Jester Jack 

"No, Hannah, you can't do that, that's cheating," complains Derek, throwing his ten-year-old hands up in the air.

He had a full-bodied mannerism, especially when it came to frustration or annoyance. Which, he always was when it came to his younger sister. Who was only six, so she really didn't know anything at all. Not like Derek who now knew the times table all the way up to twelve.

"I'm not cheating!" squeals Hannah. She quickly makes one giant fist and swings it tightly over to her hip as she bends slightly forward.

But Derek won't have it. Hide n' Seek is a serious game, and this is the fourth time he's caught her peering through her fingers while he looked for a hiding spot.

"You can't peek when you count! You have to go back and start over!"

At that, Hannah's round cheeks redden. She narrows her eyes and glares at him through her sunlit hair.

"I didn't peek!"

"I saw you!"

The two of them stand off, face to face, fuming in the half-finished basement. Hannah's bottom lip starts to quiver.

"I didn't peek."

Derek has two options. He can stand his ground and call her out for her behaviour until she bursts into tears, and risk Mom storming downstairs to yell at him. Or, he can let it go.

It takes great maturity, one that Derek believes marks just how much wiser he is than Hannah, that he chooses to back off. For the sake of a fun play day. Of course, he is still ten years old, so it is inevitable that he also rolls his eyes and huffs.

"Fine. Okay. I'll go count, then."

Hannah doesn't like his tone. She scrunches her eyebrows meanly together, but the excitement of getting to hide is far greater than her grievances.

"To one hundred," she demands, running off.

"No! That's too long! I'm counting to fifty," Derek mutters, and so he begins his long count.

He purposely skips the thirties. Just to keep things fair.

The basement is unexpectedly quiet. The dusty white curtains hiding the washer and dryer dangle strangely from their string. Derek loathes them. Their drape always makes it look like someone's watching from behind. If he squints, sometimes he swears he can make out a nose or lips. He goes there first and yanks the curtains apart, unsurprised to find that Hannah isn't hiding there, and also relieved to prove that nothing else is lurking.

Derek tilts his head, listening intently. She always breaks in the first five minutes with either a muffled laugh, or the shuffling of her shoes. Nothing this time. Derek frowns.

"Are you hiding... here?" He tiptoes over to the piles of storage boxes shoved under the stairs and leaps between the gaps.

This time, he is surprised. This is Hannah's usual hiding spot. He looks around, pressing his body deeper into the boxes to check if maybe Hannah decided this time to crawl further in. She is small enough to fit.

Nothing.

He wriggles out from between the boxes, suddenly tired of playing. She could be hiding in the toy room, but he doubts it. Hannah is too much of a scaredy-cat to go in there. Then another thought occurs to him, one that makes his veins boil; she could've gone upstairs to hide. Knowing her, she probably did because the basement was too scary.

Derek grits his teeth, positively livid. After all the grace he'd shown her, her audacity of sneaking upstairs and leaving him all alone in the basement was a line too far. Because, although he'd never admit to it, Derek was scared, too. The prospect of being all alone in the basement was terrifying. Without Hannah's presence, the corner of the room, which he so bravely hid in a mere few moments ago, feels cold and threatening. The shadows are definitely concealing some hideous creature or ghost. The space between the boxes that he'd just crawled out of has a kid-eating monster hiding only a few inches from where we checked last. Derek is sure of it. Goosebumps pinprick his arms. In his periphery, something dark and shadowy slithers towards the washing machine.

Derek skitters towards the stairs and grabs onto the handrail.

"Hannah, if you went upstairs to hide, I'm not playing anymore! You can't keep cheating! It's not fair!" He hollers up the staircase, trying to mask the fact that his knees are shaking.

In response, a loud thud echoes from the toy room. Derek jumps. He scrambles halfway up the stairs before logic hits him. It has to be Hannah. It has to. She is the only one else here. She probably heard him yelling and got scared that he might go upstairs without her. He rolls his eyes and stomps back down the stairs.

"You're not funny, you know," he declares as he passes through the doorway and into the carpeted portion of the basement.

A lifesize doll stands right below the lightswitch. One that his grandmother bought for Hannah on Hannah's third birthday. Derek loathes the doll; it's the freakiest part of the toy room, in his opinion. At first, Derek mistakes her blond curls for Hannah's. He grabs her shoulder and screams when his hand sinks into plastic rather than flesh. The purple ballerina costumed body topples to the carpet, upper-right arm crumpled and bent. Derek's heart leaps to his mouth. He clamps down hard on his tongue, tasting blood.

It takes a full minute for him to calm down enough to bring a shaky hand up to the lightswitch. Not that the light helps. It only adds a faint yellowish hue to the room. The carpet feels warm and sticky under Derek's barefeet, probably an effect of the AC mixing with the summer humidity and perpetual dampness of the basement.

Derek doesn't wait a moment longer. He storms towards the closet at the end of the room and yanks the door open hard enough for it to slam against the wall. Derek barely flinches at the sound.

But Hannah isn't there.

He stares at his feet, where a small box, no larger than the palm of his hand, had fallen. He presumes that it was what had caused the commotion. It must have been hidden on the top shelf, above the hanger rod, where Derek wasn't yet tall enough to see.

The box was quite beautiful, Derek thought, drawn to its maximalist style. Medium blue curtains speckled with painted stars draped over each corner edge. In the center of each face was a juggling clown, half yellow, half blue, the same shade as the curtains, with bright red buttons, and bright orange shoes. A strange calmness settled over the young boy, melting his initial anger into passive fascination. Something about the box felt so familiar although Derek had never seen it before.

Derek couldn't explain it, but the box spoke to him. Called out to him. Begged him to pick it up in his little hands. He held it close to him, gently turning the box around to inspect every side.

"One wish," Derek read aloud, skimming the instructions manual printed on the bottom face.

MAKE A WISH

WIND THE TOY

WHEN JACK POPS OUT,

YOUR WISH IS YOURS TO ENJOY.

WARNING: WISHES CANNOT BE REVERSED OR UNDONE. ONE PERSON, ONE WISH.

One wish. The words echo repeatedly in Derek's mind. What could he possibly wish for? A million dollars feels too easy, too cliche. Derek's mind immediately drifts to that Roblox Ninja set that Mom said was too expensive. Or maybe, he can come up with a loophole and wish for a wish to get whatever he wants for the rest of his life, or–

"What are you doing?" Hannah suddenly calls out.

The box clatters out of Derek's hand. He whirls around, heart pounding in his throat, guilty as if he'd been caught doing something bad. He moves himself slightly to cover the fallen box with his leg. He doesn't want her to see it. She'll take it and make a stupid, six-year-old wish for a Barbie doll or something.

Hannah stands like a doll just underneath the lightswitch, with her curly, unkempt hair, and a wash of sugar clearly over her lips. She doesn't seem to notice the fallen doll just at her feet, whose head is turned unnaturally to the side so that it faces Derek and the box. Although the doll's eyes are painted on her face, Derek can't bear looking at it for too long; he's convinced that anger lurks secretly in those green acrylic irises.

Hannah's eyes, on the other hand, are annoyingly bright and indignant, clearly testing him.

"You're supposed to be hiding," Derek grits his teeth.

"I was waiting and waiting and I got bored," Hannah stares at the box on the ground. She grabs a little baby doll from the open chest on the other side of the door and tucks it under her right arm like a purse. The baby doll winks mutely at Derek with one limp eyelid. She shuffles closer towards Derek, clearly uninterested in the doll, and points, "What is that?"

Derek grabs the box, infuriated.

"Where were you hiding, Hannah?" He stares at that shade of sugar on her lips.

"I was hiding!" Her eyes flash defensively. She furrows her eyebrows together.

"Where?"

"What is that?" Hannah tries to change the subject. She reaches for the box again, but Derek holds it up as high as he can.

Why won't she just go play with her dumb dolls? The silent baby doll head lurches obediently this way and that every time Hannah moves.

"Where were you hiding?" He pushes his sister away as she tries for the box again. She grunts, pushing back against him, "You cheated, didn't you?"

"I didn't cheat!" Hannah yells. Tears well up in the corner of her eyes.

If either child had eaten lunch, perhaps the following events might have been different. Even young Derek knew that he was mostly irritable because he hadn't had lunch yet. And the scary events of the few moments before Hannah returned didn't help his mood. So, it's neither of their faults that the fraying thread of peace keeping their argument from turning into a full-fledged fight quickly snapped.

"You went upstairs. That's cheating!"

"No, it's not!" She screams.

"Yes, it is!" He screams back even louder.

Hannah forms two fists and pummels them into Derek's abdomen.

"I hate you!" She screams, wildly flinging her fists. Her sobs echo dramatically in the room.

Derek shoves her. Hannah goes stumbling back and falls.

That seems to shut her up. Derek breathes heavily. Hannah clutches at her arm. A droplet of blood trickles down past her shoulder. Derek glances at the box in his hand. He had been holding it when he pushed her; it must have nicked her. A stain of red on the lower left corner of it reinforces this thought.

For a second, Derek feels a pang of guilt.

"Are you hurt? I'm sorry, I–"

But Hannah is past any logic or reason. With a growl, Hannah leaps up and lunges at him. The sound that comes out of her is feral. Derek's back hits the ground, and for a second, he can't breathe. The box tilts and rolls over to the edge of the closet door. Hannah is on a quest for blood. She sits on top of him, using her knees to pin his arms down, tearing nails through his skin. An eye for an eye. Reparations for the injustice he'd inflicted upon her.

"Ow! Stop it!" Derek yells, turning his head to dodge her slaps. The colourful box glints, shining its instructions towards him, "Get off me!"

He shoves her into the closet and slams the door shut. From behind, Hannah starts to scream. She frantically pounds her fists against the door. Derek uses all of his body weight to hold it closed.

"Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!" She shrieks, her voice getting louder and higher in pitch.

"Shut up!" Derek screams in response.

The box is somehow in his hands, although he doesn't remember picking it up. He's not sure what he's thinking, but that baby doll stares at him from the floor, and the ballerina doll lies limp and all quiet–

He twists the lever over and over again. What's his wish? Derek isn't even sure he's thinking of anything, and those stupid dolls just stare at him so quietly. Inside, Hannah won't stop screaming, and could she just shut up for one second, let Derek think–

There is no accompanying song. Just the gentle whir of the mechanics as they rotate.

Jack pops out, colourful, bouncing clown.

The screaming stops. A strange crinkling sound, like plastic, shudders from behind the door.

"Der–"

A gentle thud reverberates against the door, and then everything goes silent. Derek breathes hard. The clown bounces up and down and then stills.

"Hannah?" Derek calls out, unable to move his body to open the door just yet. A bad feeling glosses over him.

His hand finds the doorknob on its own accord. Derek feels as though he is floating above his body, watching the events unfold in slow motion. The door creaks open. A body tilts out to the ground, stiff and unmoving.

The buzz in Derek's ears isn't panic as much as it is merely the fact that he cannot quite process the situation. It's as if he were staring at two images, trying to spot the difference, except both images were wrong.

"Hannah?" His voice is barely a whimper as he turns her over. Her skin bends and indents under his touch, completely plastic.

He gasps.

Her eyes are wide open, but flat, as though they'd been painted on. Derek drops to his knees.

He frantically stuffs the clown back into the box and shuts the lid. He twists the knob over and over three full times, but other than the gentle whir of the gears, nothing happens.

Hannah stares at him, a glint of horror in a plain white sugary paint mark just over her irises.

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