InsaniKey 2

I rolled over and pushed myself up to my knees, my hand gently running along my jawline as I looked at the scrapes down my arms. I felt like a heap of blood and pain.

“You’ve arrived.” Jinxx announced to nobody in particular.

I shook my head as I felt around cautiously for any serious damage. “Where am I?”

I heard the loud click of a circuit breaker activating before a bright light lit up a huge area around us. Jinxx stood on the other side of a black wrought iron gate gaging my reaction.

I stood up and looked beyond where Jinxx was standing. Strings of lights hung from trees around the perimeter of what he’d created. “Did you make this?”

His face was painted white eyes darkened, and the way the dim lighting shone down upon him made him seem like an entirely different person. “Jinxx?” I stared at his blank expression. He didn’t seem to notice I was there and he started to remind me of the dummy from Goosebumps. I backed away slowly, feeling an intense urge to get out of here.

I passed a row of empty carnival game stands, painted black and white on the outside with a row of stars along the top. There was a rubber duck pond, a row of targets to shoot a water gun at, a stand with balloons to throw darts at, a single bowling lane with a row of pins lined up at the end, and a stand with different lengths of string attached to coins on the other end. It would have been fun if I weren’t the only person there. Jinxx was still standing at the gate, he hadn’t moved.

I picked up a dart and popped a balloon from the pegboard wall with it. Jinxx failed to react. I threw darts until the row of darts was out and moved on to the bowling lane where the ball got stuck halfway down the metal ball track. I looked at the ducks at back at Jinxx. “How long are you going to stand there?” I shook my head. “Join my adventure?” I tried. “Bruh?” I gave up and took some of the darts from the broken balloons, heading toward the rubber ducks. I thought throwing darts at Jinxx’s ducks would bother him but he refused to move. One of the darts sent a duck flying outside of the pond and when I picked it up I noticed a letter written on the bottom of it in sharpie. “A” I read.

“If you send me a message on rubber duckies.” I shouted to Jinxx in the distance. “Is it a quack-o-gram?” He had to have known I’d compulsively flip over every duck in the pond to see what the rest of them said.

Now standing in a pile of rubber ducks with splatters of water covering my arms and jeans, I had the letters ‘a-l-e-y-c-a-t-s-n-d’ and a stoic Jinxx remained unhelpful in the distance. I looked ahead and saw a giant wooden wall painted to look like a castle. “Castle...Andy?” I said, walking back up to Jinxx.

“Did you trap Andy behind that wall?” I asked cautiously.

He smiled but didn’t move.

“Jinxx.” I put a hand on his shoulder. He avoided eye contact. I placed my other hand on his other shoulder and shook him slightly. “Jinxx, this is weird.” I said, “Snap out of it.”

A wide grin crept across his face and reached his eyes as he finally looked at me. “We’re all a little mad here.” He said.

Notes