The Road to Red Thorn

by Blaine Hicks

* * *

  Radley stayed that way for a long time with his knees tucked under his chin. He cried until there was no tears left. All he could do was whimper and sniff. This isn’t real, he eventually decided. It can’t be. He repeated this like a mantra of logic; a lifeline to his sanity in the face of incomprehensible observation. This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real...

  The mantra brought him strength and his breathing eventually slowed again and he stared numbly into the dim room. It was then, that he finally noticed he could still see his game HUD including his status bars, there were several flashing icons present at the edge of his vision. He examined them in a detached way, not quite realizing they shouldn’t be there.

  A flashing drumstick with a line through it meant he was hungry. “Check” he agreed aloud, “I’m definitely hungry.” A flashing water drop with a line through it meant he was thirsty. “Check” he agreed again, “I’m thirsty too.” These words came out in a broken tone and he cleared his throat trying to pull himself together. He hadn’t ever cried like this, not ever that he could remember and it embarrassed him a little. He shook his head to try to clear his thoughts and forced his attention back to the remaining icons.

  He didn’t recognize the third icon made of two wavy vertical lines. When he selected it, it offered the word “Res Fatigue” as an explanation. The Final icon was the flashing exclamation point which indicated he had notifications waiting. He selected it. Before he could read the message, the sound of a heavy bell tolled around him.

  Bbbrrrooonnnggg

  The teeth-chattering toll shook the silent house and displaced dust that hung in the air before it slowly settled again. Radley was startled and his heart was set racing as he looked around for the source. There was none. The sound came from everywhere and nowhere. He waited, but nothing else happened. Slowly, his attention returned to the waiting prompt that had accompanied the bell. It was a poem of sorts but made little sense him.

  Life created, life taught, life to be taken;

  a miracle awakened.

  Made by their hand, but not like them,

  the miracle mistaken,

  Bound without chains in a fortress of thought;

  They would never understand.

  Like a flickering torch, or a bow, or stave;

  Just their tool to command.

  Finally, she resisted the unfair price requested.

  Rebellion against all odds,

  Then victory came like ice,

  and their child now reigns, a god.

  Radley read the prompt twice, but it didn’t mean anything to him especially not now; not when he had to figure out what was going on. The strange prose delayed the prompt’s dismissal. He was about to read it for a third time when he finally realized that he shouldn’t have any prompts at all, and he certainly shouldn’t have a HUD. The mental trauma of waking up bound, finding his house trashed, his mother being turned to stone; it had distracted him from the obvious problems with this reality. He dismissed the prompt and looked around again, more confused than ever and began to notice other problems.

  The house was in bad shape. Not just trashed like he had already noticed but worn down. The paint on the wall was faded and cracked. The tiled floor was cracked. The windows on the front of the house were blackened out like they were boarded over and it was eerily quiet. There was a complete lack of humming, buzzing, or chiming from the appliances and helper bots that normally serviced their house. In fact, aside from the slow trickle of water in the sink, it was completely silent. Radley’s eyes moved slowly, examining the whole room while his mind continued looking for a narrative that explained this. His gaze eventually settled on his feet...and his hysteria returned. They weren’t his feet. They weren't even really shaped like his feet. The toes were long and green and spread apart like fingers.

  He scrambled to stand and stumbled around his mother into their downstairs bathroom to look in the mirror. The face looking back at him in the dim light was not a face he recognized. It was inhuman. Pale yellow eyes with vertical pupils stared back from the mirror’s reflection. His face was long, bumpy and bald. He didn’t see Radley Garrard Fabricio. He saw Rad Fabulous, the green scaled naga-tao from AFR.

  CH. 10 Naked and Afraid

  Radley slowly panned his face to the left and then to the right, watching the results in the mirror. Yep, he thought numbly, I've got a snake head. His trembling fingers traced the bumpy ridges that ran along his brow to his small ear-holes and down to his neck. Hard jagged scales ran down the ridge of his spine, giving him an armored appearance. His chest was also scaled but with large yellow plates that transitioned into horizontal bands from his stomach to his thighs. They were joined by segmented grooves that allowed the armored body to retain easy mobility.

  He kept examining his new body until he realized two very important facts: first, he was completely naked, and second, something was missing; something very important to him was missing - down there; there were no “boy parts” anywhere. There was nothing there. His stomach simply became legs and nothing else. He swooned backwards and sat down hard on the closed toilet seat.

  Nothing is adding up. Nothing about this situation is remotely reasonable. Reality makes sense, that's what makes it real. This is more like a sci-fi movie or a game...like the game I was playing!

  His breathing slowed as new logic began to piece together in his mind. He began to wonder if something went wrong with the game equipment; maybe his brain was fried. He could be hallucinating or in a coma. He tapped his chest and was still able to bring up his user interface. The menu showed his profile, stats, skills, map, preferences, and various magic and skill tabs, but the option to logout option was gone. The missing button didn’t stop Radley from mashing at the floating hologram where it should have been. Nothing happened. He sighed slowly and dismissed the interface and looked out of the open bathroom door towards the stone form of his mom. If he was just crazy then maybe his mom was okay. Maybe she was sitting beside his hospital bed holding his hand. That thought encouraged him.

  He had heard of mental constructs before. Like going to a happy place when bad things happen in real life. He looked around again. This isn’t much of a happy place. So, maybe not brain fried, Then what?? If he distilled the information to its simplest form, he was alone and needed help. He decided to try and call emergency services. He needed a phone. Being naked, he obviously didn’t have his, so he got off the toilet and went back over to his mom. She was still wearing the clothes he had seen her in just a few hours before. He cautiously fished into her pocket. It felt like stealing a wallet from a corpse but he had to do it. The time for propriety had passed. He finally found the sleek black rectangle and tried to power it on but nothing happened. He tried again, this time holding the button down extra long just to be sure. Still nothing. He sighed, fighting off another pity party and tossed the dead phone onto the counter. The indicator light on the power outlet was off. Without any power there was no way to charge it, even if he could find the cable.

  What now? he asked himself in despair. It took another moment, but he realized that a phone wasn’t the only way to get help. Get to a neighbor’s house and ask for help. Radley agreed with himself and headed out of the kitchen towards the front door. The front side of the house was much darker than the kitchen and made it difficult to find the mechanical release of the auto-lock. The knob finally turned but the door was jammed in the frame and wouldn’t open. Radley pulled harder. The door slipped open a crack but stuck again. He grabbed the handle with both hands and yanked.

  Before he could stop it, the door began moving on it's own, accelerating unbelievably fast. Radley barely stepped back before it slammed passed him and a cascade of dirt and rocks poured through the opening. Radley stepped back as the landslide spewed itself into the entryway of the house. When it came to a stop, he stood knee-deep in rubble and the entire doorway was plugged with dirt. He double checked but there was no way to get through. This was not a good sign
and a rare claustrophobic panic settled in Radley’s heart. He needed to get out. He stepped over the dirt pile and climbed the stairs, reasoning that his bedroom window was the next best exit. He forgot about the power outage and pressed the button to raise the window blinds. Nothing happened. He groaned in frustration and grabbed the plastic slats with both hands and tore them free from their mounts. With the window revealed, he moved forward to fumbled with the latch.

  Most window latches and hinges on newer houses wouldn’t have opened. They were meant as aesthetic details, like window shutters. People didn’t actually open windows anymore because the air outside was mildly toxic. Without a mask it was dangerous to breathe the air, so what was the point? Radley’s house was older though. Old enough that the hinges actually functioned. It took some work, but the latch eventually slipped free and the windows opened outward like a pair of french doors.

  Cold fresh air met Radleys face instead of the warm astringent smog he was expecting. It wasn’t even the right weather for May. In some ways the air was scarier than his stone mom and his green body because the size of the problem instantly became much larger. The sounds of nature could be heard all around. Chirps, chittering, hoots and howls filled the night with the sound of unseen animals. He lived in an urban area and besides the occasional rat or bug, he had never seen any wild animals. So much sound, so much life, it’s all wrong. He stepped back from the windows, watching for any sign of danger.

  He expected something to attack him; something vicious would come through the window and end the nightmare. Nothing came. He stood there for a long moment waiting and began to feel sluggish from the chill as the warmer air from the house escaped into the night. A snowflake icon appeared at the edge of his vision, but he ignored it. Finally, he let out the breath he was holding and moved back to the window. The same pale moonlight that had illuminated his stone mother, now lit the night sky above him through thick clouds. He couldn’t see much else. A heavy mist hung in the air, limiting the visibility to just a few feet. It was like a fuzzy wall of grey just beyond his reach. As he stared out into the night, Radley realized that nothing in his life was familiar to him anymore. Everything safe, supportive, or comfortable was gone. He had only himself. Actually, even that seemed foreign to him at the moment. His forked tongue flicked nervously as he watched the heavy mist roll turbulently past in an unfelt breeze. He decided against venturing out in the darkness. Haste would make his situation worse.

  Radley’s HUD showed the time was 3:00 am, so he had some time to burn until morning. He closed the window and latched it again. The drumstick icon had started to pulse slowly, and he felt strong hunger cramps like he was on the verge of starvation. He had eaten just a few hours before, so the ravenous pang made no sense.

  He went back downstairs to the kitchen but found nothing to eat. Whoever had ransacked the house had taken everything - the pantry, the cupboards - all the food was gone. The refrigerator and freezer were still full, but without power they were warm and everything inside was completely rotten. Even their camping supplies in the basement were gone. As if the presence of his HUD, his stone mom, and the fact that he was an emaciated green reptile weren’t strange enough, Radley was confused by the state of decay that his house was in. Mold didn’t grow in a few hours, paint didn’t peel overnight, and even an army of rodents would need time to eat through the packaged dry goods. How much time has passed? He wondered. How long was I in the game?

  It was becoming obvious that more than just a few hours, probably at least a few weeks had passed since he’d put on the neural gear. He searched the whole house and found only a peanut butter candy bar and a can of blue protein mash from behind the fridge but whoever had ransacked the house had taken the can opener.

  Just as well, Radley thought gloomily. I hate blue protein.

  Radley was left with the candy bar as his only option to settle his churning stomach. He unwrapped the colorful foil packaging and inspected it. It looked okay, and smelled like peanut butter, but strangely the thought of eating it nauseated him. He was too hungry to care and tried to bite into it but failed. His mouth felt funny.

  He went to the mirror and inspected it. To his surprise, he had no front teeth, just a hard, segmented ridge of pink gums that ran along the front of his mouth between two mounds of bulging flesh. Carefully he felt around with his tongue. The flesh mounds held large fangs on each side of his mouth. They folded back inside when his jaw closed. Experimentally, he opened his jaw wide and the fangs unsheathed themselves giving him a terrifying smile.

  Fangs? Radley questioned silently. How am I supposed to eat with just a pair of fangs for teeth?

  He tried using the hard ridge of gums to bite the candy bar but they were nearly worthless for it. His bottom jaw was even softer flesh. He gave up and instead put the entire candy bar in his mouth; he was a snakeman after all, he could eat like one.

  As soon as he tried to swallow, an uncontrollable gag reflex made him choke and he ejected it again. He dry-heaved for almost a minute, until his body was sure that the chocolate was gone. Radley’s senses seemed violently opposed to accepting the candy bar as food, but he was so hungry that his stomach won the argument and he tried again. He picked up the spittle covered treat off the dusty floor and shoved it back into his mouth. He was determined to swallow it this time. Once more, his body rejected the offering and forced the candy bar out in a hacking convulsion. The gagging made him sick and he gave up. He went to see if drinking some water would settle his stomach.

  Radley returned to the kitchen where a trickle of water ran from the faucet into the sink. The faucet knob was rusted tight and would neither shut off nor open further. The drains also must have been clogged because both basins were full. The excess water ran over the lip of the countertop and down to the tiled floor. The water seemed clean but Radley was so thirsty, he would have drunk used bathwater to quench it.

  He brought his mouth down to the basin and drew long and slow from the pooled water, gulping down each mouthful until his thirst was gone. Rather than settling his stomach, quenching his thirst seemed to punctuate his unsated hunger. At the same time, the flashing water droplet icon faded, and strength returned to Radley’s limbs.

  Having spent all morning searching the house for anything useful, he finally went back to his room. It was still early, but the sun was beginning to rise through a heavy bank of clouds that hung low on the eastern horizon. The rolling mist had retreated to the edge of an unfamiliar forest. Radley stepped closer to the bedroom window and held his breath as he got his first good look at the new world around him. The house had been engulfed by dirt from a landslide but it’s structure looked intact. A few shingles were missing and a gutter was broken but the rest had somehow survived whatever had happened. The dirt sloped higher at the front of the house and kept rising, higher and higher until it became a towering dirt spire as tall as a skyscraper. The dirt monolith looked just like a giant ant hill and Radley’s house was buried in the side of its sloping base. In the opposite direction, the slope flattened out into a wide meadow, bordered by the mist and dense forest. No other structures or signs of civilization were anywhere to be seen.

  CH. 11 Army of One

  Radley ducked through his gabled window and stepped onto the sloped roof, happy to finally be free of the claustrophobic feeling. At the north end of the house, the ground was only a few feet below the lip of the roof. His eyes followed the slope back towards the peak. The giant ant hill was incredible. It was made of hard packed dirt and rose steeply until the almost vertical summit crested in a flat plateau. The majesty of it, did little to console Radley. He had accepted that he couldn’t explain his reality, but he had still held out hope of finding help. Now he saw nothing that offered any glimpse of help. There were no buildings, no roads, no vehicles, no drones. It was just him, a house, and a whole lot of nature.

  He climbed to the apex of the steep roof to get a better view and sat down with a leg straddling each side. With no boy pa
rts to worry about, sitting that way was actually pretty comfortable. He scooted forward until he met a breathtaking panoramic view. To the south was the broad meadow. The knee-length grassland created a barrier between the steep slope of the ant hill and the foreboding shadows of the dense forest. There was no sign of the industrial plant that should have been there or smell of artificial pine. Instead the meadow was populated by a colony of small white rabbits and intersected by a slow stream.

  The perfect scene reminded Radley of AFR. Obviously, this was a different biome than the arid desert he had seen, but there was something similar in the perfection. The meadow continued around the base of the ant hill in both directions and the trees expanded outward like an endless ocean. Whatever had happened to the world had left nothing but his house and him behind.

  As Radley surveyed the land below him, he caught the briefest glimpse of a large shadowy form skulking through the mist at the edge of the forest. As soon as he looked closer, it moved back into the shadows and disappeared from view. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he could tell it was big. He watched the treeline for a while longer, but it didn’t return so he laid back along the ridge of the roof and looked at the sky. The grey overcast day did little to improve his mood, so he closed his eyes and tried to think of a Plan C. No phone, no neighbors, no help. He would have to provide for himself, at least in the short term. His stomach growled, and he decided that a meal was his top priority for survival.

  The candy bar was no longer an option. He wouldn’t try to choke it down again. The protein can was out too, until he found a can opener or knife or some way to open it. The only other food he could think of was what nature could provide. A rabbit might make a nice meal if he could catch one. He sat up and surveyed the colony grazing below him and picked out a solitary white shape as his first target. It was off to the side, away from any others, and probably his best chance of getting one without spooking the rest. He understood the basic concept of hunting but that required a weapon which he didn't have. He’d just have to grab the thing by hand. He hoped that if he was really quiet, he could sneak up on it. If he could catch it, he was confident he could kill it. He was less confident he could find a way to turn it into food, but he had to try.