Nightmare Fuel 2021 - Day the Third

Three days of this! Here's a vignette about what you do when you reach an edge of the world. 

The world's topology is complicated - it has many, many edges.

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"Come here. You've got to see what I found!"

It's Maddy, of course. She's always the reckless one, the mad one. The one sneaking through neighbor's yards, who found the tree you could climb to hop over to the roof of the school. 

You're all out together, in the kind of early fall day you when you can still pretend it's summer. The kind our parents still call "Indian Summer" no matter how many times we tell them not to, then awkwardly joke that it's "Native American Summer" or some other such silliness. 

It's Maddy who always gets you all into trouble.

Mike looks skeptical, like he always does. "What is it this time? Are we gonna get in trouble again?" Mike was the last one down from the school roof. The principal caught him and made him spend an hour carrying books to  different classrooms. He didn't turn the rest of us in, but he still never forgave Maddy.

"Nothing like that. Look, this'll be great. You've just got to see it. But you have to hurry. It doesn't stay there for long."

You follow, not open for long being a magic phrase. After all, we don't want to miss out on something that isn't there for long, do we?

This adventure leads you on bikes down the busy street and to the sculpture garden behind the tiny art museum our parents drag us to sometimes. Past the lake, to the wide grassy hills nobody ever wanders past. Not because there's anything to stop us, but because there's nothing there. Just well-manicured grass and perfectly straight hedges.

Before long we get there, to a perfectly straight row of hedges with a perfectly round hole through the middle. The sunlight, from straight overhead, leaves the hole perfectly dark. This must be the "it doesn't stay for long" Maddy was talking about. Her eyes are bright. 

"It's a gateway. To another world."

"Another world?" Mike looks at the hole. The gateway. He doesn't step closer, doesn't shy away. "What's this other world like?"

"It looks like this one, but EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT." Her eyes are wide, bright. Mike shakes his head. "Except for when you guys talk me into trouble, I LIKE this world. It's where I keep all my stuff."

Maddy shakes her head. "Well, I want to explore." 

You find yourself between Mike and Maddy, as he edges back towards the hole and she steps forward.

Maddy walks through the hole and vanishes.

You follow. Darkness washes over you, as the world vanishes for just a moment. Then step out into the light, on the other side of the hedge. Maddy smiles at you. "I knew you'd come. We can't go back through, or we'd end up back in the same world." The back of the hedgerow is less even, less finely cared for. You smell damp earth, something a bit wild. You walk along the hedge together for a bit, her hand in yours. Then you find a thin spot between hedges and slip through, branches tearing at your skin. You walk back along the hedges until you find this world's version of Mike, with this world's version of the bicycles another you and another Maddy had left behind when they went exploring, off to a different world.

Or you don't follow. Maddy gives the two of you a look of disappointment, disappearing into the darkness as she steps through the hole. You and Mike share a look of resignation. Minutes later another world's Maddy appears from a gap in the hedges a ways down. Not a portal, not a tunnel, just a gap. Neither of you stop her from taking your Maddy's bike to ride home in silence, her disappointment hanging in the air between you.

You glance back once, knowing that your choice matters. That now everything is the different.

Or everything is the same. 

Nightmare Fuel 2021 - Day the Second

 

The Long Way Home

You take the long way home from school, along the backroads. You always told your mother that it was because the noise of the busier street bothers you, and she always pretends to believe you.

The truth is that you don't know who will be home today. Which monster.

The first time was weeks ago. You remember standing out in the yard, kicking a soccer ball against the house. The tall grass of the lawn worn to dirt patches where you stood, twelve yards from the side of the house. You'd paced it, to be sure. Your mother's voice through the kitchen window "You've lost your goddam mind". 

You stopped kicking. He'd lost his mind? Was your father a zombie, a shambling undead creature with no thoughts, feeding on brains? You stayed out until darkness had fallen, until you could barely see the ball. 

When you finally came in to dinner at the kitchen table (the dining room was only for Sundays or holidays) his mind was indeed gone - he ate with an absent-minded, glassy-eyed stare. Didn't say anything. Spent the last part of the meal scaping a line of crumbs out of the table's central joint with the tiny pocket screwdriver he always carried. He didn't say good night when you excused yourself to bed.

Then there was the time he'd lost his senses. That was worse. His eyes were glassy, he barely picked at his dinner. He must have lost his sense of taste as well. 

"Are you going to eat your food or just stare at it?" You almost reflexively answer "I'm eating", but she wasn't looking at you. There was not a word the rest of the meal, but that's what it's like when you someone loses their senses.

So today, you take the long way home. You don't want to see the mind-numbed zombie or the deaf-mute senseless drone. 

Your mother is standing outside the front steps as you approach, "You'd better hurry in. Your father's going to lose his head if you make me keep dinner waiting any longer."

Lose ... his head? A real monster this time, all shoulders and body and appetite and anger? Arms even longer, able to reach you from even farther? What was the head but the wobbly bit on the top? The place he kept his mind and senses? Without his head, it's just the monster.

You hear heavy steps down the stairs. You see his feet, the long arms, the mouth. It's hard to know without a face, but he looks angry.

Resigned to your fate, you step inside. 

If you get another chance, you'll never take the long way again.

Nightmare Fuel 2021 , Day the First

 Good morning friends, if anyone is still here.

These pages have remained empty for a long time, and I skipped this whole exercise last year as pandemic brain kind of melted me. The game is the same - one piece of flash fiction per day, written one day late in the early morning. Just little sketches here to get the brain moving and put us in the October mood.

Project is courtesy of Andrea Trask, sometimes known as Bliss Morgan. If you want to play along, prompts are here on the Tumblr. She also has a Patreon for those who wish to patreonise her. 

Now, on with it.

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There are whispers of a place, isolated but not too isolated, where the anonymous acolyte of worth holds a book. If you find him - and it isn't as hard as one would think - you'll be shown a single page.

On it is be written the greatest day of your life. The only price is that you need to look, and you'll always  carry that knowledge that on one shining day - perhaps in the future, perhaps lost in your past - you had your best moment. And none before or since would measure up.

Nobody ever asks what "greatest" means. Not that the acolytes would ever tell.

I arrive on a chill October day, accompanied by a youth. They laugh nervously as we travel the tree-lined ghost-walk to the weathered stone temple of worth. "You're almost fifty. Whatever your time is, it's in the past. Why bother?"

I smile. "Maybe I just need a reminder. But we're here for you."

We step in. The acolyte is where we'd been told, covered in heavy robes. Impossible to tell who it was, male or female. They were holding a black-leatherbound book, as worn with the ravages of time as the building around us. They look first at the youth, beckon with one crooked finger. He steps forward, the book is held up to him and opened. 

"October 31, 2036. You tell the truth to yourself." That's how it was written - always in the present tense, as if it is always unfolding. Right now.

 2036. Fifteen years from now. 

The youth steps back. "but.. I never lie for myself. It'll take fifteen years? For just that?"

The figure is silent. It always was. 

I stepped forward to complete the ritual, but I already know.

"November 27, 2001. You go where you need to be."

The youth laughs, again nervously. "That's it? You went where you need to go twenty years ago? Some life, eh? You must be disappointed. What's left to live for?"

I barely hear. Because it's the date I knew. I remember the shoes I was wearing, the brown rockports with the frayed lace on one side, because I was tying them when I got the phone call. She was scared. She didn't think the doctors were paying her enough attention. She knew it was time for work, but she needed me.

I remembered she was wearing her glasses because I was left clutching them as a nurse ushered me away from the others who'd answered my calls for help.

The same nurse - or maybe a different one - asks me if she was wearing a watch. I say I don't know, and then she hands it to me. Stupidly, absurdly, I'll always wonder why she asked that.

Then I'm standing in a tiny, anonymous office built for painful conversations, staring at that watch, not even seeing what time it showed, as I'm handed a phone. "Do you need to call her family? Anyone?" I hold the receiver in my hand for a long time before I realize that I don't know what I'd even say to them. I set it down and say something. I don't remember what.

The rest is a blur from of fear, anger, frustration. The fear fades slowly over the next days, weeks, months. The sense of "not out of the woods" and "could happen again" that lingered like the scent of something long departed until, without fanfare, it is gone. Almost. There will be reminders later, over the years. Nothing is ever over.

I smile at the youth. "What I have to live for is the same reason I skipped work that day. It could have been the worst day of my life. It WAS one of the worst days. But also the greatest. I know if given the choice, you'd do the same"

We leave that place, having learned nothing.