115Over the Fantasy
Prologue
"Banton hut!" yelled Blair, the head drum major in her loudest voice, calling the band to attention.
"Hit!" the musicians responded, rather unenthusiastically.
"Step around the mud as much as you can as you walk up to the sidelines," called Blair.
"But, Blair! The mud is everywhere!" called out a piccolo player in anguish, near tears as she stood in a puddle of mud nearly up to her ankles.
"We'll get mud all over ourselves!" chorused a saxophone.
"Deal with it," said the exasperated senior drum major, Ivy. "Come on flutes and clarinets! It's not going to kill you! Trombones, what's so funny? This is serious! Jimmy, go back to the trumpet section. Tubas, put on your hats already…"
After a week of pouring November rain, the sidelines of the football field were nothing less than a pit of mud, now filled with marching band members, clad in blue uniforms, trying to pick their ways through it while getting ready to perform their half-time show. Already, their shoes were more brown than white, screaming to be cleaned.
"Damn," muttered Laura Dunn to the percussionist to her left. "It smells like those worms you use when you go fishing. You know what I mean? Sick!"
"Unfortunately, yes, I do," was the response.
The mud squished beneath her feet as she attempted the tiptoe to her place between the cymbal players. Trying her hardest to peer over her quads without toppling forward, Laura the drummer cringed and cursed as she heard the squelching mud.
"Oh, great…" Laura bent over as best as she could to pick up the drumstick that she had dropped in the mud. As she triumphantly straightened back up with the sopping stick, she froze.
"Laura, what are you doing?!" yelled the balding band director, Mr. Ham. "You're getting mud all over you pants! Do you know how much it costs to get one of those uniforms dry-cleaned? A lot! Now, you've gone and gotten mud all over it!"
"Sorry, Mr. Ham," Laura mumbled, glancing around at the mud-stained pants of all of the other band members that Mr. Ham had failed to notice.
"Okay, guys! Like, hurry!" yelled Stacie, the third, youngest, and blondest drum major. "Just, like, jump over the mud, or something!" she said, twirling a strand of her bleached hair between her fingers.
Laura eyed the nearest dry ground, gauging the distance she would have to jump to reach it. "What the hell," she whispered as she prepared to bound, pulling her beret tightly down over her ears so there was no chance that it would fall off.
Just as the female drummer leaped from the muddy ground, Laura heard her name being called. Instinctively, she twisted herself around to see who it was. In a moment of panic, Laura realized that she was losing her footing, falling backwards into the mud.
"Laura! Shit!" she heard someone exclaim as she braced for impact. But, it never came.
"AAAIIIIIE!" Laura screeched as she fell straight through the mud. Everything around her was black, and the wind cut into her mercilessly, despite the heavy woolen uniform that she wore. She could hear snatches of voices having indiscernible conversations. She called out, yet no words escaped her tightening throat.
Suddenly, there was an abrupt flash of jade green light, and Laura saw scenery begin to materialize around her. She seemed to be suspended in the sky.
"Weird…" she murmured, momentarily forgetting her panic. In the distance rose looming dark mountains, and directly below her was a crystal blue stream flanked on both banks by a spring-green meadow, studded with flowers of all hues, which looked like tiny colored dots from where Laura was.
"NOOO!" she screamed as she felt herself being to fall again at breakneck speed, twisting and flipping through the air. She tried to grab the sky, but the attempt was fruitless.
Without warning, Laura crashed into the stream, sinking rapidly.