops his fork in surprise.
“I WISH THAT I COULD TELL EVERYONE HERE THE TRUTH!” She shouts, “I WISH THAT I WASN’T SUCH A COWARD! I WISH I COULD MAKE MY OWN DECISIONS, AND I— I wish… I wish that I wasn’t living in a body and mind that weren’t my own. I wish—”
Before I can even begin to comprehend what she’d just said, a sparkly blue apparition appears next to her. It explodes into a cloud of smoke, sending glitter everywhere, and in its place is a woman with white hair, a long blue dress, and celestial-themed makeup. Something about her seems so familiar, but I just can’t place my finger on why! It’s that same feeling I’d had about Maggie when she first appeared before me.
The woman places her hand on Maggie’s shoulder, and Maggie looks up at her with fear in her eyes. She is trembling now, her conviction from just a few seconds ago completely vanished.
“How adorable, my conjuring is starting to develop its own feelings and willpower,” the woman says, her voice dripping with venom as she grips Maggie’s shoulder tightly with sharply manicured fingernails, “I should’ve known something was up once you’d told me you didn’t have any of my memories! Even though I made you to be me, you’re really not me at all, are you?! Hmph! Too soft-hearted and naïve… You really thought I’d let Anton and his little friend go if you befriended them, right? Well, you thought WRONG! You’re forgetting your purpose– TO DRIVE THEM TO THEIR DOOM!”
Anton quickly stands up. I stand up too, taking half a step behind him. I peek out from behind his shoulder; he doesn’t acknowledge me at all.
“So I was right to be paranoid,” he says gruffly, looking directly at the woman in front of us, “So I was right that Maggie was going to betray us. It’s near poetic. I will have you know I never truly let my guard down. I was anticipating this moment from the very beginning.”
Maggie is looking at the ground, and she is crying.
“I… didn’t mean for this to happen,” she sobs, “I didn’t m-mean to—”
“Will you shut up?” The woman yells at Maggie, “I don’t ever remember being such a crybaby! What a headache you are! I’m sending you away so I can deal with these DEMONS properly. Can’t do that with you bawling your eyes out.”
She snaps her fingers, and Maggie turns into a cluster of dandelion seeds blown away by the wind. I gasp in horror, wanting to call out her name, but finding I cannot bring myself to say a word. I’m much too terrified!
“Boo hoo, you thought she was your friend, huh?” She asks, turning her manic gaze to me, “Isn’t betrayal such a wonderful feeling? Now you know only a fraction of the pain I’ve gone through in my pathetic life.”
“I don’t know what I thought,” I reply, my throat dry, “I don’t know who you are. You look familiar. I think I saw you in a scrying vision once.”
“I could say the same about you, seeing as I’ve been watching everyone here through my crystal ball this whole time! You know, maybe I was a little harsh on Maggie. She did do a good job of leading you right to me! I should be thanking her… How foolish of me to erase her from existence. Oh, well. Even someone as perfect as me makes mistakes sometimes~”
“How awful!” I shout, stepping out from behind Anton and putting my hands on my hips authoritatively as I can, “So you’re the one that’s trapped us here, and you’re the one who was controlling Maggie! What an awful woman you are, playing with someone’s existence like that!”
“You’ve decided to stop using Anton as a human shield. How brave of you,” she tuts sarcastically, “And yes, I suppose you could say I was ‘controlling’ Maggie, since she was simply an alternate version of my younger self I’d created to do my bidding. She really had no will of her own, you know, her will was my will.”
“Okay, wait a moment,” Anton interrupts, furrowing his brow, “I feel like we skipped over the part where you said you’d sent Maggie to drive Hong and I to our dooms. Just who are you, anyway, and what exactly is your problem? Would I happen to know you from somewhere? I must admit there is something familiar about you, and Maggie looked like someone I’d known briefly long ago, but…”
The strange woman looks at Anton as his voice trails off.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” the woman clenches her fists angrily, in a similar manner to Maggie, “Well, ANTON, let us be reacquainted. My name is Magdalena, though you may remember me as Margaret. Margaret Leary.”
“Margaret… Margaret Leary,” Anton strokes his chin, deep in thought, presumably, “…Margaret Leary from St. Mary’s school? The one who’d sat next to me in Latin?”
“YES! FINALLY! YOU REMEMBER!” Margaret(?) shrieks, “IT TOOK LONG ENOUGH! HOW INSULTING… How insulting you’d barely remembered me after you BASICALLY RUINED MY LIFE!”
“I ruined your life…? Margaret, I have no earthly clue what you’re talking about. I cannot possibly begin to fathom what I could have possibly done to you to make you behave in such a manner, but for what it is worth I will apologize to you sincerely since I do not wish to be trapped in your hellish dreamscape any longer than this. Now, if you could return my protégé and I to the world we rightfully belong in, that would be most excellent.”
I look up at Anton, and he is standing firm and not terrified at all. How could he not be?! I’m quivering in my sneakers!
“What a cocky attitude! You haven’t changed at all. And it’s Magdalena now, not Margaret, so get that through your thick skull! UGH! If I weren’t so damn NICE I’d just kill you right now like I’d planned to… But, since I am a lady with class and decorum, I’m going to send the Englishman and purple-haired skank back to the waking world. I seriously have no idea how they even wound up here, anyway! It was just meant to be you and Hong!” She snaps her fingers, and Tim and Catherine both disappear unceremoniously, “…You know, this isn’t the first time I’d had intruders in my dream.”
She narrows her eyes, looking at me.
“Wh-What are you looking at me for?!” I ask, puffing out my chest in an attempt to look more intimidating.
“Oh, right, I’d forgotten I’d erased your memory about the whole thing… Well, let’s just say we’d met before in another dream.”
As she continues to look into my eyes, memories of a previous night’s dream come back to me. I was in her castle! I think to myself, And that girl in the school uniform she’d been yelling at was Maggie! And that important thing I’d meant to tell Anton was about her plot to kill him in this dream! I remember it all now!
“No, it isn’t! I remember you and your stupid Barbie castle! I overheard you telling Maggie you wanted to kill Anton, and I wanted to wake up so I could tell him! But you erased my memory!” I blurt, feeling a rush of adrenaline, “Unfortunately for you, you’re not going to get a chance to hurt Anton or me! If you try anything, you’ll be burnt to a crisp with my fire magic!”
Anton looks down at me in shock, and Magdalena only laughs.
“You say you’re a phoenix, but you’ve got the heart of a chicken. And that damn ego of yours is only going to get you killed! Anton must be a horrible mentor; that’s a lesson he should’ve taught you a long time ago!”
“Anton is my best friend, and I can’t let you do anything to him! And I’m not a fucking chicken; I’m not scared of you at all!”
“Hmm, I think you’re a liar just like your little friend Maggie was. But, whatever, I think a messy dining table in the middle of some random field is a boring place to die. I think I’ll bring you to my castle grounds. Don’t you think that’d be a more cinematic place to die? I’m envisioning your painful demise against the backdrop of my pretty pink princess palace, and it’s beautiful. Like me!”