Escape from Harrizel

by C. G. Coppola

  I follow his finger and find blue dots strewn behind the gate. They’re carrying—or maybe dragging—something, some keeping to a large pole that extends in the center of the open lot, the only beacon in the distance.

  “What are they doing?”

  “I’m sure Jeb will explain all that.”

  “And out here?” I turn to the trees.

  “Well it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Is this part of our home too?”

  “Not exactly…” Clarence lowers his head, stepping past a patch of golden lavender bulbs, “this is the outskirts. The wild. You’re not allowed to leave the gate.”

  “Then why take me here?”

  “To show you the beauty that is Harrizel. Sometimes things can seem so…” he stops, searching for the right word, “cold. It’s not all like that. And I want you to remember this.”

  What does he mean by cold? And remember this?

  “There’s an opening in the gate,” he gestures ahead, “Yerza and Norpe should be at their post to let you in. I’m sorry to abandon you like this but I must go.”

  “You’re leaving me here?”

  “My job is done. I’m your escort, Fallon. I have to go back and find other survivors.”

  “But…” my mind races with everything that’s happened, everything he’s told me and everything he still hasn’t. “What now? I live in there,” I point to the black daggers, “for the rest of my life? Doing what? You can’t just—”

  “Jeb will explain everything,” he cuts me off. “He is, after all, the Guide,” Clarence leans down, his hands on his knees. He lowers his voice, speaking in a gentle tone, the way a father would soothe his daughter. “You’ll be fine. This is a new life, Fallon. A new beginning. Open yourself to the possibilities.” He eyes the Castle as if it were something peaceful in the distance. I follow his gaze, peering through the ivy to the fortress ahead. It sits like a brick in my stomach, trepidation suddenly rising.

  “When will I see…” I turn to Clarence but he’s gone.

  I’m alone.

  Fear grips me like a hand to the throat. Suffocation takes over. I’m about to fall but the assault at my neck keeps me standing, each limb too frozen to move, too weak to fight back. I need to find movement in my body but I can’t. I’m trapped inside myself. And out here, in the wild.

  I close my eyes and count to ten, listening to the jungle breathe around me. It comes in droplets first, a soft trickling stream of dew from petal to petal and leaf to leaf. Some are quick, rushed descents while others take their time, slowly dripping drop by drop, their songs overlapping to create a chorus of watery chimes. And then the windswept leaves start rustling into themselves. Humming erupts and I open my eyes again, the golden lavender bulbs releasing a soft glow, some cricket or animal responding in its own mewling screech.

  My heart slows to its normal rate, the grip of fear at my neck dissipating, freeing my limbs to move again. I trek forward, swiping wet leaves from my way and ducking under sodden branches. A few more overgrown bushes of the yellow-tipped tongues and I’m there.

  The edge of the jungle.

  All lush plant life stops at my feet and a new ecosystem exists. The desert to this ocean. The dry, cracked skeleton of a dead earth left to its eroding bones—a wasteland of dust and ash. Cinder rises over the rocky ground leading up to and beyond the iron-gate, which stands as tall as the trees behind me.

  Something flashes ahead.

  It’s a movement, darting over the gate—a giant bug zipping from rod to rod. Another appears, springing down the railings, zigzagging until it reaches the ground. Paused in its curled state, it’s hunched over and small… until it starts to rise, standing erect on two mountainous, greenish-brown legs.

  A lizard.

  But he stands like a man.

  A man with amphibian skin and covered in dark green armor that shines iridescent like cockroach wings. The rear of his head is rounded but the front is longer and hangs lower with a snout, two slits for nostrils and yellow eyes like the sun. He picks up a long brown rod with his scaled hand, his black talons clenching it close to his shelled torso. With his other hand, he strokes a cluster of cascading whiskers that fall at the base of his snout and back toward the soft skin of his throat.

  The second lizard-man descends to the ground with a hard thud next to the first. A grey cloud floats in the air, shielding them from sight as a loud hiss erupts. Then it’s silent until the dust settles, the two facing each other, their glowing eyes darting about. The first continues to play with his whiskers while the other zips around, practicing assault with the rod, aiming at imaginary opponents. A few loud clicking bursts are exchanged before the second returns to its legs, shaking the rod high in the air. The first leaps on the second and the two roll in the dirt, causing a second dust cloud to whirl about them.

  I step back and my heel hits a pile of leaves which crunch.

  The creatures still, their yellow eyes peering in my direction, darting about the greenery before the first one drops to all fours, racing toward me.

  I freeze, keeping my arms pulled to the side, opening the leaves like separating a curtain. I don’t move. I don’t breathe. My heart is a bomb about to explode, just as the first one slowly approaches. He lifts two growling slits in the air, sniffing mere yards to the right. His partner jumps to the gate, shaking his rod over his head again, signaling the other’s return. The first one gives up, glowering at the shrubbery before returning with a hissing snarl to the gate again.

  Once he reaches it, I spin to the jungle and take off. Fast as I can, fast as my legs will take me.

  Keep moving, keep moving…

  The jungle’s laden with obstacles—giant roots sit like boulders in the dirt, bubbling over uneven ground and swinging branches reach across one another, slicing the air like ready nooses. Vines try to trap me in seemingly endless walled webs and I’m barely able to navigate the tiny gaps. But as soon as I tear free from a nasty tangle and out into a clearing, my foot gets caught on a hidden root and I fall, face first, into the ground.

  I hit it with a violent smack but something tiny and sharp slices my left cheek. I bring my fingers to the bone. Red.

  A hissing blue flower with orange-coated petals sneaks back into its bush of siblings. The group of thirty all turn, pointing a sharp yellow stinger at me, vibrating before retracting. I spring to my feet, wiping the wet cheekbone just in time to dodge the yellow stingers shooting darts into the ground that sizzle and evaporate into nothing.

  Racing, I push past a curtain of hanging yellow leaves and come to a shield of vertical vines, hanging from the canopy and dotted with crimson blossoms that dip to the ground. Clusters of trees intermingled in a sea of the spitting blue and orange flowers block the path on either side. A breeze floats through the vines and they all sway to the left.

  I sweep a few to the right but the instant I touch them, the crimson blossoms spit out red goo that burns my fingers like acid. Only a few drops land on my fingers but the pain is so intense, I snap them to my chest, nursing one throbbing knuckle in my mouth. There’s a clearing just beyond the curtain of vines but it’s about fifteen feet away. I pass another aching knuckle to my mouth and clench my fists, locating the largest gaps in the sea of hanging fire.

  I’ll have to run.

  But what if I can’t make it? What if they snap awake and try to trap me and I burn alive? There’s no other way. The blue and orange dusted flowers have their yellow stingers aimed in my direction, arrows ready to fire.

  I wish I could remember someone. Anyone. A person I loved, one who could tell me it’d be alright, no matter what happens. Someone to offer comfort. But there’s no one. No one to remember. Just the fire and sooty faces, the cold walks and fights. Just survival.

  Like this.

  I take a breath and focus on the clearing ahead. I can make it. I just have to be fast. I count myself down.

  Three…

  I’ll just have to move really quickly
.

  Two…

  I’ll grit my teeth. It’ll only be a few seconds.

  One…

  I take off and immediately, the pain is unbearable. I’m zapped everywhere, every inch of exposed skin bubbling with acid, eating away to the fat and muscle. Throwing my arms in front of my face to shield it, I move as fast as possible, sweeping through the hanging fire but all I can feel is the pain—this erosion of my body. My head hangs low, my scalp screaming with scorched flesh but I keep going, biting my lip which nearly bleeds from the assault. I’m almost through, almost to the end but there may not be much of me left. Am I burning alive? It feels like it. Bits of me are being charred away, melting into this poisonous place to be left behind as evidence. Evidence I didn’t survive.

  But I’m not quitting.

  My legs carry me further, wobbling as patches of skin disappear. I’m just about through when I snatch the last few vines to the side and fall into a giant puddle of a sticky blue substance on the other side. The liquid starts to envelop me but I keep my mouth and nose perched high, sucking in air for reserves. I try to wriggle free but can’t move. My heart thumps rapidly, racing.

  I’m drowning.

  The gooey liquid is going to suck me down, and it’s here, I know, that I’m going to die. Just as I start seeping under, grabbing the last bit of breath, the burning starts to fade.

  I stop moving.

  The eroded skin on my hands and arms start to cool, the wounds suddenly repairing themselves. My body relayers the missing muscle, fat and skin until they are fully restored. Able to snatch my hand easier than expected, I turn it over. Healed. No gaping charred holes. No sizzling to the bone. Taking a deep breath, I submerge myself completely, rolling around in the liquid blue as the cooling sensation washes over the skin on my face and scalp, reconstructing it. I come back up for air and find it easier to move. In fact, the substance is no longer sticky, but closer to the texture of water, silky and fluid.

  Dragging myself from the puddle, I rest in a patch of dirt and grass at the foot of a mammoth tree, one—like most others—more suitable for a giant than a human. With my left cheek resting on the damp grass, my fingers sink high into the cool dirt above my head. I could stay like this forever. Never moving. Never leaving to discover other horrors that await me in this nightmare. But I’ve only just started. I haven’t put enough distance between myself and… whatever those things were.

  I have to keep going.

  With every ounce of strength I can muster, I peel myself from the ground. My legs wobble, unsure of the weight they carry, but I force them on, faster and faster.

  Just keep going. Keep moving.

  Swiping hanging ivy and clamoring over low branches that cut across my knees, I fall to the dirt a few times, tripping over hidden roots, but I get back up, pushing forward, always pushing forward.

  Just a bit further. You’re almost there.

  Except it’s not me this time. It’s someone else, or something else inside my head. Even if my legs can’t carry me much farther, this feeling, this intuition leads me like a compass. There’s something ahead. Something important I have to find.

  I trudge forward, sweat pouring down my body, grazing over my limbs like drizzling rain. I swipe my brow with my forearm and my upper lip with my finger. I’m soaked. My hands are black with dirt and my hair sits matted to my neck and back. Heavy pounding threatens to explode my chest as my legs barely stumble on, about to give out.

  But then I round the cluster of trees and come across something odd.

  Just ahead, in the middle of a natural clearing, a collection of broken walls remain, cathedral-sized and overgrown in a wild nest of ivy. The stone fragments sit close to one another, a few disappearing into the treetop canopy above, but most are broken at the lower branches. Ivy drapes between them and covers each like fabric. At their base, yellow cobblestones swim in overgrown grass like sinking ships, dotting the clearing with a losing battle on the sea.

  I fall to my knees.

  I know this place.

  Nearly incapable of moving, I manage to crawl, dragging myself over pools of ivy. The ground pads my swollen palms and knees but they still throb, screaming for rest. I can’t stop now—I need to know what this place is… what it was.

  I plant my elbows into the ground like stakes, lugging myself closer to the first broken remain. It stands over ten feet tall with chips of stone blown away, moss, ivy and dirt working to clog the holes and mend the jagged edges. There’s another wall some ways back and another up ahead, lying adjacent to the ruin on my left. It must have been a room. I scan my brain, searching this image, searching for what it might have looked like but there’s nothing.

  This needs a more thorough investigation than crawling. If only I didn’t ache so badly, if only I’d just discovered this beyond the first few trees. I ignore the throbbing in my limbs, the pounding in my chest about to break me open, and I stagger to my feet, clutching the wall for balance.

  Yes, I’m in a room—a compartment of some sort. When my legs secure themselves, I push forward, past the ruins in front of me and find another grouping ahead, also coated in sheaths of ivy with bare blocks of stone wall remaining.

  What is this place?

  I wander from ruin to ruin and stop at each wall, gazing over the remaining stone and their connection to the others. They were white at some point but age and dirt have eroded them to this yellowish tint. They must have been here for years. Centuries, possibly. But how do I know? It’s like a feeling, like a hidden message was stowed away in me all this time—a knowledge I didn’t know I possessed.

  I continue on, lost in this ruin of a city that at one time must have been quite spectacular to behold. More rooms, more compartments await me until I emerge from them all, finding myself across from a new clearing and in the middle of it, a single tree with flowing tresses of pink, peach and orange blossoms.

  It stands alone, overlooking the city with its ancient, ethereal eye. A breeze whisks through, dancing in the blossoms and playing their pink fingers like a pianist on his keys. Drawn by its overwhelming magnetism, I start for it when I’m distracted by a crunch, crunch behind me.

  I drop to the ground, my back to the closest stone. Another crunch, crunch—the stomping of leaves. It’s coming from my left… or is it my right? Have they found me? Those creatures from the Castle? Or is this a new predator?

  My chest thumps emphatically as I listen for the source of the sound. The crunching grows louder on my left but a soft pitter-patter of steps echoes on my right. A pack of something? If I don’t move now, they’ll find me. Kill me. Eat me, most likely. Maybe that’s better, though. Ending my fate now instead of prolonging all this. Maybe the best thing for me is to do is run out and fight it and go down trying. But somehow, I can’t. Fear has swelled inside me, blocking the practical from survival. I can’t give myself over willingly, even if I wanted to. It’s human nature to fight and although I can’t remember, it’s in my nature too.

  Another rustle of leaves. What then? Flight? Fight? Neither sound like an ideal activity. I have to do something. But what?

  Crunch, crunch!!

  This is it.

  My demise.

  I wish I could remember someone I once loved, someone I’d think about at the very end. Any person who’d make this time here all worth it. I try to search for any glimmer of light but the rustling is upon me. I’ve lost. Perching myself to spring from the wall—one final act of survival—I see him.

  His deep mahogany eyes burn through me, nonplussed…

  …and then everything goes dark again.

  Chapter Three: Castle

  A table.

  Just out of the sun’s reach, it sits on a square porch under a tin roof. Three glasses drenched in condensation sit atop the table’s plastic yellow cover, a black ashtray in the center. A pair of slender fingers flick a cigarette, releasing the ashes before bringing it to her mouth. She inhales and the tip lights up orange. Her black hair is
swooped up in a red bandana and large squared frames block her eyes.

  The scene fades and is instantly replaced by another—an older woman staring straight at me with long, white, billowy hair breezing around her. With silvery glass eyes, she pierces me, looking through me, searching. She calls my name but her mouth never moves, never opens.

  Fallon!

  She’s shouting for me. Shouting for me to hear her, to see her. Her eyes flare wider, ghastly, overpowering everything else.

  FALLON!

  I’m awake.

  Everything’s bright. Open. I’m on a flat, hard surface but it’s not the floor. A table? I roll my head to the left and find four endless rows of metal, rectangular surfaces built five feet off the ground. They disappear into blurs on the opposite side of the space, lost in the streaming sunlight. I look to the right. Same. Except there’s half of a wall that divides my row from the others. I kick my head back. A solid pane of glass stands behind me, reaching from floor to ceiling and follows the tables in both directions. It’s like a strange hospital with too many beds and no sign of doctors.

  How did I get here?

  The last thing I remember…

  …are his brown eyes. Burning. Alive. He’d stilled, completely flabbergasted to see me too. His jaw dropped to speak, but then it went dark. As if I fell asleep. As if someone turned the lights off and now, however many hours later, they’re back on. And here I am, alone again with no clue how I got here.

  A pounding in my temple erupts and I bring my hand to my head, massaging the curls above my right ear. This surprises me. Bending my knee, I get further proof and sit up—no restraints are tying me down. I kick my legs off the side of the table and notice my Converse have been replaced with powder blue slippers. They’re made of some scratchy, near-cotton material. I resist the urge to touch them but look down and find I’m dressed in scrub-like pants and a mid-sleeve top, both fitted and made of the same itchy, sky blue fabric.

  Jumping down, I land on my toes without making a sound and make my way toward the wall-length window. The afternoon sun greets me, casting light on the cracked dirt below, offering more warmth than yesterday. The jungle glistens on the horizon across, but sits barred by the immense wrought-iron gate.