he was cold in the hospital on the real side. Cold in a hospital gown.
Do you know where you are?
Christopher raced through the freezing water. The cold soon turned to numb, and the numb soon turned to heat. His legs were as hot as his forehead. He jumped out of the stream and back onto her trail. The streetlight far in the distance. Christopher saw a fork up ahead. He looked down to know which direction to turn.
Suddenly the footprints were gone.
Christopher stopped. Panicked. It was a trick. A trap. Another way to kill him by killing time. He looked around him on all sides. All he saw were trees. The hissing lady could be anywhere. He was a sitting duck. Christopher listened for any sign of her. He heard nothing. Just the wind and the sound of his own breath.
Crack.
Christopher looked above him in the trees. He saw hundreds of mailbox people, waiting quietly in the shadows. Hanging on the high branches like icicles. Christopher turned to run, but all at once the mailbox people jumped into the path.
Christopher was surrounded.
The mailbox people swarmed over the woods. The deer rushed at him. Christopher grabbed a branch to climb his way out. He moved up one branch. Two branches.
But the hissing lady was in the tree like a serpent.
She grabbed his hand. Slithering.
Christopher screamed and fell down onto the trail. But the deer were on top of him. Their teeth punctured his skin. They smelled like the hospital. Like antiseptic. Christopher was too tired to scream. He knew this was the moment of his death. He closed his eyes for the inevitable when suddenly, he heard deer being picked up and thrown. Christopher looked up.
It was the nice man.
“GET OFF HIM!” the nice man screamed.
The deer snapped at the nice man. Taking chunks of flesh from his shoulders. Blood poured down his shirt. Down his arm. He grabbed Christopher’s hand.
“COME WITH ME!” he yelled.
“NO!!!!!!!” the hissing lady shrieked. “STOP HELPING HIM!!!!!”
The hissing lady swooped down from the trees just as the nice man and Christopher took off running. The deer and the mailbox people giving chase.
“How did you get away?” Christopher asked breathlessly.
“David.”
“Where is he?”
“Bringing help. There are others who want to be free. Come on!”
They ran together. Down the path. The streetlight was right in front of them. Blue like the moon. They jumped out of the woods onto the field. They raced toward the street. Christopher looked ahead and saw his neighborhood laid out like a circus.
The imaginary world had gone completely mad.
He saw clouds move over the town like a brushfire. Hundreds of people screamed. The man in the Girl Scout uniform pulled himself into the bushes. Another man pulled himself into a van. The couple couldn’t stop kissing each other. People he had never seen before. All of them were screaming the same thing.
“Get us out of here, Christopher. Please!”
Christopher and the nice man raced toward the street. The mailbox people fanned out through the smoldering yards, surrounding it. The hissing lady crashed through the trees with the deer and ran at them at blinding speed.
“GIVE HIM BACK TO ME!” she hissed.
The hissing lady jumped on the nice man just as he threw Christopher over the mailbox people and into the street to safety. Christopher hit the cul-de-sac with a hard thud, scraping his body on the pavement. He immediately jumped up. He saw the nice man being torn apart by the hissing lady. Her burnt hands ripping at his flesh like two claws.
“Stop helping him!” the hissing lady screamed.
The nice man pushed her back and crawled to the street. The hissing lady slipped onto the pavement. Her foot started to smoke and burn. Leaving liquid skin on the concrete, which was carried away by the blood. She immediately jumped back onto the driveway, screaming and cursing.
The hissing lady motioned for the deer. They laid their bodies across the pavement like chips on a roulette table. The hissing lady jumped on them and moved to the nice man crawling on the street. She pulled up his head and sank her teeth into his neck. His throat crunched like a wishbone. She was eating the nice man alive. It was now or never. Christopher felt it. It was ten seconds until midnight. Ten seconds until Christmas.
10
The deer jumped on the nice man. Snapping and biting. Christopher knew he had to kill the hissing lady now. He looked at her body. Shot. Stabbed. Burned a hundred times with