Magic Mansion by Jordan Price (best fiction books to read .txt) 📕

long, wavy, once-brown hair filled the box, giving her head a sort of disconnected appearance from the rest of her body. Either she was deep in meditation, or she was simply biding her time until this initial humiliation was over.

John looked to Bev again. Her short gray hair floated, and small bubbles rose all around her. Her score on the scoreboard surpassed everyone else’s, gaining ground half a second at a time. Then, once she’d gotten her bearings, she jabbed the green button. Her tank lit up, and the animal wrangler approached with a cupful of fish and dumped them in. Her numbers on the scoreboard, which were already ticking by more quickly than her competitors’, began scrolling up even more rapidly.

John stopped deliberating and hit the green button straight away; his few seconds of initial pause may have already cost him dearly.

The sound of water rushing into a vacuum was peculiar, a deadening muffle so intense it seemed like it should have been labeled “loud.” Monty had been doing some kind of play-by-play banter, but as soon as the water filled John’s ears, the sound of his own steady pulse overtook everything else, and his world turned inward.

The water, on some level, resonated with his Truth. That Truth, and not the Islander heritage, was probably the real reason the ocean had been kind to him in his youth. Not only would his score rise faster from choosing to be underwater—he’d be able to hold his breath longer there, too. Because the water seemed to understand. It calmed him. And he felt his pulse ease back, and his heart slow—and though he’d only seen a frozen body of water on celluloid, in films where some unfortunate would plunge through a hole once the foreboding music had peaked, it occurred to him that hypothermia must work that way.

But then the fish plunked into the water all around his face, and his heart rate sped to normal, and beyond. Though water’s Truth should have felt alien compared to that of a human being, it was pure enough to understand at a glance. The fish were another matter: want, want, want, want.

Want.

He felt them exploring his hair, wriggling, touching, testing. His earlobe. His eyebrow. So close they were nothing but small, gray, nipping shadows. Reflexively, he tried to bat them away, but only succeeded in bashing his hand against the outside of the tank. Large bubbles rose as he released a gulp of precious air in his startlement. He looked to one side. Muriel—calm, dry. The other—Bev, gray hair spread in an underwater halo as she turned to see how Fabian, in the tank on the other side of her, was doing. Outside the tank, a loud and percussive sound, mostly muted by the water. And then Fabian’s timer stopped rising. His final score: one minute, twelve seconds.

John felt people rushing past him, but with his head locked in a tank, couldn’t see. With his ears muffled by water, couldn’t hear. Fabian was fine, wasn’t he? He had to be fine. The worst he would have was a snootful of water.

Unless he’d suffered a heart attack.

But, no. That wouldn’t have happened in just a minute.

Right?

John had no idea. He’d never had so much as a cavity or a sniffle, so he never actually read any of the articles Dick sent him about stress tests and HDL levels and colonoscopies.

He stared at the side of Bev’s head until she turned and locked eyes with him. John tried to gesture toward Fabian’s tank with his eyes, to see if she might be able to hint at what had just happened. But her face was distorted from the effort of holding her breath while the doctor fish picked at the corners of her mouth. Seeing those fish swarming her face made John’s own predicament feel even worse, so he fixed his eyes on the scoreboard instead—his and Bev’s seconds ticking by at double-speed, Muriel’s slower climb now surpassing Fabian’s final score—and he blinked away a greedy fish while he did his best to ignore the impending burn in his lungs.

A fish plucked at his eyelash, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He was unsure if it was better or worse with his whole world narrowed down to the sound of his own pulse in his ears. It seemed much faster than he cared for it to be, and he did his best to calm it, and to think about Rose. For years, she’d suffered being tied and trussed and locked inside painted boxes, all the while wearing four-inch heels and a bright, red-lipsticked smile. Surely her son could tolerate being nipped at by fish for a few more seconds. Even in front of the cameras.

He opened his eyes and saw his score was over three minutes now—which probably meant he’d been holding his breath somewhere around two, multiplied by the delayed addition of the water and the fish—and he didn’t see how he could last much longer. Between the excitement of the competition and the freakishness of the fish exploring his face, he simply couldn’t force himself to stay calm, and his diaphragm was screaming out with the need to draw breath. It hurt—but no doubt cramming oneself into a box in four-inch heels was no treat, either. Stage magic was all about self-control. So John acknowledged the hurt. But he held firm.

A muffled whoosh broke his concentration. The Math Wizard had punched the red button. Her tank drained immediately into the pedestal below, and the top popped open. Bev’s final adjusted score: four minutes, eighteen seconds. John felt people rushing behind him again—and finally his aching lungs would take no more. He pushed his red button. The water (and the fish) drained, the top opened, and sweet, sweet air rushed in. Four minutes, two seconds. He might have beaten Bev’s score, if only he’d been quicker to fill his tank with water.

Beside him, calm and dry, Muriel stood with her head inside a sealed plexiglass