WnW 1.11

The trees slowly passed me by, like attendants of a solemn funeral march. I felt like I was on a conveyor belt, even though I was the one walking. Chase was whistling cheerfully ahead of me, occasionally extending an arm to drag his knife along a tree.

Time passed, although I didn’t know how much, and we arrived at the edge of the forest. We were next to a country back road, where a car was parked. Chase procured a key and the car lights turned on, the doors unlocking with a click.

“Get in,” he ordered, opening the driver’s side and climbing in.

I complied, going around and getting into the passenger seat.

Chase threw his knife on top of the dashboard in front of me and started up the car. We started moving down the dirt road. I stared at the knife rattling on the dash, it jumped whenever we hit a pothole, like it had a life of its own.

“Hold that,” Chase said.

I reached out and picked up the knife. There wasn’t anything special about it. The handle was made of black wood and it fit comfortably in my hand. The blade was a little longer than my index finger, with a single edge.

The side of my head felt wet. I touched the ear that wasn’t facing Chase and then pulled it away, feeling the blood between my fingertips. Everything sounded far away, like I wasn’t actually in the car, but floating high above it. Grace’s scream must have been the cause. The front of my shirt had the putrid smell of vomit, but it didn’t seem to bother Chase.

“I thought you were different, Nick,” Chase said, not taking his eyes off the empty road. Blood stained his face, from his nose to his chin. A single drop of blood beaded on his chin but didn’t fall. “The way you acted in the face of the Pianist. I was impressed. Everyone always just wants to stay inside their little boxes. I haven’t seen someone so readily charge in like that. Granted I gave you a little help, but that isn’t enough to make most people put it all on the line…” Chase trailed off, regarding me with half-lidded eyes, like he was about to nod off.

I furrowed my brow. How did I feel about that? Was I supposed to feel something? Logically I should be concerned that I was being taken to an unknown location, but I didn’t remember what being alarmed felt like. This isn’t me. The far away sounds, my lack of feeling, all of it felt so surreal.

“Am I dreaming?” I asked in a hoarse voice.

Chase nodded and turned back to the road. “Part of you is. That’s how my power works. I can make parts of your brain fall asleep. Hippocampus, amygdala, all that jazz. Emotion drives everything we do. My power proves that. It’s a fine line to walk. If I lay it on too thick, too quickly, people lose their motivation to do anything. Look at you, you don’t even have the will to resist.”

I stared at the knife in my hands. Should I do something? Why was it so hard to decide what I should do? It should have been a logical process, but it was like I was missing some key element.

The car horn blared, startling me. Chase had slammed his palm into the middle of the steering wheel. He eyed me with cold, dispassionate eyes. I felt a small nudge of fear. Directionless, it coiled inside me, twisting and turning like a snake. Nowhere to go. This isn’t me.

“Come on, Nick. Fight back a little. I’m so bored. Don’t you feel the same? We’ve been given this incredible opportunity, a peak into a deeper layer of reality. I know you feel it too, the urge to throw your old life away to chase whatever was hiding there.”

Chase reached over and wrenched the knife out of my hands. The snake in my stomach contorted and suddenly I was a kid again, sitting in my father’s car on one of our trips. I would sit, just like this, looking out the window. Powerless, a scream bouncing around on the inside.

“The day I woke up in that asylum and found a needle in my hands…” Chase held up two fingers, the knife balanced in the middle of the V shape. “I knew I had two options. Go back to sleep, or inject myself. It could have been poison. I could have kicked the bucket. But at least it would be something.”

I was barely listening. The low notes of his voice lodged themselves in my body, nestling in as little knots of twisted muscle. What had I done during those trips? Had I resisted? No. I had done nothing. I eyed the wheel that Chase held with only one hand. What if I had done something? This isn’t me.

“Nick…” Chase said warningly. I blinked. My hand was reached out, my fingers stretching towards the wheel. How had I done that? It wasn’t a complete thought, it had just felt… I had just felt something.

Chase spun his knife so the point faced downward and plunged it into my outstretched arm.

My head kicked back as the pain rushed in. I yelped and pulled my arm back, the knife still lodged there. The snake was writhing, moving around, touching parts of my body that had been locked up. A rush of emotion that spread from the knife to the rest of my body, clenching my muscles, quickening my breath.

Ah. I could think properly again. I was sitting in the car of a murderer. I touched the handle of the blade and felt the intensity shoot up to eleven. It was the worst pain I had ever experienced. Had it hit the bone? Yet I welcomed it with open arms. Fear pumped through my system. Healthy fear. I could act now. I struggled to keep my expression slack and neutral. I couldn’t waste this opportunity. If Chase found out, he might hit me with another dose of his power.

Chase didn’t appear to notice. He kept his monologue going, “It wasn’t poison in the needle. I continued to exist and what happened next was amazing. A new world opened up to me, full of tantalizing secrets. My mind had expanded. There was so much fun to be had.” Chase laughed heartily. “I had power and worthy adversaries to challenge. I needed to know more, so I cut my way to the core of the asylum but…” His expression grew disinterested once more. “It turned out that the puppet masters were in a different castle.”

I readied myself. I watched Chase’s hands on the wheel out of the periphery of my vision.

“Then that night, I’d been caught off guard. Ambushed by the Pianist. Just as I started to lose consciousness, there you were.” He gazed at me. I kept my eyes forward.

“You had the balls, having no knowledge of what you were up against, to face down a dragon and jump down its throat.” Chase shook his head mournfully. “We could have been great. Brawn and brains. But then you had to go and be boring,” he said the word with utter contempt. “Do you want the world to stay the same? To just turn and turn until it rots?” He snorted, a bubble of blood expanding from his nostril until it popped. “Not my idea of fun.”

Skid marks appeared on the road ahead, the memory of someone struggling to maintain control of their vehicle. I followed them until a motion from the side of the road caught my attention. A deer lay in the ditch up ahead. It was badly hurt. It writhed fruitlessly from its wounds. Blood coated its side and one of its antlers was broken. Despite everything, it struggled to live.

Chase followed the deer with his head as we came close.

Now. I lurched over and yanked on the wheel with my good arm. The car swerved, fishtailing. Chase cried out and tried to correct it. The back of the car swung from one side of the road to the other. I was pressed against my passenger side window. 

Time seemed to pass as still frames as I felt the car tip into the ditch. Then I was tossed upward as the car rolled. My seat belt caught painfully on my neck. A moment of weightlessness and then the impact. My senses were scrambled as I was tossed and shaken like I was in a washing machine. The sound was deafening. Something slammed into my head and I blacked out.

—

The acrid smell of smoke pulled my consciousness out of the dark. I coughed, trying to move and finding my good arm was pinned to my side by something. I opened my eyes and found that I was looking through the broken passenger window at the night sky. The car had come to a rest on its side. I couldn’t see any stars. My seat belt had been twisted around me, cradling me in the air. One of my legs was wedged against the seat, while the other dangled down in the car. Chase’s seat was vacant below me. 

I could hear what sounded like a fire burning in the distance. I tested my injured arm. The pain felt distant as well. The knife had fallen out, the sleeve of my dress shirt was soaked in blood. I ran my hand along the seat belt, trying to find the buckle. Grasping near its base, I hauled myself up, freeing my good arm. Then, carefully, I adjusted my position, making sure to stay balanced so I wouldn’t drop down to the driver’s side.

When I turned my head, the sound of crackling fire grew louder. My other ear must have been in better condition. Something on the car was burning. I braced my foot against the car seat and got a good grip on the outside of the car, cautious so as to not cut myself on the broken glass.

Raising myself out with difficulty, I saw smoke drifting up from the underside of the car. I slid off the car, landing on the grass and rolling to the lowest point of the ditch. I lay there, just breathing, trying to clear the smoke from my lungs. My arm began to throb.

I couldn’t be still for long though. I pulled myself to my feet and looked around. One headlight of the car was still functional and was flicking on and off repeatedly. Each flash illuminated something laying in the ditch a little ways away. Was it Chase? Was he dead?

I approached slowly, watching for movement. It lay still. I stopped in front of it. A broken antler pointed towards the moonless sky. It was the deer. Its eyes were glassy. Dead or dying.

But I had lived. I knelt down, trying to think of something to say to the animal. All that spilled out was a weary laugh, relief flooding through me in a wave. Thank you.

My laugh echoed back to me. But it didn’t sound like my voice. 

I stopped laughing.

Chase’s mirth continued.

I turned to face him. He was badly hurt, large shards of glass lined his right thigh, all the way from the knee to the hip. There was a massive gash across his chest and blood ran from his nose in a solid red line. His right eye was shut, a thin cut running across the eyelid. His remaining open eye looked around wildly, like a hyperactive kid. He laughed like I’d just pulled the funniest prank on him. Genuine laughter, bubbling up from the stomach. 

“Nick!” he shouted and threw his arms wide. “You can surprise me after all! That’s what I call exciting!”

I loathed him. I hated him deep in my core. Rage bubbled inside me. I staggered towards him, arms outstretched. He regarded me with amusement as I closed my hands around his neck. My fingers felt his pulse, blood pumping through his neck. I could feel the air being taken in through his windpipe. I squeezed and his breathing became ragged. But he just kept watching me. I growled gutturally and pressed down harder. 

Chase coughed and when he tried to breathe in more air, he found that he couldn’t. He grabbed my wrist feebly. I could almost see his consciousness fading out of his eyes. But I couldn’t do it. My grip loosened and Chase looked disappointed.

The rage abandoned me. It bled out of me like a drain plug had been pulled out. I released him, looking at my hands. They were bloody and quivering, echoes of an emotion I no longer felt.

“Kill yourself,” Chase commanded coldly.

We both stood still. Chase’s face cast in shadow from the blinking headlight behind him. Then Chase chuckled. “Nah, that doesn’t work. There’s some self-preservation instinct that my power still can’t override.”

His knife flashed in his hand. I felt the tendons in my forearms give out. They dropped to my sides and started to feel warmer on the outside as blood poured from the cuts. Heat drained from my fingers, leaving them numb. He leaned down and reached around me, like he was checking my pockets. I felt my hamstrings release. He’d cut them too. I buckled, legs no longer supporting me. I fell awkwardly, knees bending forward but my back hitting the ground as well. Chase towered over me, holding his knife gently, as if holding a pen.

“Let’s get this over with, hm?” Chase whispered. He crouched beside me. “Any last words?”

I opened my mouth and he slit my throat.

What little light was left faded away.

—

A dream came to me, murmuring out of the abyss. Light poured through painted glass windows, the light scintillating as shafts of divided colours. The roof was almost entirely made of stained glass windows too, depicting figures of religion that I couldn’t name. A wooden beam, painted white, ran down the centre of the roof and small connecting arches curved downwards towards the walls. The walls of the chapel were broken in places, chunks of brick missing, creating a strange jigsaw puzzle made of stone. Light came through these holes as well. 

Instead of rows of pews lining the chapel, low tables filled the space. Every inch of available surface was filled by potted plants. The leaves of the plants seemed to absorb the hues of the light, becoming just as colourful as the painted windows above. There were vivid flowers of every colour. Vines crept up poles buried into soil. Fruit I could not identify hung from small trees.

A woman’s face leaned over me. She had short black hair, roughly cut without attention to style. Clumps of her hair stuck up in odd directions, like an unkempt bush. Her eyes were large and she regarded me solemnly.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

I looked down. My body was hollowed. My chest was caved in, a depression where my heart should be. Like someone had scooped out the flesh with a shovel. I smiled and shook my head.

It did hurt. It hurt so immensely that it pinned my body to the table I was lying on, like a massive beast laying atop its prey. I don’t know how, but I could tell the woman knew I was lying.

She turned her back to me. She was wearing a brown gardening apron, covered in dirt. Her frame was thin. How old was she? If she was an adult, she was petite for her age.

She turned back around. In her hands, she carried a bucket of dirt and a short spade. She placed the bucket down next to me and slowly tipped it forward, allowing dirt to pour inside my chest cavity. It felt strange.

“Leave me alone,” I rasped.

She paused, looking at me curiously. “You say that, but you don’t mean it.” Her voice was gentle. She continued until the bucket was empty and the dirt had settled into my chest.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked.

The woman reached over and picked up a flower with long white petals. She stared at it thoughtfully before answering, “Returning a favor, I suppose.”

She placed the flower into the cavity, covering the roots with dirt. Then she leaned in and said something to it. Air whooshed through the room, as if the whole chapel had just taken a breath. I could feel the roots grow out into my body, warm and solid.

The girl looked at me. Her loneliness washed over me like water, tangible and heavy.

“Do you remember me?” she asked.

I stared at her face. Did I? There was something nostalgic about it. A feeling more than a memory.

The lights outside the chapel started to darken. Her face faded, the moment to respond had passed.

“You’re not done yet,” I heard her voice whisper.

Her words filled me with determination. “Damn right,” I said as the chapel crumbled into the haze of dreams.