The Film Girl

Author's notes: This short story is inspired by my hatred for what I call "unhappy
endings". Some fantasy stories or films end with a character coming back to reality, or
their own world. If I were one of those characters, I would never come back. By the
way, I don't own any rights to Labyrinth. One more thing: I would like it if more readers reviewed
this story so that I can figure out whether to continue it or not. Thanks!

The eccentric film girl sat in front of the screen of her shabby television, waiting
for her favourite scene to start. Labyrinth played on, as she waited with bated breath.
She was a sort of antisocial young woman, who fell for anything fantasy or horror—hard.
She wanted nothing more than to live in one of Jim Henson's fantastical universes. She
would choose to fly into a black hole if it meant there was a chance of arriving in some
new dimension full of faeries, hobbits, elves and goblin kings. That's why she planned
on being a film director. She figured it was the closest thing to living in a movie, and she
would forever be able to play around props and watch things come to life. A place where
people purposefully wore masks or became characters was better than a world where
people tried to be genuine and failed miserably.

The favourite scene had arrived. She watched as the floating glass bubble
revealed to Sarah a tiny model of herself, in a puffy white dress…and the handsome,
charmingly hievhievous goblin king moved around, tricking and evading Sarah in the
massive, magical ballroom. The film girl watched the dance transpire with a feeling of
such intense longing that it nearly suffocated her. The film girl was a drug addict. Her
love for surrealism often dominated her judgment. She thought briefly about the magic
mushrooms she had eaten an hour before. The goblin king's fast movements blurred and
swirled for both Sarah and the film girl. The lazy synthesized tune pumping out
rhythmically from the gorgeous ballroom in the television was hypnotic, and soon the
film girl found herself glassy eyed and nearly comatose. It was then possible to be
crippled by longing. This was the kind of longing that someone felt when they recalled a
shadow of their past life of which they had been violently robbed. This was an aching no
body part could ever know, but the mind…not the brain, but the mind.

The film girl began to feel the light glittery dust from the ballroom fall upon her
face and short, Winona Ryder-esque hair. The film girl didn't even want to know if it
was real; if it was the apartment ceiling deteriorating above her, or enchanting pixie dust
from the goblin city. She would take it for what it seemed. She closed her eyes slowly.
When she opened them again, she was only partly surprised to find them staring directly
into the mismatch-coloured eyes of the goblin king himself. His wicked-yet-amused grin
appeared as a result of the girl's gentle confusion. As she became more aware, she felt
that her hand was in his, the other on his crushed velvet shoulder. She felt her feet move
with his, taking steps she wasn't supposed to know. The film girl tried to speak.

"You…you're…" But she was too weak. The ache, the motion, the shrooms and
the disbelief each had their potent hold on her coherency.

They swirled around and around in the palace ballroom, holding onto one another
as if each were a ticket to Heaven in the final hour of the apocalypse. The eccentric film
girl was jarred by events that transpired now, though never appeared in the movie. Her
comatose lips were warmed by the goblin king's soft kiss. Her eyes widened yet she was
still unable to speak. She remembered how in the movie, Sarah was distracted by her
mission to get through the labyrinth and rescue her baby brother; she thought about this,
and realized that she had nothing to take her away from this fine masquerade.

It's 12:47…what happens after 13 o'clock? The girl thought. The dance slowed,
and she caught a glimpse of herself in a large silver ornament against the wall. She saw
her eyes, which were now blue-green pools, filled to the rim of their sockets. She saw
her white puffy dress catch strange shadows and turn black…but when she looked down,
she realized they weren't shadows. They were swirls of magic, transforming her dress
into a black nightgown. The goblin king, with his hand on the small of her back, pulled
the girl against him tightly. She became excited, but before she had a real chance to
react, the king waved his slender hand over her eyes.

The film girl opened her eyes after what seemed like eternity, and found herself sitting
alone on a black quartz cliff at the edge of a green sea. It was more vast than anything
she had ever imagined. Her eyes seemed to reach to the end of the sea, and the sky
on the horizon line was black with faint twinkling stars. It was like she could see through
time zones. The girl reluctantly tore her eyes away from the picturesque scene, and
turned to look behind her. Far away lay the Goblin City, and to the right there was a
faded image of grassy hills, forests and mountains. There were two moons beginning to
appear in the sky, one larger than the other, just as she had seen on the covers of many
fantasy novels. The castle of the goblins was alive with the switching on of lights in
windows, and flapping of flags. The eccentric film girl took one last breath of the surreal
coastal air, stood, and strolled through the high grasses, in which Brownies made their
cozy homes, straight toward the castle.

I'm home… She thought.


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