Archive of Our Own ^beta

The nights are the worst;

But they’re the absolute

when they’re on the night before Halloween.

But the weirdest is that I can’t

Nov 1, 1988 - 2:35 am

Dear Dairy,

I’m doing everything I’m able to make it through school, I swear. I’m a fantastic student, I’m trying out for the college volleyball team on Karen’s behest (guh!) and I’m even working at my campus’s book store part time to be able to have my own “fun money”, as Daddy calls it, but I feel like I can’t help the falling behind I’m doing! Already!

Like, I swear I’m not doing it on purpose but like, I keep slipping at this time of year, EVERY year, since I was a teenager, but I don’t get it!

Sure, the nightmares are kinda bad, I think, but like, it’s not like I’m dying, right? It’s whatever, I guess.

I like my roommate a lot though, she’s super nice. Even though it’s only been a few months since the start of term, she’s offered to help me so MUCH! She’s let me borrow her slippers when I lost mine (I’m pretty sure that Toby took them and hid them when my parents and him came for Parent Night a few weeks ago; he’s such a twerp) but hers were a little off putting the first time I wore them, not gunna lie. They smelt terrible and they had these weird feathers stuck in them. My roommate; sorry, her name is Abigail, said that they’re from her home country and I’m not a prejudiced person, and that they’re made from some bird they find to be the most holy, or something? I’m not sure, her accent is weird and strange, but like I said, I am NOT someone to judge!!!

Anyways, the boys, oh my god!!! They’re all so cute here! I can’t wait to go on a date with Thomas next weekend! He’s from my Chem Lab and WOW he’s so hottttt!!!

I’ll write back after our date!

Bye!
- Sarah W

Nov 1, 1990 - 4:31 am

Dear Dairy,

Yet again, hello.

I know it’s been a long time since I wrote in you, and I apologise for that. It’s just that… It’s been a rough few months.

Thomas broke up with me last week and I can’t explain it but I think it’s just the time of year? Like, a few other girlfriends of mine have also had their boyfriends break up with them, so maybe it’s the change of the season or that they’re too afraid to commit, maybe? Oh, probably, now that I think about it, it might be because of the holiday season, or something?! Like, that they’re too afraid to commit to Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever? Guh! Fuck guys!

But anyways, yeah… My grades are… I guess just there?

I’m trying my best, but damn is it hard! Just this weekend alone I have three essays and five separate projects I need to do and that’s only in two of my classes! I have no idea how the hell I’m going to be able to do this… I feel like I’m on the edge of breaking!

And, again!!! The nightmares aren’t helping!! I’m hardly getting any sleep enough as it is, but WOW they’re really, really bad this week, especially last night’s!!

I mean… I remember it being bad, but I can’t remember what it was about?! I remember waking up in a cold sweat with my pillow soaked and I SWEAR my closet door made some sort of weird ass noise!!

Anyways, GUH! Just a terrible time all around!

Goodnight
- Sarah W

Oct 31, 1993 - 1:22 am

Dear Dairy,

I’m losing it, I have to be. Right?

I have to be.

I just woke up, so this might not amke sinse..

but i swear that i herd a gigle in my close t I

3:58 am

Okay, I’m more awake now, sorry.

It’s that weird time of year where I have these horrible nightmares, right? I swear I’ve mentioned them before in this journal before in this diary before in this journal before in this diary before in this journal before in this

Whoa.

I…

I didn’t write that…

I’m going back to bed,,,

- Sarah W

Oct 30, 19944444 - 99:99:99 AMPMMPMAM

Deer Dariy,

Hello.

I am writing to you! :)

Yes, I am! :)

I’m soexcitedto writeinyou!YesYesYesYesYesYes!!!!!

- I didn’t write that -
- I don’t know what’ ssss happening to me -
- I neddddd help help help helP ME PLEASE OH MY FUCKING GOD HELP ME PLESe ples eples
Ples
Plespleplsepasepleaseplae
Splease
splese
Plse
PLEASE
HE
LP
ME
PLE ME
PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!

Best! :)
- SaRAK WK

Oct 30, 1995 - 11:46 pm

Dear Diary,

I promise you, with everything inside of me, that this is ME writing inside of you.

I can’t explain it, I know I can’t since I’ve TRIED (oh GOD have I tried!!!) over the last ten years to explain it to my doctors, to my therapists, to my PSYCHOtherapists, to my own God Damn PARENTS but there’s SOMETHING that happens at this time of year that HAPPENS to me and I SWEAR I’m not fucking CRAZY!!! I SWEAR I’M NOT!!!

I can multiply to the fourty-fifth times table, I can recite to anyone Homer’s Poems, I can do any single BASTARD’S fucking taxes, but there’s SOMETHING at this time of year that makes my MIND become RUINED!!

AND I’M SICK OF IT! I’M GOING TO BED!

I DESERVED TO GET MY DEGREE!

THIS IS INSANE!!

AND I AM NOT!!

GOODNIGHT
- SARAH W

Oct 30, 1995 - 11:51:06 pm
After Final Diary Entry Was Finished According to Final Reports

These corresponding anecdotes were recovered from the subject’s private notepad “Blog” entries approximately at the noted time
Case File: #597-APL-89

I am a perfectly fine twenty-five-year-old woman, if you asked any other regular person to look at me in a lineup, I could say so myself. I’m sure if you looked at me you’d see any other perfectly drab white woman of my age in a lineup and find me plain, old, in-the-middle, fine and dandy, “thank you very much.”

Right?

Well, I’m apparently not so, according to my doctors, my parents, and even my fucking so-called friends.

My damn stepmother leaked my diary entries to my dean after I had a “mentally strenuous time” during my third attempt to finish my undergrad —------------rdgreg49^&JKKKKKKKK(((0

THINGSARENTALLWAYSSWHATTTHEYYSEEEEEEEEMAROUNDHERESOYOUYOUYOUCANTTAKEANYWTHINGFOR GRANTEDGRANTEDGRANTEDGRANTEDW

Oct 30, 1996 - 10:58 pm

Sarah swore that night, as she laid down to sleep, her handful of medications that she was forced to take, night after night, for the last three years, safely and warmly tucked down into her stomach, that this would be the night she finally got to get a full night’s rest without a single nightmare. She swore, up and down, to herself that she could feel it; yes, tonight would be the night she would either get to have a dreamless sleep or, heck, even hopefully, a pleasant dream.

No such thing was going to happen to her tonight, unfortunately.

She had to develop a “healthy sleep” routine on her doctor's orders, and it really was a very long process that was nitpicked and looked over every month now, which was a huge step up from the bi-weekly lookovers and especially so from the weekly lookovers that her doctors would do to her.

First off, it started around seven in the evening, so to say that she was an “early to bed, early to rise” kind of person was just a bit of a cruel joke.

She would have to turn off all electronics at this time, which meant that anything good that would be on TV would have to wait for tomorrow and hopefully, if Toby were able to remember to record it for her as he’d always promise he would do (although, he never did). She would begin the lengthy regime of dolling out her meds from her daily plastic trolly. If anyone would imagine someone at her age to be taking so many drugs they rightfully use have assumed her to be taking coke or meth, but no, she had a regular pharmacy worth of sleep aids, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, anti-anxieties, anti-lifes.

She took Zoloft, Prozac, Celexa, Lithium, Thorazine, Valium, Lunesta, Rozerem, and, of course, Tums to help with the gut rot that all these separate meds would do to her stomach lining. Of course, she didn’t take all of these at once, but that was the list of medications she had been working through in greedy rotation over the past few years.

Currently, her cocktail of needs was thankfully only the finest of collections in this long list; the Prozac and Lunesta seemed to be doing most of the heavy lifting, but the Thorazine was especially helping her knock out early enough after taking it… so far.

After last year’s breakdown, she was sent to the loony bin for a cool and calm four-week in-patient stay with doctors, pale white-washed cement walls, and ever-lasting days-long boredom.

The food wasn’t too terrible; at least she didn’t have to cook for herself, which was a nice change of pace, but the maddening thing was that she wasn’t crazy, damnit! She felt like she didn’t deserve to be housed in this Young Adult unit of sixteen-year-olds to twenty-six-year-olds when her roommate was an oversized nineteen-year-old who was wider than she was tall, who whispered to Jesus day in and day out and who thought He whispered back to her.

When she was released (thank God!), she was forced to move back into her childhood home, most likely permanently, for the rest of her life, for forever more.

Locked down.

Shut out and away.

Imprisonment.

Oh, right, back to the procedure. Just like every night.

After swallowing her bitter-tasting mouthful of pills, which she would wash down with a tepid glass of water and half a yogurt (to help settle it down and protect her lining, but not too much food, or else the dreams would absolutely become warped), she would take her nightly shower for exactly twelve minutes.

Karen had everything down to the nanosecond for her nights, and if Sarah did anything off, she would harshly admonish her as if she were sixteen all over again, only worse because her own anxieties had skyrocketed in the last year, which would make Sarah’s guilt and shame exacerbate.

After she was towelled off and lathered in probably five different layers of lavender, between face cream, body cream, pillow sprays, eye drops, and deodorants, she was to do half an hour of slow-movement yoga in her room with only white noise played on the same tape she’d have to rewind every morning.

Once that was finished, she was to lay down in bed for self-reflection and slow breathing exercises, which Karen would call her “meditation” period, and this was when the lights would turn off.

Sarah hated this part the most.

Having to sit and stew, replaying every half-fuzzed-out memory, her addled brain was able to make out from the last horrible ten years of her life. Alone.

The worst one to remember was last year’s breakdown, mainly because it was the hardest one to shift through in her playback; it was all so hazy.

She could remember flashes of lucidity and coming out of the fog, which was horrible to recall.

Running down the hallways of her dorm building, half-naked, screaming her head off like a murderer was chasing her.

Falling down staircases, maybe only a flight or two, perhaps even a dozen or more.

Bright, terrified faces of people right in her own face, trying to speak (or shout) at her to calm down, but then they’d - there was no other word for it - glitch out of reality and flicker into different faces, terrible, disgusting, horrible faces and she’d peel off running down another corridor.

Karen said when they were finally able to get her, they found her cowering in a maintenance closet, whimpering about how she should have turned left, not right, over and over again.

But no, now she’s safe and warm in her childhood bed, everything exactly as when she was just a child; even Lancelot was in his rightful place in his spot on her hanging shelf.

She was safe.

She was going to go to sleep, and she was going to have a night filled with anything but nightmares.

It was a chant, a prayer, a hopeful manifestation.

“I will sleep and be safe.”

That was precisely at the stroke of nine, and her eyes were shut, the drugs hold having taken over her and her religious routine’s job having finished in totality.

But when it was two minutes to eleven, her eyelids were ripped open in fright and shock when she felt the clawed hands of sickening, creeping cold snap around her wrists and ankles. The scream that would have echoed out of her mouth was clamped behind her lips, completely unable to open, no matter how hard and wide she tried to open her jaws. She might as well have been pepper sprayed with how immediately the tears began to flow out from her eyes, riveting waterfalls careening out and streaking down in hot streaks that tangled into the sweat-soaked mat of hair behind her neck.

The tears blurred her vision, but she could make out… well, she wasn’t entirely sure what she was making out in the night’s dark, but it looked like bouncing, weaving, wobbling giant dust bunnies come to life. The worst part was what she could hear, though.

Snickering, evil and hurtful whispered loudly around her and, above her and even underneath her, coming from the recesses of her bed. She couldn’t make out any real words besides “take her, take her!” and even though she couldn’t shout out for help, she could whimper against her life, shaking her head violently in protest.

She tried with all her might to fight against whatever was holding her limbs down, pulling and kicking, but she was frozen still against the forces, and her muscles already felt like they were made of thick mud because of the medications flowing through her veins. The medicines that are supposed to help her. The meds that were now hindering her, causing her to be a limp noodle, so weak and vulnerable.

The tears flowed hotter, more bitterly, more sorrowfully.

In a whimpering attempt to talk behind her sewn-shut lips, she tried to ask, over and over, “Why are you doing this?!” and she wasn’t sure what was more horrible, that whatever forces were holding her down could understand her mumbled attempt to cry out or that they actually answered her.

“We’re here to come claim you as ours. We’re bringing you back to where you belong, girlie.”

It was definitely that they answered her.

The scream that was trapped behind her lips was so horrible and powerful that it blew a few blood vessels in her eyes, and it was the very last thing she could remember clearly before she passed out, falling endlessly into the black abyss of shadow that was unconciousness.

It was almost a peaceful saviour to be here.

Almost.

The black abyss was where she wanted to stay, forever and ever, plus a day, but when her eyes fluttered open again, she realized it wasn’t about to come back to save her from this nightmare.

Although, as her eyes blinked repeatedly, open and shut, open and shut, she was fully aware that this dark, inky blackness was hauntingly familiar. The crawling sense of itching memories seemingly pounded on the doors of her mind, calling out to be let in.

She was sitting up at least, but from her bottom, she could feel the dank, cold floor underneath her, and as her hands crawled around feeling the gritty floor, she was ready to scream from any invading touch. The smell was all the more worse as it invaded her sinuses; what at first smelt like wet earth gave way to the dreadful stench of death and sandy musk in its aftertaste, as if one would lift underneath the rug and find only carpets of dead bugs.

Was this hell? Was this purgatory? Did she finally succumb to the nightmares after all these years?

She hoped so because anything else would be worse than death.

“H-hello? Is anyone here?” she tenderly tried, probably against her better judgement, but wasn’t fully aware just yet how deeply in the thick of it she was.

No, not yet.

Her ears pricked with painful sharpness when she first heard the sickening chuckling that came from the shadows, hardly more than a few feet away from her. It wasn’t even ugly chuckling, no, but the low purr of terrible beauty that would stop you in your tracks when you would see a puma in the forest, ready to pounce after stalking you for hours in the nightime.

The laugh of a hunter, a predator, ready to go in for the kill after toying with their dinner for far too long.

Once the light appeared from a glowing orb hanging in the air, seemingly attached to nothing, her heart dropped into the hollow of her bones. When her eyes focused on the shock of brightness in the black, she saw—she finally saw.

Her hunter.

Jareth the Goblin King, sickening crooked grin and gleaming eyes alight with the thrill of his prey on her knees, just as he had wanted her to be, standing there right before her.

This can’t be real.

“Hello, Sarah,” his horribly velvet voice greeted her. He canted his head, almost in pity, as he looked down on her from his standing position.

He was just as terrifying as her muddled memories from her once awful nightmare remembered him to be.

Mysterious, dark, charmingly thrilling, condescendingly evil.

A monster.

“W-w-why– why?” she stuttered, unable to come up with anything else.

“Now Sarah, do speak up,” he chided with a tut, gently shaking his head in disapproval. “Stammering as such won’t do you much good here.”

Hot tears of shame, as if she were a student being reprimanded by her teacher for answering incorrectly, smartened in the back of her eyes. One by one, trails of those prickling tears swam down her cheeks without her permission, and she took a dry, painful, deep breath to fight against the stone that seemingly grew in her throat and threatened to shut off all ability to speak.

“W-why… Why have you done this to me?” she managed to squeak out from the ground, her head hanging low, unable to look him in the eye.

“Why? Why, you know perfectly good and well ‘why,’ Sarah,” Jareth answered, still haughtily. “The goblins told you. You’re where you belong.”

His arms opened widely as if he was showing off his grand treasure to an audience, and Sarah dully noted that she could hear the fluttering from his flowing shirt sleeves when he waved them open.

“You, my dear, are in one of my many oubliettes. Does it feel homey? Do you remember how scared you were when you first landed in it? Do you remember anything in that drugged mind of yours, I wonder?”

He was toying with her, she knew, but the ridiculing interrogation that made her feel as if she was nothing was all the worse than the creeping realization that this wasn’t like any nightmare she could have had before was worse.

Without words, since the stone finally won out in the end and choked off all ability to speak, she shook her head back and forth slowly.

“What a snivelling mess you are,” he all but spat out, disgust written clearly in his voice. “This will not do.”

He folded his arms across his chest and considered her with a shrewd eye; his head cocked to the side as he was appraising a confusing piece of art, his blackened thick eyebrows furrowed.

“No, no, this will not do at all.”

A leather-clad hand escaped from the fold of his crossed arms, and he flicked his index finger up, just once, in a flick, and Sarah stood up as if she was but a mere marionette doll on strings, landing on her feet with a wobbly unsureness.

“Now, look at me when I’m speaking to you,” he ordered with another flick of his finger. Without her own power, Sarah’s head snapped up to attention, and she stared at him dead in the eye.

“That’s better, isn’t it, dear?” he asked with what could have been a warm smile, but the tears flowed hotter as Sarah saw the glint in his eyes that held no warmth.

“Let’s try that again. Do you feel at home here in my oubliette? I should hope so because the next few words that come out of your mouth will decide your fate on whether or not this will end up being your forever home or not, my love.”

Sarah had no choice but to look away as his evil smirk grew with an uptick; her eyes were glued onto him without relief, blinking being the only available breakaway she had. The tears flowed freely, silently.

“Do you pick to stay here, forgotten, alone, to wither away and die without another living soul finding you or caring even to do so… or… join me, without a fight, to be my queen?”

No. Oh, God, no…

“Tick tock, Sarah. Choose your next words carefully, remember?”

All thought, everything logical or sensible, abandoned her as the words landed bluntly across her mind.

Be his bride? Are you kidding me? I can’t! I just can’t!!

“No,” the single, two-letter word came out barely above a whisper, but it was the best she could do.

He tutted her, closing his eyes and shaking his head as if he was disapproving of a child answering wrongly to a simple question.

“How unfortunate, truly.”

He was gone without another word, melting out of existence before her very eyes.

Once he was gone, Sarah regained control of her body, feeling the pulling strings of magic vanish just as easily as he did. The only evidence that stayed behind, to some relief, was his glowing orb of light.

Sarah briefly worried that it would go out and she would be stuck in the dark again, forever and ever, until she died, but the worry was fleeting. If she lost her light, what would it matter anyway? She has nothing else here.

Nothing.

Not a damn thing.

She collapsed on the ground, her legs turned to rubber, and she began to sob into her hands loudly.

“This isn’t f-fair!” she warbled in a bellowing cry, shouting out to no one. “Why m-me?! I d-don’t d-deserve this!”

She pounded the gritty ground a few times with clenched fists, full-blown into a frenzied tantrum, and screamed with each punch. Of course, this did nothing to help her situation and only served to hurt her hands fiercely.

Face bright red with emotion and wet from all the fluids flowing out of her, tears and spit and snot alike; Sarah blubbered as the breakdown slowly petered out after an hour of sobbing.

With her exhaustion replacing the emotional outburst of defeat, she wasn’t sure what else there was for her to do. She was tired, all right, but she worried about what could happen to her if she slept now. So, with numb ruin, she laid on her side, not caring (since what was there left to care about?) that she was lying in the dirt.

“This might as well be my tomb. My grave. I’m going to die here.”

Hiccoughing shivers escaped her lungs from the aftershocks of her fit, but otherwise, Sarah stayed still, unseeing into the abyss of her new forever.

The walls of the oubliette were identical to the ones she landed in all those years ago in a bad dream that she thought was nothing more than that, a dream.

Dry dirt walls, yet moist with what could be slime, or moss, or anything else she didn’t care to find out.

Dry dirt floors.

Dry dirt ceiling, no hole in sight.

Yup, this would make for a perfectly fine grave.

“I’m going to die here,” she repeated out loud, quieter.

She sniffled, and the tears returned, only softer and more silent, dripping without sound to stain the dirt just underneath her head.

Sleep took her quickly, like an old friend, enveloped in a black embrace.

Without the ability to tell time, when Sarah awoke, in a gasping start, she was more than simply disoriented; she was right back into a raging panic attack.

Hyperventilating as she shot up from the cold dirt floor, she quickly crab-walked away from her sleeping spot until her back hit the closest dirty wall and screamed in fright at the feeling.

“It’s still happening—it’s still happening—it wasn’t a dream—I’m still here—it’s still happening—it wasn’t–” she repeated, over and over, in increasing volume and speed.

Her hands found themselves wrapped around her oily, messied hair, and she rocked on her heels, back and forth, back and forth, as the spiralling realization hit her like a brick wall.

“—it wasn’t a dream—I’m still here—it’s still happening—”

The orb, silent and unwavering in its glowing hanging magic, began to move now for the first time since being created by its master.

It dropped down, slowly, unnoticed by Sarah as she lost herself in her ruminations, falling further and further into her lost mind, never with a flicker or a change to its brilliant glow. As Sarah was losing herself into her crazed mind, it crept closer to her, hovering only a few inches off the ground now.

When she finally noticed its change in position, now floating right in front of her feet, she yelped with a crying scream in shock.

“Ah!” she snapped her feet as close to her body as she could possibly do, instantly, away from the orb. “Go away! Leave me alone!”

Of course, it did nothing of the sort.

In fact, it floated higher now, closer, hovering right up close to Sarah’s face, its glow asunder.

She closed her eyes tightly and fisted her hands on both sides of her face as the light shimmered in and out of wavering brightness, sure that it was about to explode or something else awful, perhaps to finally take her out of this world and kill her, ending this nightmare once and for all. But when the flickering, flashing in and out, faster and faster until it was blinking like a roll of old film, stopped, it wasn’t to return to the bright white glow it once had. No.

No, now it was showing Sarah her dreams, like a movie screen.

“What?” she mumbled with worry, peeking out from her squinting eyes. Her mouth hung agape.

She couldn’t understand what it was showing her, and she didn’t want to, but she was glued to the images that danced before her, transfixed.

It must have been the past, or perhaps what could be her future, but her guts rolled over in horrific terror as she watched inside the orb her friends, Hoggle, Sir Didymus, Ludo, and even some of the lesser creatures that helped her or just even met her, were tortured before her very eyes.

“No!” she cried in a choked gasp, her hands covering her mouth.

Hoggle was taken to the dungeons and left to starve, forgotten.

Sir Didymus was stripped of his knighthood and forced to become a court jester for the king; worse yet, the noble steed Ambrosius was turned into a skinned rug at the feet of the king’s throne.

Ludo was hung upside down over the Bog of Eternal Stench, crying and swinging until the tears that swam in Sarah’s eyes distorted the screen too far to see through, no matter how much she blinked and angrily wiped them away with the back of her hand.

“This can’t be! This didn’t happen!” she screamed at the orb, screaming at herself. “Why would he do this to them?!”

His voice now sang softly and with dancing whispers, with promises, from within the orb, making Sarah yelp in fright and shield her eyes again with both hands.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Sarah-mine,” his words pierced her ears, and she whimpered. “ You can stop this all from happening. Just love me, fear me, be mine, and they will all be saved.”

Oh, God. No… He wouldn’t…

…He would…

He could already be in the works of having it all done…

This… Bastard…

Her eyes blinked painfully as she tried to clear them enough to make out the new images playing before her eyes inside the orb, and she was struck by how vastly different they were.

It was her, in who knew how many years from now, thinner, grayer, more abandoned in looks and miserably written clearly across her face, but… smiling. It wasn’t a big smile like she used to have, at least in her memories before the nightmares ruined her life, but a smile nonetheless.

She was in his arms, in a ballroom, spinning together in a lovely waltz.

His looks were totally unchanged; the hands of time did nothing to his handsome, evil charm, and his eyes were held for nothing more than her. The trinkle of sounds that played out of the images were of that same song she remembered him singing to her all those years ago. Her dress looked nothing of the same; no, the ballgown on her was more refined, more mature, more regal. It flowed in trains of darkest blues and richest blacks but still nearly seemed to swallow her whole.

They were dancing to the hold of the entire court, every citizen and Fae of the kingdom watching them on the sidelines and—there! (blink, and she would’ve missed it)—were her friends, safe and sound, watching in the audience as well. They looked completely unharmed, but they watched their human friend, once a girl, now a queen, with sadness in their eyes.

“But…”

“They would be safe, Sarah. And as will you be too,” his ghostly voice promised her between the notes that sang for the dancing images of them together. “As my queen.”

A final, single, lone tear trailed down to join in the tracks of the others that were shed down her cheek, but she had nothing else to give.

She was more trapped now than before when she had already accepted death alone, here, in the oubliette. Before, he gave her the illusion of a choice which was more than easy enough for her to make; she would rather die than be with him. But she had no choice now if she wanted to save her friends.

The last few footholds of colour drained from her face, and she hung her head low.

“Fine; you win, Goblin King.”

She didn’t lift her face when she heard the orb smash against the ground.

She didn’t lift her face when she smelt the change in the air of magic, musk, alluring spices.

She didn’t lift her face when she could feel his presence either.

“Well?” he said, cockily with a trill in his voice, too victorious for Sarah to bear.

“I’ll do it. I will become your queen,” she stoically answered, deadpan without a hint of emotion. “You have given me no other choice but to. But just know this,” she finally lifted her face now to look him square in the eye, her jaw set in stone and her eyes hard. “I will never, and I mean never, love you. I will play queen and allow you to dress me up in whatever you want, but you will never have my heart as yours.”

His winner’s grin transformed into an all the more horrifying smirk of dangerous delight.

He bent with an arm behind his back and the other, with the cold-looking leather glove held out in nearly innocent politeness, offering her a helping hand up from the dirty, freezing cold ground. Her hand was limp as a dead fish as she took it, and a shiver of repulsion shuddered through her, starting at the tips of her fingers and rippling out down to her toes.

“It’s a good thing that I simply do not care whether or not you ever love me, my queen.”

Then, with a pop, the oubliette was once again empty of any living soul and bathed in darkness.

They were to be wed immediately that night if the servants and slaves of the kingdom were able to make everything to Jareth’s specifications on time. Sarah was being carted around, shunted off, shoved between steps as a blank slate, with no fight in her to give, no words of complaint or simmering comments to be made.

She was done.

The servant women, all many kinds of ghouls and goblins alike, washed her, cleaned and dressed her hair into twirling towers of curls and braids, adorned in many crystals and gems between the weaved circlets fixed to her. They painted her up in creams, colours, perfumes, lotions and who the hell knew what else. They spent long moments picking out the fabrics and various accessories to create her gown, which they did from around her, making her stand perfectly still on a pedestal in nothing but a slip to cover her body as they worked around her.

No one spoke to her. They treated her as if she was nothing more than a mannequin body, and she might as well have been one. She had no desire to speak to anyone, especially not any of these creatures that she barely registered were to become her servants after the ceremony.

Hunger pangs came and went throughout the hours of preparation, and try as she might, she wanted to ignore them in retaliation, but after not having anything to eat in who knew how many hours (days?), she relented.

“Um, pardon me?” she quietly asked, trying to get the attention of a rather old and mean-looking goblin woman who was measuring out the bottom of her right foot, probably to stick them in horribly uncomfortable heels.

The goblin lifted her toadish broad head and served Sarah with a look of disgust and agitation, “Aye? What is it ye want, human?”

“Oh—um,” the servant's voice painted with such disdain surprised her because she didn’t expect to be openly hated by these beings so easily. "Could I please have something to eat? I’m quite hungry.”

A sneer of revulsion brought the frown on the goblin’s face to deepen, but with an “umph,” she flicked her head up, chin leading the way, to the attention to the table in the corner from Sarah’s left.

“Oh, thanks,” she quietly said, a twinge embarrassed now that she could see that there was a small spread of finger foods that must have been explicitly brought for her to pick through while she was preparing for the wedding.

With many grumbling sounds of effort to stand up, the servant finished taking her measurements and walked away without offering her another look.

Food might help. Maybe. Who knows. I don’t.

Listlessly, Sarah floated over to the table, and it took a few blinks of her eyes, heavy with tiredness and layers upon layers of makeup that she couldn’t even remember them applying, trying to make sense of what food was in front of her.

Bunches of grapes, fat and juicy, white, green, and purple alike, were tastefully decorated around the layout, with tureens of jams, jellies, and marmalades. Meats, cheeses, crackers, bread. Olives, pickles, dates. Fresh fruit, bright and colourful mixed beautifully together in delicate dances with raw and salted vegetables alike.

“It’s like something out of one of Karen’s magazines,” she mumbled under her breath, in awe and equal parts repulsion to the overwhelming spread.

If only…

Her mind wavered in and out of being able to form coherent thoughts; words seemed more demanding than ever to string together and make much of any sense.

Did I ever know how? Immortal this, unaging that, but is there anything that could…

Another smaller table sat at the head of this perverse layout, showing off decadence and holding gleaming bronze plates and cutleries. Her eyes swept once again further across the meats and other finger foods and landed without measurable consideration on one of the cheese knives.

Sharp enough? Small enough to hide?

Surely, what she was planning (but wasn’t really, since how could she keep her thoughts together enough to come up with anything more heavy than “right foot, left foot”) couldn’t work. She knew that he was immortal.

Was it salt? Is that…

Her hand flashed out and pocketed one of the smallest of those cheese knives, and the surprise she felt when it nicked her fingertip, slicing inside her slip and the sting that flowed after feeling hundreds of times worse than any regular cut would.

The salt? Is that why it hurts worse?

She focused on where the knife had been laid, in a literal heaping pile of salt, probably used for decoration or maybe some weird protection spell. The knife’s original home now had an indent in the perfect shape of her grabbing fingers.

Too obvious.

With her free hand, she rearranged the food—this bunch of grapes here, those lettuce leaves over there—and the spot was better hidden now.

…Salt…

Her mind wanted to wander more, and it really did, to struggle and formulate something, anything else, that was more concrete. But her sluggish, racing thoughts were harshly interrupted by the single knock and entry into the once-empty chamber. Whoever it was that came into the room didn’t wait for her to allow them entrance, and why would he?

He owned the place and her now.

“My, how ravishing my blushing bride looks,” Jareth called out to her across the long room in nothing more than an open, unbuttoned to his navel, flowing shirt and his tight britches which, Sarah noted in the back of her mind, looked much too threatening now than they ever did when she was a teenager in that horrible once-nightmare.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to see your betrothed until the ceremony,” she said with a deadpan note in her voice. Still, her insides were screaming out in terror to be stuck alone with him right here, right now, with that look in his eyes as they travelled up and down so terribly slowly across her body.

“Perhaps that may be a tradition for you all in the Above, but it is not here, Precious,” he paused only a foot or two across for her and licked his lips as if he was looking at a meal. “No, here, the groom is usually rather fond of sharing a few last moments of sweetness with his bride before the ceremony begins.”

No, he wouldn’t.

“Take your clothes off, Sarah.”

He would.

“No,” she answered, her fight creeping back up her spine, lighting her brain on fire with determination, “I won’t.”

“Tsk, tsk, my love,” he shook his head, the icy blonde tips of his hair waving lazily in trails with each shake, “need I remind you that I told you that you would become my queen without a fight?”

He stepped closer to her, each step achingly slow, which Sarah took to mean that he expected her to run and then snap into the chase, probably pining her down, probably grabbing her hands together, and probably taking what he wanted by force.

Probably.

“Come kiss me first,” she commanded, surprising him as she could see his eyebrows tick up in her change of heart and herself.

She was obviously no longer in control; her fight-or-flight instinct had taken over, and it looked like the fight was behind the steering wheel now.

His devilish smirk twisted into a lecherous wide grin, and Sarah gulped with every inch he closed between them, the flight itching in her feet of wanting to take off.

“That’s what I thought, Sarah-mine,” he purred under his breath. As his hands, she forgot to notice that they were now ungloved, snaked across her body and took her into an embrace. “This needn’t have been such a dramatic fight, now did it?”

Then his lips were on hers.

She snuck her hands away from her body, the one in her pocket and the one that was pinned to her side underneath his stronghold and copied him, snaking her arms around his body, deepening the kiss, which elicited a deep moan to build in his throat. She could feel the growing of that heiniously horrible bulge in his pants against her.

Now or never.

Her hand that fisted the knife, now bloodied from her own wrong step when pocketing it, flashed high up in the air and plunged down, hard and as deeply as she could manage in her sweep, over and over, stabbing him three times before he pushed her off of him with a screaming cry that already began to gurgle.

“Ahh!! You fucking cunt!” he yelled, his deep, nearly black blood raining down in torrents from the side of his neck and quickly staining all of his clothes, his hair, his skin, the ground itself. “How the fuck did you do that?”

“Salt,” Sarah spoke out loud, but not to him, to herself. “It was salt.”

He roared with blackened anger that he had never felt in all the hundreds upon hundreds of years he had lived so far, blind with rage now that he was seconds from succumbing to the fall of a fucking bitch like this human. With his eyes glown alight in his dying breath, he used one last blow of magic to help his wrath and sliced his hand in the air horizontally, not touching Sarah physically with his touch, but the deed was done.

Her throat opened up from the slice, and her blood flowed with just as much strength as his own that rained down.

“Jareth…” she was able to gurgle out with her last breath before the blood filled her throat and mouth.

She collapsed to the ground but had the unfortunate charm of fate to be still awake long enough to see him crawl on his side towards her and wrap her in his arms, laying one more kiss upon her lips, their red hot blood mixing together on their lips.

His eyes were the last thing she saw before she slipped away, hard and stoney with fury and his voice, his horribly velvet voice, was the last thing she heard.

“‘Til Death do us part, right, my love?”

Screaming, screaming, screaming.

That is all she could recall in her first fleeting understanding of her awakened thoughts.

Screaming, screaming, screaming.

She knew she heard it, and she knew that realistically, everyone else in the house heard it, too, but it seemed as though she was screaming for eons into millennia, beyond centuries.

But her scream was altogether cut off—off—all at once—once—Sarah realized that she was—awake—wake.

Awake.

…Awake…

Awake

Awake

—Awake—

“...Where…” Her balled fist rubbed her heavily crusted eye, and she swore the crust was blood in the muted moonlight. But her knuckles sang to her the familiar, now wonderfully known feeling that it was nothing more than the Sand Man’s calling card—eye boogies.

“I’m safe,” she breathed out a heavy sigh of relief that she had never known was hidden in her lungs, tucked away for a moment such as this. "I’m… Alive.”

Her skin prickled up into goosebumps before she heard the snarkeling titters that sang in between her bed and her closet, knowing she wasn’t truly safe after all.

“What a pity,” a voice chided from her mirror.

A ghostly face stayed still within the frame that bore too much wild hair and two eyes that refused to match.

Sarah, in her turn, finally fell into the final scream, brought wrought to her damnation to return.

Karen, Robert, and Tobias wondered why they never did a damn thing with the empty bedroom all these years while they ate their breakfast.