The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen by Ellen Datlow Read Free Book Online Page A

needed something bigger if I wanted to come out of this alive. I crouched beside rubble from the chimney, dropped my brick, and grabbed a discarded axe handle where it lay half-buried among the weeds.
    The Scarecrow trembled, begged. “Please don’t hurt me! Please!”
    The Wicked Witch formed her hand into a claw. Eldritch flames sprouted from her bitten nails, knotted into a pulsing globe.
    “I release you, Scarecrow! I give you your freedom—in death!”
    She hurled the fire and the Scarecrow tried to block it with upraised hands.
    The ball hit him and ate his body up in seconds.
    The Wicked Witch stepped into the yard, blocked my way to the road, as the Tin Man and Dorothy circled the Scarecrow’s smoldering remains. If I braved the apple orchard, I’d have to fight them both, one armed with an axe, the other with a dead dog.
    “This is taking too long,” the Wicked Witch said. “It’s time for you to join me, Michael.”
    “I’m not going anywhere, Denise.” I waved the axe handle before me.
    “My name is not Denise. I can’t remember my name. It’s been such a long time since I heard it.”
    “But if you’re not Denise. . . .”
    My words trailed off. I let my eyes trace the lines in her face. I barely recognized the woman I’d flirted with in the hallway. She might be there under the thick cheeks, the warts, the bony chin and green skin, but there wasn’t enough to convince me.
    “Then . . . I must be the Wicked Witch!” she said.
    I swung my weapon and reached for the roof. The handle cracked when it hit, cut my hands as it splintered. The Tin Man was nearest the cabin and he screamed. His voice squeaked. You’re going to need to oil more than that, buddy. My blow shook the roof ’s remaining boards and the water puddles washed into the yard, striking the Tin Man. He scrambled into the road, metal limbs clanking, joints squealing from friction. The shower streaked Dorothy’s makeup, washed her brown tresses blonde, knocked Toto from her arms.
    The Wicked Witch smiled.
    She raised her claws to meet the deluge running across her body, black rags clinging to her stick frame. The shape beneath was suddenly too skeletal and bulged in all the wrong places, cancerous and demonic. She licked the stagnant moisture off her lips with a leprous tongue, slurping at the algae.
    “Yeah, right,” she said. “Like no one’s ever tried water before.”
    I ran but a tree stopped me. Not one of the apple trees. Those were back by the cabin.
    The Wicked Witch screamed—“Get him! I won’t lose two today!”— and I looked over my shoulder, trying to spot a pursuer. When I turned forward again, I ran face first into a lightning-split oak.
    As I lay there dazed, my audience assembled.
    “You can’t get away, Michael,” the Wicked Witch said.
    “What do you want?”
    “I was thrown out of my land a long time ago and I can never go back.” She gestured at the forest, the ramshackle cabin, and the rotting orchard. “This is my home. This is my reality. This is my dream.”
    I shook my head. “A dream?”
    Dorothy wiped her face and left fingerprints in the wet mascara and rouge. “More than a dream. We play our parts, we keep her from loneliness.”
    “Stan was one of us,” the Tin Man said. “He served his time. When she tired of him, she let him serve her outside.”
    “Be quiet, beehive!” said the Wicked Witch, pushing him aside. “You’ll learn my ways soon enough, Michael. You’re going to replace him.”
    “You’re crazy!” I pulled myself up against the split trunk. “I’ll never do anything you want!”
    “That’s why I love you, Michael.” She motioned towards the tree. “Lift him up.”
    A noose dropped over my head and cinched tight. At the other end, hidden among the leaves, an orangutan jumped into the air, guiding its descent with spread wings as it hauled the rope across a thick branch.
    My neck snapped.
    The Witch’s obsession traps us here, and her magic forces us