Six Feet Under

[Rahsash Geldich]

Amber turned the music up a little louder and turned around to grin at her boyfriend in the back seat. He winked and blew her a kiss before turning back to his heated conversation with one of his friends.

 

"Man, this is going to be the best party ever!" her friend Jasmine gushed. Her entire body glittered with silver sparkle as she jammed to the musics heavy bass beat. Amber bumped the steering wheel lightly with the palm of her hand, humming to the music. "And everyone is going to be there too!"

 

"Maybe Alec?" she interupted with a grin, enjoying the shocked and slightly secretive look that Jasmine pulled over her face.

 

"Maybe." Amber just laughed and pulled onto a graveled side road, checking the street sign to make sure she was going the right way. Personally, she thought Cemetery Lane was a stupid name, not that it realy mattered. The roads namesake was visible off to her right, sillouhetted against the twilight sky, headstones standing guard over their owners. She shuddered slightly. She hated graveyards.

 

Soon she parked her car in a long line of others, and they all flew out of the car and into the mass of people. Similar music pumped through giant speakers opposite a giant bonfire which was the source of quite a few pleasant aromas. There was a strange smell of smoke on the air, one she didn't find familiar. It was vaguely sweet, something that she had smelled before...

 

"Wanna dance?" Chris snuck up on her from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist grinning at her tilted back head.

 

"Sure!" she pulled him, both laughing, to a place around one of the speakers and began piecing together bits of her Dance Team routine with ad libs. Chris grinned at her, dark blue eyes taking her in. She stepped closer and grabbed his hands, making him dance the steps they had made up at previous bashes. She could see a glittering Jasmine talking to Alec, both leaned against a table and apparently deep in conversation. Seeing Amber's glance, Jasmine grinned cheekily back, saying some comment to Alec that made him laugh. At least they were talking.

 

After she finally tired out, Amber went off to talk with a few of her other friends that Jasmine was excitedly gabbing with. Chris said something about food and wandered over to the bonfire.

 

"And he asked me out on a date! The movies, next friday!" Amber gave her a high five and a few of the other girls laughed. They went over all the latest gossip, each issue being picked apart and everyone's two cents being chipped in.

 

After a while, Amber sat her glass down to see what food Chris had found, glancing at the glowing numbers on her watch. Nine oh five... they had to be home by ten thirty, so to leave at then gave them another hour or so. As she approached the fire, she could smell the strange smoke again, its odor slightly irritating. A brief encounter with Chris, who was relating a huntng tale, left her with a hot dog and a bag of chips. She gave him a quick hug and headed back over to her friends.

 

She picked her drink back up, sipping it to rid herself of the smell of the smoke. She listened to the rest of them talk, munching on her food and generally enjoying herself. At the beep of ten, she got everyone together and got into the car, revving the engine slightly as she waited for the person behind her to let her out. She yawned and wished she hadn't. The music was lulling her to go to sleep after her late nighter the night past. She pulled out and headed home, unable to supress the shudder that ran through her as they passed the cemetery, its spot upon the hill giving her a feeling of being watched. She shook it off and...

 

"@#%$!" Another car was comming head on, having overcorrected and swerving into her side of the narrow country road. There was an explosion of light and a scream, heart tearing and so painful it was almost mental. Another scream tore past her mouth as the dashboard bit cruelly into her legs, Jasmine slouched, head bloodied against the window.

 

"Amber!" Amber slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a sudden stop that threw all of them agianst their seatbelts. She could feel sweat beading on her forehead, trickling down her back. Her breath was ragged in her throat, comming in short sharp gasps. The road surrounding her was empty. There was no car, no light but that of the half-full moon.

 

"What...? Didn't you guys see that?" She was shaking, hands slipping on the smooth steering wheel. Chris nodded shook his head, worry written all over his face. He reached for one of her hands, prying her fingers off of the wheel anf twining them through his own.

 

"What in the hell was that?" Jasmine asked softly, rubbing her head where it had bashed the window.

 

"I don't know... Do you think we should go on?" Toby was looking at them both concern etched deep in his eyes.

 

"I think so. I'll be careful..." Amber tried to start the engine, but it simply wouldn't turn.

 

"Dammit. I just fixed this last week," Chris muttered angrily. All four got out of the car. And looked around. And fell weakly back against it.

 

"Dorthy, you just left Kansas," Said a voice close to Ambers shoulder.

[Rahsash Geldich]

Amber twisted around, staring open-mouthed at the strange being that was now perched on the roof of her silver Jeep. It was grinning mischeviously back at her.

 

"What is that? A midget in an easter bunny suit?" Toby's voice allowed Amber to recover enough to shut her mouth and stop gaping like a fish out of water. Indeed, that was what it looked like. The man was clothed in a white rabbit suit, the floppy ears twitching as he talked. The face was cut out, allowing slightly sinister brown eyes to twinkle out of an unnaturally pale face. He had a little pug nose and whiskers, along with an eerie cheshire cat grin. His perfect pearly teeth glimmered like his suit in the pale light.

 

"I, sir, am no rabbit. But I'm not a man either." With a fit of mad giggles, he hopped off the top and landed in the middle of the road, directly on the yellow line. At his expectant look, Chris applauded scarcastically. The strange little man didn't seem to notice that the others didn't follow suit. Amber then noticed he had a scepter, also of some white material, the number six surrounded by a circle perched on the end he carried upright, the other end was curved in the double cleft of bones on a child's halloween costume.

 

"So what would that make you?" Jasmine questioned. The man turned and got a slightly confused look on his face.

 

"I don't really know," He decided. "Call me Guggle. No, wait, I don't like that. What about Yelch? Nah, Toodles? Nope..."

 

"How about Cracker?" Tobey muttered, beginning to lose his temper. Jasmine shushed him just as the strange thing waved his scepter triumphantly.

 

"I have it! You must call me Hexad!" With this proclimation, he begain to execute a Chinese fire drill, running around the Jeep giggling madly.

 

"Hexad? What the hell does that mean?" Amber asked the others. Each eventually shrugged, and turned back to watching the bizzare thing run in circles. Amber looked around, awed at the change in scenery. There was no bonfire in view, nor was much else. There seemed to be nothing but a stretch of black road to either direction, disecting fields of tall grass the swayed to some unfelt breeze as if with a life of its own. She wondered why it wasn't gravel, but it made little difference she supposed. The hill upon which sat the cemetery was the only thing that was the same. Amber could have gone without that. The moon hung lower in the sky, much larger and brighter, casting a faintly blue light all around that she reckoned was bright enough to read by, should the need be.

 

After a few more laps, Hexad collapsed against the rim of the front tire, giggles drowned out by pants.

 

"Um, Hexad?" It took the being a few seconds to realize someone was talking to it. When it finally did, he looked up at Tobey with a cheeky grin.

 

"Yees?" He pulled out the middle of the word, pronouncing it with a long 'e' rather than the normal short 'eh'.

 

"Where is this?" Hexad tilted his head to the side, ears twitching in thought.

 

"Come with me to have some tea!" As if that answered the question, he stood up and began skipping off in the direction of the cemetery. Tobey clenched his fists, crossed his arms, and stomped off after him, the light of anger in his brown eyes, but not enough to hurt Hexad. The trio left standing by the car looked at one another undecidedly.

 

"What time is it?" Whispered Jasmine, as if that was actually a deciding factor. Amber looked at her watch, then looked at it again. The numbers were going backwards, stopping at odd intervals to flash the number six a few times, never in any order. Wordlessly, she showed off the glowing dial, Jasmine sighing deeply and rubbing her temples, Chris storming off after Tobey. "We might as well follow them." Amber nodded and trotted after the others, who were following Hexad up the gentle slope of the hill.

 

"I hate cemeteries, I hate them, I hate them, I hate them," Chanted Amber.

 

"I gathered as much," Jasmine commented dryly.

[Rahsash Geldich]

As the ascended the hill, Hexad was pointing to a hole near a leafless tree that stood in the middle of the graveyard. Its topmost branches clawed at the moon as if to bring more light into the shadow upon shadows that was this place. The headstones were mostly worn, old granite that reflected the pale light as a glow, but the first few reflected it, newer. Jasmine suddenly gasped and jumped closer to Amber.

 

"What?" Amber looked around, expecting the undulating specter of her nightmares to jump out at any second.

 

"There's a face on that headstone."

 

Amber shivered, a chill wracking down her spine as she skirted the space in front of it. During the day, the face might have looked like a child singing, but now it looked like a cryptic scream, a tormented cry for help. She didn't want to look, didn't want to know who now resided there.

 

"Well, you wanted tea, but now you won't come down to drink it!" Hexad pouted, crossing his arms and nearly hitting himself in the face with the scepter. His ears were straight up in indignitation, and the tail that Amber just now noticed was tapping in time to one of his oversized feet.

 

"I wanted to know where we were, not whether I can have some tea or not," stated Tobey tersely. His hair was sticking up at odd angles from where he had run his fingers through it in agitation, and he had hand clutched at the back of his neck as if imagining what the effects would be if that was placed at Hexad's neck.

 

The thing had the audacity to look perlplexed by this proclimation, tilting its head to the side. One of its ears flopped down in his face and he blew it back up irritably.

 

"Besides," added Chris, "Theer is no way in heaven-"

 

"Or hell," interjected Jasmine shuddering. Amber gave her a caustic glare, much happier munius the thought.

 

"That I am following a white rabbit into a hole."

 

"Ah, don't worry about it," said Hexad, dismissing the refusal and waving them into the hole as he went in himself. "Alice doesn't live here any more."

 

The words set a thousand icy butterflies loose in her stomach and they way they were fluttering, she didn't think she would be able to stomach the dreaded tea.

[Rahsash Geldich]

They stood in a small circle, a circle of famliarity that each had come to depend on in this short, yet in explicably long amount of time. Amber could read the fear on everyone's face, feel in in the tears that sprang unbidden from her eyes and flowed down her face. When Tobey saw them, his face crumpled in anger and some unnamed feeling the spoke of regret and hurt.

 

"I hate this place. We're following a white rabbit down his little magic hole."

 

"To drink tea... Wonder if there's a guy running around down there with a top hat..." They all chuckled emptily at the joke. Chris was staring at Amber, into her eyes, silently begging ehr to please stop crying. She couldn't stop the tears any easier than she could give a genuine laugh, but a watery smile brought one in return, and he wiped the glittering substance off of her stained cheeks and sighed, kicking the ground, completely at a loss.

 

"Well, no use in standing here, lets get going." Tobey tried to usher them all towards the hole, and the wind that had gone by so long unfelt ran up the hill. It was ice cold and carried long, somber notes that brought feelings of untold mourning and suffering to all of them. Jasmine shuddered. A voice sounded up, carrying a melody that was more felt than said.

 

"Crying, crying silver tears, silver tears that speak of fears... Dying dying all are dying, all are going away, running astray, drifting away."

 

Amber was called back to life by Chris tugging on her arm, pulling her insistenly towards the hole, trying to speak, saying something... The voice held her, called to her, wanted her to lift her voice and join in the song...

 

"I don't know the words," she whispered, twisting slightly. Chris gave another insistent tug and she crawled into the hole, seeing nothing but Tobey's white tee in the distance, and the flecks of silver that occasionally showed where Jasmine's cocoa skin was located in the ever dark. Then Chris came in behind her and shut off all the light.

 

She went in mechanically, on her hands and knees for the most part. The wind whispered behind her, trying to reach into the tunnel and pull her back out. There was an insistent combination of tugging and pushing that led her away from the voice.

 

"But I want to sing," she protested, still moving and completely lost in the internal battle that she was fighting.

 

"Damnint Amber, keep moving, you're scaring me to death..." She dimly recognized the voice as male, but no more than that.

 

Suddenly, the voice stopped, leaving Amber feeling as if a pressure had been taken off of her entire body. She tingled head to toe, and small spots of light danced in her vision. Although the caster of the spell had stopped, the after effects were lignering, and she still felt the desire to turn around.

 

"Oh my god, what the hell was that?" Jasmine stopped in front of her, turning around to hug Amber.

 

"You had us scared to death hon, you looked like a zombie or something!"

 

Up ahead, Tobey had crawled out into the space beyond the tunnel, and a thump resunded as he sat down against the wall, to let the rest come in.

 

"You guys, I don't know where we are, but I don't think that the Mad Hatter would keep a house like this."