Into the Real

by Z Brewer

  “It can’t be.” I looked at Coe, knowing the truth, but refusing to accept it. “Can it?”

  “Just how supportive was your brother, oh fractured Quinn?”

  “Stop it! Kai loved me. He always supported me. He alwa—” Without the aid of Coe and the mirror, the memory returned to me. Kai and I had been standing beside his car, the sun baking down on us. The back seat was filled with his belongings. As he slid into the front seat and put the key in the ignition, he looked at me with venom in his eyes and repeated the words the vision of him had said to me that day in the school. “It’s your fault they’re gone, you know. It’s all your fault.”

  My chest felt hollow. And I knew the memories—all that Coe had revealed to me—to be real. “Kai left me. Our parents died and he just . . . left me.”

  As I spoke, my words sounded as if they were coming from someone else. They were too painful for me to say. Too painful for me to admit. I disassociated for a time and let the truth drip from my lips. “That’s when the fog rolled in. That’s when the monsters appeared. The Rippers, the Screamers, the Unseen Hands—none of them existed before that moment. Before I’d lost everything but the truth of who I am.”

  Standing, Coe clapped his hands together slowly. “And so, we come to the center of the shrubbery maze.”

  “How could I have convinced myself that my family was so supportive, so loving? How is it that I can still recall so clearly the fog, the monsters, the world falling down around us all, if it hadn’t until they were gone?” I pressed my back against the wall and stood. My legs trembled. My knees felt weak.

  “It seems to me that the world collapsed when your world collapsed. But it was easier to imagine a mystery that you couldn’t comprehend than to face what really happened.” He took another drag and blew it out. The stench of the smoke almost made me choke. “Lies are often cushions against a hurtful truth.”

  The horror of my situation filled me until I thought I might burst. I’d created the wall of fog the day that Kai had left me behind, shutting out the light of the world. Only I couldn’t bear the torture of my reality, of my family’s utter rejection. So I’d built a new truth—one so vivid that I made it reality. “It was me. This whole time I blamed you for what Brume has become. But . . . it was me. I made it this way.”

  I was certain now. I was also certain that the responsibility didn’t fall on my shoulders alone. I hadn’t done everything—not on purpose. But I’d created the fog, the monsters . . . it was me. Lia’s mom, Caleb’s sister. Everyone had been made to suffer because I somehow turned our world into the nightmare that it was. Wondering if there even was an answer to my question, I said, “How do I fix it?”

  For a moment, Coe stood silent. I wondered if he was sympathizing with me or relishing in the pain of my realization. He lit a second cigarette and took a drag. His words were puffs of cloud in the air between us. Like fog. “You solve the puzzle.”

  I stared into the mirror for a long time, considering Coe’s words. What puzzle was there to solve?

  My reflection glanced down at their body before locking eyes with me again. We were one, they and I. Same face. Same hoodie. Same expression. But we were separate entities as well. Just like me and the other Quinns. But what had they meant by the gesture? Were they hinting at an answer to what the puzzle might be? Was it related to my—our—body somehow? My reflection’s lips drew a thin line in frustration. They waved a hand across their face, and revealed something new. A face I knew well—pretty and feminine. It was me, but the female me. Under my breath, I whispered to the mirror, “I don’t understand.”

  Their hand waved across their face again, this time revealing scruff and the hardened gaze of the masculine me. A third wave revealed my reflection’s original face—though I was certain we weren’t sharing the same expression. They looked like they had the answers.

  Sudden realization tore my eyes from the mirror and focused them on Coe. “The puzzle of why I’m shifting between realities. The paradox. It’s me.”

  Coe the Stranger said nothing.

  “I caused the split . . . just like I caused the fog. I couldn’t face the possibility that Lia might not want me as more than a friend because I’m genderqueer. So I broke my existence into thirds. I created the paradox—three worlds, but with different relationships, different gender identities, different experiences . . . but one singular problem. In each reality, I’ve been looking for people outside myself to accept me for who, for what, I am.”

  His smile grew twisted as he tilted his chin down. His eyes lit up with an unnerving, excited glow.

  “It’s my fault the split happened. But if I created it, I can fix it. I just need to find a common thread. Something that will tell me which Brume is the real one.” I looked at the mirror again. Could it somehow be the solution to my problem? I pictured the rock as it flew into the mirror, to parts unknown. I thought of the other two Brumes and the impossible task that lay before me. Only . . . maybe I was making it seem more impossible than it really was. “Wait. You’re wrong—no. No, I’m wrong.”

  The Stranger stood silent.

  With an air of wonder, I said, “All three Brumes are real. My life hasn’t been split. It’s . . . more.”

  As I moved past Coe toward the front of the cave, where Caleb and Lia were sleeping, he chuckled. The sound of it echoed low off the cave walls, his fading words trailing it. “Don’t forget. You get one life, fractured Quinn. Make it count.”

  When I glanced back, he was gone. Just as I’d expected him to be.

  After shaking Caleb and Lia awake and directing them back to the mirror, I tried hard to explain what I’d been experiencing—how my life had become three lives, and all that was facing each one of me, the paradox that I’d created. I wasn’t surprised to see the doubt in their eyes, or the quiet glances they exchanged as they questioned my sanity. I said, “I know how this sounds. But it’s happening, I swear.”

  Lia took a moment before she spoke, as if choosing her words carefully. “Do you hear what you’re asking us to believe, Quinn? Three different Brumes? Escaping some psycho camp? Fighting some war? It’s . . . it’s just a lot to take in without doubt.”

  “Look. We live in a place where monsters kill people indiscriminately. Where the town is surrounded by an inescapable wall of fog. Where a woman can walk into the high school and come out a bloodthirsty banshee.” Sharp pain sliced through Lia’s expression, but I had to say it. Like slapping someone to relieve their shock, sometimes pain helped anchor us to reality. I didn’t mention that I had a hand in her mom’s transformation. Hadn’t I hurt her enough already? “If you can believe all of that to be real, what makes what I’m saying seem so farfetched?”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Caleb said, his tone soft, but not indulgent, which I appreciated.

  Lia looked up at the ceiling of the cave, as if the answers might be written there. Finding none, she sighed and met my eyes. “So what if it is real? What if you haven’t lost your mind? What then?”

  Straightening my shoulders in determination, I said, “I caused the paradox. So I have to resolve it. And I have to do it now, before the lantern dies and we’re all reduced to nothing but blood and bits of bone. If the Rippers don’t get us first, that is.”

  Caleb cocked an eyebrow. “But you can’t—”

  “I know. A paradox can’t be resolved. But I have to try.”

  “Just how do you propose to do that?” Lia had drawn her arms up around herself, as if searching for warmth . . . or comfort.

  I gestured to the back of the cave with a nod. “I’m going to enter the mirror and choose which life I want to live.”

  An invisible emotional wall went up in front of Lia. She shook her head. “You can’t do that, Quinn. Even if it were possible to pass through a mirror’s surface, even if some realm existed within it or beyond it, you can’t just go into that thing and expect to survive. You have no idea what it really is.”

  Caleb said, “It’s no
ordinary mirror. We know that much.”

  Lia flashed Caleb a look that said he should stop trying to help. “Are you really willing to risk your life based on wild guesses and Coe’s guidance?”

  As calmly as I could, I said, “It’s more than that. It’s . . . this feeling I get.”

  Throwing her arms up, she scoffed. “Seriously? A monster like Coe stalks you, and then, because your exhausted, confused, frightened brain tells you it’s a good idea, you’ve decided to throw yourself into a weird-ass floating mirror?”

  Deciding to help me again, Caleb said, “Didn’t you say that Coe does both good and bad? What if this is one of the good things?”

  Ignoring him, Lia met and held my gaze. I knew what she was thinking. If anyone could talk some sense into me, it was her. “My point is, I think we should maybe investigate this whole thing a bit before you trust it with your life, Quinn.”

  “Which life, Lia? What’s there to investigate? Can you possibly tell me any more about the mirror than I already know? Can you come up with a better solution? Because that lantern is dying, Lia. And we will be too soon, if I don’t do something fast.” Aggravation pulsed through my veins.

  “What if you’re wrong about creating the paradox? What if going through that mirror is the sort of thing that changed my mother into that shrieking banshee monster she became? What if . . .” Tears welled in her eyes. I struggled to recall if I’d ever seen Lia cry before in this Brume and came up empty. “What if I lose you too, Quinn? I don’t think I have the strength to take the loss of your life as well.”

  “I’ll be okay.” I wasn’t sure if I was lying. Even if I was, it’d be worth it just to quench her tears before they fell.

  But fall they did.

  My hands shaking in frustration, I ran my fingers through my hair, combing it away from my eyes. My chest felt tight, like my lungs weren’t getting enough air. “Look. Coe said that the choice was mine, and that I have to choose. I can live whatever life I want. They’re all real. If the mirror is a portal, somehow, to whatever life I pick, what choice do I have but to step through it?”

  Lia folded her arms in front of her, shaking her head, her cheeks still wet. “This is crazy. Even if it works, even if you come out on the other side okay . . . how do you choose which life you want?”

  “I have no idea.” A sigh escaped me. “In the Brume where I present as a girl, I have to hide the most important parts of myself, or my parents will shut me out of their life. My whole world will come crashing down if I don’t keep the fact that I’m genderqueer a secret from them. But my family is alive.”

  “And in the other Brume, where you present as a guy?” Caleb glanced from me to Lia and back, checking on her while he spoke.

  “There I’m respected and confident, and changing the world for the better. But I have to hide who I am inside because too many people might lose that respect for me, and the Resistance could suffer, the entire country could fall under the control of a fascist regime.” The light coming from the beginning of the cave, from our lantern, was fading fast. I could no longer smell burning sage. “Neither of them is great, but they each have their advantages.”

  Caleb began pacing slowly back and forth, his lips drawn in against his teeth, as if he were deep in thought.

  “What about here?” Lia said. “What about this Brume? There’s gloom and death all around us. There are Rippers and Screamers, violent gangs and the Unseen Hands. Your family’s been taken from you. What could this life possibly offer you?” Lia had been raising her voice with every word, and by the time she finished speaking, she was practically shouting. Her skin had flushed pink. Her chest rose and fell in panicked breaths. She thought I was leaving her. Like her mother had left her. And the truth was, I didn’t know if she was wrong to think it.

  “True. It’s ugly here. Downright terrifying at times. But at least here, I’m free to be myself out loud without judgment.”

  “I guess I just don’t get it.” She sounded hurt.

  Caleb stopped pacing. His eyes lit up with something resembling excitement. “Wait. Why not do what you can to change things in those lives? Find your people who’ll stand by you, and come out? That way you can finally leave this Brume behind, but still have the freedom that comes with being out.”

  I imagined what it would be like to live a life without my parents accepting me for who I am. To live with friends—maybe those I’d made at Camp Redemption. What it would be like to be out and in charge of the Resistance. Maybe with enough resolve, I could change perceptions there. I didn’t know. But even if I did reveal my true self to people in those other Brumes, there would always be that other thing.

  “The problem is that monsters exist in every world.” They both snapped their eyes to mine in horror. I knew what they were thinking, that I’d left out the part about the Unseen Hands being everywhere. But, in a way, what I’d meant was much worse. “Sometimes those monsters are Rippers. Sometimes they’re people who’d hurt a person for being different. Sometimes they’re turncoats and bloody acts of war. But there are monsters in every life. At least here I know how to fight them.”

  Lia and Caleb grew quiet for a long time. They both just stared at me, as if they’d discovered a new species and were desperately trying to understand its inner workings. It was Lia who broke the silence at last. Her voice was barely louder than a whisper. “But is that enough?”

  Caleb furrowed his brow. “What about us? When you choose which life you want to live, what happens to Lia and me?”

  The two of them exchanged looks of intermingled wonder and horror, but I could offer no words to comfort them. The truth was, I had no idea.

  I thought about the mirror in each of the Brumes and wondered why it was the same in each world. If stepping through was the answer, then what was the question exactly? What question lay at the heart of the paradox?

  Opening my eyes, I looked at my reflection and mused how three people could look into the same mirror and see the same person. How could we all be me? I didn’t know the answer to that, but I had a feeling that if we each looked into the mirror at the same time, we might find it.

  I leaned back against the cave wall and closed my eyes. “I don’t know, Lia. But it’s getting dark in here.”

  Outside, I heard a Ripper growl.

  6

  Breakfast was filled with laughter and smiles the next morning. Therapy with Dr. Hillard was fruitful. Reckoning was revealing. Prayers were said. Blessings were offered. All of us even managed hugs and well-wishes to Collins when his parents came to whisk away their newly healed son. There was growth spreading through Camp Redemption, despite—or perhaps because of—the darkness that had shrouded the evening before.

  It was all bullshit.

  Once postdinner duties had been finished, the remaining few of us retired to the rec room. Valerie made certain we were alone and in the clear, and then Randall set a pair of wire cutters on the spool table. “I nabbed these from the toolshed after lunch. Think they’ll be enough to cut through the fence, if we need them to?”

  I nodded. “The fence stops at the surface of the water, so we hopefully won’t need them.”

  Valerie said, “I think we should bring them just in case. What if there’s some other fencing material blocking our way? Better to be prepared, right?”

  I pictured Dr. Hillard’s hands on the padlock that held the door shut, keeping Lloyd inside. “What about bolt cutters? For the lock on the shed where they’re keeping Lloyd?”

  Randall held up a pair. “Gotcha covered.”

  Caleb placed some bills on the table. “I have fifty bucks. That should be enough to get us away from here. Not by much, but . . .”

  “Here’s my last twenty.” Valerie added her money to his small pile.

  Caleb said, “What about the security cameras?”

  I said, “If we trip the breakers, it should knock out the power for a bit—maybe long enough to get us close.”

  “What about after we
get out? Where do we go?” Randall’s voice cracked in fear—fear that I was willing to bet we were all feeling.

  It was all I could do to ignore the nightmare I’d had about the cave and the mirror—about Coe—as I replied. “There’s a pay phone outside the high school. I’ll call my girlfriend to come pick us up.”

  We had a plan. Now we just needed to take action without getting caught.

  It was a long, slow trek to Lloyd’s prison. We stuck to the shadows, hiding the best we could. Randall managed to cut the wires to the camera by the opening in the fence over the creek. Maybe it would buy us time. When we reached the shack, Randall whispered, “Shit.”

  One of the larger staff members was sitting on a chair just outside the door. His arms were folded across his chest, and though at first glance he looked as if he might be slipping into a nap at any moment, further examination proved that he was squinting but alert, scanning the darkness for any sign of trouble.

  Valerie’s shoulders sank. “There’s a guard? Since when?”

  I sighed. “My guess? Since Lloyd wasn’t miraculously obedient when they opened the door last night.”

  “What do we do now?” Randall shook his head slowly. Doubt clouded over us all.

  With his jaw set, Caleb yanked the bolt cutters from Randall’s hands and crept up behind the guard. He raised the tool high in the air and brought it down with a hard thwack. The man fell to the ground, unconscious.

  Valerie gasped. “Jesus, Caleb! I thought we could throw a rock into the woods and draw him away or something. That was—”

  “Effective, but scary?” Randall was looking at Caleb with what seemed like newfound respect, and maybe a healthy dose of fear.

  But Caleb wasn’t listening anymore. He’d come here to set Lloyd free, and that was what he was going to do, guard or no guard.

  From within the shack came a small voice, peppered with coughs. “I hope you guys brought a rubber hose, a tub of Vaseline, and a live chicken, because I’ve had a lot of time to think in here, and I’ve got a few extracurricular ideas.”