Something Wicked
Title: Something Wicked
Author: tainry
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Prompt:Pairing Wanted: Optimus Prime/Sam
Rating Wanted: I'll leave that to the writer.
What scene do you want to see? something Halloween themed. It's one of my favorite holidays.
Three things you want in your story: Halloween costumes, candy and a scary story.
Three things you do NOT want in your story: not too silly, funny yes, Bots curious about Earth cultures yes. But no out and out SNL comedy please.
Notes: With apologies to Ray Bradbury. :D
Something Wicked
First of all, it was October. Smoke-scented, blue-skied, red-leaved October. Sam had to hand it to the East Coast for this whole Autumn thing, even if the ambient temperature was, as Leo repeatedly insisted on putting it, a titty bit nipply.
Driving through the blue night, Sam caught the scent of popcorn and hot dogs, cotton candy and hot lights and oil on the bat-winged breeze well before the carnival became visible beyond the hills. It was the kind of travelling fair Sam had only seen on TV, with everything from freak show to Ferris wheel. Not exactly conducive to the quiet, contemplative drive he and Prime usually took of a Friday night, to allow Sam an escape from the hustle and thrash of dorm life. Caught by an impulse from a childhood Sam hadn’t had, he touched the steering wheel. “What do you say, Optimus?”
In reply, Prime took the dirt turnoff, rumbling around a curve. He bypassed the parking field, however, letting Sam out and transforming. “I will observe from there,” he said, pointing at a low, forested hill that overlooked the entire carnival. Their cover was blown the world over, but that didn’t mean Optimus wanted to stride into every human gathering in robot mode. Sam grinned and nodded, waving as he ambled toward the ticket gate.
Through Sam, Optimus understood breathing; tides of air through nose and throat and bellows-chest; knew the soft rhythm of a liquid heartbeat, thump and shush, pulsing in ears and chest, skin and brain. When Prime was not too involved in seventeen other tasks, Sam could make him shiver by running a fingertip along the edge of his own jaw. And sometimes, now and then in the sliding space between sleep and waking, Sam felt the great slow turning of a spark hot in his core, the molten churn of energon lines buried in heavy limbs and dull, armored skin, half numb even as the universe opened out around him to other senses he no longer had names for.
He gave the dwarf, er, little person ticket-taker a crumpled five and walked under the battered Carnivàle sign with its flickering, old-fashioned bulbs. Sam was glad he wasn’t prone to seizures. Any more. He adjusted his earpiece - not a Bluetooth though it looked like one - more to fiddle with it than because it was an unaccustomed weight on his ear. Voice was two-way, and Optimus could receive video signals from it as well.
“Carnies,” Sam said, tasting the edges of lives he’d never know.
”Coogar and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show,” Optimus replied. The longest running travelling carnival in the United States.
Tumult assaulted him as he approached the midway. Adults were taking groups of kids around trick-or-treating; each game booth was giving something out. The wind blew warm then cool, carrying scents of sawdust, old wood, ozone, sticky sweet candy, ancient canvas, questionable wiring, the breath of six hundred humans. Children shouted, barkers hollered, young lovers giggled, parents called warnings or encouragement. Music made from running feet, struck tin targets, glass bottles ringed with thrown hoops, the rarely-struck bell at the top of the Test Your Strength tower, wheezing calliopes rigged by a jury of old men flowed around Sam like the wind. He breathed deeply, opening his mouth a little, wondering what Optimus made of the whirling input.
“Rent a costume!” cried a buxom vendor from an open, striped tent to Sam’s right. “Get into the spirit of the night! Join the revels, sir! Rent a costume!”
Why not? It would be the last time Sam celebrated this holiday as a child. He entered the tent, let the Shakespearean-garbed wenches pick an outfit for him, trying not to stare too long at the expanses of cleavage heaving like ocean waves as they buttoned his long pirate vest and helped him into his long pirate coat. He kept his jeans, but the skin of his torso and arms prickled under the unaccustomed smoothness of linen, the weight of brocade and heavy wool, the stiffness of the broad leather belt. The tall, cuffed boots were a struggle, but comfortable enough for a night of walking once he’d stomped them on. An elaborately feathered tricorn hat sat rather low on his head but didn’t seem to interfere with his earpiece. It didn’t occur to him until later that they had not given him a weapon - only a small resin chest within which to stash his trick-or-treat booty. He tucked it under his arm and pocketed the key they’d given him to the locker which stored his sneakers and hoodie.
Feeling vaguely ridiculous - especially with Optimus “watching” - Sam opened the chest at the next booth he came to. Targetmaster, the sign said. Painted ducks and turkeys and bears and manticores jerked by slowly on a track, knocked down with a hiss and pop. Boys and their fathers lined up to try their hands with air guns that looked antique.
“Trick or Treat!” No way was he going to attempt a Jack Sparrow impersonation. The vendor didn’t bat an eye, simply tossed a plastic-wrapped hard candy into the chest with a hollow rattle. It always sounded like knucklebones thrown in a wooden box, no matter how many other pieces of the skull- or pumpkin- or bat-shaped candies were already there.
He stopped once for a corn dog and soda, savoring the fizz of the drink, tang of the mustard, the slight graininess of the breading, the bite of his teeth through the skin of the hot dog inside, incisors tearing flesh. He felt an odd wave of something from Optimus, a kind of mental shudder. The robots, he considered, under normal circumstances killed nothing alive to maintain their own lives; gaining their energy from suns and other sources of fusion. Autotrophs, came the word welling up from a biology text in high school. He chewed his deep-fried meal slowly, swallowing the greasy, processed fats and proteins with the satisfaction of a full stomach. “Sorry, big guy, but we’re omnivores. Meat builds strong bones and muscles.”
Do you know what is actually contained in hot dogs?
“No! And don’t tell me either. Gyah! Long as it says Real Beef on the package I don’t care.”
Again he stopped, collecting a paper cone of cotton candy, still warm, sweet and fluffy against his tongue, melting to a crunchy, chewy, compressed nugget in his mouth. It had been years since he’d had cotton candy. His tongue would be blue now - he stuck it out at a baby in a backpack carrier who giggled and stuck its own little tongue out in return. Mirror neurons, Sam’s all too helpful brain said. Optimus chuckled warmly in his ear.
A gypsy sat by him on the Ferris wheel, stealing his hat with a smile. Sam was pretty certain she worked for the carnival so didn’t protest. It was getting hot under all those layers anyway. The cool breeze felt good through his hair, across his face, wreathing down the collar of the coat, teasing him with a hint of her musky, mossy perfume. As they reached the top of the wheel, Sam looked out beyond the lights and music and swarms of people, trying to spot Optimus. A dot of blue among the shadows of trees winked on then off. One of Prime’s running lights, probably, across where collarbones would be on a human. Sam waved and the gypsy laughed, waving too, but not in the same direction.
I am here, Sam…. Uhff! Sam’s chair had started its descent from the crest. Prime had evidently gotten some of Sam’s leaving-your-stomach-behind feeling. The link between them was weirdly powerful tonight.
Farther from the midway, the lights were dimmer, strings of lights in trees between attractions providing just enough glow to stave off the darkness and keep the patrons from stumbling.
More tents, canvas flapping and thumping beneath the cries of the barkers and the more subdued hubbub of the crowd. The Lava Drinker! Mr. Electrico! The Monster Montgolfier! The Dangling Man! The Skeleton! The Demon Guillotine! Sam decided to skip the Sideshow freaks. He reckoned they were probably just people in costumes and makeup, but what if they really had medical anomalies in there? A part of him was curious, but his stomach was already making noises like it wasn’t going to be happy with him in an hour or two. The paintings on the barrier behind the barker were lurid enough for him.
I am surprised that the overt exploitation of the defective is still allowable here.
“I think they’re fakes,” Sam said. “Probably. But people still can’t stop staring at a train wreck. I dunno. Maybe just because we’re relieved it’s not us in there. No matter how bad you think your life is, it could have been worse.” The wind was picking up, getting colder. He was glad of the heavy coat and boots.
“Carousel’s closed for repairs,” said the glaring, red-haired man at the gate. He pointed to a hand-lettered sign that said the same thing. The lights were on, flashing in sequential rhythms, but there was no music. Sam looked askance at all the things on the poles that weren’t horses, or not like any horses he’d seen. Eight legs? Fish tails? Fangs?
“Just as well,” Sam murmured, ambling on.
Thirteen dancers spun on a raised wooden stage between two oak trees. Women dressed in flowing greens and browns, waving red-leafed branches in each hand as they swayed and stamped in an interweaving circle, chanting.
“Hoof and horn, hoof and horn, all that dies shall be reborn. Corn and grain, corn and grain, all that falls shall rise again.”
“Not exactly reassuring,” Sam said, thinking of Megatron. And the Fallen.
Perhaps not, for us. But resurrection seems to be a powerful concept within the traditions surrounding the autumnal equinox. Along with communication with and honoring of the dead.
He moved on. The lights flickered, warm and golden, but fewer the farther in he went, with shadows alive between them. Not an electrical flicker, more like flame, but behind the frosted glass of the lanterns it was hard to tell.
“Enjoy the Egyptian Hall of Mirrors! SEE your future, past, present! Our Hall is like no other on Earth! Wonders within beyond Ordinary Imagination!”
“Egypt again. Oh well. Might as well go for the full effect,” he told Optimus. Sam seemed to have misplaced his treasure chest, but the pockets of his jeans continued to yield small bills enough for entry.
He stepped through the narrow door and it seemed normal enough - a maze of glass and mirrors, flickering reflections of himself and the others who had gone before him receding back to infinity. Heat from lights above pressed his face, stealing the fog from his breath. The floor was dusty, soft drifts in corners repeated a million times.
Sam bumped along, wishing he could borrow Optimus’ scanners. His eyes were playing tricks. Instead of silvery glass he was catching glimpses of paneled walls, daylit landscapes, women with lioness eyes stared at him and were gone. Sam touched a pane of glass, behind which a man stood in a library with an upraised knife, behind a woman reading an atlas. A mirror slid shut, hiding the scene as the knife came down.
Sam? Your heart rate is elevated. Are you well?
It’s a trick, Sam told himself. They’re just playing. Nothing here will hurt me. Prime would die - and had - before allowing Sam to come to harm. Drafts blew cold between the edges of the sets and the mirrors. He could hear the voices and laughter of the other patrons through the plywood walls. It was only a trick. For half a second he stood outside on a hill, cold metal with a sun for a heart and eyes that saw through shifting spectra that made him dizzy.
“I’m fine.”
He lurched around another hairpin turn. How big was this maze anyway? How big could it possibly be? Ahead stood a man in a ragged top-hat and tails. Long black hair hung in tatters down his back. He turned as Sam approached - the man had no eyes and an impossible, gaping, grinning mouth full of black metallic teeth. He reached for Sam, but there was glass between them. The lights flickered, threatening to go out. Sam forced himself not to bolt, stepping carefully among the reflections of that demon grin.
Funhouse, House of Horrors. Well he’d gotten his money’s worth this time. To his left a woman trapped in an enormous, coffin-shaped block of ice clawed at the inside surface, her mouth opening in screams he couldn’t hear. To his right a little girl with a dirty face but immaculate hair, dressed like a vintage doll, stared and stared at him while blood dripped from her fingertips.
Sam?
“I’m all right.” The path between mirrors was narrower now, zigzagging sharply. Sam tried to move faster, and not to pant. The last thing they needed was Prime storming in with guns blazing.
He banged against a dead end, turned back to find it was only another sudden hairpin. A swamp with lichen-hung trees and black water rippled through another opening in the mirrors. Things with glowing eyes emerged, missing their lower jaws. Someone had put too much glycerin in the fog machine. Except it smelled like rotting vegetation, not fake fog.
Nearly stumbling, he found himself in an open space, like a turn of the last century small town general store. Coils of rope and swags of black fishing nets hung from the ceiling among spear guns and sharp boat gaffs. The canning jars on the shelves contained things Sam didn’t want a better look at. The scraggly old man at the cash register grinned at him with red-stained teeth. Sam managed to grin back.
In the corner was what Sam first thought was a wooden drugstore Indian. Then a flash of memories connected, and he knew he’d seen that style of clothing before; not on a Native American. In National Geographic or on the Discovery Channel, a documentary about the “Iceman” found in the Alps, frozen, mummified. Some kind of stone-age guy, with all his knives and tattoos more or less intact, and they’d reconstructed his clothing. Skins, cut to fit, sewn together, more advanced for the time period than anthropologists had thought.
As Sam moved, as the light shifted, the wooden not-Indian’s eyes flashed an improbable blue. A hologram. Iceman, Sam thought. Very funny, Optimus. A morbid kind of pun, but typical of the multilayered jokes Prime was wont to pull. “Cute.”
You appeared to be alarmed.
“Good times,” Sam muttered. His voice came out higher in pitch than he’d have liked. Whatever nightmares he got from this couldn’t be worse than the ones he already had. He hoped.
Beyond the Miskatonic General Store, the mirrors disappeared, and the passage resembled a low-ceilinged mine-shaft. Plywood and painted canvas, Sam thought, though the dirt sifting from above here and there and the groaning of timbers sound effects were very convincing. A group of teenagers whooped and hollered up ahead and he followed them out into the cold. Sam looked up at the star-pricked sky just to be sure. A rope and post fence steered people back toward the carnival, but from there Sam could see Optimus’ hill through the trees.
He put his hands on the rope to step over, the cuffs of the wool coat brushing his knuckles. Costume! “Be right back,” he told Prime. Swaggering through the carnival now, he found the crowds had thinned. The young children had gone home. Teens and young adults roamed the midway, some in costume. Sam caught whiffs of alcohol from a few.
By the time he’d transformed back into Sam Witwicky, college student, Prime had pulled around to the field near the front gate, waiting for him with a welcoming rumble of engine. Sam jumped inside the cab, grateful for the heater and a familiar, friendly presence.
“So, what was all that in the Hall of Mirrors?” Sam asked, leaning back in the seat, arms limp at his sides. Optimus reclined the seat-back slightly. “How was any of that real?”
“I don’t know,” Optimus admitted. “This is your planet, Sam. You tell me.”
“I think,” Sam said, half asleep, “that there are still people on this planet who work together to make magic. Maybe just for kicks, but they’re doing it. Some kind of magic. Maybe not magic magic, but…something.”
Optimus hummed, like the hum of his wheels on the road. “I’m glad, then, Sam, that you had a good time.”
“Thanks,” Sam murmured. He closed his eyes, smiling.
Then, as the moon watched, the two of them together left the wilderness behind and rolled into the town.
Author: tainry
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Prompt:Pairing Wanted: Optimus Prime/Sam
Rating Wanted: I'll leave that to the writer.
What scene do you want to see? something Halloween themed. It's one of my favorite holidays.
Three things you want in your story: Halloween costumes, candy and a scary story.
Three things you do NOT want in your story: not too silly, funny yes, Bots curious about Earth cultures yes. But no out and out SNL comedy please.
Notes: With apologies to Ray Bradbury. :D
Something Wicked
First of all, it was October. Smoke-scented, blue-skied, red-leaved October. Sam had to hand it to the East Coast for this whole Autumn thing, even if the ambient temperature was, as Leo repeatedly insisted on putting it, a titty bit nipply.
Driving through the blue night, Sam caught the scent of popcorn and hot dogs, cotton candy and hot lights and oil on the bat-winged breeze well before the carnival became visible beyond the hills. It was the kind of travelling fair Sam had only seen on TV, with everything from freak show to Ferris wheel. Not exactly conducive to the quiet, contemplative drive he and Prime usually took of a Friday night, to allow Sam an escape from the hustle and thrash of dorm life. Caught by an impulse from a childhood Sam hadn’t had, he touched the steering wheel. “What do you say, Optimus?”
In reply, Prime took the dirt turnoff, rumbling around a curve. He bypassed the parking field, however, letting Sam out and transforming. “I will observe from there,” he said, pointing at a low, forested hill that overlooked the entire carnival. Their cover was blown the world over, but that didn’t mean Optimus wanted to stride into every human gathering in robot mode. Sam grinned and nodded, waving as he ambled toward the ticket gate.
Through Sam, Optimus understood breathing; tides of air through nose and throat and bellows-chest; knew the soft rhythm of a liquid heartbeat, thump and shush, pulsing in ears and chest, skin and brain. When Prime was not too involved in seventeen other tasks, Sam could make him shiver by running a fingertip along the edge of his own jaw. And sometimes, now and then in the sliding space between sleep and waking, Sam felt the great slow turning of a spark hot in his core, the molten churn of energon lines buried in heavy limbs and dull, armored skin, half numb even as the universe opened out around him to other senses he no longer had names for.
He gave the dwarf, er, little person ticket-taker a crumpled five and walked under the battered Carnivàle sign with its flickering, old-fashioned bulbs. Sam was glad he wasn’t prone to seizures. Any more. He adjusted his earpiece - not a Bluetooth though it looked like one - more to fiddle with it than because it was an unaccustomed weight on his ear. Voice was two-way, and Optimus could receive video signals from it as well.
“Carnies,” Sam said, tasting the edges of lives he’d never know.
”Coogar and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show,” Optimus replied. The longest running travelling carnival in the United States.
Tumult assaulted him as he approached the midway. Adults were taking groups of kids around trick-or-treating; each game booth was giving something out. The wind blew warm then cool, carrying scents of sawdust, old wood, ozone, sticky sweet candy, ancient canvas, questionable wiring, the breath of six hundred humans. Children shouted, barkers hollered, young lovers giggled, parents called warnings or encouragement. Music made from running feet, struck tin targets, glass bottles ringed with thrown hoops, the rarely-struck bell at the top of the Test Your Strength tower, wheezing calliopes rigged by a jury of old men flowed around Sam like the wind. He breathed deeply, opening his mouth a little, wondering what Optimus made of the whirling input.
“Rent a costume!” cried a buxom vendor from an open, striped tent to Sam’s right. “Get into the spirit of the night! Join the revels, sir! Rent a costume!”
Why not? It would be the last time Sam celebrated this holiday as a child. He entered the tent, let the Shakespearean-garbed wenches pick an outfit for him, trying not to stare too long at the expanses of cleavage heaving like ocean waves as they buttoned his long pirate vest and helped him into his long pirate coat. He kept his jeans, but the skin of his torso and arms prickled under the unaccustomed smoothness of linen, the weight of brocade and heavy wool, the stiffness of the broad leather belt. The tall, cuffed boots were a struggle, but comfortable enough for a night of walking once he’d stomped them on. An elaborately feathered tricorn hat sat rather low on his head but didn’t seem to interfere with his earpiece. It didn’t occur to him until later that they had not given him a weapon - only a small resin chest within which to stash his trick-or-treat booty. He tucked it under his arm and pocketed the key they’d given him to the locker which stored his sneakers and hoodie.
Feeling vaguely ridiculous - especially with Optimus “watching” - Sam opened the chest at the next booth he came to. Targetmaster, the sign said. Painted ducks and turkeys and bears and manticores jerked by slowly on a track, knocked down with a hiss and pop. Boys and their fathers lined up to try their hands with air guns that looked antique.
“Trick or Treat!” No way was he going to attempt a Jack Sparrow impersonation. The vendor didn’t bat an eye, simply tossed a plastic-wrapped hard candy into the chest with a hollow rattle. It always sounded like knucklebones thrown in a wooden box, no matter how many other pieces of the skull- or pumpkin- or bat-shaped candies were already there.
He stopped once for a corn dog and soda, savoring the fizz of the drink, tang of the mustard, the slight graininess of the breading, the bite of his teeth through the skin of the hot dog inside, incisors tearing flesh. He felt an odd wave of something from Optimus, a kind of mental shudder. The robots, he considered, under normal circumstances killed nothing alive to maintain their own lives; gaining their energy from suns and other sources of fusion. Autotrophs, came the word welling up from a biology text in high school. He chewed his deep-fried meal slowly, swallowing the greasy, processed fats and proteins with the satisfaction of a full stomach. “Sorry, big guy, but we’re omnivores. Meat builds strong bones and muscles.”
Do you know what is actually contained in hot dogs?
“No! And don’t tell me either. Gyah! Long as it says Real Beef on the package I don’t care.”
Again he stopped, collecting a paper cone of cotton candy, still warm, sweet and fluffy against his tongue, melting to a crunchy, chewy, compressed nugget in his mouth. It had been years since he’d had cotton candy. His tongue would be blue now - he stuck it out at a baby in a backpack carrier who giggled and stuck its own little tongue out in return. Mirror neurons, Sam’s all too helpful brain said. Optimus chuckled warmly in his ear.
A gypsy sat by him on the Ferris wheel, stealing his hat with a smile. Sam was pretty certain she worked for the carnival so didn’t protest. It was getting hot under all those layers anyway. The cool breeze felt good through his hair, across his face, wreathing down the collar of the coat, teasing him with a hint of her musky, mossy perfume. As they reached the top of the wheel, Sam looked out beyond the lights and music and swarms of people, trying to spot Optimus. A dot of blue among the shadows of trees winked on then off. One of Prime’s running lights, probably, across where collarbones would be on a human. Sam waved and the gypsy laughed, waving too, but not in the same direction.
I am here, Sam…. Uhff! Sam’s chair had started its descent from the crest. Prime had evidently gotten some of Sam’s leaving-your-stomach-behind feeling. The link between them was weirdly powerful tonight.
Farther from the midway, the lights were dimmer, strings of lights in trees between attractions providing just enough glow to stave off the darkness and keep the patrons from stumbling.
More tents, canvas flapping and thumping beneath the cries of the barkers and the more subdued hubbub of the crowd. The Lava Drinker! Mr. Electrico! The Monster Montgolfier! The Dangling Man! The Skeleton! The Demon Guillotine! Sam decided to skip the Sideshow freaks. He reckoned they were probably just people in costumes and makeup, but what if they really had medical anomalies in there? A part of him was curious, but his stomach was already making noises like it wasn’t going to be happy with him in an hour or two. The paintings on the barrier behind the barker were lurid enough for him.
I am surprised that the overt exploitation of the defective is still allowable here.
“I think they’re fakes,” Sam said. “Probably. But people still can’t stop staring at a train wreck. I dunno. Maybe just because we’re relieved it’s not us in there. No matter how bad you think your life is, it could have been worse.” The wind was picking up, getting colder. He was glad of the heavy coat and boots.
“Carousel’s closed for repairs,” said the glaring, red-haired man at the gate. He pointed to a hand-lettered sign that said the same thing. The lights were on, flashing in sequential rhythms, but there was no music. Sam looked askance at all the things on the poles that weren’t horses, or not like any horses he’d seen. Eight legs? Fish tails? Fangs?
“Just as well,” Sam murmured, ambling on.
Thirteen dancers spun on a raised wooden stage between two oak trees. Women dressed in flowing greens and browns, waving red-leafed branches in each hand as they swayed and stamped in an interweaving circle, chanting.
“Hoof and horn, hoof and horn, all that dies shall be reborn. Corn and grain, corn and grain, all that falls shall rise again.”
“Not exactly reassuring,” Sam said, thinking of Megatron. And the Fallen.
Perhaps not, for us. But resurrection seems to be a powerful concept within the traditions surrounding the autumnal equinox. Along with communication with and honoring of the dead.
He moved on. The lights flickered, warm and golden, but fewer the farther in he went, with shadows alive between them. Not an electrical flicker, more like flame, but behind the frosted glass of the lanterns it was hard to tell.
“Enjoy the Egyptian Hall of Mirrors! SEE your future, past, present! Our Hall is like no other on Earth! Wonders within beyond Ordinary Imagination!”
“Egypt again. Oh well. Might as well go for the full effect,” he told Optimus. Sam seemed to have misplaced his treasure chest, but the pockets of his jeans continued to yield small bills enough for entry.
He stepped through the narrow door and it seemed normal enough - a maze of glass and mirrors, flickering reflections of himself and the others who had gone before him receding back to infinity. Heat from lights above pressed his face, stealing the fog from his breath. The floor was dusty, soft drifts in corners repeated a million times.
Sam bumped along, wishing he could borrow Optimus’ scanners. His eyes were playing tricks. Instead of silvery glass he was catching glimpses of paneled walls, daylit landscapes, women with lioness eyes stared at him and were gone. Sam touched a pane of glass, behind which a man stood in a library with an upraised knife, behind a woman reading an atlas. A mirror slid shut, hiding the scene as the knife came down.
Sam? Your heart rate is elevated. Are you well?
It’s a trick, Sam told himself. They’re just playing. Nothing here will hurt me. Prime would die - and had - before allowing Sam to come to harm. Drafts blew cold between the edges of the sets and the mirrors. He could hear the voices and laughter of the other patrons through the plywood walls. It was only a trick. For half a second he stood outside on a hill, cold metal with a sun for a heart and eyes that saw through shifting spectra that made him dizzy.
“I’m fine.”
He lurched around another hairpin turn. How big was this maze anyway? How big could it possibly be? Ahead stood a man in a ragged top-hat and tails. Long black hair hung in tatters down his back. He turned as Sam approached - the man had no eyes and an impossible, gaping, grinning mouth full of black metallic teeth. He reached for Sam, but there was glass between them. The lights flickered, threatening to go out. Sam forced himself not to bolt, stepping carefully among the reflections of that demon grin.
Funhouse, House of Horrors. Well he’d gotten his money’s worth this time. To his left a woman trapped in an enormous, coffin-shaped block of ice clawed at the inside surface, her mouth opening in screams he couldn’t hear. To his right a little girl with a dirty face but immaculate hair, dressed like a vintage doll, stared and stared at him while blood dripped from her fingertips.
Sam?
“I’m all right.” The path between mirrors was narrower now, zigzagging sharply. Sam tried to move faster, and not to pant. The last thing they needed was Prime storming in with guns blazing.
He banged against a dead end, turned back to find it was only another sudden hairpin. A swamp with lichen-hung trees and black water rippled through another opening in the mirrors. Things with glowing eyes emerged, missing their lower jaws. Someone had put too much glycerin in the fog machine. Except it smelled like rotting vegetation, not fake fog.
Nearly stumbling, he found himself in an open space, like a turn of the last century small town general store. Coils of rope and swags of black fishing nets hung from the ceiling among spear guns and sharp boat gaffs. The canning jars on the shelves contained things Sam didn’t want a better look at. The scraggly old man at the cash register grinned at him with red-stained teeth. Sam managed to grin back.
In the corner was what Sam first thought was a wooden drugstore Indian. Then a flash of memories connected, and he knew he’d seen that style of clothing before; not on a Native American. In National Geographic or on the Discovery Channel, a documentary about the “Iceman” found in the Alps, frozen, mummified. Some kind of stone-age guy, with all his knives and tattoos more or less intact, and they’d reconstructed his clothing. Skins, cut to fit, sewn together, more advanced for the time period than anthropologists had thought.
As Sam moved, as the light shifted, the wooden not-Indian’s eyes flashed an improbable blue. A hologram. Iceman, Sam thought. Very funny, Optimus. A morbid kind of pun, but typical of the multilayered jokes Prime was wont to pull. “Cute.”
You appeared to be alarmed.
“Good times,” Sam muttered. His voice came out higher in pitch than he’d have liked. Whatever nightmares he got from this couldn’t be worse than the ones he already had. He hoped.
Beyond the Miskatonic General Store, the mirrors disappeared, and the passage resembled a low-ceilinged mine-shaft. Plywood and painted canvas, Sam thought, though the dirt sifting from above here and there and the groaning of timbers sound effects were very convincing. A group of teenagers whooped and hollered up ahead and he followed them out into the cold. Sam looked up at the star-pricked sky just to be sure. A rope and post fence steered people back toward the carnival, but from there Sam could see Optimus’ hill through the trees.
He put his hands on the rope to step over, the cuffs of the wool coat brushing his knuckles. Costume! “Be right back,” he told Prime. Swaggering through the carnival now, he found the crowds had thinned. The young children had gone home. Teens and young adults roamed the midway, some in costume. Sam caught whiffs of alcohol from a few.
By the time he’d transformed back into Sam Witwicky, college student, Prime had pulled around to the field near the front gate, waiting for him with a welcoming rumble of engine. Sam jumped inside the cab, grateful for the heater and a familiar, friendly presence.
“So, what was all that in the Hall of Mirrors?” Sam asked, leaning back in the seat, arms limp at his sides. Optimus reclined the seat-back slightly. “How was any of that real?”
“I don’t know,” Optimus admitted. “This is your planet, Sam. You tell me.”
“I think,” Sam said, half asleep, “that there are still people on this planet who work together to make magic. Maybe just for kicks, but they’re doing it. Some kind of magic. Maybe not magic magic, but…something.”
Optimus hummed, like the hum of his wheels on the road. “I’m glad, then, Sam, that you had a good time.”
“Thanks,” Sam murmured. He closed his eyes, smiling.
Then, as the moon watched, the two of them together left the wilderness behind and rolled into the town.