Darius was on top of the water tower. Storm clouds twisted around him. Thunder rumbled off the canyon walls, and he could feel the vibrations through the soles of his sneakers as if he stood on a giant drum.
Badrik crouched beside him. His dress shirt sleeves were rolled up and his hand rested on the hoop of rebar that was the handle of the trap door.
“Are you sure about this!” Darius had to raise his voice over the driving wind. His hair rippled in his eyes. He squinted against the occasional hiss of dust that rode with the wind.
“No, not at all. This is your world. Your choice.”
“But this is where the water is…” Darius looked doubtfully at the black hatch of metal at his feet. A gust of wind buffeted him. He staggered sideways and found his footing again. “The grounding from chaos.”
“This is the box you have made for yourself. You have taken the tip of your bat and have drawn a box in the dirt. Now if you don’t get in the box, you can’t hit the ball,” the big man said, one eyebrow raised.
Darius paused, looking at the hatch, and then kneeled beside Badrik and grasped the handle with the big man. “Let’s open it.” Badrik nodded, and they pulled together. The hatch squealed in protest as they wrenched it back to slam open against the flat steel roof.
“Am I gonna see you on the other side too?”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Oh, you can always count on that,” Badrik said with a wink.
“Ok, then,” Darius said, stood, and jumped feet first into the blackness.
He knew the water would be warm. It was supposed to be. The giant barrel of the corrugated steel was painted black for that reason. In the hot, dry climate, the sun warmed the water enough to provide a warm shower. Where the drainpipe came off the bottom, it had a split nozzle to allow someone to shower underneath the tower. Privacy was provided by wooden dividers like stall walls in a bathroom. The main pipe then ran out to the barn, where a smaller run split off to the cottage and ran through cool rock.
Darius dropped and plunged deep into the warm water, felt his decent ebb and he pulled himself towards the surface and sputtered as his face broke clear of the water. The interior was black dark. The yellow patch of light that was the open hatch seemed to shift and hover far above him like a magic carpet. Much too high to ever reach from where he now trod water.
“Badrik,” he called. His voice echoed loudly. The unsettled water from his plunge sloshed against the tank walls. “Badrik!” He stared at the bright square of light as he treaded water. Nothing. No answer.
“Well, now what do I do?” he mumbled. He peered around him and then chose a direction and swam. He took a few strong strokes, then slowed, and a few more easy cautious ones. The darkness was complete now, away from the open hatch, and he didn’t want to swim headlong into the steel wall. The water made lapping sounds close to his front. He reached out, touched the wall, and turning to his left, he swam the perimeter. He thought there may be a side hatch, an interior ladder, a pipe, or something. But there was nothing. He swam the inside of the wall around more than once before he stopped. It was disorienting inside the giant drum. The small square of dim light above him seemed to pirouette, a detached part of another place, a magician’s door.
“Badrik…? Brock…? Nova…? Anyone? Can anyone hear me?”