You've Got Another Thing Coming

Cherokee was dancing limbo. He hated it – he hated it with a vengeance.

However, he did not hate the dance as much as Limbo itself. A place in between worlds: not exactly a real world, but real enough to somewhat exist. And now he was there, forced to do the limbo till his own goddamned world would find it fit to let him back in.
The people here were the worst part, though, Cherokee had to admit. They were all – quite literally – clowns, and if there was one thing Cherokee couldn’t handle, it was clowns. He’d choose to face a full-grown Hungarian Fire Dragon any day over having to lay eyes upon a living, breathing, balloon-animal making clown. Also, he’d been here before, and now he didn’t have Rose with him to protect his honour and sanity, and the creepy people recognised him and tried to make polite conversation over the Hawaiian music that seemed to be a part of the air over here.
Last time he’d seen the clowns had been after the cave incident when Rose and he had been thrown into limbo and forced to humiliate themselves by walking under a stick that kept lowering itself and shouting obscenities at the ones who couldn’t walk under it. They had been walking in the cave when suddenly they began to sparkle, and bells chimed in a non-existent breeze. With a ‘poof’ they had ended up in Limbo, and hadn’t gotten out of there until the bells started chiming again, sparkles flew and with a ‘poof’ they’d returned to the very place they disappeared from.
And now he was back.

Cherokee hated Limbo. He hated it with a vengeance.

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Let me tell you one thing: being attached to a cold stone wall is not fun. Being attached to it by rusty chains are even less fun. Also, having ankles and wrists wanting to commit suicide – and a headache that made me want to have the wrists and ankles commit homicide – hanging by chains attached to a cold stone wall is probably one of the least humorous things you can ever do.

“Groan,” I groaned, and allowed my chin to rest on my chest. “I want an aspirin.”

The dark darkness that covered the entire dark room with darkness swallowed my words with a hunger that resembled a PMS-ing girl with a chocolate craving.

“No, wait!” I rustled my chains and hung my head even lower. “I want a dozen Vicodins, a cane, a medical degree and a really cool motorbike.”

“I think you violated at least three copyright laws right there,” the darkness spat back at me.

Let me tell you another thing: being spoken to by darkness isn’t something that happens to me on a regular basis. However, I’ve been spoken to by a dress, a king and a lamp post on a very short period of time, so talking darkness shouldn’t bother me as much as I’m a bit ashamed to admit that it did.
Still, I did not hesitate too long before I answered, as me shutting my mouth is a once-in-a-life-time thing.

“I don’t think it’s against the law to make a reference towards popular culture,” I told the darkness with as much dignity that I could summon. Consequently, a new born mouse would’ve sounded more impressive than I did.

“Maybe not,” the darkness agreed. Silence followed.

“Hello?” I ventured, as the silence became a bit pressing.

“Yes?” said the darkness politely.

“Uhm,” said I, trying to jump on the polite train as well. “My name’s Callie. Who are you?”

“Your warden,” the darkness said. Suddenly the sound of heavy boots against stone floor echoed in the silence, and from the lovely shadows emerged quite an interesting character. Of course, I couldn’t see anything, as the complete darkness of the room was still very o-so-present.

The boots made their way somewhere over to my right, and then something sounded like a curtain being pulled up. Light flooded the scene, but my gaze was stuck on the person over by the newly materialised window.

It was a guy, no more than two or three years older than my self, with curly black hair and the kind of brown eyes that makes weaker girls than me swoon and scream out in delight. He seemed to reach me to my chin, but as I was hanging a bit up the wall I’d say we were about the same height under normal circumstances.
Also – and let me tell you; this really made my day – he was wearing a uniform. It was a simple infantry uniform; green trousers which were nicely tucked into heavy army boots, a green coat held together by large brass buttons and a thick green belt of the same rough fabric as the trousers and coat. He was also sporting a green hat, or cap, with a cute little brooch with the written words "Vive la Résistance! on it; but he was holding it in one of his hands; hands of the kind you wouldn’t mind have roaming all over your skin.
This ensemble accentuated my warden’s broad shoulders and chest, his lovely flat stomach and gorgeously shaped face.

So, can you really blame a girl for staring?

“Ahem,” he cleared his throat uncomfortably, probably in order to snap me out of my drooling fan-girl pose.

It did not work.

“Ahem,” cough, cough. “Ahem.”

Too lost in his fashionably wonderful eyes to even notice, I began leaning forward in my chains until my face was nose-to-nose with his. I grinned.
“You’re gorgeous,” my tongue spoke before my brain had read over the files and put an ‘OK’ stamp on them. I felt a bit of froth collect in the corner of my mouth and I tried to giggle flirtishly, but my vocal chords thought it would be a hell of a lot more fun to sound a bit different, and turned my light giggle into a deep, rumbling half-snort.

That snapped me out of my hormone-induced comatose. Jerking backwards, my back hit the wall with a thud that made the nice, un-credited air go ‘whoosh’ out of my lungs. My head dropped, my body began to ache again as my brain kicked into action and I groaned loudly again: “Argh!”

The very pleasant-looking guy took a step back.

“Uhm, are you all right, man?” he wondered, his awkwardness stepping aside for a more prudent sense of sympathy.

My brain cells tried to collect themselves in the simmering void that was my skull.
“Man?” I marvelled as soon as my tongue figured it was still in my mouth and there for a reason.
Through the haze that consisted of my current visionary abilities I glared down what was left of my torn and ripped shirt, which resulted in the conclusion that I was in fact a man – because if I wasn’t then things would be peeking out of where they shouldn’t be peeking out of.

“Yes?” the guy prompted, as he had thought that my utilisation of the word ‘man’ was actually a reference to himself.

However, my brain was still reeling with the information it had conveniently lost during the previous commotion, and now rediscovered.

“If I’m a man,” I spoke out loud in the reverence of the thoughts that smacked into me with the force of a heavy-loaded truck going at about 110 km/h, “then I probably shouldn’t stare at you the way I’m staring at you.”

The thick fog that was the insides of my head cleared up a bit, and I could now see the guy’s face a bit more clearly. This didn’t help with my new-found concentration abilities; however, he did seem to agree with my previous words.
Yet, he chose to speak as following:
“It’s none of my business whether or not you find me attractive,” he said, eyeing me suspiciously. “It really does not matter in a situation like this.”

“In a situation like this?” I repeated, eyeing him suspiciously. We were apparently both suspicious bastards.

He pulled something up from one of the pockets of his uniform – can’t really say where the pockets were, as the fabric clung oh, so nicely to his body like it does in every girl’s fantasy – and walked up to me from the side.

“This is going to hurt a bit,” he told me, his eyes suddenly filled with compassion. “They messed you up pretty damn well back there.”

Then he stuck the large key in its keyhole and turned it around three times. He then pushed it three times, crowed like a hen and stomped his foot.

Thankfully he had the grace to blush after this little display of loony-bin behaviour. And then, he tapped my nose three times.

As of by magic, which it probably was, the chains slacked, let me go and I fell to the ground in a heap. The guy had been right. It hurt.
A couple of hands then grabbed my shoulders and hauled me to my feet. I stood, but only for about half of a second before toppling over and falling down in order to re-enact The Fall of Man.

My warden apparently thought this to be the wrong kind of actions a prisoner should make and decided to haul me to my feet again. Only this time he slung my arm over his shoulder and supported my weight by himself. As the utter girl I actually was, I felt a slight tint of hurt as he grunted from the excessive burden.

My head was spinning a million miles an hour, and I felt the pleasant darkness overcome me yet again.

“I think I’m going to faint, dude.” I mumbled in complete honestly. “It’s either that or puking all over your fancy uniform.”

He glanced down at me from the corner of his wonderfully chocolate-coloured eyes and said with heartfelt sincerity: “Faint.”

And, as the good little prisoner of the French Resistance, I fainted nice and quietly as my warden dragged me across the room and out the thick, wooden door.