Free Wait Until Twilight by Sang Pak Page B

someone in the previous chamber where the pickled weirdness was. “Crap,” I say, and go through the next door. I freeze for a moment because there’s a guy looking straight at me in the flashing corridor. Flashing because there’s a bright-as-hell strobe light blinking in there, making everything look all herky-jerky, and like it’s not real. When I turn to run, so does he, in that kind of broken, discontinuous way strobe lights make things look, and I realize it’s me. It’s a mirror that leads into a labyrinth of more mirrors. I hear the door begin to open at the back of the other end so I run into the maze and start making random turns, right and then left. I feel like a laboratory rat in a bad dream. It’s hard enough to get my bearings with those mirrors making everything look like there’s more depth than there really is in there, but the strobe light makes it even harder to tell where the hell I’m going. I have to keep my hand onthe cold mirrors so I don’t run straight into them. I get caught in a dead end and backtrack a couple turns and keep going until I stop at a strange sight. My blinking reflection is all twisted up into a two-foot-tall ball and my misshapen face a bug-eyed mask of something stupid and hateful. It’s one of those distorted mirrors that bend your reflection. I step back, and my shape changes into a coiled-up snake and then back to the two-foot-tall thing. An ever-changing warping of reality, like nothing is normal, at least not for long. While I’m staring at myself, a twisted figure steps in behind me, right over my shoulder. I turn around to look behind me, but it’s just another reflection on a mirror about five feet away. At least I think it’s a reflection. It looks like a face smiling at me, but I can’t tell for sure, what with the lights and the distorted mirror and the distance. But if it was a reflection, then how the hell is it still over my shoulder? It should be in front of me now that I’m turned around. I turn back to the front and then back again. I tell myself it’s just my imagination playing tricks on me, but my heart starts to get real busy. I can feel it pounding against my rib cage. I throw my orange fountain drink at it. The cup almost looks like it’s moving in slow motion because of the lights, like a stop-motion animation reel, and it splashes open against a mirror. It’s just a reflection for sure, but that shapeless face is still there over my shoulder. “Fuck it,” I say to myself. I take off running. There’re a dozen of my reflections running alongside me in all the mirrors, but I don’t see that other figure. I keep running anyway until I reach the last black door and I’m outside on the other end of the funhouse standing on black pavement. I’m back in the real world, where people are walking around having fun at this traveling carnival. The sounds of carnival music, the smells of popcorn and hot dogs, it all floods back in.
    “Damn man, you look like you just saw a ghost,” says Reed Callahan. He and Chip Callahan are standing there watching me catch my breath. They’re guys from Sugweepo City High School,the crosstown adversaries to our Central of Sugweepo High School. We’re the Central of Sugweepo White Camels, and they’re the Sugweepo Trojans. Their school is twice as big as and much nicer than ours. If I had lived within the city limits, I would have probably gone to Sugweepo. Living outside city limits as I do requires a stiff tuition fee, which I know Dad can’t afford, so I don’t even ask. I’ve played against Reed on the junior-varsity basketball team. He comes off the bench like me, but when he gets in the game, the whole Sugweepo side would yell “Reeeeed!” He’s the most popular guy in the tenth grade over there. Chip is his cousin, not as athletic but prettier in the face. And also more ruthless. I heard he’d go down to Florida on spring break and ride around on scooters randomly punching people. They both