by Zara Starr
He turned away from me then and strode over to his bed skins where he lowered himself to stretch out across the mattress.
I perked a brow curiously. Why did it seem like this guy enjoyed having the cave to return to when I was wondering how we had been stuck with such poor accommodations?
I decided to try rehashing events again since speaking with the guy had only landed me with grunts and strange words I had no way of translating.
I had gone into work. I parked my car in the third-row space where I had been assigned since starting. Everything seemed fine—until Carlisle called me into his office just to harass me about being late. I basically quit on sight and then the same car that had caused me to be late wouldn’t start again.
I shook my head as glimpses of my memory began piecing back together.
There had been that strange old woman—the one who was insistent on asking me about my relationship with God. She had told me that the bus depot had started flooding and there would be no more buses for the rest of the day. But what happened next?
I pursed my lips and glanced over at my pile of clothes, wondering where my smartphone had gone and walked over to kneel down beside it. If the thing still worked, it was going to require drying out—that much I knew. But finding it seemed to be the most important thing.
I fished my jacket from the bottom and stuck my hand into the front pocket. My fingers brushed within the pocket and instantly found the bottom—poking out from where a hole had formed.
How the hell had that even happened? I wondered.
Life was working out to be just great for me it seemed, and here I was stuck with a person who didn’t even make a lick of sense.
Four
Ella
There was something comforting about not being completely alone, even if the other person didn’t speak the same language as you.
It was a relief that I took some gratitude in and as I stared at the man in the mask tending to the fire in the cave I came to understand how isolation could mess with a person’s mind.
What was strange though, was that after about an hour of waiting, nobody came to shout that the scene was done being filmed. I suddenly began to suspect that whatever was happening was eerier than I had first thought.
I had once heard that the human mind had three levels when dealing with grief: denial, fear, and finally, acceptance. I figured I must have been somewhere between denial and fear because I had struck for the first logical thing that made sense.
That might have been a mistake because the longer I sat in the cave the more the thunder boomed outside. The ground never ceased to tremble like it too feared the heaviness of the storm.
Don’t think crazy, Ella, I told myself. Just keep yourself calm and don’t focus on overthinking so much.
I repeated the same things I knew my therapist had instructed me to do.
Just try to talk to him rationally and try to get some help, maybe get the hell out of his hair.
I walked over to him and knelt down, finally falling back to sit on my butt as I crossed my legs over my lap.
“So, what movie set is this? Is it anything I know?” I asked curiously. The man looked up at me and grunted. “You know, you’re really good at your job and all. I mean, it’s great to see you stay in character so convincingly but I really need to talk to you.”
The man sighed audibly and lifted his arm over his head, pulling the mask from his face. I perked my eyebrow upon seeing the mottled color of his skin and scoffed.
“Wow, you guys must have one hell of a costume artist.”
The man groaned and placed the mask down alongside the leaf he had placed food on—food that I now wondered if I had eaten when it was meant to remain uneaten as a prop.
The man pointed down at the leaf and tilted his head as he looked back at me, his eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at me.
I gulped, feeling as if he were angry with me for eating the berries, I blurted the only thing I could think of.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to eat your props—if that’s what they were. It’s just that I’m really confused about what I’m doing here and when I woke up the food looked like it had been placed there for me to eat,” I said.
The man lifted the pieces of smoked fish and stuffed them into his mouth, chomping at them. He held out a piece to me and nodded.
I shook my head and put my hand up over my face. “No, I really—I have food allergies and I just can’t eat that,” I said.
He tilted his head and perked a brow as if he could not understand a single word I was saying. I had just about had it.
“Okay, look. This may be hilarious to you and all—and I admit, I did find it a little funny at first—but this is getting ridiculous. Will you please just speak plainly, here? I mean, I’m really anxious and I’m not quite sure what the hell I am even doing here. It would be nice if somebody could shed a little light on what’s going on,” I said, my voice rising to a steady and stern stone with every word I uttered.
The costume he had was incredible, the scenery way more than believable. But the way he looked back at me blankly when I nearly yelled at him was enough to send me straight through the roof of the cave.
“Hello? Come on, can’t you say a damn thing here?” I asked.
“Olisa jukia.” The stranger’s mouth parted and he uttered another strange gibberish word I could not make any sense of.
I shook my head. This had gotten to an unbearable point and I couldn’t take another second of it.
I stormed over toward the cave’s entrance and slipped outside—glancing up at the sky and noting that the storm seemed to have ebbed off slightly.
I walked closer to the forest line—my eyes scanning over the plants curiously. Maybe just looking over the landscape could help me shed some light on where I was, but as I looked deeper into the forest a shuddering wave of goosebumps flooded over my skin.
There was something creepy and strange staring back at me from the darkness and I could not be sure what it was—but I did know that it had deep scarlet red eyes and it was staring directly at me.
I stepped backward and gasped aloud as the man appeared behind me pointing back at the cave. I perked a brow and scoffed, but could see he held a long spear in his hand, indicating that whatever had horrified me was obviously worth fearing.
This can’t be a movie. There is no possible way this is just a movie.
I turned to walk back the cave and watched closely as he stared deep into the woods. Suddenly, lightning flickered across the sky with a deafening crack—lighting up the trees and giving me a brief glimpse of the luminous and scaled creature that had been crawling through the underbrush.
“What the hell is that?” I screamed, turning to run back toward the safety of the cave as every mythical creature I could reference slithered through my mind.
Was that a dragon? Was it a freaking basilisk?
I could not be sure from the brief flash I had seen, but I knew it was some sort of reptile—and a giant one at that.
As I got back into the cave, I tucked myself down atop the bed skins and pulled my knees in against my chest, lowering my head to rest atop them as I covered my head and ears.
It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.
Something was entirely different about this place, different from any of the parks I had ever visited during the five years of living in Southern California. This place was a nightmare and here I was stuck in it with no way out.
I could feel my tears beginning to well in the corners of my eyes and hopelessness overtaking me as I sat there and began to rock back and forth. This was what anxiety did to me. This was why I had worked so diligently in my therapy sessions.
I hated the way it felt to be completely out of control and unaware of what was going on around me.
Looking back at my life, I couldn’t really point out where the panic attacks had set in but it was always in situations of new and unknown things—and this place was definitely both new
and unknown.
I lifted my face just as I heard the male grunting before me again—my eyes instantly meeting with his kneecaps as he came to tower over me.
“What do you want?” I asked him, agitated by the constant grunting, “You can’t tell me anything. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who you are, and mostly, I have no idea how I’m ever going to get back home!”
Tears started to roll down my cheeks as I was overcome by the stress of it all.
“My clothes are still wet, which means whatever I’m remembering about being in water must have actually happened. Nothing else makes sense!”
I was far beyond angry at this time but as I looked up at him and noticed the purple oozing goo that covered his mask I realized that whatever he had just gone through was probably worse when compared to my panic attack.
“What happened to you?” I asked, shaking my head as soon as the words fled my lips.
I was playing the part of the idiotic damsel in distress and that really didn’t fit my usual endeavors to continuously be a strong and independent woman.
“There probably isn’t a single person here who can understand me at all. From the looks of you, whatever exists outside of this dark and musty hellhole has my kind listed on the menu for the night. I know I saw gnashing teeth from some sort of sea monster. That’s probably where the tears in my jacket came from. But what I don’t get is how you got ahold of me and brought me here. None of it makes a bit of sense!”
Suddenly, I realized that my yelling was probably not a smart idea—especially, after having seen the glowing red eyes of the beast that had stalked me from the woods.
The male pulled his mask from his face again and I could tell from looking closer that his skin wasn’t just mottled from mud and the washing of the moonlight—it really was purple.
It was almost a pink color like the jewels I had spent a fortune on when visiting Arizona. It was beautiful, but it seemed like it was wholly a part of him—just like the shade of my skin, complete with the mars, scars, and sunspots I had earned from sunbathing in Malibu for the past several years.
I stood up then, as he grunted in my face again, and reached forward, extending my finger to slip over his cheek. I wiped at his face slightly, but the bluish tint didn’t seem to shift at all and I perked a brow.
“You are.” I quirked my eyebrow and tried to rub at his cheek again and shook my head as my mouth fell agape. “You are purple!”
I shook my head and stepped back, my mind beginning to swirl with the possibilities.
First, there had been a really weird set of storms that had descended upon Earth—so much that the newscasters had been up in arms with the possibility of it being Armageddon, or the Apocalypse or whatever end of the world terms people wanted to concoct for it.
Then, there was the massive white lake monster that had tried to snap me up between its jaws when I strangely wound up in some random body of water that was nowhere near the California I knew—at least, not to my knowledge.
“Gifi funacka,” the male murmured. He began to holler at me as my fingers slid away from him.
I shook my head and sighed. “This is ridiculous. Obviously, I’m not going to be able to bridge the gap in communication here,” I muttered aloud, shaking my head at the absurdity of it all.
Was this my punishment for not being nicer to Mr. Hubert? Was this the universe’s way of trying to teach me a lesson in humility?
I scoffed as I murmured, “Okay, I’m sorry! I think my car broke down and I got caught in a wicked storm.” I glanced over at the man and whirled around. “And, now this as my only company. I think you’ve done a great job here, karma! I’d love my regular life back now!”
The male shook his head and walked to the opposite side of the cave—putting much-needed distance between us, I supposed.
I had to admit, if some person just randomly wiped at my skin I’d have probably had the same reaction, and yet I didn’t feel that was his primary motivator, not in the least. I was feeling wholly confused and lifted my hand to wipe at my own face, sighing as I considered the language barriers.
“This can’t be happening,” I said
The stranger sat and scoffed loudly, his grunts coming in succession—almost sounding like he was giving me a stern reprimanding for my stupidity. It reminded me of the tone my father had often taken when he had lost his patience with my ignorance.
He wasn’t a bad father, per se, but he had no room for people who could not follow instructions. I imagined that was probably because he was raised by a military general, an officer, at that.
I could never be totally sure. Mostly because my father seemed absent more often than paying attention, basically leaving my mother to raise me and my brother on her own.
A lot of people I had met never got that, thinking that I had somehow been blessed by not having a broken home like most of the other students in my school.
That wasn’t always the case, however, as my father was a workaholic who liked things to be in perfect shape—or as close to it as possible.
I couldn’t take another second of this bullshit, but yet I knew it was impossible to go back outside of the cave.
Still, a part of me wanted to run away, as far as possible. I suddenly wondered if the man could interpret pictographs.
Cuneiform or hieroglyphics might be useful here, I thought.
I glanced around the cave curiously and perked a brow when I spotted a long stick—what appeared to be a walking stick—poised in the corner near the bed skins.
I walked over to it and glanced back at the male who was now staring at me with an odd expression.
If I picked up the stick would he consider it an aggressive move?
I pursed my lips and pointed at it with a nod, reaching for it as I walked closer to him. I pointed at the ground with one hand, holding the stick with my dominant hand, and nodded again.
He narrowed his eyes slightly as I made eye contact with him and began drawing in the dirt near the fire.
I drew a large body of water, and above it clouds with strikes of lightning emitting from them. Then, in the center of the body of water, I drew little lines to represent waves and a person waving their arms around—stick figure, of course.
This was no art class. I was just trying to come up with a way to figure out where the hell I was and whether or not I was actually going crazy.
He perked his brow at me as he watched me draw. As I finished making the picture I stepped back and pointed at it again. He tilted his head slightly and grunted again, moving closer to me as he reached for the stick.
I allowed him to take the stick and stepped back a bit, feeling slightly dwarfed by the massive purple man standing beside me. Watching closely, I perked a brow as he began to draw what appeared to be a box—at first.
As the picture took shape, however, I realized it was a raft with a sail and a stick figure standing atop it—very near to the figure I had drawn waving its arms in the middle of the body of water. He then drew what appeared to be a lasso wrapping around the person in the water.
My eyes widened as I began to interpret what he was drawing. He had been the one who had pulled me from the water. Did that mean that the creature I had seen was real?
I nodded and reached my hand out, wiggling my fingers slightly to indicate my need for the stick again.
The man released it into my grasp and I stepped forward, beginning to drawing a snake-like creature beneath the frantic person in the water and the raft he had drawn with the man lassoing the person.
I did my best to draw the mouth as a wide and gaping circle with jagged triangular-shaped teeth—to denote what a monster I recalled having seen.
The sudden epiphany of my situation was becoming more real by the second. Especially when he reached for the stick and brushed the dirt over—as if he were erasing the first image to begin a new one.
Sure enough, he began drawing a body of water, the same clouds, and the raft.
Thi
s time it had the sail open wide, a large triangle in the dirt, and his raft that had two stick figures on it. One that I presumed to be himself, and the other, me, spread out across the raft as if I was sleeping.
This did not reveal what had become of the creature I had seen though. It made me curious to know if he had killed it or just rescued me and gotten away as quickly as possible.
It was obvious that something about this place was not Earthly by this point, but I felt some comfort in learning that he had rescued me from the literal jaws of death. What bothered me most, however, was that I had no way of letting him know how thankful I was.
I sighed. It was going to be a very long night.
He stood up and handed me the stick again—moving away from to the bed skin mattress and lifting a layer of skin from it.
He walked back toward the fire and sat down, covering his shoulders with the skin and pointing back at the mattress—which still had most of the thicker and obviously more comfortable animal skins he used to make his bed with.
I tilted my head, curiously recalling how body language often spoke louder than words and realizing quickly that while I may not have understood a single grunt he made, he was doing his best to accommodate me after having saved my life.
I shouldn’t have started yelling at him. As I looked between him and the bed I felt a pang of guilt hit me in the chest.
I nodded back at him and walked over to where the stick had been originally set, placing it back in the corner and walking back to the mattress.
There wasn’t much else to do—in the primitive setting, I didn’t have any other entertainment and going to sleep seemed like the best solution after the long and wild day I had had. I crawled deep under the skins and curled up in a ball as I tried to calm my worries.
I was out of control though, and feeling totally at a loss about what to do next I closed my eyes, hoping sleep would come quickly and dawn even sooner.
Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad outside in the daylight?