[Original Novella] The Road Less Travelled, Part 3 (the finale!)

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Part 2}

I tried to laugh but found that I had no mouth just then. Nor a body of any kind that I could feel. I floated for a few more seconds in that comforting void until it again receded, depositing me onto a cold concrete floor.

I dry heaved. I don’t know whether it was fear or the process of transport. When I felt my wits had returned, I scoped out the room I was in. A concrete cube with no doors or windows. Just a single bulb hanging from the ceiling by wiring. In the middle of the room was a pedestal with a familiar metal cylinder on it. In the far corner, a small body hunched over as if to hide.

“Hello? Don’t be frightened. I don’t know how I got here. Is there a way out? Are you hurt?” It twitched almost imperceptibly in response to my voice. And began to turn towards me as if in slow motion.

I noticed then that words were etched into the walls. Over and over, looping around the room from floor to ceiling. A string of cyrillic characters I now knew like the back of my hand. “And yet it moves.”

When I looked back at the child, it was standing. I couldn’t determine the gender. It wore a white sleeping gown of some kind. But the face. I couldn’t force myself to acknowledge it initially. But reality is what continues to exist even if ignored.

The face was as smooth and featureless as an egg. I cried out, and backed into the corner. The light began to flicker. Each time it flickered, however briefly, the child moved towards me by the smallest increment. The flickering intensified. Longer and longer without light. It drew closer, moving further each time. The watch in my pocket began beeping. The light went out.

I continued screaming as the darkness tore apart around me into the geometric fractalized nonsense from before. Not before I felt a small, cold hand grasp at my throat. But it wasn’t touching the watch, so it was left behind. I still cannot say what might’ve happened otherwise. Or where I’d be now if I hadn’t pocketed the watch to begin with.

As it had now saved me twice, although from what I could not precisely say, I took the trouble of strapping it to my wrist. I could see now that it was counting down sixty seconds, and must have been doing so each time I was sent someplace new. None of it made much sense to me, but at least I now suspected I knew where all the shelter personnel had gone.

I was deposited in a crumbling building. Outside, thick grey stormclouds rolled by overhead. Every other building was in the same or worse shape, like a war zone. I detected motion on the street below. Three creatures like nothing I’d seen until now hopped along.

As they grew closer I could see they were people, with agonized expressions on their faces. Their tongues hung from their mouths, bloated to several times normal size, and they were wrapped head to toe in thickly bundled yellow cord of some kind.

I made my way down to street level to meet them. I searched my jacket for a knife to cut their bonds with but found nothing useful. When I descended the stairs one of them was already trying to force itself inside through the doorway. “Easy fella. I just got here. Where is this? What’s happened? Are there any more survivors or just you three?”

He glared at me, wild-eyed, and howled as best he could with a swollen tongue. He stretched it out towards me as if trying to lick me with it and cried in apparent frustration because it wouldn’t reach. The other two could be seen through the windows on either side of the door, hopping about, groaning and crying, seemingly as desperate as this one to get inside.

I turned to leave. That’s when the one stuck in the doorway spoke. It was slurred because of the tongue but understandable, and refreshingly in English. “You….will be...delitized.”

I furrowed my brow. “Pardon? I’ll be what?”

It grunted and resumed struggling. “Delitized! Permanently, forevially delitized! Permanent ham and cheese skin, permanent ham and cheese tongue! From your real working delitized eyeballs down to your delitized toes, with ketchup and taco sauce for blood! Forevially wrapped up in the yellow rope and loving it!”

I noticed more had shown up outside. Groaning, crying, or babbling about “delitization”. The one in the doorway, pushed by the throng of hopping madmen bound up in yellow rope just outside, began to slide through.

Some of his skin, crispy on the outside by the looks of it, began sloughing off. As slabs of his flesh fell to the floor, the muscle underneath oozed with what I recognized by the strong scent was sour cream.

I managed to vomit this time. But when it stumbled towards me I collected myself and retreated up the stairs. I looked at the watch. Twelve more seconds. On the blown out second floor I was again afforded a panoramic view of the city street below.

It was now jam packed with those people. Or things. Bound up in yellow rope, hopping towards the commotion I’d started. Bloated tongues hanging out, swinging to and fro. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of them spreading out in all directions, forevially delitized and loving it.

The one from the doorway began stumbling up the stairs just as the watch started beeping. I caught a glimpse of what remained of his face staring at me with a mixture of rage and confusion as the distortion overtook my surroundings.

I wanted to cry. Of course the light wouldn’t let me. I didn’t have a body here, at least not one I had any control over. Everything else seemed worse, so part of me wished I could stay here. But as before, the light faded and I found myself someplace new.

An infinity of possible realities. Had to be. Multiverse or whatever. I was never one of those guys who followed this shit, all I had to draw on were half remembered episodes of that Michio Kaku science program I used to watch while stoned with my roommate. These weren’t different planets, or time periods. They were possible Earths. Parallel dimensions, whatever. Of which there are supposedly infinite.

I exited the darkened room into a bustling city. The sky was pure white like on a winter’s day, but it was comfortably warm. Several men and women in business suits hurried past me, all appearing nervous and looking at the ground. I might’ve written it off as a fluke except everyone else I saw was doing the same thing.

A woman gasped when she spotted me. “Don’t look!” she said in a harsh whisper. Like some hidden camera show and I wasn’t in on the joke. “Don’t look at what?” I asked. She stared at me as if I had two heads. “Don’t talk about it either, idiot! It can always hear us. Keep your head down!” With that she hurried off.

Alright, I thought. An alternate Earth populated by paranoid schizophrenics. By now I’d seen worse. As I navigated the city I suddenly came upon an unfamiliar sight. Something like an elevated highway but many times wider, passing overhead, supported by pylons mounted to the tops of buildings. I went around the block to see if it continued, and it did.

I’ve found in the past that if you pretend like you belong someplace you’ll be surprised how far you can get, where you can access and whatnot. Works even better if you’ve got a clipboard and hardhat. But just by strolling about like I owned the place I was able to enter an office building and ride the elevator to the top.

I eavesdropped on some conversations on the way up. Bizarre nonsense. “It’s a fine day we’re having, absolutely nothing is wrong” one man said while sweating profusely. The woman he spoke to, on the verge of tears, replied “Yes, it’s quite pleasant out. Because there is no danger and I suspect nothing I am likely to enjoy a walk through the park after work.”

On the top floor I could get a proper view of the elevated highways. No building anywhere was taller. They were not highways, as I discovered when I saw the first of the creatures traversing them in the distance. They were walkways for immense creatures, from which to surveil the city below.

The nearest one resembled a tremendous black hairy beast. Spines or long quills of some kind ran down its back. Its gait resembled a jungle cat but the arms terminated in recognizable hands with simian-like fingers.

As I watched, the beast surveyed the city street below, then seemed to pick out one person in particular, reach down, and grab him. The poor bastard let out a scream audible even from where I stood, perhaps half a mile away.

My jaw dropped. It wasn’t going to...was it? It lifted him to its mouth, and bit off the lower half of his body. The upper half dangled from its claws, gushing blood as the man continued to scream.

The woman from before burst into the room. “I knew it! They told me you came through here. What’s wrong with you? I told you not to look!” I grabbed her by the shoulders and shouted at her. “Are you fucking kidding me? These things lord over you, picking you out at random to eat and your solution is to pretend they aren’t there?”

She looked at me with apparent confusion. Then at the beast outside. I noticed for the first time it was also only looking downwards. “No. How do you not know? Not those things. THAT!” She pointed at the sky.

I peered out the window. Where I expected to see the sun, there was instead a gigantic iris and pupil. It darted around a bit, then came to focus on the woman and myself. She started screaming, not quite drowning out the beeping of my watch.

I was still holding onto her when it took me. She didn’t come through any more than the child had. Just evaporated with the surroundings. As the white light surrounded my field of vision I braced myself for whatever might come next. Only to find myself deposited on a metal chair, welded to a platform, in the center of a spherical chamber.

I laughed until I cried. Then remembered the watch. It was still counting down. I tore it off and threw it to the far side of the chamber. A buzzer sounded, and the mercury within the glass hoops stopped cold. The crackling ceased, and the robot arms positioned the hoops so I could leave. I did so with a spring in my step.

What are the odds? Out of infinite possible realities, to return to my own. After I’d given up on it, resigned myself to endless travel through the unknown and unknowable. Perhaps programmed into the watch? To bring the subject back after a few short trips. Like our first experimental manned flights to orbit.

I ran laughing from the lab complex, nearly tripping on the lumber propping the safety doors open. The tram was waiting for me where I’d left it. I withdrew another energy bar from my jacket and scarfed it down on the way, tears of joy rolling down my cheeks. It was a hell of a story. One I knew better than to share with anybody, as I’d forgotten to take pictures. Isn’t that how it always goes.

It finally stopped at the entry plaza. I hopped out of the tram, made my way into the airlock, then eagerly typed in the sequence of characters it expected. The inner door slid shut, the outer door opened and I exited into the cave. The cool, fresh air tasted impossibly good to me. The outer door slid shut behind me with a clang, and I began my ascent to the mouth of the cave.

It was dark when I reached the surface. I’d expected that going in. Wasn’t too much trouble to find the car. Once inside I tore off all the layers, started the engine and twisted the climate control knob all the way towards “hot”. Not so much to get warm, although I didn’t mind it, but to get dry. I set my GPS for home. It said “searching for satellites”, and hung there.

I gave up on that, reclined in my seat, and once it was warm enough I shut off the engine. I felt too exhausted to drive safely, that could wait for tomorrow. I woke up once a few hours later. Thought I heard distant voices. Nothing but darkness on all sides, so pulled my jacket up to my neck like a blanket and dozed off again.

When the sun came up I ate the last energy bar for breakfast, took a leak behind a tree, then started driving. I was elated to put all of it behind me. Part of me mourned the fact that I could never tell anyone if I didn’t want to wind up institutionalized, but I’d certainly discovered what I came out here to. I could finally stop prying. I knew better now.

I turned on the radio. Only static. Fuck, something else I’d need to drop money on when I got back. I only put it together that something wasn’t right when I pulled over the rise and saw the city in the distance. Multiple plumes of thick black smoke rose from various points. Some buildings were still ablaze.

How long was I gone? Did time pass differently while I was in there? What could have happened? War? A terrorist attack? I was so consumed by these worries that I didn’t notice the deer dart out in front of me. The impact was bone jarring. The airbag worked as intended, sparing me any serious injury, but when I got out to inspect the damage I discovered those were the least of my concerns.

The deer lay before me on its side. Neck clearly broken, head hanging at an odd angle. Its bloated tongue dangling from its mouth, its body wrapped up in yellow rope.

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^{The End.}