Going Lucid (3 page)

“What?”
Malakha asked herself running her hands over her goose bumps.

Then
she heard the laugh. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh either. It was deep and
throaty, reminding Malakha of how Bowser laughed in the Super Mario games. She
must be feeling homesick if she was hearing that laugh.

Malakha
ignored it, looking at the door and wondering if anyone would notice if she
left. As Malakha started inching her way towards the door, she heard the
laughter again. This time, Malakha stopped to pay attention to it, looking
around to see if she could find the source of the laughter.

“Where
are you?” she asked.

She
didn’t get an answer and the laughter continued, getting louder in her ears,
making her head begin to hurt as the priest’s voice also rose along with the
screams of the woman.

“Where
are you?” she asked again. “Why are you laughing?”

The
laughter continued, but something told Malakha to look at the exorcism again,
to where the woman had fallen out the chair, still screaming hysterically with
her eyes rolled back and looking like she was having a seizure.

“You’re
laughing at her,” Malakha realized. Then she frowned and said it again. “You’re
laughing at her.”

The
laughter only continued.

“Stop
it. Stop laughing. Stop laughing at her,” Malakha said, volume increasing. When
the laughing continued, Malakha groaned loudly and then screamed, “Damn it.
Leave her alone! Stop laughing at her.”

The
laughter stopped, and Malakha looked around again to see if she could tell
where it had been coming from, but found nothing. Then she noticed that
everything in the room had stopped. The priest had stopped his exorcism. The
woman’s cries had quieted. And everyone in the room was looking at her.

Malakha
looked back at them in confusion at first, and then it dawned on her.

“You
all… you all didn’t hear the laughing.”

John
answered her first, after he exchanged a look with Father Thomas and the
priest.

“What
laughing?”

Malakha
stared at them, wide-eyed at first and then her eyes narrowed as she huffed,
turned on her heel, and said, “This is bullshit. I’m done.”

With
that, Malakha stomped out of the room, not caring that Father Thomas was
calling her back, not caring that she would probably be in more trouble. She
didn’t care at all. All she knew now was that she was going to that rave.

Chapter
Three

The Rave

Malakha stormed
down the hall, ignoring the fact that if she was caught right then, she’d
probably be accused of causing trouble. They wouldn’t believe that she was
actually coming back from her punishment. No one believed anything she said.
Malakha was starting not to believe herself. Hearing the piano in the music
room was one thing, but hearing laughter that no one else could was something
else entirely. It concerned her to say the least.

Still,
the fact that she heard laughter wasn’t what bothered her the most. The fact
that someone was laughing at all was the problem. While she didn’t believe in
exorcisms, she didn’t find it remotely funny that someone else found humor in
the girl’s trauma as she was supposedly exorcised.

Malakha
was so focused on what she had witnessed earlier that she didn’t realize she
had made it back to the school part of the building until she was about to take
the stairs up to her room. She paused on the steps. If she went back to her
room, then Sabrina would not only want to know what happened, something Malakha
didn’t want to talk about, but she would also try to convince her not to go to
the rave. While on any normal day, Malakha wasn’t easily persuaded by Sabrina’s
arguments, she felt a little too unnerved to argue with her friend. And Malakha
really wanted to go to that rave. Malakha
needed
to go to that rave.

Decision
made, Malakha looked at the time on her phone, a simple old-fashioned flip-up
phone that the school distributed to them. 8:45 flashed at her. Tucking the
phone in her pocket, she took her foot off the first step and started down the
halls, heading in the direction of the courtyard. As she got closer to her
destination, the halls slimmed. Then she began to pass walls with large windows
that looked out into the courtyard.

It
wasn’t too late, so the there were no hall monitors yet to catch her sneaking
out. It would be sneaking back in that would be the problem and even then it
would only be slightly harder. She would just wait until about six o’clock in
the morning when it wouldn’t be too odd to see a student up and about in the
halls headed to the dining hall for an early breakfast.

Malakha
crossed the courtyard and then went through the arched entryway that led to a
shorter hall with stone walls and damp concrete floors. The hall led to the
garden, which was bordered by large hedges on the side, with only one official
exit at the end, usually guarded by one of the many nuns or monks that
volunteered at the school. However, there was another, unofficial exit; a hole
through the hedges that would free her from school property. The hole was
small, but since Malakha was a small girl, she fit through it easily.

Now
free of the school, Malakha crossed the field of what Malak called wild
flowers, weeds in Malakha’s opinion, to the road about a hundred yards or so
from the castle. A group of people were already there, Malak not one of the
people among them. Their stares probably should have made her uncomfortable,
but instead Malakha stared right back.

“What
are you doing here?” a girl with blond hair, blue eyes, and pale skin from the
senior class asked.

“The
same reason you are,” Malakha replied standing next to the edge of the road.

“We
know that,” said one of the guys standing near the girl, while throwing down
and stepping on a cigarette before taking out another to light. And the nuns
thought Malakha was a delinquent…

“Question
is who invited you?” another guy said looking up from the phone he was texting
on.

“I
did,”
came
Malak’s voice from behind them. He was
making his way out the flower field, followed by a tall dark skinned girl with
relaxed hair hanging down in waves just below her shoulders. Malakha guessed
she was in one of Malak’s classes because Malakha had never seen her.

“You
invited her?” the blonde girl from earlier said.

“Yes
Eliza. I did,” Malak replied. “Is there a problem?”

Eliza
didn’t reply, only looked at Malakha out the corner of her eyes before looking
back at Malak. “I guess not.
As long as she doesn’t spoil
it.”

Again,
Malakha’s reputation preceded her. Their problem wasn’t necessarily her beliefs
or lack of them, but not many people appreciated Malakha’s brutal honesty and
inability to mince words.

“I’m
not spoiling anything. I’m going because no one in there knows the definition
of fun,” Malakha said nodding back toward the school and then added, “But if
you really don’t want me to go, I’ll go back. But don’t expect me to cover for
you if one of the nuns
catch
me sneaking back into the
dorms.”

It was
an obvious threat; one Malakha knew everyone in the group knew she’d carry
through even if Malakha would get herself in trouble in the process. She was
already in trouble as it was.

Eliza
glared over Malakha’s shoulder at Malak, who Malakha imagined shrugged behind
her, before looking at Malakha again.

“Whatever,”
she said turning back to the road to wait for their ride.

Malakha
was perfectly content to wait by herself and let Malak talk with his
classmates, but instead he came to stand next to her. He didn’t say anything,
but Malakha could feel his eyes on her.

After a
while, he finally said, “You look like a school girl.”

Malakha
started to ask him what he meant, but he raised an eyebrow at her, which made
her look down at her clothes. She was still wearing her school uniform.

“Damn
it,” Malakha muttered.

“Did the
exorcism last that long?”

“Not
really or at least, I left early so I wouldn’t know. I had time to get changed,
but I just didn’t feel like arguing with Sabrina about it tonight.”

Malak
laughed.
“You?
Not up to an argument? What happened at
that exorcism?”

Malakha
rolled her eyes. “That is the last thing I want to talk about right now. Can we
just figure out how I’m going to find something else to wear?”

“Okay.
Now you’re passing up a chance to vocalize your problems with Catholicism and
their practices? I know something’s wrong.”

It was
supposed to make her laugh, but Malakha didn’t. Instead she again heard the
deep, throaty laugh from the exorcism in her head.

“Malakha,
are you okay?”

“Just
not in the mood for your joking right now,” Malakha said while glaring at Malak
to back up her statement.

Malak
sighed. “Relax. Just take off the jacket and tie and open the top buttons of
your blouse some. You wear enough jewelry on a regular basis that it makes you
look more dressed up,” Malak offered.

Malakha
removed her jacket and then swung her arm back and forth to loosen the silver
bracelets on her left arm so that they would make a clanging sound when she
moved. Then she took off her tie and opened the top three buttons of her
blouse.

“Better?”
she asked

Malak
looked her up and down. “Perfect. It’s a good thing you’re already inclined to
breaking the school dress code anyway.”

That
was true. Jewelry was against the rules in school, but Malakha thought it was
stupid and wore her silver bracelets, two silver rings, and a pair of silver
stud earrings anyway. She was also supposed to wear tacky patent leather shoes
that not even a six year old would wear. Instead she wore her black leather
boots with silver buckles on either side. The nuns stopped trying to correct
her ages ago.

“My
hair okay?” she asked running her hair through the long wavy micro twists.

Malak
nodded, and Malakha finished adjusting her outfit just as a large van pull up
on the road.

“You’re
late Ralph,” Eliza said as she opened the front door and took the front
passenger seat while everyone else climbed in the back.

“By ten
minutes,” said the boy at the wheel. Malakha couldn’t quite tell how old he was
because his beard threw her off, but she guessed he wasn’t that much older than
she was.

Malakha
got in last, ensuring that she got an end seat. She looked over to her left to
see the tall girl Malak brought with him. She met Malakha’s gaze and smiled,
but didn’t say anything which left Malakha to lean on her arm and look out the
window.

The
ride to the rave took half an hour and made Malakha glad that she caught a ride
with the group because otherwise she didn’t know how she would have gotten to
the rave. When they got there, there was a long line of people outside the
door. Normally Malakha would have tried to find a way to get ahead of it, but
the line was moving fast, so she was content to wait in the line with everyone
else. When they got to the front after about ten minutes in line, she flashed
her ID and the bouncer let her in.

The
sound of the electric dance music immediately assaulted her ears and already
Malakha was beginning to feel better. She looked back at Malak, who was saying
something to the tall dark girl she had been sitting next to in the van, and
decided to leave before he could try to glue himself to her side in the name of
protecting her or something. Malakha didn’t particularly care to dance at the
moment, so she went to find something to drink before finding a place to sit on
a round circular lounge couch with a round table in the middle of it.

As
Malakha sipped on her drink, she watched the bright flashing light show,
entranced by the different colors and shapes.

“You’re
going to have a seizure if you keep looking at that.”

Malakha
turned to look at the person behind her. He was a tall muscular Caucasian with
what looked like brown hair, and Malakha was pretty sure he didn’t go to school
with her, so she guessed he must be one of the local teenagers.

“They
probably won’t,” Malakha said to him, turning back around in her seat. Normally
strangers made her uncomfortable, but this time she wasn’t bothered by the fact
that he was invading her personal bubble. Maybe it was the rave or maybe it was
something in her drink. She smelled it as she took another sip, but wasn’t sure
she would know what to smell for since she avoided alcohol and no one in her
family drank it.

“Want
to dance?” he asked.

Malakha
shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t
tell me you came all the way here to sit and drink by yourself.”

Malakha
actually would have been content to do that all night. Half the fun of going to
a party was watching what other people were doing.

“I
might dance later,” she decided.

“Come
on,” he said.

Malakha
sighed as she looked at him. There was definitely something in her drink
because she was actually considering taking him up on his offer. Or maybe it
was the fact that she still couldn’t get the laughing out her head. The guy was
a welcome distraction if he could help her keep the laughing away.

“You’ve
convinced me,” Malakha said, trying to seem like she was only acting coy. She
didn’t think the guy cared though as he led her to the dance floor to dance to
the electric music.

Malakha
was normally a very conservative person, despite her very non-conservative
beliefs or rather, her non-conserved way of making people to know them. But she
didn’t care about that, so desperate to get the laughter out her head, the
screams of that girl as she was supposedly exorcised. So she began to sway her
hips and raise her arms, picking up her feet to the beat, keeping up with the
music and the mental metronome in her head, a habit formed after years of
formal piano lessons.

The
guy, whose name she belatedly realized she hadn’t bothered to ask for, flashed
a smile as she began to let the music loosen her up. Then he placed his hands
on her hips to guide them, staring at them as she swayed them back and forth.
Normally, Malakha would have been uncomfortable with that too, but she let it
slide as long as he didn’t try to grind his hips into hers.

Her
heart began to race with the beat of the music, thumping faster and faster,
pounding the laughter from the exorcism earlier that night out of her head
until she was lost in the moment. Somewhere along the way she changed dance
partners, until she was just dancing amongst a group of four or five people,
none of whom she knew.

Malakha
didn’t know how long she danced, losing track of time, not even worrying that
she had no clue when her ride was supposed to leave and take her and the rest
of her schoolmates back to school. Honestly, she didn’t even care, allowing
herself to stay lost in her own little world, moving to the music. The beat
began to pick up, the same notes repeating over and over, but higher and higher
and higher on the scale until they climaxed with a deep, throaty, dark laugh at
the end.

It
snapped Malakha out her trance and caused her to look around. While she was
sure it had been part of the music, she wasn’t sure. Regardless, the laughter
was back to the forefront of her mind, and she doubted she would be able to
forget about it again. So she went to get another drink and found her seat at
the round lounge couch. More people were there, Eliza being one of them sitting
next to their driver.

“Where
have you been?” Eliza asked.

“Dancing,”
Malakha said.

“Malak
was looking for you,” the tall dark skinned girl from earlier said.

“I
figured. Probably so he could be all protective of me. I won’t have any fun
with him around.”

Their
driver grinned then. “You haven’t begun to have fun yet dear.”

Then he
took something out his pocket, a bag of what looked like tablets.

“What’s
that?” Malakha asked though she already suspected.

He gave
her a wry look as he began to pass them around the table. Eliza took one and so
did some other people she didn’t know. The tall girl passed, and when the bag
got to her, Malakha stared at them for a moment, not sure what to do with them
or if she would take them. The laughter was getting to her again though,
beginning to suffocate her and make her feel claustrophobic. One time wouldn’t
hurt; one time to get rid of the laughter. She took a tablet and passed the bag
back to Eliza. Then Malakha watched to see what everyone else was doing and
seeing everyone just stick the pill under their tongue, she did the same and
waited.