by A.L. Bridges
Chapter 14: Rays of Sunshine
I wake up in my bed, lying on my back. The sunlight streaming through the window indicates that it is morning. My memories of last night are fuzzy. I stand up out of bed and start pacing. The harder I try to remember them, the more they slip away, as though they were from a dream. One thing does stick in my mind though: Cheza wearing a pink babydoll with her silver hair sparkling as her face moved closer to mine.
Now I’m really confused. Is that an actual memory? Did Cheza actually crawl into my bed last night in a pink babydoll? Or was that a dream? If it was a dream, then that means I’m having dreams about my little sister wearing lingerie which means I… I…
I proceed to the wall that my room shares with the hallway, and I start repeatedly slamming my forehead against it in a futile effort to drive thoughts of my little sister from my mind. Sara and Tia are suddenly standing in my doorway, watching me.
“What the hell did you do, Tia? Scramble his brains?” Sara whispers to Tia.
“What? No, I just purified his mind a little! He shouldn’t remember anything!” Tia whispers back. “It’s better this way, like hitting the reset button!”
“Cole? Cole! What’s wrong!?” Cheza asks with concern.
I stop beating my head against the wall when I hear her voice. I feel blood drip down my face as I slowly turn towards her.
All I see is that pink babydoll.
“AHHHH!” I scream at the sight of her and smash my head into the wall, really fucking hard, letting myself fall backwards to the floor on the recoil. I keep my eyes firmly shut as I lie there.
“YOU CALL THIS BETTER!?” Sara screams at Tia.
“Well…obviously not this,” Tia scoffs.
“CAN ONE OF YOU PLEASE DESCRIBE WHAT CHEZA IS WEARING FOR ME?” I scream from my position on the floor.
“She is wearing my pink babydoll that is see-through below the chest and is about three inches too long for her,” Sara calmly replies and I open my eyes.
“Yeah, but over an inch too small in the bust,” Tia mumbles right before Sara punches her in the arm.
I look at Cheza, who is staring at the ground away from me with a flushed face.
“So last night actually happened? It wasn’t a dream?” I ask, starting to feel relieved.
“What wasn’t a dream?” Cheza questions, making me realize that I had felt relief prematurely.
“After we got home, we all just went to bed, Cole,” Tia replies, causing my stomach bottom out.
“So… what was this dream about?” Tia asks with her ‘signature’ smile.
I start to panic, trying to think of any dream that I would be worried about and included my little sister in lingerie, but didn’t involve incest. I’ll just say I don’t remember! No, that won’t work because even if I don’t remember, incest will be implied! Then it hit me.
“I had a—”
“Anyway we don’t have time for this so Cole, Cheza, get dressed and meet me in the hall,” Tia interrupts.
I almost continue, just because I had put so much work into coming up with a lie, but I do the intelligent thing instead: I shut up and grab some clothes from my dresser as the girls leave. I walk through the door to the right of my dresser and into my bathroom for a rushed shower, thinking that I kind of need one to help clear my mind after everything. After stepping out of the shower, I towel off, and put my boxers on, quickly followed by my jeans. I’m about to put on a white t-shirt when I stop, remembering my head wound.
I look at my reflection in the half fogged mirror and see no head wound. Out of curiosity, I rip the waterproof foam-rubber bandage off my chest only to find that the wound is completely closed. In fact, I can barely even see a scar, just the stitches. I cut the stitches using my trimming scissors and remove the sutures using a pair of tweezers. I throw the t-shirt over my head, thinking that I can work out this mystery later. I walk out my door and see Tia waiting for Cheza and me. I lean against the wall and wait with her.
“So, where are we going?” I ask.
“You will find out soon enough,” Tia replies and ends our conversation as I hear Cheza’s shower turn off.
The next thirty minutes go by in silence before Cheza comes out in jeans and a light blue t-shirt. I look at her as she looks down and to her left to avoid my gaze.
“Let’s go,” Tia says.
Cheza and I follow Tia to the end of the hallway, past the master bedroom on the right, and into Uncle Eric’s office. At a young age Uncle Eric made it apparent that his office wasn’t some place to play. As such, I have only ever been in Uncle Eric’s office twice and both times were because Sara or Tia told me to fetch him for dinner, so this was really my first time getting a good look at his office. In front of the window on the back wall is a bare Victorian style desk and a matching Victorian chair behind it. There are four full bookcases that cover the right and left walls, with nothing else in the room.
Tia walks over to the left bookcase closest to the door, pulls out the book farthest to the right on the bottom shelf, and reaches up underneath the shelf above it. There is a loud click and then Tia stands up, grabs the inner edge of the bookcase, and pulls it out, revealing a winding stone staircase leading down.
Really Uncle Eric? Really? A secret room hidden by a book case? What is this, fucking Scooby Doo? A Bat Cave is next right?
We follow Tia down the unlit staircase.
Again, really Uncle Eric? You spring for a secret room and elaborate lock, but you don’t install lighting?
I start to stumble, but I catch myself on Tia’s shoulder. We continue down the staircase and I feel Cheza grab my hand for support. After what seems like an unusually long time, we reach the bottom of the stairs. We stop for a moment, and suddenly everything is blindingly bright.
When my eyes finally readjust, I see that we are standing on a raised, yellow, sandstone-brick platform that is roughly a hundred yards long and fifty yards wide, bordered by six sandstone pillars on each side. Over each side and hundreds of feet below, there is a tropical jungle that stretches to the horizon. Cheza squeezes my hand and I go into protective brother mode to become the rock she needs me to be. I look back at her and smile before seeing what’s behind her, facing forward again, and letting my face fall.
The staircase that we just came down is gone.
My inner voice starts screaming “IT’S A TRAP! EVERYBODY PANIC!” but I keep my head, knowing that any indication of me freaking out would scare Cheza. Tia starts walking towards the opposite edge of the platform so I follow with Cheza attached. We are about twenty yards from the opposite edge when I start to question our direction. In the time that it takes for me to blink, a step pyramid is erected at the edge of the platform.
I just keep an “Ah yes, I deal with magically camouflaged stone pyramids on a daily basis too!” expression on my face and follow Tia up the steps. Thankfully, Tia keeps a slow, steady pace going up the 137 steps. The pyramid levels off… into another platform just like the one before and in the distance, there is another pyramid. Oh don’t tell me. I look behind us… and see that the stairs and platform from before are still there. Well that was anticlimactic.
Tia keeps walking until we are exactly half way in between pillars four and five. Tia turns ninety degrees, walks to the left edge, bends down and then something that I can only describe as the smell of ozone fills the air. I hear Cheza giggle behind me. I look back and see the tips of her hair floating upward and assume that mine have done the same as my skin starts to feel tingly.
“What is this?” I ask Tia.
“Oh, that’s just a security mechanism,” Tia stands up and walks over to the fifth sandstone pillar, keeping her balance along the edge the whole time, and presses her thumb against it.
“A security mechanism against what?” I ask with a pit growing in my stomach.
“A security mechanism against you, Cole,” Tia says without turning back to look at me.
Cheza grips my hand tighter. Why would
anyone need a security mechanism against me? I don’t even understand how this is a security mechanism to begin with. It isn’t restricting my movement or anything; it just makes my skin tingle.
The pillar begins pulsing red from the top downward, in increasingly short intervals. Now, having grown up playing video games regularly, I know that when something starts flashing red, there is a decent chance that you are about to die. I feel relieved when the pillar starts flashing green and makes the same noise that a correct answer receives on Jeopardy.
“So what would have happened had we gotten the Double Jeopardy question wrong?” I ask Tia.
“Firebomb? Depending on the threat, the place we are going to might have just ejected while sealing the exits behind it as this place imploded,” Tia replies. Brings a whole new meaning to the word Jeopardy…no wait, actually that was the original meaning.
Tia walks back to where she started and then jumps off the cliff, or at least that is what should have happened, but she just stands there in midair. I look closely and see that she is standing on some kind of bridge that I can only describe as what a ray of sunshine looks when it is shown through a really dusty room. It is about six feet wide and three hundred feet long, but it might be longer.
Tia keeps walking so I pick up the pace, Cheza in hand until we are ten feet from the edge. I drop her hand as I jog towards the edge to jump to the sunshine-ray-bridge-thingy™.
When I’m about three feet from the edge, Tia stops walking and says “I forgot to mention the gap,” while turning around and screams, “COLE!” when she sees my body leave the main platform. She looks surprised when she sees me clear the gap, as if she had been expecting me not to.
“You can see the bridge?” Tia asks incredulously.
“Umm… yeah? Cant everyone?” I reply.
I hear the slapping sound of shoes on stone as Cheza runs towards the edge. I turn around and see that something is holding her back. She won’t make the jump that she starts two feet before the edge. The instinct to not jump into thin air and onto something that she can’t see must be what is keeping her from reaching full speed. She screams as she jumps with her right arm outstretched (doing a great impersonation of the Air Jordan logo) and looks at me with fear in her eyes while I watch as her feet pass under the bridge.
Something inside me snaps and pain explodes in my head as I’m launched from the driver’s seat of my body. My perceptions speed up as the pain fades. The outline of Cheza’s body starts to glow silver as an orb on the inside of Cheza, over her navel, starts to glow light blue with a frosty white encroaching from the outside. Cheza’s body starts to slow down while my body remains at normal speed. I sprint to the edge of the bridge, ten feet away, and see that Cheza has only fallen to knee level. I lean forward while I throw my left arm under her right, and wrap it around her back as my right hand extends further forward to reach under her left arm. When I have a good grasp on her, I quickly pull her into me.
“AHH-oomf!” Cheza screams as she hits my chest.
She looks up at me, her eyes looking slightly startled when she sees my face. I hold her close to my chest and move back until we’re six feet from the edge of the bridge.
“Cole. Shut it down, Cole. Cheza is safe so it isn’t needed anymore,” Tia urgently says before her face takes on a perplexed expression.
“Can you not feel anything?” Tia asks. My head tilts to the side in confusion.
“Umm… Cole? You are kind of… Umm… squeezing my breast,” I hear Cheza say from my chest.
I look down and see that her breast is fitting perfectly in my right hand. I freeze for a moment and then snap back in control of my body. My right hand immediately flies off her breast and up into the air.
“Oh shit, I’m sor—AUGH!” I scream as the pain I felt from before comes back in full force, plus interest. I crumple to the ground, my left side hitting down near Cheza’s feet as I face towards Tia.
“COLE!” I hear Cheza scream as she kneels down beside me and puts her hand on my right shoulder.
“TURN IT OFF! TURN THE SYSTEM OFF!” Tia screams.
“WE CAN’T TURN IT OFF WITHOUT TURNING OFF THE BRIDGE TOO! THEY’RE ON THE SAME NODE!” Kira’s voice booms from somewhere unseen, most likely the sunshine-ray-bubble-thingy™ that is at the other end of the bridge. Every muscle in my body feels like its clenching together and then releasing violently. Whom is that I hear screaming…? Oh wait, that’s me.
“Shit!” Tia swears. “Chezarei, hurry up and help me drag him!”
Cheza grabs my left arm as Tia grabs my right. Whoever is screaming really needs to stop—they’re giving me a massive headache… no wait, that’s still me.
After fifty feet have passed, I start seeing stars and the edges of my vision darken.
After one hundred feet have passed, the range of my vision is at less than half.
After one hundred fifty feet have passed, the muscle clenching turns into convulsions.
After two hundred feet have passed, my vision goes black as I smell something burning.
But, just this once, I would like to believe that’s not me.
…