‘Naw. You’re too pretty to waste, ain’t yer?’
And that’s when I feel them. I’d forgotten they were even behind me, but they move all together, like they’re one thing. Arms hugging my middle, pulling me tight and locking so I can’t move. And then long fingers wriggling over my face and around my eyes, hot and soft as anything. And then a mouth, close, blowing a whisper, before more hands clamp over my ears like doors.
‘It’s time.’
It all happens so fast that I can’t even scream at them to stop.
My hands are clenched. I can see pink light through the gaps between their fingers. I can hear the muffled sounds of Him hollering as they hit Him again. And again. And again.
I can feel it, and I can’t feel it.
Just my heartbeat and my head are left together and we’re banging about on each other, churning with my stomach.
I struggle to get out.
I can’t.
Something as flat as pages is being pushed into my hand. It sits nice between the creases of my fingers and thumb, like I was meant to have it there this whole time.
The key.
And then, when my hands are singing and the taste of blood is in my mouth and I think I’m gonna pass out from not breathing, all the hands go all at once.
And I can see again. The sudden light is like the sun bars coming on.
I don’t even think about it. My legs are used to doing it anyway.
I run.
I run even though my eyes ain’t working yet. I hop over the black shape slumped right in front of me. I don’t slide in the hot puddles around it. I run to the door – one, two, three, four, five, six – and I raise my hand up, like I seen Him do a million times before, and I got the key in it, though it looks more red and smudged than it did in His hand, and I’m whacking it hard on the box near the door and hearing the beep that means the light has gone green. I don’t look up to see it go green, though. I grip the handle and pull it with all the strength I got left and it comes open easy. Easy. Like it ain’t even nothing. Like I been opening doors all my life.
The door is open.
The Outside hits me, cold as rain.
But I don’t stop to feel it. I don’t sit and look at all the marks on the floor Outside of the door, or think about how it smells like wet on walls. I don’t even stop to look behind me at them, ’cause I know they were right. They don’t belong in this story.
And I don’t look, ’cause it hurts so bad that I know it’d stop me leaving.
And it’s time.
I let the door slam shut behind me. I let the key fall out of my hand. And I run.
Part Two
* * *
OUTSIDE
Eighteen
I’m running real fast on a floor made of teeth. It bites at the bottoms of my feet, like no floor I ever did run on before.
And I ain’t in my Inside or the Outside Inside my Head. I’m somewhere else. In a long room, all grey, with walls rushing by in a blur and tiny sun bars above me that light me up in spots.
There’s another door. I kick it hard. It opens up with a squeal.
The sun bars turn to bright white and I’m running across a page. A page bloodying up my feet.
And then I’m running down a hill, like the Tower really was high up, after all. The hill pushes me to run. Faster.
Run faster.
I can feel pain in my chest like my heart is beat up. I feel cold in my lungs.
I run. For what seems like years, I run.
It’s like pelting through water from a tap, but staying all dry. It’s like being blown out of a mouth, all cold.
And then I’m seeing shapes and they look kind of like boxes. Big boxes. Grey. And I see the ground under me and it’s grey too, all cracked like it’s falling apart, with little tufts of brown hair growing from the cracks like fingers out to get me.
I leap.
And, just when my legs are too numb to feel, like I’m just floating in a puddle of grey, I run right into a door on one of those grey boxes. And I pull it open and throw myself through it and –
And then there ain’t nothing.
Nineteen
I wake up. For a moment, I just let myself lie there on the floor, trying to grab hold of the dream that’s trickling out of my head like water down the drain.
Was it a good dream? I ain’t sure.
I open my eyes a crack and see that the sun bars are already on.
My head feels like it’s on too tight and it’s squeezing in on itself in time with my heart, slowing my thoughts to drips.
I blink a couple of times. The sun bars are on awful bright. I jump up to my feet and I start my usual morning running and –
Goddamn! I fall back down.
Some Other has gone and bit my feet in the night. I shove them all red and raw into my mouth but spit them out as soon as they get between my lips.
I ain’t tasted no feet like it before. Like walls. Like holes in walls. But sharp, too – like Him.
I blink a couple more times, but still can’t see a damned thing but light. My head is swimming with different thoughts, and the only one I can really make sense of at all is Goddamn.
I wrap my hands over my eyes and try to hear myself over my heart.
Think, Ele. Whatcha thinking?
And then I remember. I remember what I done. I remember that it weren’t no dream.
I scream out but it don’t sound right. It don’t sound like me at all, and I look around me from under my fingers and I see I ain’t in the Tower no more. I’m somewhere else, and it all hits me so hard I –
I wake up. It feels like the middle of the night. This time I don’t dare open my eyes, let alone move.
I’m shaking. It’s awful cold, but that ain’t the half of it. The whole world is breathing on me, as if the tap has gone and run out of water and is bursting air out of its pipes.
My nose is so plugged up with smells that none of them are getting through. All together it kind of smells like Him, but not enough to make me think that He’s gone and followed me out. It’s Him mixed in with something a little like wall, or maybe floor.
It’s digging around in my brain and making all these ol’ pictures flicker in my head that I swear I ain’t never seen in no book before. Of ladies looking kind of like me. Of hands holding mine. And I get this big flash of something that feels almost real. I’m being thrown in the air and hung upside down, and there are long painted fingers tickling me up under my arms and my thighs. And I’m laughing so hard I can’t breathe.
It all cracks my head like I’m splitting in two. I scrunch my eyes up tighter and push myself over on to my front, but even that’s all strange. I ain’t on no floor I’ve ever felt before. It’s flat and smooth, kind of like skin, but cold and hard. Not like the floors in the Tower, which were all scratched up and scarred from us beating around on them. This floor might never have been walked on at all. Why, I might be lying on a page of my very own book.
Something kicks up in my gut.
I let my eyes open slow. It ain’t as bright as it was before. My head is still thumping awful bad, and I have to blink a fair few times before I really believe what I’m seeing. A floor. A floor that definitely ain’t mine.
I lift my head up and peek out from under my tangles.
I’m Outside.
Well, inside. But not in my Tower. I’m inside some Outside room that I ain’t never seen before, and that almost takes my breath clean away. It’s bigger than my Tower. Almost double the size, I reckon, though the ceiling is closer in some places and goes up at the middle in a triangle, like someone big is sucking it up from the top. The walls are smooth, too, just like the new floor, but made of folded bits of black metal like flattened-out bars.
But all this space don’t matter none, as it’s all packed up with so much stuff that I wonder how I managed to get myself from the door all the way to here in the first place. There’s all kinds of things about – some of it I even reckon I r
ecognize from out of the books.
I see a table.
Two – no, three – pans.
Chairs all stacked up on each other like someone has been trying to reach the ceiling.
And other stuff I don’t have no proper names for, but what we always called ‘drinking bowls’ and ‘extra-skins’, all stuffed into shiny black skins with holes in.
Everything is all shadowy and dark, but I can see it all. It’s real.
And then there’s the stuff I ain’t never seen and don’t have the faintest clue what to say about. Hair tangled up in knots tied on to the walls. Animals all stuffed up and dead. Round boxes with letters stamped on them saying TEA and SUGAR and BREAD.
It’s all piled on top of itself like it’s settled down to bed.
My heart is running in circles. Am I trapped Inside again?
I lift my head up even higher and crawl over to the door, all shadowy in the corner. I prop myself up on my elbows and watch wide-eyed as the door blows in and out, like it’s sleeping.
It don’t look locked. There ain’t no light at the top to tell me either way, though. It must be broken or something.
I put my finger out. The door is a lot rougher than the walls and the floor. A lot warmer, too. I hold my breath and I poke it.
The door yawns open and closes again, sucking in the air from Outside and making me roll away from it. I’m breathing like I’m running at my fastest, but I find what looks like a fist-shaped rock and I shuffle back to wedge that door open.
There. There. I ain’t trapped. There won’t never be no more doors stopping me.
I lie down on my back until my heart calms itself.
When I get up again, I open my eyes and right ahead of me is a real-life window. It kind of reminds me of the hole in the wall back in the Tower, but it’s open and full of glass, just like all the windows I seen in my books.
’Cept this one is in front of me. It’s here. I’m here.
I stumble over there with my eyes squeezed shut. My body hurts something awful, like I’ve been running non-stop for days. I lean against the glass and feel whispers on my skin.
Breathe. Breathe, they say.
I am breathing. I ain’t scared.
I know that I might see some bad stuff out there, like Dragons and Ogres and Giants, but I’m brave. I can beat all of them.
I’m an Outside Person. And I’m Outside.
I bite down on my lip, straighten myself up as tall as my broken body will let me, and open my eyes.
Twenty
I’m looking Outside. Into the real goddamn Outside.
First thing to say about it is that it ain’t as green as in the books. It ain’t green at all, actually. Not one bit.
Everything Outside the window is grey as walls, and I’d think it was inside too, if it wasn’t for that big black sky and that moon shining down on me and warming my face.
The moon. Shining. On me.
I smile so wide my teeth feel cold. But I’m feeling that moon – the real goddamn moon – on my face, all warm like a kiss. It’s a bendy moon – half there, like someone has chewed it and been thoughtful enough to leave some for me.
Ain’t nothing as beautiful as no moon.
The sky all around is glowing colours: blue deeper than pictures of sea, with clouds – clouds! – that ain’t white one bit, but black and blue like they’ve been tumbling over themselves trying to get near that moon. And I put my hand out, as they look awful soft, but I don’t touch nothing but window, which feels all cold and slippery.
There’s so much going on in my head that it starts hurting again. But I try to keep my eyes open as long as I can, just staring at the moon and whispering.
We made it, Zeb. We gone and made it Outside.
Twenty-One
That lady is in my dreams again, clear as if I’ve known her my whole life. I can see the lines around her eyes crinkled up in a smile. And dots all across her nose, like stars pointing the way to red lips.
She’s always smiling.
I want to stay in my dream with her, but when I wake up the sun bars are already on full blast and I know I’m late with my running.
Then it hits me. I’m Outside now. This light ain’t from no sun bars at all, but the real-life sun, shining real bright through the window – no doubt with a big smile on its face, showing off its fiery beard, like in all the pictures in the books.
I jump up to my feet, a skip in my step and my head all full of wonder at the way the light is coming in sideways and not from the top of the ceiling like it did in the Tower. I smile wide and sneak a peek at the real-life sun in all its glory –
FLASH.
My eyes are all bright white for a second and my knees give way. I cry out, my head splitting up like that light was made of broken glass and my eyes are now full of splinters. I push the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, but all I can see is a big black ball bouncing around inside my skull.
The sun. The sun did that. It din have no smile for me. It took one look at me and scratched at my eyes.
I feel around with my eyes closed for some extra-skins, and I throw a big one over the bar at the top of the window. The sun hides itself, thinking about what it’s gone and done, and I can open my eyes again – but that black ball is still following me everywhere I look.
I push my back against the wall and try to calm my breathing.
I just got to think, is all. I just got to figure it out.
So the sun ain’t smiling. That don’t mean nothing. Everyone has their bad days.
But then there’s that grey Outside the window. Those walls, where I din see no trees. No Mermaids. No Princes atop white steeds.
What kind of Outside have I gone and escaped into?
I push my hands into the floor, but then remember that it ain’t the one I know.
I try knocking out to Jack.
What have I done?
The metal wall just whines.
My stupid lungs are pulling in air like there ain’t none. I grip my arms round themselves instead, and close my eyes real tight into myself, ’cause I know me. I know me and I’m there. Beneath all these strange smells and sounds, there’s me.
Me. All alone.
I should never have left the Others Inside. I should have dragged them kicking and screaming across that page of teeth to this new place. ’Cause it’d be better in here with them, wouldn’t it? What kind of home is an Outside if it ain’t got no Others in it?
All the air has melted and it’s too slippery to catch. That black ball is bouncing around like crazy now as my eyes look all what way. I cling hold of me, push myself as tight as I can into the corner and breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe, Ele.
The air starts coming back in. And so do the facts.
I’m Outside now. And I don’t get scared.
Being Outside means that there’s fighting that’s gotta be done. I’m gonna have to slay some Dragons, and if the sun’s gonna go be the bad guy then I’m gonna have to take it down, too.
How to be an Outside Person – number one: Don’t look at no sun.
I write that down in my head, next to all my ol’ proofs of the Outside. All my proofs that were as true as I said they were. ’Cause when you’re looking for truth – whether that be the truth of the Outside, or the truth about being an Outside Person – it’s good to occupy yourself with the facts.
I ain’t gonna look at no sun no more. And that’s a fact.
I lift my head up and look around. There’s a lot of stuff in here that an Outside Person like me could use, come to think of it. I think back to ‘Rapunzel’ and pick out a big white extra-skin from a box near my corner. I stick my arms in it all what way, trying to make it look right. It don’t have no holes for my arms, so I just wrap it round me.
I look down at myself and I reckon I look kind of like a Princess.
How to be an Outside Person – number two: Wear extra-skins.
Now I think of that Princ
e, and I pick my way across all the stuff until I find myself a sword and a shield.
My sword is long – one end pointy and the other flat and stuck with clumps of dirty hair.
I pick my shield up off a big black tube standing on its side. It’s got a handle on the top and is round, just like the shield the Prince had in the stories. The tube kicks out an awful smell when I take my shield off the top, so I move away sharpish.
Now I look like an Outside Person.
How to be an Outside Person – number three: Look like them.
The sun has gone and hidden itself below the horizon. Good job, too. Now that I’ve got myself a sword, it won’t do no good to be messing with me.
I shuffle my broken feet over to the door, with the last of the day’s sun leaking in round the edges. I poke the door again. That rock is still keeping it open, just enough for skinny fingers like mine to reach round.
How to be an Outside Person – number four: Go Outside.
I squeeze my eyes closed and I push the door all the way open before I can talk myself out of it. It makes an awful racket, squealing like it ain’t never opened before, and I jump right back and let it close on the rock again, panting.
I got me a look outside the door, though. Ain’t no Dragons or Ogres waiting for me, just grey floors and a grey wall without no ceiling on the other end.
I lift my shield high and try again, pausing for only a second before pushing that door right open and peering out.
The moon is up there again, shining in a sky that ain’t quite dark yet. I give that moon a quick smile, but it don’t stay long on my face.
The Outside sounds too quiet, like someone has put their hands over my ears. I reckon I should be hearing the howling of Wolves blowing down Pigs’ houses, or the footsteps of Soldiers to match the way my blood is marching itself around my body, but there ain’t nothing. All the sound has been sucked out, and it ain’t right. I raise my sword higher.
I stick my head out of the door slowly and turn to look at my new place from the Outside. Seems kind of small, somehow. It’s made of the same flat black metal on the Outside, too, but all covered in dents and marks.
Outside Page 6