Danger

I'm not sure if it was due to remarkable reflexes, or if part of my subconscious had already foreseen such an event, but I was already diving for Seabass as he started to go over. I managed to grab a foot before he was gone for good, wrapping both hands tightly around it and bracing my own feet against the railing. Mr. Slither drew closer.

"Pull me up!" Seabass screamed at me, wind milling his arms wildly. It didn't make my job any easier and I felt my muscles start to strain. Or I should say strain more since they were already being stretched to their limits.

"Aren't you going to be heroic and tell me to drop you and save myself?" I managed between gritted teeth.

"The hell with that!" he shouted, right before shouting in a much more shrill voice "It's moving upwards, no, pull me up, pull me up, pull me up!"

I opened my eyes, not even realizing I had closed them in my efforts, and saw the vines below climbing up and over one another to form something resembling a tentacle. It was forming right under Seabass. I tugged harder, every fibrous strand of muscle working its hardest.

But let's face it. At the end of the day, I weighed maybe a hundred pounds at most, probably less. Most of my exercise came from running away from monsters, and I would never be the kind of girl you might find at the gym, looking pretty while running on a Stair Master. I simply couldn't pull the guy up.

"Ok, new plan, Mr. Seabass." I could barely make the words out now, the effort of keeping him in his current state of limbo almost too much. "I can't pull you up. You can't climb up on your own, since I'm holding you by your feet and not your arms. If you try to bend upwards..." I started to run out of breath and gritted my teeth harder, "you're only going to drag me over. So we're left with only one option."

"And what's that?" Seabass asked, stopping his struggling and just looking up at me in alarm, knowing that whatever I said next would probably not be conducive to his health.

"Let go. If you aim your fall, you can probably dodge the vine tentacle. The, errm, vine carpet is probably too spread out to get a good hold on you if you keep moving."

"What about the falling ten feet thing?" Seabass asked, already shaking his head no. My grip on his foot started to loosen. Then I heard a footstep beside me, and turned to see Mr. Slither right there, reaching one of his hands towards me. His fingers wiggled like they were made of jelly, anxious to feel the flesh of the living.

I pretty much lost my mind at that point. It was too much, even for me. I just started screaming, clutching both hands to the side of my head as if to block out the sound of my own terrified shrieks. Of course, I presumably dropped Seabass at that point, but I was too lost in the horror to even be aware of it.

Closing my eyes, I made my way along the railing for about ten feet. Then I slammed into the side and followed Seabass in his footsteps as I fell right over the edge. Having enough presence of mind to tuck myself into a ball, I desperately tried to remember the least painful way to land.

Before I could think of any kind of game plan, I landed, my right side hitting the ground and sending a numbing pain through my whole body. Ignoring the hurt, I rolled with the momentum, seeming to remember reading somewhere that rolling after hitting the ground helped reduce the impact.

I slammed into a bookshelf and temporarily lost my ability to breath. Part of me wondered if I'd just cracked a rib. The other parts wondered if I had just cracked something much, much worse. It was about then that I felt the sliminess of plant tendrils worming their way over my body. I had escaped one monster only to find myself confronted by another.

Trying to scream, I was horrified by the thin little gasp of noise that came out of my mouth. I started brushing the vines away, like the helpless girl in a horror movie who gets swarmed by spiders and just brushes them away while screaming endlessly, too stupid to actually run away or douse herself in lighter fluid or something (which is what I would have done).

I stood up and started moving, realizing I needed to put distance between me and the vines before they could get a good grip on me. The mere act of standing nearly made me pass out, but I managed to shake off the stars that seemed to be circling my head. Though the ones that were all over my vision didn't seem to want to go away just yet.

A bit dazed, definitely not in my right mind, I started walking since it was the best I could manage. My feet hurt. My legs hurt. My whole right side was a dull ache of insufferable pain and I suspected that I couldn't even move that arm. Oh, and my nose itched. I found myself wishing more than anything else that I had a tissue.

Almost in a sleepwalk-like state, unaware of anything except for the slow shuffle of my feet, I found myself opening a door and walking through it. Presumably I was out of the library and now walking down another hallway. I wasn't sure if it was my extreme fear or my numerous injuries, but the fact that I didn't seem able to comprehend my surroundings was definitely worrisome.

"Concussed?" asked a kindly old man who appeared beside me. It was Dr. Hammond from that old Jurassic Park film. I decided there was about a fifty percent chance he was a hallucination. Only fifty because weird stuff happened to me on a regular basis. I wasn't going to just write him off as not being real simply because he was a movie character.

So I nodded, being polite.

"Yeah, I'm probably concussed. Might have some broken bones too!" I said the last bit like a little girl would announce that she just bought a pony.

Dr. Hammond nodded at me sagely.

"You're in no shape to go off fighting monsters, girl. Let alone saving lives. You need to get some rest."

I shook my head.

"No time. Seabass probably got killed when I dropped him, but maybe he's still alive and needs my help. And if not him, there are so many others. Sorry, but peeps need me."

I continued walking. I made it maybe halfway down the hall before I collapsed. The last memory I had before lack of consciousness struck was of looking back to see Dr. Hammond sadly shaking his head. I was not a happy Neems...

If it had been up to me, I would have slept for a very long time. Years maybe. Unfortunately, my all too brief period of unconsciousness had given my body time to adjust to its injuries. And realize just how much they hurt. I was like a gong of ache. I opened my eyes reluctantly, my vision swimming, and found myself lying on a comfy bed.

There was also a girl. Pretty, blond, kind of the girl next door sort of look. She was sitting in a chair across from me reading. Oh, and my nose still itched. I raised myself up on my elbows.

"Do you have a tissue by chance?" I asked.

She finished the page she was on, laid the book on a little coffee table next to her, and turned to watch me with a look of curiosity on her face.

"You're that weird girl aren't you, the one from dinner who told me I looked like a mermaid?"

Mentally I kicked myself as memory started to return. Ariel Stillwater. Now I remembered who she was. I'd never asked her what she did for a living, though someone had said she was a neurologist or something, but I'd said a lot of dumb things to her over dinner. Primarily accusing her of being a mermaid in disguise, since she had the same name as a well-known cartoon character.

"That's me," I said wearily, "and whatever I said at dinner I probably would say again if I had the chance, so I won't bother apologizing."

I then pointed a finger at her book.

"So, what were you reading?"

She picked the book up to show me the cover. It was called Country Waffles and had a blue chicken on the cover. I was very properly baffled.

"Looks weird. Is it any good?"

She shrugged.

"Not really. But it was something to take my mind off what was going on outside. I hid in here after it all started, and got kind of bored after a while. I'm just planning to wait it out if I can."

I shook my head.

"There's no waiting out Mr. Slither. He's probably killing people as we speak. We have to band together, like the Three Musketeers and go save the day!"

Her expression went kind of flat, a look I was all too familiar with.

"But there's only two of us. And they had swords."

"Then we shall find our Paragon and some swords!" I shouted, striking a stance that I hoped was heroic.

Her face, if anything, went just a little more blank in disbelief.

"Paragon?"

My mind started whirring desperately as I sought the name of even one of the Musketeers. It had been a long time since I'd read the book.

"Err, I think I meant... Pothos? No, that's a plant. Hmm," I started stroking my chin thoughtfully, lost completely now in memory and speaking to myself more than I was to her.

"Paul? No, he was the iron maiden guy. Or iron something, I can't remember. Peter? No, he was a Buddhist or... something. Percival? No, I'd never hang out with someone with such a wimpy name. Not that I ever did hang out with any of the Three Musketeers, but if they had been real I would have."

I heard the door open, and suddenly came back to reality to see Ariel leaving.

"Hey wait!" I shouted, running after her. "It was Porthos, now I remember, his name was... probably Porthos!"

She kept moving, picking up the pace.

"We need each other!" I shouted. "I'm all banged up right now and can't do this on my own."

Ariel Stillwater whirled around, her face full of anger.

"No! I need someone who's sane! I spent hours in that room just waiting for someone to rescue me, someone to open the door and tell me everything would be okay. Instead I get you. Miss Nut Job telling me that we can use our magical swords to defeat the bad guys. No thanks!"

She started walking again, and I knew I had only seconds before she was gone and I was once more alone.

"We might not have swords, but we could use guns!"

She stopped. So did I, wondering where my subconscious had grabbed that thought from.

"Where would we get guns?" Ariel asked, turning around to face me.

Nothing came to mind, so I went over whatever mental clues I could find as to what I might have meant. We were in a mansion. One of those classy, expensive, Look-At-Me-I'm-Rich kind of places. And any stuck-up, would-be, Victorian era wannabe Baron, such as our dear host, would have all the ornate little extras he could find. Like the crossed swords I'd used earlier. And maybe a trophy room...

A room full of stuffed animal heads, probably fake, and all of his equally fake stories about hunting trips to Africa. But more importantly than all of that, it would also be a room full of guns. Big, elephant killing, double-barreled monster guns. I grinned like a maniac at Ariel, probably on the verge of scaring her off once more.

"The trophy room," I said, my eyes lighting up with mischief. Her own seemed to glow with sudden understanding.

"You think he has guns in there?"

I nodded.

"Of course he does. So he can show all his buddies the weapon he used to take down Mr. Elephant. If we find the trophy room, we have something to defend ourselves. Ready to team up?"

She made a face like she'd just swallowed something sour.

"Reluctantly. Don't think this means we're going to be friends and all. But if we can find this trophy room, then we might just stand a chance."

A door opened a little bit ahead of us and a plant zombie shambled out. It only occurred to me about then how much shouting I'd been doing in the last minute or so. Oops. Beneath the writhing vines, I could just make out the face of Kenneth Mugsy. It looked like the jerk had gotten exactly what he'd deserved.

"Run?" Ariel suggested.

I shook my head.

"Running never works out in the end. We have to stand up to this guy here and now."

Another door opened to our left, and a second plant zombie walked out. It was the Colonel. Whatever Mr. Slither had done to him during the attack in the billiards room, he had then quite happily zombified him.

"Okay, maybe running isn't such a bad idea," I said, right before the Colonel was all over me. The vines around his corpse reached out like feelers, grasping and prying at my skin. I looked frantically for the vine that had an eyeball at the end, the one that had been the weakness of the last plant zombie I'd slain, but saw nothing. Just a writhing mass of vinework that seemed intent on wrapping itself around me.

I shoved and fell backwards at the same time, dislodging the vines and rolling as I hit the ground. My right side twinged with pain, but I ignored it as much as possible.

I would like to say that I came up fighting, gave the plant monster an uppercut to the jaw, strangled the little eyeball vine thingy, and then turned around and did the same to the other one, heroically saving Ariel. But I did none of those things. I just stood there, breathing hard and on the verge of passing out, watching the plant zombie get closer. Then Seabass came out of nowhere and threw himself at it, sending both of them tumbling to the ground.

Before joining the fray, I turned to see how Ariel was faring against the former Kenneth Mugsy. He had his many vines extended, already wrapping themselves around her arms, but she otherwise seemed to be holding him off, at least for now.

With a small grimace at the thought of injuring myself further, I dived on the one that Seabass had tackled and started running my hands through the many vines, searching for its weak point and ignoring the ones that started to wrap themselves around me.

"Gotcha!" I shouted as I pulled loose a particularly veiny-looking vine with a bulb on the end. The bulb opened, revealing the frightened eyeball inside. Then every single plant vine that was wrapped around the corpse of the Colonel, moving as one entity, abandoned their host and converged on yours truly.

I screamed as I found myself completely covered by vines, which soon began to constrict me like so many snakes, squeezing the life from me. I followed their example and tightened my grip, the vine that I held moving spastically in my hands as it sought to get free.

It felt like my whole body was suffocating, this deep feeling of oppression deafening every inch of me, till my world was just me and the vines that covered me. Yet I didn't let go. I squeezed that creepy little bugger for all I was worth. It was almost too late before I remembered that plants didn't necessarily have lungs, so strangling it wouldn't, in point of fact, do anything. As usual, I felt like an idiot.

Then I remembered the lighter that Kenneth Mugsy had given me, the man who was probably killing Ariel just a few feet from me. Hoping against all hope that it had not fallen from my pocket, I inched my hand through the vines that had bound me, creeping it slowly towards my right pocket. Praying at the same time that I had put the lighter in my right pocket.

My vision started to go black. My fingers went all numb, which was either a sign that circulation had been cut off, or that something weird was going on. And I had the lighter. Grinning like a maniac, I flicked it open and held the flame against the nearest piece of plant life.

Everything around me loosened instantly, and I felt they would have screamed if they could. Taking the opportunity while I had it, I pulled out one of the bottles of whiskey from my other pocket, smashed it against the ground, splashing it all over both me and the plant monster, and held the lighter towards the nearest puddle. It was kind of cool how I created an instant inferno.

The ball of flaming vines leapt away from me and thudded into the wall, blindly panicking now as it began to crisp. I probably would have done the same, just sitting there burning up as I watched, except both Seabass and Ariel grabbed me from behind and started beating the flames off of me. They had dragged me safely away from the dying remnants of my attacker before my mind started to kick in and I did the whole thinking thing again.

I glanced over towards the second plant zombie, only to find its limp remains, the eyeball vine lying nearby having been quite clearly severed. Then I looked up at Ariel, surprise and admiration on my face.

"You killed it all by yourself?"

She shrugged, and I noticed the kitchen knife she was holding in one hand.

"I wasn't going to just wait around in a creepy mansion without some sort of weapon. I snagged this before I made my way to the room you found me in."

Then I glanced at Seabass. He looked in pretty good shape for a guy who'd been dropped twelve feet or so into a glob of vines.

"Sorry about the whole... dropping you thing." I said with a sheepish grin. "It was an icky situation and Mr. Slither is the kind of guy who creates nightmares. How did you wind up here?"

Seabass gently pulled me to my feet.

"Why don't we talk as we walk? There could be more of those things nearby."