Castle on the Edge by Douglas Strang

of the lowest cross rail encircling the floor panel. The light from my flashlight was all but dead but I had enough to see the lever on the trap door. I made sure I had my home-made rope in my hand so I wouldn’t have to grope for it in the dark. Then I lifted the latch, turned off the all-but-extinct light so it couldn’t be seen by all the jokesters from down below, and put it aside.
    I commenced, slowly, ever so slowly, and ever so quietly, sliding the panel back. I was in complete darkness now and had to stage my movements very skillfully, and carefully, in order to not accidentally fall through the gaping hole into the black abyss below. Foot by foot I lowered my knotted sheets until there was no more slack.
    I was ready to descend and give them all the surprise of their lives. I thought to myself excitedly about the revenge I was going to exact upon those devils for what they’d done to me. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
    My adrenalin was spilling over as I took hold of the line. Down I went…hand under hand, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty. Then I stopped.
    There I was, hanging in space with a twenty-six-foot drop to the floor. I’d passed the point of no return now. I couldn’t see the floor or anything else below me, not to mention above me…or beside me. It was like my eyes were closed tightly, even though they were wide open. The perspiration on my hands was causing my grip to falter. With what strength I had left, I began swinging…back and forth, building a horizontal momentum of about ten feet, I think. Then I went into my Johnny Weissmuller routine. “Ah-eh-ah-eh-ah-eh-ah-eh-ah…I gotcha.” I shouted, “I gotcha. You all didn’t get me. I got you. The joke’s on you…hah-hah.” I went into such a frenzy I forgot where I was and what I was doing. I lost my grip on the sheets and free fell twenty-six feet, straight down to the hardwood floor below. As I lay there in the middle of the rec. room, in the blackest of blackness, I must have lost consciousness for a few seconds because I was completely disoriented from the hard fall. My legs had taken the brunt of it, I know, because when I tried to get up, I couldn’t move them. In fact, my lower body was completely paralyzed. Then an ominous tingling sensation started going through both legs simultaneously which quickly transformed into pain. The pain grew stronger and stronger until I was writhing with it.
    “All right, the joke’s over, I’m hurt, I think I broke both my legs, I can’t move and I’m in terrific pain, help me.” I screamed, franticly…pleadingly. I was answered back with silence. “Please, help me. I’m badly hurt. Where is everybody? Oh my dearest Mary, where are you? Are you all right? I need you. You need me. We need each other, dearest. I love you.” Mary didn’t come. Nobody came. I was all alone. This is impossible, I thought. They have to be here. Mary has to be here.
    “Where are you, Mary? Mary-Mary-Mary.” I begged. No Mary, no one, no sound, no nothing. I lay on my back staring up into the darkness, seeing only the darkness, on the floor of the recreation room, where everybody was and now nobody is. I might as well have been in a grave. Strangely enough the pain was subsiding. I felt as though I was being anesthetized…yes, anesthetized. As I gazed up, I noticed something hovering, floating, above me, on my left side. I discerned two objects that appeared to be like marbles, yes, two marbles with the same design and color. They weren’t round like regular marbles but more almond-shaped. The spheres were a glowing opaque white with round black centers inside.
    The black ones seemed to be more or less translucent. Then I saw another pair moving into me from the right. They moved closer to the first pair, but the inner spheres were blue in that pair. Then both pairs were