Chapter 4.2: Down in a Hole (continued)
The hell am I doing down here? Those girls are crazy!
Raz shifts uncomfortably on a wooden crate and pops another protein pellet into his mouth, more to temporarily wash out the room’s unpleasant musty tang than to satisfy any real need for sustenance. The fog is so thick all around him that he can barely even see the exposed rebar and crumbling concrete of the half-blasted wall.
He came to the Third Floor Fog Lounge as soon as he woke up this morning. Soda was still snoring away in his bedroom, but Raz didn’t bother him. He had a hunch, and wanted to test out his theory.
How did Garden do her so-called fog meditation anyway? Raz wondered. And what does it have to do with the strange way we’ve both been acting lately?
It’s a perplexing mystery that’s been bothering him to no end these last few months since he started feeling this way. Every time he’s had to do a courier run, he can feel the strangest sensation in his head as he walks up and down the stairs through the fog levels. It’s almost as if another presence is taking up space within his mind. At first, there was just a faint tingling that he hardly noticed at all, but his awareness of it grew perceptibly over time until he eventually became very conscious that there is definitely something going on in there.
Then came the blackouts. His mind starts racing at full speed whenever he feels one coming on, and then just shuts off like a switch. Like there’s nothing to it. A flicker, and he’s out.
The strangest thing is that when he comes to, it’s as if no time has passed at all but he suddenly knows the most uncanny things. Usually, it’s related to something he recently heard. For example, a friend might tell him some gossip they heard in the Crypts, and on his trip up he’ll inexplicably gain very detailed insights about the rumor that he couldn’t possibly have figured out on his own. Or his parents might be acting peeved off in the morning, and by the time he returns home in the evening, he’ll fully understand what is bothering them.
It makes no sense at all. And it’s really getting on his nerves.
The last few weeks, he’s even started waiting for other people walking the stairs to accompany on his courier runs. He finds that, although he still feels that annoying itch at the back of his brain, the blackouts never come as long as he just keeps chattering. Problem is, he spends so much time waiting around for somebody to walk the stairs with that he’s been getting too many complaints about late deliveries.
Yet, what can he do? Go to the doctor? Not much help the doc could offer other than forbidding Raz from doing courier runs for who knows how long. And then he’d just lose his job, and everyone knows what happens to disruptive teens who don’t perform their assigned roles. Raz really doesn’t want to be banished to the Crypts—as much as he’d tried to downplay Crypt life to Carlita, he actually has a topside family he cares about and doesn’t want to leave them, damnit.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He chews the bug ball angrily. Something about this fog’s messing with him and his friends, and he’s determined to get to the bottom of it.
Garden just sat here staring into empty space, right? He squints his eyes, letting the fog blur into a solid sheet of white between his thick black lashes. He can feel that itch creeping in again, like a chain rattling around at the base of his skull, snaking up into his mind.
A flash of even brighter white sears across his vision and his eyes fly wide open. Oh, this is different … I’m still awake, he thinks with a level of serene calmness that borders the absurd.
The light flashes again and again, pulsing in a steady heartbeat-like rythm. He sees nothing else but glaring brilliance, hears nothing but his own breathing muffled by a fog so thick that he labors to breath it. The light becomes his entire existence. Light, and knowing as new thoughts develop unbidden in his mind leading to a revelation that shocks him to his core.
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Whatever’s moving in there, it’s BIG!
Dead Boy darts for the smooth metal wall of the dome and hides just outside the shadowy opening with his axe clutched tightly in both hands. He looks around for any other escape route, but all he can see other than the dome and the chasm is a wide blue plain that disappears into an eerily dark gloom.
His mind races to calculate his odds. He has no idea how fast that thing inside the dome is—running when he’s already this close to it might be suicide.
If I’m gonna fight, he concludes, staying right here at the edge of the chasm and just outside this thing’s front door is probably the best chance I have of survival.
He runs one finger along the sharp edge of his axe and nods to himself with firm resolve. Let’s do this. And let’s make it a real fight this time.
Dead Boy crouches down next to the hole in the wall, waiting with tense muscles ready to spring at a moment’s notice. Though his heart is pounding nearly out of his chest, he forces his breath to sift between his clenched teeth as slowly and quietly as he can manage, like a roiling kettle moments before it whistles.
But before he can even register what is happening, a massive blue six-clawed hand shoots out of the dome’s opening in a lightning-fast blur, followed by a gigantic ten-foot arm that just as quickly bends at the elbow, snapping the talon grasping back toward Dead Boy’s face. Dead Boy has just enough time to bring his axe up in front of him to ward off the attack. The huge claws grip the axe haft, violently wrest Dead Boy’s only weapon from his hands and fling it far into the gloom.
A second gigantic blue arm whips out through the opening at an impossible angle and in a flash Dead Boy is caught fast in a two-fisted clutch, with one huge clawed hand wrapped about his waist, the other digging painfully into the flesh around his right shoulder and across his back.
Dead Boy screams and for a split second he tries to wrestle free, but it’s no use. Before he can resist a moment longer, he is violently jerked into the opening and whisked into the lair of the beast.
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