“Thank you,” I said, in probably the least grateful tone I’d ever managed. Only because I was sticking to the script.
“We’ll see you in the next few days, then?” he asked.
That… it felt wrong. I didn’t remember it.
He was breaking from script.
Making me say it.
“Sure,” I said. My chest and throat were so closed up with emotion that I could taste bile in my mouth.
He gestured with his hands without moving his arms, “Got plans? You should sit. Partake of our fries.”
“I shouldn’t,” I said.
“Don’t worry, really. We’re about as low key as people get. Come on, we’ll order a round. It’s on us.”
His eyes were exactly right in this world of imperfect and muddled details. For someone who said he was low key, the eyes were hungry, drinking in every detail they could, looking for something he could use.
I’d sat down. I’d had a bit to drink, despite being under the legal age. Such was the script.
The past me had. Here, I took a different option, “No thanks. I’ve got someone waiting for me.”
His smile was almost smug. Not Carl’s smile so much as it was my shadow’s. I was deviating from the script. I hadn’t ruined it, I wasn’t running, or refusing to continue, but I wasn’t helping myself either. Not on the surface.
“See you in a few days, then?” Never-blinks asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. I raised my hand in a small wave, forcing a smile to my face.
“Bye, Blake,” Carl said.
I didn’t reply as I left the cafe. I headed to the hill that overlooked the shop, leaned on the railing at the cliff’s edge, and stared out at the alien landscape. I could take this option, but I couldn’t refuse to give him my name. I had to give him that power.
After about twenty minutes, I punched the railing hard enough that I should have shattered my hand. It hurt like I had.
■
Time slipped away from me somewhere along the line, as this shadow-reality crept in on me. Never time that I could have given up. Hours stretched on, but always the better hours. I lost track of time while I worked, I experienced time at its normal pace when I lay in bed, awake.
If this was a matter of simply overcoming one or two events, it would have been something else. Grit my teeth, fight.
But this was a question of endurance, fortitude. Doing it all over, the bad bits, the stressful bits, the parts I regretted.
I’d been physically exhausted on my initial entry into this shadow reality. Now my emotions and my sanity were starting to feel the toll. The hideousness of everything, the darkness, the uncertainty, knowing what was coming…
Fuck this place so very much. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck, fuck, fuck.
An unspoken curse punctuated every push of my feet against the bike’s pedals.
Wheels skidded on the dirt road as I came to a stop.
Carl’s place.
Cabins, all built on a hilly spot of land, overlooking a lake.
Carl waited on the front steps of one cabin. It felt imperfect, not exactly right. He had a bundle in his hands.
The second I was off my bike, he tossed the bundle at me. Clothes, jacket, boots… Everything I needed.
“Great to see you, Blake,” he said. “Come check it out. Get hydrated.”
I couldn’t say no.
Except that wasn’t exactly right. I could. I just couldn’t do it without failing this test.
I followed.
More cabins, all log, stripped bare, set down on a concrete-block foundation. Chunks were cut out of the logs so they could mesh at the corners, Lincoln Log style, with mortar or something filling the gaps.
He grabbed a beer from a cooler, tossing it at me. I caught it in both hands.
My eyes roved over the lake. I could make it out, despite the lack of light from above. I was reminded of pictures of bioluminescent algae on the ocean, highlighting the cresting waves.
It was beautiful, eerie, and unsettling.
Doubly beautiful because it was in stark contrast to the ugliness I’d experienced for the length of my stay here.
“Nice place,” I said. Script.
“It really is,” he said. Just like that, simple. He helped himself to a beer.
We drank our beers. He finished his first, starting on the second.
Tired from the bike ride, I stayed where I was, content to nurse the empty can and pretend it had more in it than it did.
“Carl!” a girl’s voice. Fungus-face’s. “Coop!”
Carl was on his feet in a second, a brilliant smile on his face. “Come on. You want to pay me back for the jacket and boots? Give us a hand.”
Waves crashed against the rocky beach below. Each crash was more intense than the last. The wind picked up, my hair and the grass whipping in the gale.
Second by second, it intensified.
“If you’re going to tap out,” Carl said, his voice friendly, as if he was my greatest ally, “This would be the time to do it.”
I felt my skin crawl.
“In a way, it’s the point of no return,” he said. “Go any further, and you might feel like you have to do something stupid. Like punching that railing…”
I touched my hand. The pain was gone, any wound already healed.
“…Or one of us. You know there’s no situation where you win here,” he said. “Conquer this reality, attack me, dash any or all of this from your mind and your heart, you leave a hollow that gets filled by other things, and you become a monster. Abandon it, and you’re still there, in the Drains, for the rest of your short existence. Go through with it, and you’ll be less.”
“I know,” I said.
“Three,” he said. “Two…”
“Let’s go build your fucking chicken coop,” I said.
He spread his arms wide, as if embracing this world. He turned on the spot, and he jogged away.
I had to run to keep up, because hesitating might have spelled the end of this, as good as giving up.
It was a metaphor for what followed.
Actors with smiling faces played the roles of the waiting group. Small, only six, eight with Carl and me.