by S. B. Niccum
When I first entered the darkness, I saw billions of these bubbles. If I’m inside them right now, it will take forever to find them! If only I could just get to that darkness again, just the plain emptiness that I initially encountered! That, at least, would be an improvement over this. What would happen to me if I stayed trapped in here for a long time? What would that do to me? But I have no time to muse over that now—someone is coming.
I’m sitting on a rock, in the middle of some mossy forest when a man, dressed like he has just come out of a Shakespearean festival, steps out from behind a tree. His look of sheer evil makes me sick. It is an interesting feeling since I have no actual stomach, but the memory of that feeling remains with me and it feels as real as if I were about to throw up.
From behind me a young girl appears. She’s about fourteen or fifteen, and as she looks at him, her face registers terror. The man is holding a rope in his hand. He wraps it around his hands, pulling it taut, and beckons us to come nearer.
“Hold my hand,” I tell the girl, not sure whether I am in the man’s reality or the girl’s. “I’ll get you out of here!” But she doesn’t seem to hear me. She is petrified with horror.
I stretch my hand and lean in to grab her, but my hand goes right through her. As I do this, the man cocks his head to the right and the girl evaporates into thin air. “Darn, it’s his reality,” I mutter.
“So, you really are here?” he licks his lips. “All the other ones…” he laughs, “they were not real. But you are!” His eyes grow large and hungry.
This revolts me, and an anger I didn’t even know I had in me surfaces. “You disgusting medieval pig!” I shout and charge toward him with such force, that I knock us both into another place. He looks disoriented and surprised by my reaction. His eyes dart around, and he looks confused by this new environment—doubly so, because we are back in the twenty-first century, a place he knows nothing about.
We’re in the middle of a populated city and loud distorted rap music plays in the background. There’s no melody to it, just jarring noises, recreated from memory. A gang of about ten guys starts to surround us, and I’m not sure which one of them is the owner of this reality. At this point, frankly, I don’t care. It will be fun to leave this feudal freak with the gang and let them sort out their differences. Already, they’re cat calling to me and shouting profanities at the guy in tights.
With a sneer I turn and run for it, hoping that somehow the next reality will be more pleasant. But it isn’t. My heart sinks even further, and I start to wonder if I’ll ever find a way out of this place. Was it like this for Alex? Did he start just like me and then finally give up? I feel like giving up. I don’t know how many more gruesome and disgusting places I can endure. It is affecting me and not in a good way. I can feel myself changing. I’m becoming cynical, hardened, callused, past-feeling—if that makes sense.
I realize that the only thing to do now is to survive at all costs in this hostile environment. I’ve got to toughen up, become an avenging angel of sorts, and start kicking some spiritual butts. I could dress up in a black leather jumpsuit with high-heeled, black boots, and a pair of matching black wings. Now that would be cool! …Either that or give in—let my mind create its own environment. At least there, I would be able to control my surroundings; I could make it safe and familiar. I could have Alex with me! Sure, he would be a figment of my imagination—the real Alex would be out here somewhere—probably doing the same thing. How sad for us, both lost here, dreaming of each other. This was definitely not what I had in mind when I made my vows to him—that death would not do us apart.
I drift in and out of bubbles. Some spirits acknowledge me, and want me to come to them, but others tell me to get out, and others either ignore me or don’t even notice me. One particular bubble attracts my attention. It looks like a living room of an old Tudor mansion. There’s a roaring fire in the ornate hearth. Two red velvet high-backed chairs sit side by side in front of the fire, each has its own footstool, and a full-length mirror has been placed off to one side. A man is standing there, perfectly still, looking at himself in the mirror.
I intrude and make myself comfortable in one of the chairs, propping my feet, one on top of the other on the virtual footstool. Since it’s not really there, I have to pretend like my feet are resting, but it’s not hard. I’m ready for a harmless illusion of comfort. The man has a long, shaggy salt and pepper beard, and unkempt long hair tied up in a ponytail. He’s wearing a long red satin robe, and he looks oddly familiar; in spite of the fact that I know I’ve never, ever seen him in my life.
“Did you just get here?” he asks, not moving from in front of the mirror.
“Yes,” I say wearily.
“I would say welcome, but…” he shrugs.
We say nothing for a long time. I sit here, looking at the fire; and he stands there, looking at himself in the mirror. Then, annoyed either with me or with himself, he breaks his reverie and swings his hand through the mirror, making it disappear. He then slumps on the other chair next to mine and with another wave of the hand, makes two glasses of wine appear. “I have magic here,” he says dryly. “Too bad we can’t taste it.”
I turn and look at the glass, and ignore it. What’s the point in pretending?
“So, you’re a realist,” he says conversationally, and I notice the trace of an accent—Irish maybe.
“I guess,” I sigh, tired.
“I did that for a while.”
“Then you gave up?”
“Yes. We all give up eventually.”
“Why did you come here?”
“I was a selfish bastard,” he says without guile.
I nod, as if I understand perfectly well what he’s talking about.
“And you?”
“I came here to find someone.”
He laughs, a roaring, loud laughter that makes me turn away from the fire and look at him. “So you’re telling me that you could have escaped all of this, but you chose to come here?” he asks.
“I am. I did.”
“Why?”
“My husband and my father,” I say, as if that explained it all. “They shouldn’t be here, either,” I add. “Well…my father might have inadvertently done something bad. But he didn’t mean it. He was filled with anger.” The stranger nods, understandingly. I don’t know why, but I feel comfortable here, in this bubble.
“How noble of you. Unfortunately, I alienated my wife to the point that she would never risk her eternal salvation to rescue me.”
We fall into a long silence again, both staring at the flames.
“How can I find them?” I finally ask, not shifting my eyes from the flames.
He shrugs. “Beats me, I’ve never tried to find anyone. When I first got here I found one of my old acquaintances, quite by accident I might add.” He shakes his head. “It was such an unpleasant experience that I created my own bubble just to get away from him.”
“Why the mirror?”
He turns and looks where it had been standing and it suddenly appears again and he stares at it longingly for a long while. “It’s complicated.”
Suddenly, I get impatient and abruptly stand up. “I can’t stay,” I say. “I have to go find them! I’m wasting time.”
“I see no white rabbit,” he says, craning his neck in all directions as if looking for something. “Time no longer exists, not anymore.” The more he talks the more I hear his accent; as it’s definitely Irish.
“Well, there is something.” I say. “Time must be passing somewhere.”
“You’re a go-getter, aren’t ya’?”
“I hate standing still. Drives me nuts.”
“Then go,” he counsels, glumly. He wants company, he wants me to stay and make his eternal doom less painful. But as he said so himself, he had been a jerk in life, and the last thing I want to do is spend my afterlife with a jerk.
I glide away from his reality, and he lets me go without so much as a good-bye. I immediately ente
r another reality, one that is oddly familiar. I hadn’t seen this place in ages, but it’s exactly as I remember it—my High School hallway—complete with my classmates and everything.
Chapter 2
I rub my face, hoping to clear away some of the haze I feel. “You’re looking for Alex!” I scold myself. “You can’t make your own bubble! Find Alex and get out of here!”
“I’m sure you’d like to,” a mocking voice says from behind.
In turning I find myself face to face with Eugenia. She’s dressed in her cheering outfit, but she doesn’t look beautiful as she did back in high school. Deep lines on her face distort her, making her look like an old hag. Her hair is charred in places, and she tries to hide those by way of an intricate comb-over hairdo. Scabby grayish scars now mar her once flawless skin, and her eyes look wild and deranged.
“Eugenia?”
“It’s over, Tess. You’ve lost,” she says smugly and starts walking around me in circles like she’s inspecting my appearance. “Mm…you still fail to impress. It’s no wonder he’s settled here, with me.”
I laugh. “O—kay.” Not only does she look like a crazy old bat, she is one!
My reaction seems to trigger some insecurity in her, so she quickly looks inside her locker, where there’s a mirror. She checks herself in it, and relaxes once she sees, apparently, whatever she wants to see. She dabs at her lips and moves a strand of half scorched hair away from her face, and pats it tenderly into the desired spot. “I’ve always been so much more beautiful than you. That’s why I don’t understand why…” she frowns and her nostrils flare, “never mind that. I’ve forgiven him. What’s important is that he is now mine and has no interest in you.”
“You’re deranged,” I note.
“No!” she screams, “you are!”
Down the hall I see the rest of the cheering squad making their entrance as if down a runway, not differently I suppose than from how it used to be in real life. They smile at Eugenia, seeing nothing of what I see, and together they start closing in on me.
Instinctively, I start to back away, but I feel movement behind me, so I turn. It’s Alex! Behind him are his old high school friends. My heart skips a beat at the sight of him; he looks exactly as he did back in High School.
“Alex!” I exclaim breathlessly and reach for him.
The look of disgust on his face, when I call his name, hurts. “Don’t touch me,” he says derisively.
I stare dumbly at him. “Alex?” Then it dawns on me. He couldn’t possibly be my Alex. Of course this would be Eugenia’s own imaginary Alex who is filled with spite, just like her. So to prove my point, and to teach her a lesson, I lunge at him, making the mirage vanish into thin air. Then to really drive it home I wave my arms wildly about me, and make all his friends vanish as well. I feel a cynical smile forming— I’ve just crushed her world—and I relish the waves of disappointment that emanate from her.
“Noooo!” Eugenia screams with rage, and throws herself at me. Futilely, she tries to scratch me, bite me, hit me, and pull my hair. But none of those things hurt in the least, so I just stand there triumphantly and smirk.
“I see you’ve found your way to familiar grounds,” a well-known voice says from the shadows. “I knew I’d find you here. Eventually we all find our way back to those who make us miserable. Just like the saying goes, misery does love company.”
Surprised by the sound of the voice, Eugenia stops dead in her tracks and looks into the shadows from where the acid voice is coming. Slowly, a black hooded figure glides out of the darkness. The cloak covers the face completely.
“Great!” I think, “It’s the family reunion from Hell!” I’m tired of all this, I want to find the real Alex and get out! Now I realize that they were right; all their warnings about coming here unprepared were spot on. I’m different here, and the longer I stay, the worse it gets. All I can feel now is spite, anger, and rage. I find that I hate, truly hate, like I’ve never hated before. I’m not me anymore. I am lost.
“What you two ever saw in that most average boy is beyond me.” Agatha says, from under her cloak.
Eugenia straightens out and smoothens the pleats of her cheerleader mini-skirt. “Better than that bloated purple pig you married,” she states sourly and I laugh. It appears Eugenia and I agree on at least one thing. On hearing me laugh, Eugenia looks at me with a mixture of surprise and annoyance on her face.
With slow determined movements, Agatha pulls down her hood and reveals a gruesome sight. Her face is completely disfigured by fire and it literally looks like it has melted right off. One of her eyelids is gone leaving the eye socket exposed. Her nose looks like it has been smeared off to one side and part of her upper lip is gone as well. It’s not so much the burn scars that make her look monstrous, it’s her—she is monstrous. She finally reflects who she truly is inside, and all her foulness is finally expressed on her face.
“It’s fitting that all three of us would find our way here, after all we’ve been through.” Agatha says as she moves closer to me. “How do you like it here, Tess?” she asks, then smiles with what is left of her face. “Not very well I take it.”
My lack of response encourages her to come closer, and she touches my undamaged hair. “Mmm, interesting, you were the only one to escape from that fire unscathed.”
“That fire was not intended to burn the—”
“The what? The good people?” she laughs. “Little good it did you in the end! We all ended up in the same place, just like I predicted.” Memories of her saying that she would see me in Hell flash before my memory, and my mind gives me an accurate recall of how it felt to shudder.
“I didn’t end up here. I came here on purpose.” I state.
“Oh? And what would that purpose be, huh?” She smirks, then laughs, and her laugh crescendos. “Maybe this is it, Tess. Maybe the spirits who talked to you in life, lied and there is no other afterlife. Have you thought about that? We are all here. Alex, your father…” She lets go of my hair and starts gliding around me in circles again, making me dizzy. “I found him, you know. It didn’t take me long to find out what this place was all about. Not like some people,” she looks at Eugenia with derision, and the latter turns away contemptuously.
“I prefer reality, don’t you Tess? Yes, I know you do. Or you would have formed a bubble of your own to escape already. But you’re stuck now, and you know it. You’ve come to realize, too late I’m afraid, that no one leaves here.”
“That’s not true,” I say on a whim. “Anyone can leave, you just have to—to—”
“To nothing. Tess, you know as well as I do that we are here for good! There is no other afterlife!” she barks, then regains her composure. “Let me cut to the chase. I can help you,” she adds, in a more subdued tone.
“Ha!”
She starts making a tsking noise with her mouth and moves a skeletal finger back and forth. “Don’t be so hasty Tess, I know where he is. The real one!” she directs her last remark at Eugenia with a sharp look.
“You’re lying.”
“No. I’m not. I found him while out on one of my roams—I call them walks in the park!” She chuckles, then shakes her head with a pleasant smile, as if these memories of roaming through these awful realities were enjoyable to her. “As I was saying, Alex is stuck in a bad place. Not as bad, mind you, as some others. But he is stuck. He did it, no doubt, to survive here. He got tired of trying to escape. It’s always better to devise a reality of your own, rather than inhabiting someone else’s reality. You, of all people, know this by now.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say stubbornly. If I know anything about Agatha, it is that she always knows what to say in order to get you to do something that would serve her purposes somehow.
“I watched him for a while. His reality varies from two main themes. Once I found out what he had come here to do, I went ahead and finished the job for him. So you see…I also know where your father is.” She smiles venomously, and her f
ace looks grotesque in the process.
“If you know where they are, show me,” I say defiantly.
“To show you that I’m not lying, I’ll give you a peek, but I will not let you free until you agree to do something for me first.”
“What could I possibly do for you here? Don’t you see? It’s over! We’re dead.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, my dear Tess. It’s not over. There’re lots of things we can do while dead, things that don’t include an extended stay in a virtual reality show.” Her eyes dart over to Eugenia and she smiles that horrid half-smile of hers. I can tell that she’ll never tire of pestering Eugenia; it’s like a new hobby for her. “I’m talking about a real out of body existence.” Agatha says and opens the one eye wide, looking more horrid than ever.
“I have it as a personal rule not to ever listen to you.”
“Then go ahead, go find him! Let’s see how long you can survive out here before you too succumb to your own delusions.”
She’s right about that. Already, I’ve been enjoying Agatha and Eugenia’s company to that of the other residents here—and that thought alone is scary. When, in my wildest dreams or nightmares, would I have willingly chosen the company of these two over that of anyone else?
The fact is that I don’t want to go back out there and start sifting though all those millions of hells again. I would lose myself entirely, either to a delusion or to this pervasive demoralization. Either way I wouldn’t be able to endure it. How did she ever deal with it?
As if guessing my thoughts, Agatha smiles, showing sinews and bones in the process. “I find this place…amusing. To see what people think about when they think that no one is looking, it gives me great satisfaction and an advantage I’ve never had over others before. I’ve already made some interesting friends.”