I guess I shouldn’t use the gun anymore and just pretend I never had it, never stole it. Using the gun won’t even help. Using it will make things worse. Lera will have no more doubts about me lying. She doesn’t have many right now, but she must have a few. I’ve ruined the seed I planted with her a few weeks ago, the possibility of her using her room here again, but maybe I can salvage the situation with a little time if I stick to my lie. I’ll need the same lie for Radovan too. I have to keep him as doubtful as possible about me being the thief. I also have to hide them somewhere, the gun and the money. I can’t keep them in my room. I can’t even keep them in the house.

I shouldn’t leave the house either; I’m sure Radovan still wants to talk to me, or worse.

But after I find a place to hide them, I can try to fix what Lera thinks. I can repair my plan with time. I just don’t know exactly how.

I should have handled Lera better. Instead, I clammed up like an idiot caught red-handed. If I was smart, I would have accused her of making an excuse to search around for something valuable to steal. Make out like I thought she had become a fiend, looking to pawn off her families' goods for more drug money. That would have thrown her off, made her second guess herself. I’ve never been smart though.

The way she’s scared of Radovan… makes me want to kidnap her and bring her home. She’s the older by four years, but she’s small. I could kidnap her. She doesn’t deserve her situation. She doesn’t deserve to have to work with mafia lackeys, to be put in a position where she must resist temptation, impulse and habit every second of everyday.

The shower turns off, breaking me out of my thinking as I sit at the kitchen table. It’s a stained and scared slab of wood brought in from the country when mom and dad moved here. I guess it could be considered the family heirloom. We grew up well with it, until we didn’t.

I’m hungry but I’ve been putting off eating because of my cut-up lips. The swelling has stopped but they still feel cumbersome and tender. Lera probably needs to eat too. Should do her good with how much she drank this morning. I pull out two tins from the bottom of the cupboard.

“Lera come eat something.” I call out across the empty house. “I’m sure you haven’t eaten yet.”

There is no reply. I’ve already opened the first tin when she comes out of her room. Her older clothes look the same on her.

Once she sees what I’ve got for us a grimace of disgust slides across her face in a split second. I guess she’s used to the nice food the drug house collects from the cafe. Though eating anything in the drug house must be disgusting. Nothing quite like eating through the stench of vomit, I imagine.

Her hair is still wet but she looks clean. More importantly, she smells clean.

Her smell. I think I know why she does it. I think she uses it as a deterrent. She lives up in the drug house and keeps her door locked. She makes herself disgusting, unattractive. Those are the good thoughts, the positive thoughts, about her situation. The bad ones are that her addiction has slowly ground her down to simply not caring.

I present both tins to her and motion for her to pick one. I don’t know what they are and I don’t care either. I find it tasteless, food in general. I only eat because I know I must.

Violet nails, their splotched painting scratched and chipped, reach out for a tin. She spoons the first mouthful and spends the rest of the meal trying to hide her revulsion.

Lera doesn’t want to talk; she doesn’t want to say anything. Or maybe she has nothing to say.

After sitting there as we both silently eat cold tinned food, Lera gets up and leaves for her room - but she grabs an empty box near her door as she does so. I hadn’t seen them, the boxes. I was too busy cleaning up the blood.

I feel worse. It’s like she’s moving out for real, boxing up her things to leave an empty room behind. I made things worse.

No, she brought the boxes with before we had our fight. But she had her suspicions. Not suspicions, she had her fear. Her fear of Radovan and what he thinks. That’s why she brought the boxes.

It makes me want to kidnap her even more. Taker her away from the drug house and the little mafia.

Listening to Lera pack up her, now, old room, I feel lost. There is no clear goal in sight, no small thing I can set out to achieve. The past few years have been amazing in that regard. The way I was propelled forwards with purpose and vision was invigorating. The best I’ve been feeling since dad died. Now I’ve crashed into a tar pit. Everything covered in the same colour, no clear direction, and worst of all; I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do. I know time is needed but that also means inaction.

I have patience. It took patience to slowly plan this out and build it up. What I have right now, this membrane of tar coating me, is being directionless, being lost and waiting for time to give you a clue, to point you in a direction.

It’s like I’m starting back at square one. Though I still do have my strength and stamina I’ve built up.

I guess I have to hide the gun and the money. That should be the first and most important, hiding the incriminating evidence. But how?

I need to get them out the house but I should not leave the house. It is a fucking riddle.

-

I spend the rest of the day trying to sleep off the throbbing pain from my lips. There is a buzzing in my ears and I have to lie with my head, my lips, up, or the pressure from my blood levelling and flooding into them makes my lips feel like they’ll burst.

Lera left. Though she didn’t take her boxes with her. Who knows what that means.

I’m just going to rest until tomorrow and think about smuggling the gun and money away.

-

I woke to a soft buzzing in my ears. Thought I heard something more but it was probably a dream. With the buzzing, it makes me think Lera got me worse than I thought yesterday.

Mom’s left for work again.

School is cancelled again. I wasn’t going to go anyway.

I’ve had no ideas. My lips feel a little better.

I think I’m going to go down into the basement today. Try do some thinking. Being around dads' stuff always helps.

The trapdoor to the basement is in the kitchen right next to the table. You have to pull one of the chairs out of the way to open it. I make sure to leave a chair in the way so someone inattentive won’t find themselves falling down the stairs. Mom always asks me to do that.

The basement, I don’t think it is actually a basement. I think it’s a bunker - a bomb shelter - from back in the Tension Years. A time when we were occupied - or absorbed, depending on how you look at it - by one side before being “freed” by the other.

Well, the bunker is a basement now. Aside from dads things we keep barrels of brine down here. The barrels let mom buy a lot of vegetables when they’re at their cheapest and most plentiful, the full swing of their season. Then you toss them in the barrels and that is that. Take a bit out as you need to eat and all the rest in the barrels are kept from spoiling.

The lids on the barrels are pretty tight, their edges clinging to the barrels lip. I pop one off with practised ease and scoop some of the brine up to my lips. The pain is sharp but the salt will do the cuts good.

As for dad’s things, there are two racks for hangers. They hold all his shirts, jackets and pants. Some of them are more than twenty years old, from when he and mom were younger. The kind of clothes you don’t see your parents wear anymore, but they still talk about them. Well, they would if dad were alive.

Then there are boxes with his possessions, things he bought, things he made, things that were gifted to him. There are books too. That’s generally what I do down here, read his books. Toprak has a library of a single shelf in one of the government buildings. If you want something better you have to go all the way over to Chervoryska. But today I’m going to relax against the cushions, do some thinking and maybe nod off.

-

I think this is what love feels like. The way the sun’s rays have a warm glow that spreads throughout you, filling you to the brim. The feeling is gentle, yet intense. Warm and comfortable but almost too hot. The feeling, the sensation, walks such a fine-line that it is unmistakable when you experience it. It feels like a dream, but not in the REM cycle sense, more the completely contented happiness way.

But there is something there, something here, just beyond my senses, my grasp, and my reach. There is an impression on the edges of my mind as my ears tell me of a hum too soft to hear, only to feel it. A hum that tickles as it disturbs, that annoys as it intrigues. I try to ignore it, at first. I try to stick with my wrapped up and filled with love feeling. But with time, my curiosity grows. I eventually seek the hum out; I find it tickling my mind with delicate vibrations.

-

The hum has turned into a static buzz loud enough to deafen my ears. But the noise has also lost its pattern, its rhythm, the hum first had. There are artifacts in the sound, blemishes and deformations. It’s so loud, the noise, the buzz, that I now feel conscious. I feel awake but asleep, dreaming but experiencing. I feel thinking.

The noise is like the static of a shortwave on full blast as the speakers vibrate in deep tones. Yet the dial, the tuning instrument, is being spun this way and that by erratic hands. The blasting static changes constantly until there is a crack as a station is found.

-way communication-

The sound blasts into my head, but quickly the hand spins the dial again.

-minimum depth-

I’m blasted again by the sudden change between screaming static and crackling signal.

-take place-

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

I feel like I should be fully conscious by now, as though this has gone far past a dream and into a territory completely unknown to me. Yet the dial spins, the static hisses and the signal roars.

-hostility-

I jolt awake in the basement. I’m still on the pillows but I’m covered in sweat. I feel like I was kept prisoner in a dream, unable to wake as that falling off a cliff survival instinct kicked in trying to convulse me from deaths jaws. My heart is still thundering.

I lie trying to wait out my bodies panicked clawing’s for life.

Maybe these are the delusions going around. They are manageable. There is nothing lingering now that I’ve woken. Maybe it’s different for other people, maybe they’re more confused.

Now it’s a question of if I should tell mom, or anyone, that I might have the minor-mass delusions going around, that I’ve experienced something strange. Maybe it was just a kind of nightmare, a strangely vivid and trapped one. I’ll keep it to myself. It was manageable.

I look around the basement, wondering if I should leave for now or not. There’s the darkened spot in the concrete where Lera vomited years ago. Either she had some really strange things in her stomach that day or it was all my scrubbing and throwing random cleaning chemicals at the spot that marked it. Before that, I didn’t know what to do with the vomit at first. I ended up pushing it down through the flooding grate with a rag. Would have been nice to hose the entire basement and wash all the filth down the same flooding grate. But I was young and there was too much to move. No chance I could get the brine barrels up the stairs.

I walk over to the stairs to check the time, maybe mom’s home.

I get two steps up when I realise - yes, the flood grate. It drains down into a tunnel system from the Tension Years that has been turned into a storm-water drain. I think it was a network of escape tunnels or maybe for smuggling and supplies - something related to preparations for war. But they don’t go everywhere, just a select few bunkers. The storm water system it’s been turned into is good for snowmelts and any non-sewerage draining. I can find a place there, in the tunnel system, to hide the gun and the money.

I’ll have to make sure the spot I pick is clear of water or I might as well just be throwing both the money and the gun away.

Should I do it right now, hide them?

Mom’s out but might be back soon. Though she never disturbs me when I’m down here. I think I should be able to enter the tunnels for however long without her realising I’ve disappeared.

I’ll need a bag to carry the gun and the money, a torch because it’s pitch black and… well I’ll be surprised if there isn’t a single homeless or drug fiend down there, so I’ll need something to protect myself. I’ll take my big kitchen knife and the club I carry with me when collecting wood. Been taking the club with me ever since a dog chased me. Couldn’t tell if it was a stray or wild.

The torch is one of those long heavy ones, I could use it as a club but it was dads. Thinking about it now, I’m sure its aluminium under the black powder coating. I don’t want to damage it or anything. As for a bag, it must be filthy down there. I don’t want to use my bag for school. Maybe a plastic bag will be fine, protect the gun and money from any wet too.

I can hide them away now and then start figuring out Lera.

The basement drain is in a corner, the far corner from the stairs. The grate is a thick iron rectangle that can fit one man passing through, once the grate has been removed. I removed it once when I was a kid. Curiosity and all that. I put my head in the rectangular hole but could see nothing aside from the metallic glimmer of the first rung, the first iron rib, protruding from the wall for the access ladder. The darkness spooked me and I went no further. The funny thing is I can’t remember how I removed the grate to do any of that.

So now I’m standing here, all packed with the gun and the money, torch tested for light and my club down on the ground next to the drain, ready to grab on my way down. But the grate is in the way. The simplest thing would be the key tools you push through the bars, turn ninety degrees and then pull to lift the grate, after that would be a crowbar maybe. I have neither so I’ll have to try with my hands.

The grate is solid iron and heavy, but it gives way after a few tugs fighting against the debris jamming it in and I pull it to the side. I unclip the little transparent plastic cap on the handle end of the torch before flicking the switch on, then clip the cap back on the end. It’s maybe old, or expensive and old. The plastic cap reminds me of the safety covers you see missile launching buttons have. I guess the cap is so the switch doesn’t flick off if you happen to bump the torch or drop it.

I point the beam down the rectangular concrete hole. The access ladder, more iron handles really, looks fine, superficially rusted, but fine. I can see the bottom maybe four meters down, damp concrete. I nudge my club over the edge and it drops down. I hear its clatter and nothing more. I’m sure I would have heard the fiends by now if they were close by.

It’s an awkward climb, getting yourself onto the rungs from the top of a rectangular hole. Feels easy to slip while you have nothing but concrete corner to grab on, but once I’m further down, the first iron rung sorts that all out.

I descend rung by rung and pause once I’ve passed the tunnels concrete ceiling. I flash my beam of light around to settle my paranoia about my first exploration of the tunnel system. Concrete walls, concrete floor, concrete ceiling. There is some slack tubular wiring hammered to the top of one of the walls and I think either faded paint or a kind of scar where paint might have once been but has since been washed away, marks the opposite wall. The fade or the marking runs in a long line down the tunnel from me, as my ladder descends into a dead-end.

Hopefully there is a ventilation shaft or a safe dry place where the wiring burrows, somewhere to hide the money and the gun.

I pick up my club, point my beam down the tunnel and start to explore.

-

I’ve been walking for a hundred meters or so and there is only more of the same tunnel. Well, there was a change, but that was the faded paint of the line on the wall changing to blocky Cyrillic letters before changing back to the line. It reads; ПОБЕГ.

ESCAPE

Fifty more meters in and there is something new. Some kind of growth or debris starts to show up on the walls. It makes me think of either barnacles or limpets you see on docks or on anchors or rocks at the shore. Maybe it’s just debris from flooding.

I walk on and bring up my hand carrying the plastic bag to rub at my ear. It has this slightly ticklish sensation.

-Stop-

I freeze out of surprise. The sound, the voice, it’s coming from my head, not the tunnels around me.

-Minimum depth ambit. Remain vigilant-

Delusions. This must be the minor-mass delusions. There can’t be a sound coming from my head, from my ears.

-This is no longer a one-way communication-

I drop the plastic bag, free a finger from the hand I’m using to grip the torch and plug both ears.

-Is your mind so frail it unravels from a sound it cannot understand?-

“Fucking delusions.” I sit down against one of the concrete walls, trying to ground myself.

“I hope I don’t start seeing things.” I mutter.

-Delusion. The superstitions of the local population-

The voice, it sounds very similar the one I heard in my dream earlier, though the volume was all the way at max then.

-A sleep paralysis demon is what they name me. The clergy would name me a sleep demon, or a dreaming devil. But here I am when you are wide awake-

“Stop! Stop talking.” I grunt out, pressing my fingers harder into my head. I want some control back; I want to decide if I can hear clearly or not.

-There are dozens of people throughout your continent who would offer their smallest digit for the chance of asking more questions-

“Then go bother them.” I mutter.

-Knowledge is not free, Aleks. But it is our first meeting so there can be no cost to your curiosity-

“Are we really talking? You’re not just a delusion?” I ask, looking up to the opposite tunnel wall as I get ready for more no context rambling.

-I am as real now as I was earlier in the day when you were half awake-

“Everyone says you’re a delusion. How can I tell you’re real, how can I tell you’re not lying?” The question rolls off my tongue awkwardly. The question is nonsensical, paradoxical.

-Lying means the person matters, and you don’t matter. You aren’t important or special in anyway so I have no reason to ever lie to you-

“… I don’t think you’re wrong, but you could still be lying.”

-Aleks, you have nothing I don’t have, nothing I can’t take, and nothing I want. There is no purpose to deceiving you when you have nothing to offer and, I, nothing to gain-

“You say I have nothing to offer but a minute ago you said there are dozens of people who would want to talk with you. But you’re not talking to them, you’re here talking to me. Sounds like there’s a lie somewhere in there.” I don’t feel the logic I’ve asserted is perfect, but there is still something odd about his claims.

-Eventually I will speak to everyone. Everyone gets their turn, and your turn is now, Aleks. In this way you are not special or more valuable, it is simply your turn-

“I don’t have time to have a conversation with you, or help you, or have you help me. I’m in the middle of something important.” I wonder how many other people have argued with the delusion, trying to get it to put their turn later so it would hopefully forget about them.

-They don’t abide your schedule or your will. They don’t wait. They come whether you want them to or not. Just like they are coming for you further down this tunnel-

I’m not sure what to say back to that.

-Bottom feeders. Marrops. In their natural state they are scavengers, stripping off any flesh left behind by other creatures and cracking bones open for the marrow inside. But they are not in their natural state. Kill them all. I imagine you do not want such things lurking in the tunnels below your home-

“Is this your proof you’re not lying?”

Talking with this thing is interesting but I’m getting the feeling that I should turn back from these tunnels and go home.

-Proof. Then you want proof. My proof is an end that justifies the means. Point your torch down the tunnel and watch for a few minutes-

I direct the beam of light as asked and count out a full minute in my head.

In the furthest shadows there is movement. But it’s so far and so slight that it seems the floor itself is gradually moving. Breaking into the light, the movement seems to be a very small step up onto a new floor at a slightly higher level.

“Marrows?” I ask, still not sure about what I’m seeing.

-Marrops. They are coming for you. Use your club and clear the tunnel of them. That will be proof enough for you-

I’ve never actually killed anything before, not that I’ve been aware of. I’m planning to kill, to deal out violence. I should do this. I don’t think killing a person is that big of a deal, just an action and a consequence. This should be the same or even easier. I’ve been gathering determination to kill Stosha and her friends for months. Hopefully it won’t be like clubbing seals.

I pick up the dropped plastic bag holding the pencil case and the wads of Kruna. I’ll need my hands free so I tie it to the belt loop on my pants. One hand for the club, one hand for the torch.

“Is there anything more I should know about them, the Marrops?” I ask, directing my beam to the shifting floor and begin to close the distance.

-Do not let them wrap around your limbs. Remember, they crack bones open to eat the marrow-

“Okay. I won’t let them close.”

As my torch begins to reveal the Marrops form, I slow down. The creatures stay low to the ground, their bulbous reptilian heads remain perfectly still while behind them their many limbs propel them forward as they slither in an S pattern. Snake like is their movement, as though several snakes are all side by side propelling themselves forward in a uniform manner with their S slithering, only those several snakes are a single Marrops limbs. The creatures, the Marrops, are perhaps like a reptilian octopus, their many limbs shifting them forwards all at once.

To crack bones open…

…they must constrict? I can only guess but it feels like a good guess. I mustn’t let the Marrops’ constrict me. More importantly they’re not as bunched up as I feared. My perspective, the distance far down the tunnel where I first shone my torch, must have made them appear densely packed. Now they are a group, but a sparse group. Their scales are a the type of black that seems to suck in the light, but at the same time there is a secondary colour to them, a shadow of dark violet seen only in the correct light.

The Marrops don’t seem to be in a rush as they close in. A calm steady slithering of their many limbs on the concrete floor, I can hear them now in the silence of the tunnel, the friction between their scaled hides and the cold grey floor. I lift my club up high and ready myself for the first three, the front runners of the group. Normal creatures - scavengers and rodents especially - would scatter after a few of them have been killed, sometimes even one.

I slam my club down on the first on, crushing its reptilian from against the concrete floor. I feel a cold wet liquid spatter my face but have no time to wonder about its dangers as I club the second Marrop against the ground. The third Marrop has had the most time of the three to slither its limbs near me. I expect to find the Marrop wrapping its limbs around my ankle, but instead it is involved in an awkward shuffle as it tries to get all its limbs which it used to propel itself forward, in front of it so they can snake around my shins. I bring my club down on it hard and feel a fresh splatter of moister on my face and arms.

The Marrops are not hunters or predatory in anyway, if I understood the delusion correctly. Bottom feeders. They aren’t suited for direct confrontation. And yet they don’t break, they don’t scatter. Even with three bodies of their brethren partially pulped against the concrete tunnel they continue undeterred.

The delusion did say the Marrops are not in their natural state.

I take a step back from the three dead Marrops and wipe at my face with the back of an arm as the rest of the group closes in. Fresh concrete tunnel now in front of me so the dead's bodies can’t cushion my blows for the living. I hammer down on the first and feel another spurt of cold liquid. I keep going, blow after blow on each new Marrop, stepping back as I need to for breathing room and fresh hard tunnel floor. Again and again I swing, the group must be twenty strong. My arm begins to hurt from exhaustion or strain and I’m surprised by it. I thought all the exercise and effort I had put in over the years was worth more than a few swings of a club. I step back and raise my arm for the last two Marrops of the group. Liquid spurts and I step back again. One last Marrop. I club it against the concrete.

I’m slightly out of breath, but not winded. I bring an arm up to wipe the cold moisture off my face. It must be their blood or some other bodily juice.

I have to thank all my time spent axing wood for my sure aim. Not once did my arm waiver and slam down on a section of the Marrops slithering limbs. Maybe that’s all it would have taken, missing a few sure kill swings, killing so slowly that a far off Marrop easily makes it to my shins. I guess I might have still managed with a broken leg, a desperate adrenaline filled fight for survival it would have been, but I think I could make it.

“Are you there, delusion?” feels stupid talking to thin air.

-Why would you call me delusion after feeling creatures die beneath your club?-

“You never told me your name” I never asked either. Come to think of it, delusion knew my name without me saying anything.

-What I am called does not matter. Some prefer names in-line with their folklore like Incubus, Night-Hag, Nightmare or the more infamous such as Lilith, Strix and Lamia-

-Thinking of it, Delusion is a fine name-

“…Delusion, that was a lot more dangerous than I thought it would be. I think I could have died if I made a few mistakes.”

-It is not yet over, Aleks. Continue down the tunnel, you will know when you have reached the end of this Ambit-

No matter what Delusion says I’m in no rush, not any more. The cool tunnel wall feels good against my back. I reach over to my clubbing arm and begin massaging the tired muscles.

These tunnels, there is history in them. I don’t know it all that well myself, but they are old. They’re from a different time, a different war, a different regime, perhaps even a different people. The men who built these tunnels can’t be the same ones I see outside today. The people of Toprak, some are trapped in a bottle, down a syringe or even in their own heads. Others want to escape this place so badly they leave their children behind, rationalising their decision with sweet lies in their mind; they’ll come back to get them when they have enough money. Only they never do. All the orphanages are over flowing. The one in Toprak, it used to be a boys only orphanage and house a few hundred little boys all squeezed in from wall to wall. But that changed in the last eight years or so. Now it’s an all-girls orphanage.

In the southern states, the southern countries, these tunnels would be a historical site and a national attraction. Their town would take pride and give tours. In Toprak, they are abandoned and forgotten. Much like the town itself.

Patting the plastic bag tied to my belt loop, I push myself up from where I was crouched against the tunnel wall. The light of my torch has not left the depths of the tunnel since I started resting, and now I’m certain I can see the beginnings of fresh movement. More Marrops, as Delusion said.