The Hollow World is a work of complete fiction
Based loosely on the public domain version of At The Earth's Core
originally printed in All-Story Magazine in 1914
written by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The characters, incidents, situations, and all dialogue are entirely a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not in any way representative of real people, places or things.
Any resemblance to persons living, or dead is entirely coincidental.
First published in the United States of America
by Wild and Woolly Press, Inc.
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
© Michael Kace Beckum 2015
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be used, or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
The Hollow World / Michael Kace Beckum
THE
HOLLOW WORLD
by
MICHAEL KACE BECKUM
* * *
Contents
Prologue
THE MACK INTERVIEWS
1
YOU HAVE TO
START SOMEWHERE
2
HOW TO KILL A MAN
WITHOUT REALLY TRYING
3
GUNS DRAWN
4
TRAPPED
5
DESCENT INTO HELL
6
BREATHING IS OVERRATED
7
WEIRD WORLD
8
THE NAKED CAVE GIRL
9
MONKEYS AND BUGS
10
A CHANGE OF MASTERS
11
NOVA THE BEAUTIFUL
12
HAJAH THE WILY
13
LOVE AND LOSS
14
MY MISTAKE
15
THE LIFE OF A SLAVE
16
THE WILY ONE RETURNS
17
A WAY TO FIND HER
18
ELIA’S LOVE
19
IT ALL GOES WRONG
20
THE EVIL QUEEN
21
A GOOD DEATH
22
INSANITY AND OPPORTUNITY
23
FREEDOM
24
HUNTED
25
DEATH AND THE SEA
26
THE CHUTANGA
27
THE ISLAND
28
THE TEMPLE OF HORROR
29
STARTING A WAR
30
GRIGORI BETRAYAL
31
MY BELOVED NOVA
32
GUDRA
33
OUR GARDEN OF EDEN
34
HUNTERS RETURN
35
THE SERPENT MAN
36
CONVINCING KIGA
37
THE BITCH IS BACK
38
THE DREAM ENDS
39
NO RETURN
40
THE TRUTH
41
PROOF
Epilogue
EPILOGUE
* * *
THE BRANDON
MACK INTERVIEWS
* * *
“So Mack left the boy bleeding out all over the sidewalk, and then came back to… what? What happened next?”
“We don’t really know. They asked, but the only useful thing Mack said was that he got into Alvarado’s Borer. After that he vanished, and then just reappeared out of nowhere on the platform. Everything in between was… well… his story… everything he told them was just crazy. I mean, totally fucking nuts. But it’s the only explanation we have for where he went, and where he is, now. Where Mizellier, Pompaneau and the cop are. Unfortunately all we have are these recordings, and all they show is Mack talking, but I guess... here. Let me turn this one on, and—see? He’s just sitting at a table with the camera locked off, so we can’t be sure who he’s talking to, or who else was in the room, though we have some good ideas about a few of them.”
“But we have the other security camera footage, right.”
“We do. Yes. But it’s recorded and stored in a separate area, there are clearances we’re going through to get them…”
“Jesus, I hate bureaucracy. Do we have a full interview, here? Does Mack ever get to it? What happened to the mole? All that hollow earth bullshit? From after he killed that kid?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Let’s watch.”
Onscreen, Brandon Mack runs his hands through his hair.
“I’ll explain why I… how that… um… you know… how that guy was killed. I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. So I shouldn’t go to jail, right? And then you’ll help me? You’ll send me back to Pangea? It’s important. You have no idea… You think there’s plenty of time—we always think there’s plenty of time—but there really isn’t. Time is an illusion.”
There’s a pause as Mack waits.
“Did you hear me?” Mack asks someone offscreen.
“I heard you,” a voice replies. Pompaneau, most likely. “Did you hear ME? I can’t help YOU if you don’t help ME. But if this guy insists that you start at some arbitrary and non-specific point in the past, so be it. Just tell us whatever it is you’re going to tell us, already, and get the fuck on with it.”
Another pause.
“Why is Pompaneau being such a dick?”
“He needs an excuse?”
“Good point. But even for him…”
Onscreen, Mack glares, and then speaks carefully.
“Yeah. Right. Well… I guess… it started because of my last date with Jessica…”
Someone sighs very heavily, off-screen. Mack glares past the camera, and snarls.
“Just roll with it, asshole,” Mack snaps.
“Did… did you…” off-camera we hear sounds of someone shifting around. “Did he just call me an asshole? Did you just call me an asshole?” There’s another pause, as Mack simply stares. “Don’t call me an asshole… asshole.”
More silence. Mack looks furious, his eyes never seem to blink, and eventually he continues.
“We’d been on a date…” Mack says, “Jessica and I… we… and it seemed to go really well. So I was expecting certain things, you know? Hoping for certain things, I guess.”
“Don’t be coy,” Pompaneau snarls, “Just say it straight out so we can get through this shit faster.”
“I wanted to fuck her.” Mack says, staring silently again, off-screen. “Direct enough for you?”
“Perfect.”
* * *
YOU HAVE TO
START SOMEWHERE
* * *
Jessica’s kiss was passionate and deep, but too damn brief. She seemed to re-think things once my hand cupped her breast, and pulled away, pushing me off. It wasn’t the first time.
“I don’t want to move too fast,” she said, trying to sound playful, but inflecting it more like a warning.
I sat back in the driver’s seat and let the passion evaporate from my lips, my hands… and other places. She was already reaching for the door handle.
“All right,” I said. “We’ll keep taking it slow.”
“I think that’s best.”
“I’m sure you do.”
She studied me for a minute, and though she still smiled, her eyebrows crunched together in the middle.
“I don’t want to make a mistake,” she said, as if answering my unasked question.
“How—exactly—would it be a mistake?” I returned, losing my veneer, sincerely wanting to know. “We’ve been dating a month. We have a lot of fun together…”
“We’re at different places in our lives, and sex always complicates things.”
She said it as if I already knew, and was intentionally annoying her by making her say it.
“How are we at different places in our lives?” I asked.
“Well, I’m focused on my career, and you’re…”
“You’re a receptionist.”
“Don’t say that like it’s nothing! I’m going to school at nights! To study law! And you’re a janitor!”
“So we finally get down to it. And sex between a receptionist and a janitor…”
“It’s more than that. When two people are at different places in their lives, one of them always gets too clingy, or needy, and the other…”
“One of the them?”
She sighed and folded her arms. Definite body language stuff going on.
“Relationships are always unbalanced,” she said.
“Are you seeing someone else?” I asked.
“Brandon!” she snapped, angry that I could even suggest such a thing. But I noticed she didn’t actually answer my question.
I looked around at the neighborhood. A nicer one than mine. With nicer cars. Nicer trees. Nicer lawns. Nicer curbs, and drains, and mailboxes. Nicer garbage cans. I couldn’t help wondering if that had something to do with keeping me at arm’s length. Not just my ‘career’ as a night janitor, but also where I came from. My blue-collar upbringing.
The evening had been romantic and fun. Jessica seemed to enjoy herself, appeared genuinely interested in me, her attention rarely wavering, and the conversation never seemed to lag. She wasn’t my intellectual equal, but saw herself as superior, and that was okay. All good, or so I thought, especially only a month into the ‘relationship’. When we were out, we never seemed ‘at different places’ or ‘incompatible’. And yet…
Once we’d finished this date—our fifth—we’d been sitting in my car in front of her house, chatting and laughing, when we hit a lull in the conversation. I’d studied her—carefully—she seemed to want it, so I haltingly leaned in, and she’d responded, passionately. Very passionately. At least for a moment. Then suddenly she wasn’t passionate any more, and now we were here.
I didn’t understand any of it.
“Don’t play games with me, Jessica. I can handle it. Just be honest. Are you seeing someone else? Are you not interested in me?”
She scowled, then softened, and after a moment of studying my face leaned closer to give me a quick kiss, then stared at me from only inches away. She looked down at my crotch, and ‘Hmmm’d’ a little. Then she gave the bump in my jeans a quick squeeze.
“You’re hard,” she said, evidently pleased.
She certainly knew how to change the subject.
“If you like it that much,” I said, “why don’t you let me come in?”
She looked as though the question actually angered her a little. But she shook it off, and smiled.
“Let’s wait,” she said, hotly, rubbing me in a way that was only going to make it more difficult for me to do this her way. “Trust me. I’m worth it.”
She waited for what felt like a minute or more, rubbing me, eyes unblinkingly riveted onto my eyes—like a challenge. Then her smile fell, she patted my crotch like it was a nice dog for staying where it was, opened the car door, leaned in to give me another, quick, soft, and surprisingly sensual kiss before exiting.
“You’re so sexy,” she said.
Wait—what? Sexy? But—what? Not sexy enough?
She got out, worked her cute little ass straight up to her apartment, and didn’t even glance back as she strode quickly through the front door. I shook my head, and drove away.
I STUPIDLY CALLED HER again a couple days later, thinking I had waited long enough to not seem ‘needy’, but really being exactly that and unable to take her silence for what it was—a stake through the weakening heart of our ‘relationship’.
“Hey, it’s me, Brandon. Just wanted to chat before tomorrow night. I’m looking forward to Beasts,” I lied. “Hearing great things about it. I was hoping we could grab some dinner before. Let me know.”
When she didn’t call back, I went in to work early one evening so I could catch her at the reception desk. If I didn’t make a special point of it, we almost never saw one another even though we both worked for APL—Avionics and Propulsion Laboratory. I got there just as she was packing to go, and the look she gave me was less ‘Oh! It’s so nice to see you,” and more ‘what does he want?’
“Hey, Jessica.”
“Hey,” she said, not looking at me.
“Sorry. Don’t mean to bug you at work. I just came to make sure you still wanted to go to the play tomorrow night.”
“Yes,” she said, coldly. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know, I just… hadn’t heard from you.”
“Classes keep me busy.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No.” she asked. “Why?”
“You just seem… you know… distant.”
“No,” she said, flatly. “I’m not.”
“Did I do something to upset you? You don’t feel like I was pressuring you too much the other night, do you?”
“No. If anything, you weren’t pressuring me enough.”
“I…. what? Wait. I’m in trouble because I didn’t push harder?”
She clutched her books tightly against her chest, leaned closer and spoke with an edge in her voice.
“A girl needs to feel like you really want her.”
“But… what about: ‘no means no’.”
“I’m not asking you to rape me. Just be a man and show me you want me.”
Glaring at me, she walked out the front door, leaving me more lost than I’d ever been before.
I ENDED UP SEEING BEASTS alone. A waste of expensive tickets for something that wasn’t really my kind of thing; dancers in animal costumes, and people who sing their way through life’s tragedies. But I didn’t want to feel like I was missing out on something because of Jessica, her last minute text making me all the more determined to live life without her.
Sorry. Can’t make tonight. Hope you’ll be able to give my ticket to someone else. Really busy these days, but it would be great to see you. Have fun! Call me when you get a chance!
I had called her. Repeatedly. And I had given her ticket to someone else—a gay man who’d been waiting with friends and was thrilled with the gift—and disappointed that I was straight. I wish I hadn’t been so pigheaded and given mine to someone else.
I re-read her message and noted that it was polite, impersonal, and easily defensible if read by another man.
I DROVE HOME IN a fog, my mind swimming over elements of the play that paralleled my own life.
The story had centered around a couple stranded on a deserted island that won’t give in to their animal passions because they’re committed to other people. They spend hours dancing around the subject—literally—only to give in to their passions in the third act, and immediately regret it.
I pulled slowly to a stop and parked on the street in front of my house—or, rather, my parent’s house. I sat quietly and thought about Jessica—how beautiful she was, how funny, how desirable, and knew she must have better offers. I lived with my folks, and as a prospect was only one step above a jobless, homeless transient. We were both young—I was only twenty-three, and really couldn’t do any better—not yet, anyway—so it didn’t seem that big a deal to me. But it obviously was to her.
Variations on the theme of ‘what was I doing wrong’ seeped into my soul like a slow acting poison as I reluctantly got out of the car and walked inside to face the inevitable ‘pep-talk’ with my father.
“Hey, dad,” I said, entering the family room, trying to hide my depression behind a smile. “How’s retirement
?”
“Good,” he said, sitting comfortably in the shifting glow from the television. “Great, actually. Watched eight hours straight of Walking Dead and no one complained.”
I laughed.
“How was your date?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Wasn’t a date. Jessica blew me off.”
“Ah!” Dad said, shaking his head. “Girls. Well, just ignore her. Play her little game.”
“Play her little game?” I asked, confused.
“Yeah. Girls play these games. Just go along and be patient.”
“What kind of games?”
“The ‘are you worthy’ games.”
“And why should I play?”
“Good things come to those who wait.”
I stared at him, unsure.
“You’re young,” he continued. “Kids always want everything now, today, right away. You think the world will end if you have to wait two minutes for something. But sometimes the best things in life are worth waiting for.”
“Dad. It’s not like that…”
“I waited for your mother. Waited a couple years for her. And I waited for the right job. I waited for retirement. It’s the waiting that makes what you want all the sweeter when you get it. If things are handed to us, we don’t appreciate ‘em.”
“And how long—exactly—do I wait?” I asked. “At what point am I just waiting for something that’s never going to happen?”
My father shrugged.
The Hollow World: (Pangea, Book 1) Page 1