by Micah Castle
The Abyss Beyond the Reflection
Micah Castle
Copyright © 2018 by Micah Castle. All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 9781982989804
Book Artwork by Anthony DePietro
Graphic Design and Lettering by Jesse Daughtery
First Published Digitally and Physically, 2018.
In memory of...
Timon/Ferret 2
You’re dearly missed, our little polar bear.
March 7, 2013 — April 30, 2018
This book is dedicated to...
Nicole, my beautiful wife
JD and JT, my two closest friends.
An enormous thank you to the beta readers, who without them, this book would have been in shambles…
Neil Butters
Laura
Jordan Anderson
Michael Denney
Maurice L. Robinson
Shannon Carpenter
Jess Mole
Table of Contents
The Abyss Beyond the Reflection — 5
Driftwood Mannequins — 26
Three White Demons — 30
The White Sea — 49
The Doorway — 71
Nowhere Better Than Here — 77
Never-ending Rain — 91
Qaeceit’s Mirror — 102
extras
The Space Passed the Stars — 124
A Star Collector — 127
The Abyss Beyond the Reflection
As if for the first time, I looked around the empty sitting room of Five Star Experience, a place where fans of celebrities can view their lives in real-time. With the ever-increasing trend of virtual reality — now what they call, “false-reality” — and the popularity of celebrities, it seemed a match made in heaven. The stars get a chunk of the profit, while the fans get to go further beyond being near the person they adore, they get to be inside their heads.
The plastic walls of the office were white and smooth, like porcelain. The floor and the ceiling matched the color of the walls, except for the unseen light bulbs in the upper corners that gave off a soft glow. Atop the black coffee table before me stood a glass vase filled with white calla lilies, sitting in water.
A window that stretched from the end of the room to the other was behind the white cushioned couch I sat on. Outside stood Cherry Brooke, a city that had grown exponentially since 2027. Hundreds of small square aged buildings stretched as far as the eye could see, then gave way to skyscrapers and stadiums. I sat forty floors up, but I could still see the ant-like people moving down the sidewalks, crossing the streets, getting into vehicles.
“Mr. Gretzel?” a woman said, pulling my attention away from the window.
She stood, around five-four, in the hallway, with pale skin and long raven hair that flowed down her shoulders, resting on her chest, which was covered in a fitting black suit vest.
“Yes, hello,” I said smiling, getting up from the couch, and shook her hand.
“Welcome to Five Star Experience. I'm Samantha. Please follow me and we'll get you started.”
I nodded and said thank you.
We walked down the hallway, moving past closed doors with golden numerals embedded into each.
“Is this your first time?”
“No, no. I came here a few years ago, then had to stop, couldn’t find time.”
“Oh?” she said, “well at least you're back now. We've made many changes since the last time you visited,” she continued, as I looked at her backside that smoothly protruded out underneath her black skirt. “The Experience now is very real, almost impossible to be differentiated between your reality and your false-reality. As if you were doing these things yourself, you can now hear thoughts, smell smells, taste foods, and feel things. This advancement even provides the ability to feel pain.
“Some companies try to play off artificial or programmed experiences as real,” she sighed, “but that’s not the same here. These are real, live celebrities in their everyday lives. You may come in while they’re sleeping, or showering, or using the facilities.”
Taken aback, I asked, “I understand all that, but pain? Why would anyone want to feel that?”
“Some people like it, gives them the thrill they want without the risk of actually being hurt. Also, there's others, who are really, really into that sort of thing. You know the ones.” She laughed, and I did too.
“But don't fret, Mr. Gretzel. These features can be switched off before the Experience but cannot during the Experience. So, before we get to your room, please think over what you'd like.”
In a knee-jerk reaction, I said, “What the hell! Bring on the pain!”
She laughed again and nodded. “Okay, pain it is then. Everything else is fine, yes? Oh, good, good.”
We turned a corner, down another long white corridor.
“We've also had many new, and old, celebrities sign up. We still offer artificial false-reality to those who want it, being able to Experience the ones that have passed, like Monroe, Williams, and Chevy. The newest ones are Jessica Hula, Katy Humphrey, and Johnathan Stanalio. Who is your choice, Mr. Gretzel?”
“This time I'm going with the blonde bombshell, Anna Scott. She's beautiful and I was surprised to see in your newsletter that she had signed up. Just had to make an appointment as soon as possible after that!”
“Oh, yes, she's a newcomer to Five Star Experience. Excellent choice, Mr. Whetzel, she's very pretty.”
The sounds of her jet-black high heels clacking against the marble floor filled the empty hallway as we made our way to end of the corridor. We stopped when we came to room XXXIV.
“And here it is,” she said as she opened the door, revealing the medium sized, square, well lit, white room. In the center stood The Experience.
Practically the same as it was a few years ago, The Experience still reminded me of a more advanced dentist's chair. Cushioned with white leather, leaning back roughly forty degrees, with steel mechanical arms jutting out from underneath and up above the headrest. They came straight down to where your eyes, ears, nose and mouth would be. On each side, under the armrests, were four color coded long wires that stretched out and were placed onto your temples and chest. It sounded more uncomfortable than it truly was.
“Now before we begin, Mr. Gretzel, you'll need to read and sign our non-disclosure agreement, as well as our terms of use, which roughly states that you're aware of the risks of using The Experience. Also, on the last page of the terms of use, there's a line you'll need to initial, agreeing that you are fully aware that you might suffer bodily harm or even death.”
As I made my way to the chair, I asked, “People have died using this?”
“No, no, the line between your reality and false-reality is very large, it's impossible to be killed, even if the celebrity you’re Experiencing is dying. But some might become too excited, mostly older people, and have a heart attack or something similar. It's very rare overall, but it could happen. You understand, correct?”
“Yes, I do.” I said as I plopped down onto the chair. “Can I have the documents now, please? I want to get started.”
“Oh, sorry,
” she said as if she was shocked, “I forgot them. I'll get you those now. Hold on please.” She turned and left the room, shutting the door behind her. Five minutes later, she returned holding two clipboards, one the NDA, the other TOU. Quickly I signed the NDA, then signed and initialed the TOU.
I leaned back, positioned my arms on the armrests, and looked up at the ceiling. She began to strap my wrists with Velcro bands against the cushions, then my ankles, my head, and my neck. With faster speed than expected, she got the EKG stickers placed onto my temples and slid them under my shirt, placing them on my bare chest, then attached them to the wires.
“Now before I strap you entirely in, I want to ensure you're aware that you'll be in The Experience permanently for eight hours. You cannot be unplugged at any point under normal conditions. Not to scare you Mr. Gretzel, but some users who were prematurely disconnected suffered from loss of memory, vision, and deafness. In worst cases, death.”
I nodded and said I understood.
“Great,” she said, smiling. “Now let's finish this up so you can enjoy Miss Scott.”
The long gleaning metal arms were pulled down from above, then placed over my closed eyes, then two arms were maneuvered into my eardrums. Everything fell silent. I felt the final two arms pressed down into my mouth and up my nose, the cold steel sending a jolt through me.
A computerized version of her voice entered my mind.
“Now, Mr. Gretzel, you will be plugged in in ten seconds. Please be prepared and remember to enjoy The Experience.”
A new voice replaced the old one, realistic and soothing.
“Ten… Nine… Eight…
… Three… Two… One…”
Seamlessly, I was no longer George Gretzel, a 38-year-old man who spent his days doing nothing but grinding at the office; a man with pudgy fingers and a flabby gut, a person whose hair was receding and his impotent little-man unable to do its duty without the help of a little blue pill, despite the easily accessible physical and visual stimulants all around him.
I had instead become the 23-year-old, blonde, tanned skin, shapely, quirky and beautiful, Anna Scott.
God… I wish I hadn't.
II
Hunched over a white marble bathroom sink, she stared down at an open book, its old pages filled to the brim with washed out ink, in some sort of language that I could not comprehend. She felt dirty, as if she hadn't bathed in at least two weeks, and a pounding in her head seemed to throb all the way down to her feet. Her stomach burned, her muscles ached, and her joints begged for relief.
Her hand gripped one side of the sink, while the other flipped the pages rapidly. I didn't understand how she could read so fast, or even if she was reading at all, it appeared reading didn't transverse during The Experience. She quickly came to two pages, a half circle drawn with hundreds of smaller jagged, rune-like, symbols surrounding them. The design was cut in half by the division of the pages, but when she straightened and looked down, the binding of the book faded away. Inside the circle were tendrils of ink, as if the artist merely stabbed and slashed at the page with his pen. The black lines swirled and twisted downwards into the center of the pages, draining into infinity.
With her right hand, she struck the center of the book with her thumb, which I quickly realized it was caked in blood. She ran her thumb down the center of the artwork until the streak of red fell from the book.
Anna raised her head and peered into the mirror. In the reflection, she stood nude, bruised, and bloodied. What the hell happened to this woman? In the hopes that I could figure out why she looked the way she did, I focused on the bedroom past the bathroom she was in, but nothing was out of the ordinary; nothing shattered and broken littered the tan carpeted floor, no blood marks streaked the walls, not even split coffee stained the bed.
She raised her right hand into view, gripping a kitchen knife. With her left hand, she placed her eye socket between her thumb and pointer finger and stretched it open. The brim of her baby blue eye filled with water, trickling down her cheek. A grin stretched over her face as she plunged the knife into the side of her eye.
She did not scream, but I did. An unimaginable sharp, burning pain shot through her body to the point that I wanted to throw up. She cut, shoved, and dug deep underneath her eye until she managed to cut it off from the inside of her head. It plopped out and fell onto the book, resting in its crease.
The once beautiful blonde girl of many of my daydreams dropped the knife, as if it were red hot. She grabbed the eye from the book without looking down, raised it and made it so the iris faced the mirror. Blood foamed and seeped out of her empty socket, drooling down her face, into her mouth. Small streams of red ran down her hand, her arm, and dripped onto her feet.
The grin never left her face, not even for a moment. An even wider one stretched from ear to ear, blood forming around her cracking lips.
She lurched forward, screaming, with the eyeball pinched in her fingers towards the mirror. The reflective glass fell inward, jagged shards splashed the endless abyss that, I horrifyingly discovered, laid beyond. She continued to fall forward, her entire frame slipping through the rim of the mirror, streaks of blood ripped down the sides of her body all the way to her feet. The tearing of flesh, the loss of blood, every maddening image flashed across her mind sent waves of fire and nausea through me.
This wasn’t normal, this wasn’t how it was supposed to be, this was chaos! I wanted out, wanted to get out more than anything, but it had only been fifteen minutes.
III
She plummeted through the vast nothingness. The harsh, unrelenting wind whipped in her ears, blocking out any thoughts that she might've been having, and numbed her eyeless socket, drying the blood. She still gripped her eyeball.
Anna smacked the water so hard her flesh rippled, making her innards bounce and rattle. With her free hand, she began swimming down into the water. Down and down, she continued for what felt like an hour, through the murky blackness. A faint light rippled over the surface, and she picked up her pace and quickly swam towards it.
When she broke through the surface, she looked up to find that what shone before was not just a light. A bulb of yellow luminescence was attached to the end of an insect-like head. The enormous creature loomed over her, attached to the curved ceiling above. Its body stretched like a millipede, its rear resting in the water at the far end of the pool. Blossoming, the bulb revealed a tendril of purple that slithered in the air, spewing some sort of oily, emerald liquid. Hundreds of tiny pale blue lights were revealed as small slits throughout its thoraxes were raised, flooding the room with shimmering light.
With the place alight, paying no concern to the monster hovering above her, Anna glanced around the large empty room. She found what she was apparently looking for and began swimming towards it. The soft blue vanished, as did the dull yellow light, when she heard a crash in the water behind her. Still paying no attention to the creature, she kept a steady pace.
She reached a small incline. With her free hand she gripped the blackened soil and pulled herself out from the water. I wanted to look back, to see if the monster lurked behind us, but she didn't even look over her shoulder. She got out of the water, staggered to her feet, and began walking straight ahead. The cold temperature of the room sent shivers down her soaked, nude body, but as if she didn’t or couldn’t feel the frigidity of the place, she moved without any hindrance.
Anna reached the end of the room, where a dirt wall appeared out from the gloom. An opening revealed itself out from the shadows, into an even darker place. Casually she passed through the portal, which lead to a crudely-shaped long stairwell.
I didn't understand how she was able to maneuver without any issues in utter darkness, or even make out the opening she just went through, or the stairs she walked down; it was as if she was using a sense that I didn't have or couldn't understand. My fear of this immediate car crash of strangeness began to fade away, being replaced with cur
iosity. She obviously was far below the city, and I wasn't sure if anyone had ever seen the millipede creature ever before.
Her mind remained surprisingly empty, but mine raged with ideas. The Experience had become so advanced now, that compared to before, it felt like I was an audience member of a first-person movie. I could feel the cold of the stairwell, the soil caking her feet, the sweat covering her body, while simultaneously able to ponder my own thoughts, feel my own fear, taste my own blood on the back of my tongue. It was as thrilling as a roller coaster, but as terrifying as falling from a skyscraper.
The bottom of the stairs led to another dirt-packed corridor, and couple yards ahead stood a large peaked door. Thousands if not millions of eyes composed the barrier she neared. Each one duly looked down at the ground, but as she approached them, they all became alert and darted up to look at her. Blue, green, orange, yellow; just about every color in the world was in the irises embedded in the door. Some large and bloodshot, some suffering cataract, others small and crystal clear, like that of a baby.
Anna held out her own eye towards the door, then placed it into its center. When her eye met the others, it turned around slowly to face her, and its optic nerve blossomed behind it. Like a pink and red flower made from thin sheets of lined sinewy petals, it rotated, spun, and twisted backwards into the door, becoming lost in the crowd.
A crease formed down the center of the door, zigzagging to avoid each individual eye in its course, and the gateway opened. The stench of dank, damp mold rushed over her, filling her nose, making my stomach turn over. A gust of wind blew through the corridor, throwing her blood clumped hair back, then it ebbed and ceased.
I had the suspicion that she finally came to the end of her journey. She had come to the threshold, used her key, and now was to be rewarded for her efforts. Rewarded by who or what, or rewarded with what, I hadn't the faintest clue. Terror, curiosity, and, strangely, excitement flooded through me. I needed to know what happened next. What would she receive for coming this far, for doing so much harm to herself?
