by White, Gwynn
Hunter quivered. The queer sense of déjà vu, the sinking feeling of an imploding dream. The quaint man with white hair was psychotic. He was calm, self-assured. The posture of an untouchable man of immeasurable power.
He thinks he’s god. That this is his world.
A bus roared up to the curb, the brakes hissing. The door folded open. The driver, an old man with sagging eyes, looked out. Hunter didn’t look away from the white-haired man and his sharp blue eyes. Rain pooled on the rim of his fedora, trickling onto his shoulders.
“My offer stands,” he said, “to rid you of the weight you’ve been pulling all this time, to quell the hunger that lives inside you.” He tipped the fedora and spilled a pool of water then gently tapped his forehead. “You have the potential to create your own world, Mr. Hunter. I can show you how.”
Leaving the city was the same as eating a bullet. Had he been down that path before, taking the easy way out? And now here he was, asked to choose when there was no choice, only the illusion of one. Accept his invitation, or the end of his life.
Have I done this already?
The bus door closed and the air brakes hissed. Dreary faces peered from dark windows as the bus pulled away. A decision had been made.
Micah unfurled the umbrella and held it over Hunter’s head. The patter of rainfall danced on the fabric. Streams dribbled from the spines like tiny faucets. It was a promise to protect him from the weather, should he accept the invitation.
A silver sedan stopped at the curb.
Micah opened the back door without breaking eye contact. He protected Hunter from the rain, inviting him to seek shelter from the pain.
The potential to create my own world.
Hunter grabbed the door, hand trembling. Dova had told him they wanted to hide him. Micah wanted him to create his own world. The offers were vague, their motivation cryptic. But the choice was clear. They would kill the dragon.
Before it killed him.
As he dipped toward the backseat, the umbrella following him, Hunter looked over the hood one last time. The old woman that followed from a distance was now in the open, watching him commit to the man that was presumably the Maze.
This is my world, he’d said.
And just as he lowered himself toward the safety of the car, a jagged line of static ripped the scene like an old photo. It popped in Hunter’s ear, a high-pitched squeal that deadened the roar of traffic and the patter of rain. In complete and utter silence, the colors of the world flipped. The woman’s hair was now black. The asphalt now bleached white.
Rain exploded on the car, giant droplets splashing in slow motion as raindrops glittered in a slow, silent descent.
Micah’s hair was black, his coat white. He frowned at Hunter, the first sign of life since he’d entered the bus shelter. It was an expression of doubt and confusion. He looked around, then across the street. His mouth moved, but words didn’t come out. He dropped the umbrella. His foot splashed in a growing puddle. Gray water was hurled over his shoe and spread over the wet pavement.
He reached for Hunter. His hand closed on the lapel of his black overcoat as rain dripped from a twisted snarl. The driver began to exit the car when colors flipped back to normal.
Gray then color. Color then gray.
Back and forth it went, each turn of the wheel slowing traffic, unwinding the rain. Each time the colors flipped, a crackle of static struck him with fingers of electrical current. Each time, the colors bleached lighter and the grays had less contrast. The buildings were still there, the road and sidewalks, too.
But the cars had vanished. Bystanders, gone. Micah was the last person to blip out of existence, his desperate reach merely inches from grasping Hunter’s coat as they slowed to a stop. His eyes had grown wide. And then he was gone.
Blip.
The old woman was still there, hands at her sides. Raindrops had frozen around her. They had become liquid jewels hanging in space. Hunter stood alone on the curb. The silver sedan was gone.
The sky was clear blue. The sun beamed into a colorless world.
Hunter couldn’t feel his body, wasn’t sure he had one or where he was, whether he’d gotten in the backseat of the car and started to dream, if Micah had hit him over the head. Maybe he was lost in the needle and this was all a dream.
It is a dream, he heard.
All was light, all was right.
He hovered in that space between black and white, the existence between good and bad, here and there, only now with one last thought. A thought that was obliterated by the shatter of countless raindrops, the shrapnel of water molecules shredding all that was matter, including the old woman. Including Hunter. Including this world.
My world, Micah had said.
Until all was white. All was nothing.
That final thought went with him into nothingness, a thought that followed him into the light. The old woman that had been following him since the day he arrived in the city. She did not work for Dova.
I know her.
27
Grey
Before the Punch
The boat rested beneath a corrugated roof yellowed with age and algae.
Rach’s grandpa sorted through shelves of paint and varnish. His glasses were gold wires, the spectacles stained like poorly washed glass. He slammed a can down with heavy hands, not out of anger or spite. It was just the way he handled things.
The engine was cocked at an angle. The seat cushions were fastened to the benches. The tackle, the life jackets, even the koozies were in their rightful places. Grey remembered them bobbing in black water, the boat turned inside out. Now it was put back together as if nothing had happened.
Except for the damage.
Hamburger Hill had had many holes over a lifetime of fishing trips, but nothing like the fresh wound now slashed across the hull. Gramps leaned over the side with a ball-peen hammer and hit the dent. The echo of metal on metal drove a spike between Grey’s eyes.
Gramps handed her the hammer. “Tap it out.”
He stood back. She clenched her teeth and popped the dent three times before pretending to examine her work. Grey’s eyes were about to explode.
“Lucky you didn’t hurt someone,” Gramps muttered.
“Wasn’t our fault,” Rach said.
It happened at the landing, she’d told him. The wind was uppity and then some jerk sped through a no-wake zone and tossed the boat onto a rotten pillar. They lost a cooler of fish and damn near capsized.
Damn near?
“Were you drinking?” Gramps asked.
“Coffee.”
“That why you both got a headache?”
She sighed. “I promise, we weren’t drinking. It was an accident.”
He stared over the wire-rims, lips silently working in his St. Nick beard. He told Grey to stir the paint, then pointed at the dent—hand thick and sun-spotted—before leaving for the house. Rach hit the hull until he was inside, each swing louder than the one before it.
“I can’t do this.” The hammer rattled inside the boat. “I’d rather buy him a new boat.”
“You serious?” Grey whispered.
“You know how many times I helped repair it? It’s older than you and me put together. God, no wonder he thinks we were drinking. I feel drunk.”
“Rach.” He looked out the window. “That’s not what happened.”
“You want me to tell him I let you drive the boat?”
“What?”
They hadn’t talked much on the drive out to her grandparents’ house. She had a blazing headache and refused to answer his questions. Can we talk about this later? she had said.
It was now later.
“He’s going to blow an artery if I tell him you wrecked it,” she said. “We’re in enough trouble. Well, I am. You can do whatever you want.” She pinched her nose. “Listen, it wasn’t your fault. The guy threw you off course with his big-ass boat. I’m not sure I could’ve stopped from crashing.”
Gre
y ran his hand over the dent. It was long and creased. That wasn’t something that happened when a boat was thrown onto a rotten pillar. That happened when you hit it at full throttle. He told her so.
Then told her exactly what happened.
“You’re still high.” She laughed.
“We drove out to the house before that. You remember the gate, the man and woman that stopped us, pointed phones at us? Remember my dad flipping out in his apartment? It was your idea to take the boat across the lake and explore the house from the shore. We went when it was dark and hit something at full speed. We were in serious trouble, Rach. They saved us.”
“Who saved us?”
“The people on the cliff. I woke up in there, but you were… they took you home already.”
She was watching him talk. Memories collided in her pupils, attempting to latch on and make sense. Instead, they bounced like billiards balls.
“You’re serious,” she said. “Holy shit, are you experimenting with sensory gear or something? That will erase reality, you know that?”
“No, I’m not—”
The screen door on the house rattled. Rach wiped her forehead and swung the hammer, shaking her head and grimacing. Grey popped the crusty lid on a can of paint. Each swing rattled his teeth.
She took sixteen aspirin before they were done.
Gramps had brought the whole bottle from the house. Each time he went back, she snuck two more. Grey ate eight of them. Once the dent was out and the hammer put away, they flipped the boat to sand and paint.
Gramps didn’t say much. She was a horrible liar. Her grandpa knew it. The whole family knew it.
That dent was from high impact, not a little misdirection at a loading ramp. Maybe he was just glad she was all right and would give it to her later. Or maybe he gave her a pass because she was selling the lie like the truth.
Because she believes it.
The sun had fallen prey to the city by the time they started home, the buildings knifing into the sky like fangs. She was singing along to the radio. Straps of hair were matted to her forehead; sweat stained her pits.
He’d tried to set the record straight twice more that afternoon. The third time she’d held the hammer like a weapon, said she would crack some sense into his skull if he didn’t shut up. Her lips thinned when she was genuinely pissed and he could hardly see them. She was hot, cheeks flushed, hair sweaty. Irritated with him, with everything.
Maybe he was the insane one.
She stopped across from his building. She was drumming to the song on the radio, bobbing her head, staring ahead. Her cheeks were rosy.
There was a red spot on her forehead. Grey leaned closer.
“Whoa. We tried that.”
“I’m not trying to kiss… just hang on.”
He pushed her hair off her forehead. She was stiff and wary. A swift punch to the throat was on deck should he lick his lips or lean in. Instead, he jumped out of the car.
Mom was at the kitchen table with the laptop. He went to the bathroom and ran the shower. Breathing heavily, he pushed brown curls off his forehead, holding them on top of his head as he leaned over the sink. His breath fogged the mirror.
How did I miss it?
He’d seen it on Rach’s forehead, a blackhead nestled into a red welt. Nothing out of the ordinary. A simple teenage blemish centered exactly in the middle. But Grey had one, too.
Only it wasn’t a blackhead.
He knew what it was. The woman that had met him in the water room with the South African accent, she’d warned him.
Do you trust your senses?
Grey sat in the shower, hot water running over his tired aches. What he saw and heard, what he smelled and felt and tasted all determined his reality. Did he trust his memories?
Rach does.
28
Grey
Before the Punch
Class ended.
Grey sat on the front steps, one side of his shirt untucked. He’d lost the belt weeks ago. Now the blue Dockers sagged enough to receive a demerit. He would’ve got one had he gone to class.
He was falling behind in one of the top prep schools of the nation. An academic scholarship took care of most of the tuition. His mom took care of the rest. He couldn’t care less about the school, but it kept him out of public education, where school was as dangerous as a civil war.
The front doors opened.
A flood of identically dressed students skipped down the wide steps, book bags swinging. They were all talented in some way—arts, music, or science. Future lawyers and doctors, future leaders of the world quickstepped their way to freedom. Most would succeed by society’s standards. They would get married, retire early, and enjoy the finer things until they died with loving families by their sides.
Others would deal illegal wares, get arrested. They weren’t thugs, weren’t morally corrupt. Money did not guarantee happiness or success. Sometimes it bred greed and disillusion. And intelligence wasn’t a guarantee to navigate the waters of temptation, where everything was promised and sometimes delivered.
Some of them would end up in the Maze.
Grey’s talent was to blend. He could stand against a wall and never catch a second look. He would make a great homeless man. No one ever looked at the homeless on corners or stuffed into doorways. They were invisible. They wanted it that way.
But it still hurt.
A small group of girls squeezed through the crowd. Grey stood up to spy on the one with a pink book bag and oversized glasses, the frames thick and smart.
“Rach!”
She told the coffee bunch that she would catch up. They cast a glance at him then quickly forgot he was there.
“Hey, creep,” she said. “Where you been?”
“Sick.” He faked a cough. “We need to talk.”
“’Bout?”
He looked around the crowd, his superpowers of invisibility fully engaged. “Let’s take a ride.”
“Sounds a little weird.”
“I want to show you something.”
“Weirder.”
The coffee bunch waited, thumbing their phones with dumb, bored expressions. Rach looked their way. Her hair was pinned back, a short ponytail tied up. Just like them.
“New friends?” he said.
“Just people. You should try it sometime, talk to someone, make a new friend. It’s not that hard.”
It wasn’t like that when they were little, when they were bound by their mutual fear of social situations. Anxiety was their common bond. Now she was sailing into new waters and he was clinging like a stubborn barnacle.
“Call me later.” She gave the universal call me gesture.
“Does your head still hurt?”
“What?”
“Your head. Does it still ache?”
“A little.”
Her rosy color blanched. A fringe of irritation appeared on her upper lip. Grey reached for the side pocket of her pink book bag and took a pencil from one of the slots. The eraser was new. Delicately pinching the sharp end, he gently touched his forehead.
A dull pain flared outward.
There was no longer a red welt. No longer a little blackhead. It only took a week to heal, but the pain was still there.
“When I think of that weekend, it hurts right here,” he said.
The pain was hard to describe, a sort of straining resistance that bloomed between his eyes, a deep sense of injustice, like being forced to do something he wasn’t supposed to do.
Or remember.
But he didn’t have to explain it to her. The bitter resistance was in her eyes. He touched her forehead with the magic pencil. She knocked it out of his hand.
“We’re not talking about the boat.”
“I just want to drive tomorrow, that’s it. I’ll never bring up the boat ever again.” He raised three fingers. “I swear.”
“You’re not a Boy Scout.”
“How do you know?”
In the week since the a
ccident, he had decided nothing could be trusted. Especially his memories.
* * *
She picked him up that Saturday.
It took three texts to wake her. Another one to get her going. It was three o’clock when she pulled up wearing her grumpy face. Grey handed her a lukewarm coffee.
“How long’s this going to take?” she said.
Grey told her where they were going. She shook her head and bit down on some nasty thoughts. They made the drive in silence. Only the radio had something to say.
He’d been researching. In the mornings, he said goodbye to his mother to catch the bus. When it dropped him off, he passed the school and walked another six blocks to the library. All research was done on public computers. Not one search through his phone or laptop. He knew what had happened that night at the lake.
Just didn’t know why Rach couldn’t remember.
What happens when you learn that memories can’t be trusted? What if it’s deeper than that? What if everything is a lie and the rabbit hole is bottomless? There is no reality and there never was? This is just a dream.
Identity just an illusion.
He needed her to know the truth. The other questions could come after that. If he was the only one on the crazy train, then he was going over a cliff alone.
He’d taken a car out to the landing earlier that week but never got out of the car. He and the driver watched a man and his wife drop a boat into the water. Grey asked the driver if he saw what Grey was seeing. The guy, a little confused, agreed.
Then they left.
How do we know reality? I can’t just tell her. She must experience it, must see that her memories are false. If she accepts that, she’ll be treading on thin ice.
Even Grey felt it crackle.
“Now what?” she said.
“Park there.”
They sat in the car and watched a pontoon boat chug past the dock, fishing rods bending at the rear.
“We dropped in at dusk. Remember?”
She nodded, eyelids heavy. Eyes bored.
“We crossed the lake, heading due west. We saw the house on top of a cliff. It was dark—”