Switched and Fears

by Shannon Rieger

  “And you run a bookstore.”

  “Yes. I’m very proud of my bookstore.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Figment.”

  “Like figment of your imagination?”

  “Yes. My sister named it.”

  “You have a sister?”

  “Yes, Tracey’s a school teacher. I miss her. If there was another Saige in this world, does that mean that there are duplicates of my mother and sister here?”

  “When that girl went through the portal, she may not have known that you existed. I don’t know what she was thinking. But even if you were to learn that there was someone like your mom or sister here, you can’t go see them, Saige. They are not actually your family. Besides, they will be watched now that you have escaped.”

  “I wondered because if I ever clear my name…and if, heaven forbid, I can’t get back to my world, is there a life for me here?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know…Only time will tell.”

  I nodded. “Thank you for your honesty.” There wasn’t a life here. It was in the tone of her voice. Impending doom and a feeling of lost hope weighed on my mind. “I just hoped that my family…would be someone I could…trust. Even here.”

  “If they even exist, they will be nothing like your family. Your world and our world are very different which means they can have varying personalities, and be married to different people. That means many won’t have had the same children that they had in your world. I can’t imagine anything being similar to yours. So many possibilities. And I don’t want you to feel disappointed.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “They are likely living in that other world…the beautiful one. And I find that those people don’t smile like we do. They don’t share the same values and dreams.”

  I nodded. I recalled the train ride. “Everyone’s noses are in their phones.”

  “Right. It’s quite different.”

  “And people don’t live that long,” Amber said, as she took a bite of her bread. “They work too hard,” she said, her mouth full. “Many die in their fifties. You said it yourself.”

  “Fifties?”

  “Sorry, she shouldn’t…”

  “Kids are kids. I know that.”

  “I’m not a kid. I’m nearly thirteen!”

  “I meant no offense, Amber. Truly. In my world, we live past ninety.”

  Amber coughed. “Ninety! Nope, not here. Ninety!”

  “Well, just the fact that in our world, our life expectancy is lower, that should suggest that most of the older people you know there, won’t exist here.”

  “I have to go back. I miss my mom and sister. I don’t want to be stuck here with no family.”

  “We can become your family!”

  “That’s sweet, Honey, but she needs her actual family. She doesn’t need to adopt a new one.”

  I thought about Jaxson. “Will your husband know more about what is happening in the jail now that I have gone?”

  “Yep. He will tell us what has happened and what we need to do to keep you safe.”

  Although, I wanted to know more about Jaxson, my thoughts were now clouded with the cruel notion that I had been betrayed by a doppelganger.

  Chapter Twenty

  Drip. Drip. Drip. The dripping faucet became annoying after the second day. The relentless beat of its song made my mind crazy. Every time a dog barked, it startled me; that never stopped. Rats or mice scurried in the walls. That gave me chills to think that they would come out at night without my knowing. I had to remind myself that at least it was better than the tiny robotic beetles in the prison.

  The wooden screech of the old window hit a nerve as Amber slid it up to let some air into the sweltering room. The curtains barely swayed. The air was still.

  The smell of spoiled food in the kitchen sink was heightened by the heat in the house. My hands fidgeted with the hem of my shirt. I used a drop of soap and ran some cold water in the sink. I cleaned the dishes as the smell of grease stuck in the stove vent hood wafted. Ruby took the bag of rotten garbage out the door and disposed of it but the smell lingered.

  Ruby turned on the fan and it made a mechanical buzzing sound that brought memories of the reptilian insects. The metallic pull on the fan made a clicking sound that came to life when I closed my eyes; robotic insect pincers clicked in my imagination.

  I scrubbed at the dried food on the bowls and then dried them to pass time. The clock ticked by and seemed to linger on the same minute for hours.

  “Look at what I found!” Amber bellowed.

  “Amber, keep it down!” Ruby shushed her.

  “Yeah, but I found cards!” she whispered.

  “You should be trying to get some of your homework done.”

  “Mom,” she whined. “I don’t want to do any right now. I’d rather play cards with Saige.”

  “You’ll have to get to it, eventually. Got it?”

  Yes! Something to do!

  As she dealt the cards, I sparingly used the wipes to clean my underarms but Amber told me, “Rub greasy, smelly garbage on you instead of cleaning yourself.”

  “You rub garbage on yourself,” I teased.

  “I’m just saying…”

  “Rat feces?” I said, as I swept the kitchen floor. I raised the dust pan to show her.

  She howled at that. “Now you are getting it!”

  “Gross,” I said.

  “Hey, you said it, not me!”

  “What is this about rat feces?” Ruby said. We giggled.

  I sat to play.

  By the third day, Ruby said that we were running out of food and that Meryk was avoiding the area so he couldn’t bring more supplies.

  “Do you want me to help find food?”

  “Nope. We are leaving tonight. Meryk’s requested that we go to our nature home, as Amber calls it.”

  “It’s my favourite place. You’ll love it.”

  “Tonight?”

  “After dark so that we only have to worry about the earlier models of those…”

  “Robo Battlers,” Amber said.

  “Robo Battlers. That’s not the name you called them before…”

  “She gives them new names all the time,” Ruby said, smiling. “That’s when I know that she hasn’t done enough homework; she must be bored.”

  “Uno!” Amber chimed.

  “We aren’t playing Uno,” I laughed. “Is that what you’ve been playing?”

  ‘Yes.”

  “Then why are you making piles of doubles?”

  “I don’t know. You were, so I was, too.”

  “So, Uno-Rummy.”

  “Right!”

  “Okay, then. Interesting.”

  “She’s always doing that, too. She switches games in the middle of them. Keeps it interesting to say the least,” Ruby said, ruffling her daughter’s frizzy hair.

  Ruby added, “We would have a better chance of passing you through undetected if we avoid the daylight. It’s not like we have a curfew. We are free to go as we please. I just wanted your scent to become more like this world, rather than what you had when you came here. Immersing you in the cooking here, the baby powder baths, the greasy hair, the—”

  “Your cooking?” I asked.

  “I purposely use curry, cumin and garlic in every dish.”

  “It was delicious.”

  “Yes, and they make you smell…bad.” Amber chuckled.

  I laughed, too. I smelled my clothes. I couldn’t smell a difference.

  “Lots of asparagus, if I had some…but I only have potatoes, carrots, turnip and cabbage from our root cellar.”

  “Potatoes make you smell?”

  “No, they are just filling. But the cabbage. Phew!” She waved her hand in front of her nose.

  “Better than bread and water,” I said.

  “Yes, very bland on purpose.” She winked.

  “Oh. I see.”

  “So, your husband isn’t coming? Is it bad out there?”
>
  “He is being careful, that’s all. He usually lets me know somehow…This morning, this was slipped under the door. There must be lots of those…” She held up a note.

  “Buggy Battlers,” Amber said, putting another pair on the table.

  “Right. So, he had someone slip this note under the door in the night.”

  “Those marks on your back…do they still hurt?” Amber asked.

  “They are much better. But yes, they still hurt.”

  Sky-Guy drank from the water bowl. He stretched.

  “Who did that to you?”

  “The guard in the prison.”

  “Man. That’s how they punish you?”

  “He did. Yes.” I didn’t want to scare Amber with the details. I smiled at Ruby.

  “Ooo, you must hate him so much.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  When we made our way through the alleyways, through the quietest of streets, a dusting fell around me with each step as the baby powder drifted. My hair was less greasy because I poured the baby powder into it, making it more of a lilac colour, and it looked more like wig, that is, if it wasn’t so short. I missed my hair.

  Ruby told Amber to leave the baby powder in a dumpster. We couldn’t use it again. They will change the criteria to baby powder if they have discovered the scent in the alleyway, and the next time we needed to change my smell, it’s a better plan to avoid one we have used in the past.

  As I shuffled and hung my head, Ruby took my arm and whispered, “Just walk as if you have been here a thousand times and that you have a mission. If someone talks to you, smile. Smile and answer. Ask how they are. Don’t shift your eyes to the right or left. Don’t fidget. You’ve been here all your life. You know the area. You know where you are going.” I recited this lecture all the way through the streets. Sky-Guy followed along. He was more like a dog.

  The sun was warm.

  “Okay, so, Edgefield is an hour back that way. We are just leaving the edge of town. Where we want to take you is further into the rural areas. Safer, I think.”

  “It’s my favourite place.” Amber smiled. “It’s surrounded by nature and a brook. It even has a waterfall, and trees, and flowers and meadows.”

  We traveled through a salvage yard, a tall chain link fenced-in yard, barbed wire donned like a hat. An attendant at the entrance waved us through. He barely looked up from his book. My purple hair didn’t faze him.

  The dusty earth bellowed in clouds as we walked. Rows of broken-down vehicles were covered in dust and dirt. Wires and hoses bled out of the cars. Doors were missing or left ajar without handles.

  Loose screws, spark plugs, pieces of plastic and metal scattered about. An ashtray from an old car. Cars were stripped of their interior parts, including seats and steering wheels. Some were burned and smashed-up and were beyond salvage. They were stacked for scrap, a yard divided.

  Rusted forklifts and wheelbarrows were parked in the pathway, and we took new passages. I heard shuffling from a car behind us and I grabbed onto Amber’s hand. She gripped back. “Don’t look back,” she said. “We have the right to be here.” I nodded but the hairs on my arms rose.

  Then a creature made a sound that made me tighten my grip. Amber turned, and then Ruby said, “Well, here kitty, kitty.” She smiled. The scruffy black cat kept its distance but followed.

  “Come on, Sky-Guy.” The cat slid along with me like ink on a canvass.

  “Why did you name him Sky-Guy anyway?”

  “He stared at the stars the first night I found him.”

  “I hope he didn’t follow your scent.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if he can follow it, so can those monsters.”

  “Nah, he never loses sight of me. He’s always following behind.”

  The acrid taste of smoke from the polluted air of the salvage yard fell behind us. The cat followed along despite the smells of grease, gas and rubber.

  But I had spoken too soon. The landfill that we had to pass through next made my gag reflex work overtime. We stepped through mounds of trash. Bags, broken furniture, concrete pieces, wire, patio bricks, empty cans and bottles and cardboard boxes made it hard to travel. A kiddie pool lay to my right. A rubber ducky sat in a waterless tub. I heard beeping coming from a children’s toy. If I weren’t so exhausted, I might have found it creepy.

  Rotting food and hot plastic in the sun made the smell worse. My foot sunk into the sludge.

  “I guess you have a new smell now,” Amber joked.

  “Guess so.”

  “We should come up with a new name for you, Saige. Sorry. But the less the townspeople know about you, the better…for your safety, that is. We would only have to use it in front of people. Not amongst us.”

  “Okay.”

  “Got a name that suits you?”

  “I always liked the named Dawn. It’s my mother’s middle name.”

  She nodded at me and then watched her step as she passed a diaper. She stuck her tongue out at me as the smell lingered.

  “Might have been nice in all of your resourcefulness, if you could have found a less horrid way to travel.”

  Amber howled as she bent over.

  Her mother said, “I have not seen her laugh this much in a long time.”

  “Well, maybe I am funnier than you,” I joked.

  “You must be,” Ruby chuckled, as she watched her daughter.

  “We chose this way, Dawn, because the robotic creatures are less likely to come this way. They’d have difficulty climbing over the garbage and the smell will mask your scent, even if you didn’t smell like garbage yourself. The salvage yard is protected. It’s safer.”

  “I see.” I winked at her.

  Ruby stopped and lit a fire in a fire pit. “This will let my husband know that I am on my way. To expect us. He makes sure that we have a safe way through the last leg of the journey.”

  “Oh. That sounds…creepy.”

  “No, no. It’s fine. But there’s a boat to get us from one side of the lake to the other. Meryk will send someone to bring the boat to the water’s edge. The robots can’t swim you see. And the guards are lazy. They won’t bother traveling across it.”

  “The smell of the lake is yucky. It’s…what’s the word you use, Momma?”

  “Stagnant.”

  “Right. She said it’s because it’s man made and it just sits more like swamp water.”

  “Maybe I should bathe in it. It’s got to be better than the smell I am emanating. I smell like the poopy diaper back there.”

  Again, Amber cracked up laughing. “You are hurting my belly! Stop!”

  When we reached the water’s edge, a man with red hair on a boat waited. Ruby greeted him with large smiles. Safe. The water was murky and, indeed, smelly, but it was not a long way across. Just far enough to make it more implausible for the robots to catch my scent and follow.

  The cat joined us without a fuss. He knew we were taking him to safety. I gave him more of my red meat. It was almost gone. He wanted more and didn’t understand the need to wait. He pawed at my face while he sat on my lap. He trusted me more by the minute. I was fond of this big cat.

  We passed a hunting cabin. It wasn’t big, but it would have been a good place to rest. I wondered if it was purposely placed on route, but she passed it without even a second look.

  Long grasses and wildflowers grew against the walls. It was beautiful. An outhouse was the place she stopped. “This is the place to pee if you need to.”

  I needed to. I slipped in. The stench seemed to stick to my clothes.

  I used a wipe on my hands.

  When Amber went in after me, Ruby said, “There is a man stationed in the cabin most of the time. He watches for anything following us. Other than the cat. I already told him that the cat is yours.”

  “What did he say to that?” Amber asked.

  “He thought I wasn’t serious.”

  I fed the cat some of my rations. Gave him some water, too.

&nb
sp; Then we were off once more.

  The cry of a bird overhead made me wince. But Amber and Ruby ignored it so I did, too.

  Once we reached the other side, the birds chirped and a squirrel chewed on a nut in the tree. The sounds were more like my home and brought an ambiance much better suited than that smelly trash yard.

  We passed a cow grazing in a fenced-in area next to a field of knee-high timothy hay with canola flowers and tall ornamental grasses. A barn, grain silo and a chicken coop complete with chickens caught my attention. They wandered around the yard, pecking at the dirt.

  A small greenhouse and garden were full of neatly tended rows of vegetable crops with a scarecrow rising up over the field of new corn. A tractor was parked in the field. This home made me smile.

  We walked down the dirt road until a ranch-style house with a wide screened porch came into view. A porch swing reminded me of home.

  “This is our home,” Amber said.

  “It’s so pretty.”

  “This is why it’s my favourite.”

  A fire pit with lawn chairs around it was inviting. Trees surrounded the yard.

  Leaves rustled and a screech from a bird. The cat followed, very interested in the bird as it took flight. The floral scents of the lilac bushes were strong.

  Amber danced in the tall grass. “Maybe we can have a fire tonight!”

  “I think it’s time for bed. Maybe when your Dad gets home.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The next morning, a tall man with silver, wavy hair, clumsily hung over a lean face walked through the front door and Amber stood on her tippy toes to hug him.

  At the sight of Amber, his brown eyes, despite their dark circles, gleamed. “Hi, Amber,” he said, wearily. He put his arm around Ruby and kissed her on the top of her head. She leaned her head on his chest. “You guys made it here in one piece.”