“Hold up.”

Maxwell was walking down an empty stretch of sidewalk when he heard a voice call out to him from behind. The voice was friendly. At first, Maxwell assumed it must be calling out to someone nearby, except there was nobody else on the street.

“I said hold up.”

No, the voice was being directed towards him. Someone who wanted money? That would be the best-case scenario. Images of Maxwell’s eviscerated body flashed through his head, and he picked up his pace.

“Hey, wait up.”

Maxwell stopped and turned around. A short distance behind, a woman somewhere around Maxwell’s age was half-jogging toward him. She had a messy mid-length haircut and a green button-up shirt worn over a mid-length skirt. Maxwell scanned the woman’s face and confirmed that he did not know her, but she looked content, and the contentment seemed to come from familiarity. This woman seemed to recognize him.

He stopped and let her catch up, but he remained on guard and ready to run if the situation warranted.

“Why do you always walk so fast?” she asked, slightly out of breath.

“Sorry?”

The woman didn’t reply. She just looked up at Maxwell and smiled. The smile was slightly too big. It caused the woman’s eyes to bulge and her nose to widen. Smiling was not for everyone.

“I think you’re mistaking me for someone else,” he said when no response came.

The woman narrowed her eyes at Maxwell and her smile somehow grew even larger.

“Clever,” she said. She resumed walking.

Maxwell hesitated. Not sure what to do, he somehow found himself walking alongside the stranger. Why was he doing this? His compliance was even more perplexing than the stranger knowing his name.

Was this person playing a game with him? Was this some practical joke? If so, Maxwell was curious to see where it was going. On the other hand, if this person was confused, then Maxwell felt he would need to clear things up and explain that there had been a mistake. Before Maxwell had the chance to correct the stranger, however, the woman began talking at a quick clip.

“So, did you like the movie?” she asked.

This question added to Maxwell’s confusion. Had he just been watching a movie? He didn’t think so, but when he thought back, he couldn’t be certain. Maybe he did watch a movie. The last few hours were hazy and jumbled.

Maxwell’s face must have betrayed the thought, as she didn’t wait for Maxwell’s reply.

“God, you’re always so negative,” she said in a pained tone. “It wasn’t that bad. Forget it.”

Maxwell laughed. “Do you have time for dinner?”

Why had he said that? It felt like he had spoken lines from a script. It felt like he had to say that.

“Are you thinking of the usual place?”

Maxwell shrugged, and they resumed walking. The stranger must be talking about the pizza place on Maxwell’s corner, the one he always went to, but how did she know that?

They walked in silence for a while. There was absolutely nothing familiar about this woman, but he couldn’t help sneaking peaks, hoping that some detail might trigger a revelation. After a few glances, the stranger seemed to notice Maxwell’s attention.

“What?” she said, laughing slightly.

“Nothing,” Maxwell said. He wanted to look like he knew what was going on. If this was a game, Maxwell wasn’t going to lose.

As they walked the empty street, it grew familiar. He recognized the old hardware store first. He had never been inside, but it served as a landmark that he was only a few steps from home. The old mustachioed man who had run it for the last fifty years was outside, smiling and waving. It was the same overly wild smile of recognition of the stranger. Maxwell had seen the man through the glass of his store window nearly every day, but he had never talked to him, never given him a reason to suggest they were on friendly terms.

Of course, the store owner might just be having a good day, but if that was the case, he wasn’t alone. The woman at the corner store was also outside and waving as she washed the sidewalk outside her store. The bookstore owner, too, nodded as he passed.

The neighborhood seemed familiar, but strange at the same time. It had all the same stores and restaurants. Everything was in its right place, but it was all brighter, more vibrant. For the first time since he had moved there after college, it felt like home and not some holding place.

At last, they arrived outside the front doors of Frank’s Pizza. The stranger held the door open for Maxwell, but he hesitated. Why did this all seem so wrong?

“Coming in?” the stranger asked.

“I think there was somewhere I was supposed to be, somewhere I have to go.”

“You’ve been acting so strange since your birthday. Dementia can’t be setting in at 26, can it?”

“What?”

the stranger looked genuinely confused.

“How do you know my age?”

“Are you alright?” she asked. When there was no answer, she answered earnestly, “I was there. I sat next to you at the restaurant the whole night.”

Maxwell shook his head slightly. “I don’t—I don’t remember.” As he reached back into the memory of his 26th birthday, he came up with nothing. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t remember this woman, he couldn’t remember much of anything. He tried to recall anything recent, but he came up short.

He felt ill and dizzy. He needed to sit down.

The stranger looked at him with concern. “Maybe we should skip dinner,” she said. “I think I should get you home.”

“Home?”

Maxwell followed this strange woman back in the direction they had come from, down the familiar streets and alleyways until they reached his apartment. He recognized his apartment, but the walls of the building seemed fuzzy and indistinct, washed out by their brilliance. He almost fell over as they walked up the stairs, but the stranger grabbed him. She helped him up the rest of the way. When they arrived at the front door, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a key identical to the one that Maxwell had.

“Why do you have a key?”

“You gave it to me, Maxwell.”

He wanted to accept the explanation. It would be to easier accept it. The stranger was kind, and his apartment beckoned to him over her shoulder. Nothing had changed since the last time he had seen it. How long ago was that? It felt like a few hours ago. It felt like decades. He looked for traces that something, anything, was different, but nothing stood out. This was Maxwell’s room, and he knew that if he went inside, all his confusion would disappear. All his fear and doubts would dissolve in its warm walls, and everything that had happened to him in the last day could be forgotten.

Wait, what had happened to him in the last day?

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

There was something there that wasn’t there. A gnawing memory of something forgotten, perhaps a lot that was forgotten. Some of it didn’t even seem to belong to him.

It didn’t matter. If he just went inside, he would never have to worry about any of it again.

So why was he still standing in the doorway? He would be safe here, content. Entering the room was what he was always meant to do, but something was surfacing in him that resisted that feeling.

“I don’t think this is my home,” Maxwell said. “I think there’s somewhere I was meant to go.”

This time the crack of a smile seemed to cut across the stranger’s face from ear to ear.

“You are sick,” she said.

“I’m not sick.”

“I think it’s been going on for a long time. I think you need to lie down. I think you would be happier there. I think you’ve been working too hard, and you need to lie down, lie down, and get better.”

Her voice was beginning to slow and deepen. She sounded broken.

“No,” was all he could say.

Despite the fog filling his head, or perhaps because of it, Maxwell wanted to get away from this woman. He suspected the stranger was the reason for his confusion. Throwing his weight against her, he sent her sprawling into the darkened room.

“They’re going to kill you, you know,” she shouted up at him. “You’re broken, and there’s no way to fix you.”

Maxwell didn’t listen. He was already staggering back down the stairs. Outside in the humid streets, he did not know where to go. The smiling strangers were everywhere around him now. He could see them moving down the street. He could see them from the windows of the buildings that surrounded him.

They no longer appeared wholly human. Their faces were pale, white, and waxy, melting off the frames of their skulls.

He turned down an alley. He could feel his strength coming back to him and he picked up his pace. The road was trying to grow longer, trying to slow him down.

He ran.

His memories of the Backend and his friends came back to him with every step. He knew where he was and what had happened to him. He turned the corner and found himself back at the hardware store.

The street itself was melting now. A black expanse of nothing sat at the end of it. Maxwell rushed toward the darkness. The walls of the shops and restaurants closed in on all sides, but the hands of the smiling figures who reached out for him were weak and slow.

The stranger appeared in front of him, but she was wasting away. She had grown frail and sickly, and only her toothy smile remained distinct. Maxwell dodged her attempts to clutch at him and threw himself into the darkness.

The moment he touched the dark, he realized it belonged to him. He had been in that blackness all along. All he had to do was open his eyes. When he did so, he found himself lying on a cold stone surface, at the center of the universe.

*

“Ahhhh,” Walter said.

He opened his eyes last and screamed up at the ceiling.

“It’s OK,” Marigold said.

“Ahhhhhh,” Walter replied.

Maxwell gave Marigold a look of concern.

“His senses should come back in just a few moments,” Marigold said.

She reached into her bag and pulled out the jar of ointment she had used on Maxwell earlier. She rubbed a generous amount under Walter’s nose.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh—” Walter stopped suddenly and sat up. He said nothing for a long moment, and Maxwell and Marigold stared at him as he sat there staring straight ahead. His eyes blinked out of sync.

“Is he OK?” Maxwell asked.

“Yes OK,” Walter said. “I’m OK, everything is OK, very OK, thank you.”

“See, he’s fine,” Marigold said.

“Every failure, every blunder. I was shown them all. The battles, the skirmishes, the typos. I had to sign off on each of them, but the stack just kept growing. When I said I had to go, I was told that the failures would just continue to pile up for eternity. I only barely got away. I had to use up all my paid holidays,” Walter said. He looked over to Marigold for comfort.

Marigold nodded. “It was just me. I was back cleaning, and nobody was making me do it. I was doing it to myself. It would’ve been so easy to stay like that.”

Maxwell explained what had happened to him, and Marigold patted him on the back.

“Well, we all made it. That’s what’s important,” she said.

Maxwell looked around. They were in a large chamber with more mosaics, but these weren’t abstract images. They depicted a scene of creatures frolicking in a green paradise. Maxwell couldn’t help noticing that there were humans among these figures or something that looked very much like humans. The room itself was mostly empty, save for four frog statues in each of the room’s corners. They were heroic figures in capes and boots, and each one held a torch in hand directed at the center of the room where a small metal bowl rested on the ground. The light inside, the light of all reality, wasn’t even bright enough to fully illuminate the room. Shadows clung to the corners.

“This is it? This is the World Cauldron?” Maxwell asked.

“All that is, was, and will be burns in the flame, but it's withered. Nobody feeds it anymore. That’s why the light is so faint,” Marigold said.

“I thought the computers created reality.”

“The System orders reality. It synchronizes personal time within a larger matrix and distributes it amongst sentient beings in the Frontend. The flame is reality itself. It used to do all the heavy lifting, but it's much easier to tap away at a keyboard than manipulate the flame, so they’ve digitalized as many functions as possible.”

Maxwell nodded, not understanding.

He walked over to the small iron bowl and stared in for a long time. “I don’t see it,” he said.

“I admit it doesn’t look like much, but it does deserve some measure of reverence,” Walter said.

“No, I mean I don’t see anything. There’s no flame here, just an empty bowl. I can see that something is lighting this space but can’t see a flame.”

Marigold looked over at Walter with concern. “You’re sure?”

“That there’s no fire here? Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

“Hmm, you can commune with the flame, right, Walter?”

“That’s why I’m here, I guess. Do you have a knife?”

Marigold reached into her bottomless bag and pulled out a very long, very sharp knife. She handed it to Walter, who knelt over the Cauldron, drew the blade across his palm, and dripped his green-blue blood directly onto the fire. For a moment, both the fire and Walter’s eyes turned the same color of blue and then both Walter and Marigold took a half step back, amazed by something they saw that Maxwell could not.

There was a long silence and then Walter spoke, “Apologies. We have come to you in search of knowledge.”

“What’s going on?” Maxwell said.

“Shh,” Marigold replied.

There was another long pause and then Walter spoke again, “Walter, formally known as Wathrendaries, Marigold the Caretaker in waiting, and Maxwell the, um, human.”

Another pause. They were seeing and hearing something he wasn’t. He had come all this way to solve the mystery of his arrival in the Backend, and he wasn’t even privy to it.

“Yes, we apologize for bringing a human with us,” said Walter.

A pause.

“Well, there was no other way. Our business is dire.”

Another pause.

“No, he cannot see you either, but he is here with us right now.”

The conversation between Walter and the flame carried on in this manner for several minutes. Walter explained their situation and their journey. It seemed like Marigold and Walter were having a sacred experience, but to Maxwell, it felt a bit like hearing half of a telephone conversation.

“We need to know what’s gone wrong, why Maxwell arrived here before his time,” Walter said.

A hush fell over Walter and Marigold as they listened.

“No,” Walter said at last. “That can’t be right.”

Marigold turned to Walter. “We’ve come so far, there must be another way. Ask if there’s another way.”

“What is it?” Maxwell asked. “Did you find out what’s wrong?”

Neither Maxwell nor Walter replied, but a voice from the shadows did. “What’s wrong is that you no longer exist.”

A familiar uniformed figure emerged from the shadows behind Walter. It was Av’enna.

Walter and Marigold turned to face her, but it was too late.

“What—” was all Walter got out before Av’enna brought her baton down on Walter’s head with such devastating strength that he fell to the floor unconscious.

The sight of her old friend stunned Marigold. It wasn’t hard to see why. Countless mouths lined each of the stone plates that comprised her skin. She had been intimidating before, but now she was terrifying.

“What have you done to yourself, Av’enna?”

“Nothing that you wouldn’t do to yourself. We just need to take care of your human there, and then you’ll see. Thank your demon when he wakes up. We had no way of accessing the Cauldron ourselves. Now we know how to fix the mess and get things started again.”

“We?” Marigold said.

“Oh, I’m not fully part of the Scholar. Not yet. There are places like this where machines can’t go, but I can.”

“The friend I used to know could never have become this.”

“You know the best part of this change? I don’t have to explain any of it to you. You’ll understand soon enough.”

There was no fight this time. What transpired was too brief and too brutal to be considered a fight. Marigold kicked out, but Av’enna’s arm was already there waiting. She grabbed Marigold’s injured leg and squeezed. Marigold screamed as Av’enna threw her halfway across the room.

Maxwell winced. He knew he should do something, anything. Though he did not have any plan, he ran toward Marigold.

“Back, Maxwell, get back,” she said.

“You really shouldn’t persist,” Av’enna said. “I have so much information at my disposal. I can calculate the probability of any move you might make.”

Marigold said nothing. She had made it to her feet, but just barely. She shifted her weight to her good leg, but a stiff wind could have blown her over. Av’enna rushed forward, and Marigold swung out with her bag. But Av’enna was ready again. In one smooth move, she ducked and grasped Marigold’s arm. The bone snapped with a sound that echoed through the cavernous room.

Marigold crumpled. She cradled her arm and lay still on the floor. Maxwell ran to her side, and Marigold did not stop him this time. She pulled him close and whispered.

“There’s nothing I can do. She’s going to take you.”

“What do I do? What did the Flame say?”

“It said—”

Av’enna pulled Maxwell off Marigold and with tremendous strength knocked Marigold unconscious. She turned to Maxwell. Her massive frame loomed over him. She spoke, and as she did so, each of the mouths on her stony body joined in.

“It said that the only way to fix things is to erase you from existence completely. We have to make it so you never existed.”

As if on cue, a deafening explosion sounded and the wall behind her crumbled. A ship piloted by a grinning robot was waiting on the other side. Av’enna picked up Maxwell, threw him over her shoulder, and strode toward it. He could feel tiny teeth gnawing at his shirt as she walked.