Anyachan

Burning Right Way Room

There was a problem with the Funuber office building. Once they'd gathered the witnesses together, calmed them down, and gotten everyone's testimony, the corporate brass passed the unanimous decision like an overdue bowel movement: Funuber had just become a prime piece of surreal estate, i.e. it wasn't worth a damn unless something drastic was done.

Old man Joatjukker buzzed down to secretary Illialehlia just one command, "We need a unicorn fetishist, STAT!"

Illialehlia smacked the intercom with a brush full of kinky jury-curl. "Sure thing, Mr. What'sisname..." then to herself, "what in the hell was that crazy old man talking about?"

"Oh," enter Clint, coffee-gopher and cannibal six-pack, "They're asking you to scoop a junkie off the sidewalk and take it over to Funuber terrace."

"Sorry, I don't speak english."

"Spic."

So Clint fishes the butterfly net out of the janitor's wine cellar, but opts to go with the chloroform, rumored to be both more effective –and- more fun for all parties involved. So, down the diamond stairs, past the gaudy stoned lion statuettes, under a prostitute, through a manhole, into the sewer, back to the diamond stairs, and up a camouflage stepladder, he at last finds himself in the old town, right in the midst of a junky nest.
He selects the most recently bathed of the bunch by scent and hooks her up with enough chloroform to choke a rodeo. That's redneck.

She wakes up sober and sobs.

"Hey little girl, what's your name?" A jew with a pulsing bulge showing through his 2000$ pants loomed over her like a pedophilic cheshire cat.

"Emily." Despite having aged only eleven of her seventy years, her voice popped like ruined rubber bands.

"Well, Emily, we'll give you a good prescription if you can help us figure out a way to save this room."

Her tears rolled back up into her eyes. "No darvies?"

"No darvies."

"Deal."

The jewish man, Mr. Mercedestein, led her down through the cubicle matrix and into the rainbow hallway of St. James elementary school. At the end loomed a swarm of shadows that flickered in and out of existence according to the whims of a malfunctioning floodlight. "That's the room." he said.
She came tentatively to the door and was about to put her hand on the knob when Mercedestein caught her flimsy wrist. "Be careful," he said, "it's very hot."
She grabbed a used maxi pad from her pocket and pulled the door open. She was at once assailed by screams and a blast of terrible heat. The classroom inside was an inferno. She had only a moment to assess the hell before Mercedestein slammed the door. "Well?"

"I don't see what your problem is."

"Follow me." He popped open a locker and slid in sideways, she trailing behind him. They crabwalked, feeling along walls covered twice over with scorpions, emerging at last from a copying machine in a break room.

A technician with a handful of coffee watched them emerge. "No wonder the damned thing's been on the fritz."

Another hallway, this one cool and filled with the silent hum of the great earth, or at least a close approximation. "Here," he showed her a door, “is the problem."

She went for the moldy pad in her pocket but he seized her wrist before she could get to it.

"Hands off, Chester."

"Sorry...anyway, with -this- door you don't have to worry."

It opened on its own, and there was nothing inside but guys in slacks and dress shirts painting the grey walls greyer with undersized rollers.

"So this is..."

"The same room, yes. When you come in the right way, it's all heat and barbeque kiddies, but when you come in from the left, it's these guys."

"I still don't see what your problem is. Can I have my pills now?"

"No. The problem is simple. Ever since this happened, we haven't been able to use that other door."

"Ah."

"It won't open at all from in here..." he walked her past the surface uniformity technicians to the door on the opposite wall. She tried the knob and found that it was stuck. "We're not sure about the door in the burning room. Every time we send someone in to try it, they always disappear."

"Hmm, mysterious. Anyway, what do you expect me to do about it?"

"You're a junky aren't you?"

"Yeah, and..?"

"Can't you use some of your super junky powers to fix this?"

"I don't have any powers."

"Too bad. I know of this one little girl who won't be getting a prescription for per--"

She snatched his sleeve, her head held down. "I'll...see what I can do."

An hour and a half in the cafevomitorium later, she'd spent ten minutes in deep thought. In that tenth minute, a viable solution had occurred to her.

"We need someone from out of state."

Mr. Mercedestein drew his sleeve across his chin. "I don't see what you're getting at."

"The fire only exists in this state, yes?"

"Yes, but..."

"Then how's it going to burn someone from out of state? Don't worry about it, just get me to a phone and leave the rest to me."

Shown to an imaginary cubicle, she scraped the ice from the desk with a stolen credit card until she'd sculpted a telephone, but when she tried it, it would not function.

The rabbit candle reminded her to dial nine first.

Ringing. Click.

"Hello?"

"Yeah, this is Emily from The Land of the Dead. Remember me?"

"Of course. You're one of the most mediocre people I've ever met."

"Great...I guess. You want to come down and walk through an inferno?"

"That's absurd! Of course I do! I'll be there in eighteen hours."

Click.

Mercedestein slid out from behind the wallpaper. Emily looked him over before speaking, gauging his gullibility. "Mr. Mercedestein, would you front me a couple of dollars for some lunch? My friend won't be here for another day, at least."

He smiled and nodded. "No."

Security guards arrived and "escorted" Emily from the building by her hair. She was locked out for the night, which she spent screaming at an especially menacing snow moth. She finally found sleep under the rays of the plastic sun.

Yuri was the one who awakened her. "Emily, come on, let's get this done." Yuri was the sort of person you were always glad to see off. Emily could think of no better person to send into a burning room.

"I'm up, I'm up."

Inside, Mercedestein walked the girls to the right way. When Yuri entered the burning right way room, the door slammed shut and locked. Mercedestein put his hand on Emily's shoulder.

"Don't worry," he said, "That always happens."

Emily, snaking out from under his touch, merely grunted.

Five seconds later, when all hope had been lost, the door opened. Yuri was standing there, totally unmarked. The fire and the children had vanished. Yuri grinned and flashed a peace sign.

"Success! Now, Emily, hold out your hand."

Emily did as she'd been asked, and Yuri, with dramatic flourish, gave her a few grams of flaming cinders.

Yuri lowered her voice to a whisper, "If you ever need to burn the right way again, you'll have these. Now I have to go." With those words, she vanished like a shooting star.

Emily put the cinders in her pocket and turned to Mercedestein, who just shook his head. She took him gently by the elbow and turned her tired eyes up at his. "You never intended to give me anything, did you?"

"No."

Security guards beat the shit out of her and hauled her out onto the sidewalk. A conscientious pedestrian mistook her for a plastic bag and threw her away just in time for garbage collection.

Anya

Wonderful_Loser

Pretty good, but the end could be described much better. When writing about her being beatened up, you could go far into detail, to give it feeling and make it realistic.

Just my two cents. It's still great.

And I didn't find anything offense about it.