The Abyss Beyond the Reflection

by Micah Castle

  She began walking through the doorway, and—

  IV

  EMERGENCY DISCONNECTION EMERGENCY DISCONNECTION flashed in big, red capital letters across my vision. Immediately, I jolted awake and saw the small, square white room dimly illuminated by floodlights in the ceiling.

  “What's happening?” I asked, my words slurred, the jet-lag effect of returning to reality.

  Samantha undid the last clasp on my left ankle, then looked up. “There was a power outage, even our backup generators went out. Luckily our backup to our backup lights still work. A storm rolled in, a good one, and you know how that goes.”

  I dumbly nodded. Memories of Anna's situation flooded back into my mind. Although I did wonder if she needed help, deep down, what I really wanted to know was what laid beyond that door.

  “How was your Experience?”

  “When can I be plugged back in?” I said, ignoring the question and trying my best to not sound desperate.

  “Thirty days.”

  “What? Why?”

  I hadn't gotten up from The Experience, as simply lying in the seat kept the room from spinning. Samantha walked over to one of the metal swivel stools placed near the wall and sat down, then scooted over to me.

  “I know it’s been a couple of years since you’ve been here, Mr. Gretzel, so let me refresh your memory.

  “Those who use The Experience have to wait thirty days between each session. The effects, once removed from false-reality, are like jet lag, but with other serious symptoms. It sometimes causes dizziness, hallucinations, nausea, and in some cases, diarrhea. If overdone or abused, the user begins to not see the line between their reality and their false one. But with the hundreds of tests we've done over the years, we've realized a thirty-day period prevents most of these symptoms from occurring altogether. It's kinda like the label on a medicine bottle, you're only to take four within six hours. If you take more, there can be more problems than just the original headache or stomach ache.”

  I pulled myself up to a sitting position, felt my stomach churn. The room rippled in front of me. Quickly I closed my eyes and tried my best to keep the vomit down.

  “But what if I have to plug back in within the thirty days? What if I saw something horrible and that person needed help?”

  “Unfortunately, that's the part I dislike about our NDA. No matter what you saw, it cannot be disclosed to anyone ever. Like a movie, what you see is what you get, it cannot be changed. We're under strict orders by the government to uphold the NDA and our TOU, or they'd likely shut us down like the other false-reality companies before us. I don't know if you remember, but you might recall Visually New, Visually Real? Or Celebriew? Those both, and many others, were shut down because they let their users use their machines willy-nilly. Government stepped in, shut them down.”

  I opened my eyes; the room was no longer spinning. Cautiously I slid my feet from the footrests and stood up. Dizziness immediately threw me off balance. I stumbled back and tried to grip the armrest to stop my descent, but my hand slipped on the sweat covered leather and I was going down. If it wasn't for Samantha catching me, I would've broken my ass on the floor.

  “Thank you,” I said under strained breathing. God, what The Experience did made it almost not worth doing, almost.

  ‘You're welcome,” she said. “Let me help you out to the exit. I'm terribly sorry for all this. The time you didn't get to use will be given to you in a code, sent to your email, so you can use the remainder of time your next visit. Ah, here we are. You sure you can make it back to your vehicle?”

  The dizziness subsided, my stomach felt tight but manageable, and my head only throbbed a little. Nodding, I broke away from Samantha's assistance, pulled open the glass door and slowly walked down the dimly-lit hallway to the parking garage.

  V

  I watched the sky slowly turn fuchsia from my couch in my living room. It smelled of the stale coffee I hadn’t finished and cigarettes, although I quit months ago. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.

  I could still see the door Anna stood before, could still feel her hand gripping her slimy, slippery eyeball and place it into the gateway; could still remember the anticipation once the draft of dank wind ceased. What could possibly be behind a door such as that? A monster? A utopia? Hell, or Heaven? It had to be something terrifying or amazing, or both.

  I slipped my cell phone out from my pocket, brought it to face level, and video called Thomas. He worked as a paparazzi photographer, staying days at a time in his SUV parked out of one of the hundreds of celebrities' homes, to get just a few photos. Most of them bad, but some were good enough to be sold at a high price at one of the thousands of magazines that lined the stuffed racks at the convenience stores.

  He wore a dark blue hat, that covered his graying hair, and large sunglasses that seemed to take up most of his tanned face.

  “What's up Gretz?”

  “Can you get me the address for Anna Scott?” I asked, rubbing my forehead.

  “What for?”

  “I want to send her a present.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, yeah, OK. I'll text it to you within the hour. Gotta go, Marissa Craft is coming out of her building.”

  I disconnected the call and threw the phone down on the couch and waited.

  About a half an hour later, the apartment full of shadows, my phone emitted a ray of artificial light. Quickly I snatched it up and looked at the message.

  “1723 Wing Street, Apartment 25B. Send her some roses for me.”

  A smile crept over my face as I got up, put the half-finished coffee cup into the sink, then moved into my bedroom. I changed into my pajamas, slid into bed, placed my phone on the nightstand, and drifted off.

  Tomorrow, I was going to see what laid beyond that damn door.

  VI

  The apartment complex I drove towards loomed over the other buildings like a rectangular giant. It had so many windows that it would’ve been impossible to count them all. The sun had just started rising over the horizon, casting a vibrant sheet of orange light over everything. After I parked my car across the street, which I was sure to receive a ticket for, I half-walked, half-jogged to the glass double doors of the building.

  The lobby was empty, except for a man, wearing a dark vest-suit, sitting behind the desk to the far left. The nametag pinned to his vest said his name was Rico. I tried to make a beeline towards the elevator, keeping my eyes down at the marble floor, but the man shouted. "Hey! Is someone expecting you, sir?"

  I tried my best to seem in a hurry, as if my goal was far too important to be held up by useless discussion. “I-gotta-go-see-Anna-she's-my-friend-and-she-needs-me. She's-terribly-ill.” Pressing the UP button at the elevator, I kept my head down, hiding my face underneath the brim of my hat.

  DING

  I heard the man coming across the lobby, clacking against the wood. He wore some type of dress shoes, they sounded like high heels.

  DING

  “Sir, I'll phone Miss Scott and see if you're expected. Please hold on.”

  DING

  The door opened. I walked in, pressed EIGHT then rapidly pressed DOOR SHUT.

  “Sir! Stop! If you don't, I'll call security!” The short man shouted, whose mustache nearly touched the ends of his lips. He lurched forward with his arm stretched out, his hand open in attempt to grab ahold of the door.

  I didn't think I could be caught, no thought beyond the bottomless mirror remained in my mind. Before the man's hands reached the doors, the shining steel slid closed, and the jerk of upward movement threw me back against the wall.

  Thomas never said which level she lived on, so for more time than I'd like to waste, I ran down the wide hallways. Sweat streamed down my body in waves. Security would be after my ass soon, and I had to hurry. The oriental rug covering the floor zoomed passed my vision, the golden design becoming a blur of indescribable yellow. Eventually I came to the twelfth floor and found h
er apartment. I had no breath and my legs felt numb from running. The door was locked, but I mustered up what little strength I had left and kicked it. It didn’t give. Cursing, I stepped back and kicked it again and again, until finally it did, sending splinters of wood splashing across her white carpeted entryway.

  Without a second thought, I ran into the room, throwing the door closed behind me, and continued to the bathroom. Shards of glass covered the floor, and the blood-stained book laid on the sink. The face-level empty mirror greeted me.

  Hesitantly I leaned over the porcelain basin and peered into the mirror. Nothingness looked back. I was terrified to jump, horrified that if I did I might not land in the black water but onto a solid surface. I might be sent somewhere far worse than she, lost forever in some unknown place with no hope of coming back. I didn’t know how this all worked.

  A cold sweat covered my body, and the tingly chill of fear spread across my hands and feet. I wiped the moisture from my brow, took a deep breath, then by grabbing the sides of the mirror’s silver frame, I pulled myself up onto the sink and stepped into the abyss.

  VII

  I don't remember much after that. It was as if the bottomless pit I plummeted down into pushed my consciousness and memories to the farthest reaches of my mind. I must've followed Anna's steps, because when my mind caught up with my body, I stood with my clothes soaked through, in front of the large open doorway. It hadn't closed. It seemed the darkness had lessened since Anna’s discovery, for I could hazily make out the towering dirt walls and the ceiling. The floor was blackened soil, and I couldn’t see beyond the open gateway due to a thick gloom.

  As I passed through the opening, the eyes looked up and followed me. Anna's eye was lost in the sea of retinas. I looked away as soon as my sight drifted over to the door. It was one thing to see it through Anna, but another to see it up close. I felt the sickly rancid taste of vomit coming up my throat, but I gritted my teeth and forced it back into my stomach.

  Once I had a yard or two between me and the door, I felt safer, relieved that the maddening doorway stood behind me. The thick gloom was like a fog, only difficult to see through when you’re outside of it. The vast corridor continued for some time, then it began to descend. The floor sloped downward subtly. If I hadn't looked over my shoulder, seeing the rise of the ground like a growing ocean wave, I wouldn't have realized I was walking farther down into the bowels of the earth.

  The ground began to flatten, and after some time, the walls narrowed, and the ceiling started to lower. Little by little the corridor tightened around me, and I believed that it was going to crush me, but it leveled out once I could see an opening in the distance. I picked up the pace and passed through the doorway.

  A large room stood beyond. It was as if I entered a dirt circus tent, the multiple slants of the ceiling sloped upwards until each side met in the center. Moisture coated stalactites poked down from above, water dripping from each point. The giant walls felt like they were the size of mountains. The floor had misshapen openings, each one filled with black water.

  Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw Anna standing in the middle of the room. She aimlessly looked out into the nothingness. I called to her, but she either didn't hear me or ignored me. As I ran over to her, I kept glancing at the ground, to ensure I wouldn’t trip or step into any of the holes.

  “Anna!” I shouted right next to her. She ignored me again, although it was impossible for her to do so from where I stood. I grabbed her shoulders and spun her around to face me. The one eye that met me was clouded over, like she suffered for extreme cataract, but the cloudiness quickly dissipated.

  “Do you want to see?” she asked, not in a voice I knew from her interviews on television. Her once quirky, cute, high voice had turned flat, hoarse, as if the words that escaped her lips were more of a groan than speech.

  “What?”

  “Do you want to see?”

  “Yes, fine.” I spat.

  Whatever she wanted me to say, I would say it. Now seeing her like this, in that dark, damp place, I realized I was being selfish and I felt guilty of ever thinking about what was beyond the door and not the wellbeing of this poor girl. She was alone, wet, nude, bloodied, practically blind, hundreds of feet underground, and seemingly mentally disabled. I wanted nothing more but to get her out of the grave we were in, wanted to pick her up and take her home, wrap her in a warm blanket in her bed and ensure she was comfortable, safe and happy.

  She suddenly leapt onto me. Her hands became gnarled claws and her mouth became a gaping maw. She tackled me to the ground, and even though I had at least seventy-five pounds on her, she easily managed to pin my arms to the floor with her knees. Her strength was of no twenty-three-year-old woman, she had the power of ten men.

  I begged her to stop, pleaded for her to let me go and let me take her home, make her safe, but my words did nothing. She inched up my body, her knees digging my arms deeper into the dirt, until her entire frame loomed over my chest. With wide teary eyes, I looked up at her blood caked hair dangling over her face.

  She opened my eyelid with her right pointer and thumb. Then with her other hand, she formed her skeletal fingers into a claw and rammed them into my eye socket, around my eye. Blood gushed out and over my face, into my gaping mouth, clogging my nose. God, I screamed.

  I screamed so strongly and loudly my throat tore and blood splashed across her body.

  Among the screaming I prayed and wished everything would come to an end right there and then. The overwhelming pain was too much to handle, too much to bear. I could feel her fingers dig deep into my skull, feel them coil around my eye.

  My body writhed, my legs kicked despite the immense fatigue, all for nothing. In one plunk, as if she had been picking up an egg from the ground, she wrenched my eye from its socket, the nerves dangling through her fingertips like a tail from a fish freshly caught.

  She threw it into the water with a flick of her wrist, then stood up. She grabbed my shoulders and forced me to my feet. She pulled me back to the center of the room. Tears and blood mingled down my face, stained and soaked through my shirt and pants. I tried to cover my eye with my hand, as if that would lessen the pain, but my arms felt like they were full of lead.

  “Now you can see everything.” She said.

  She turned me to face the black puddle. Like a dolphin coming out from the water, the millipede creature rose out from the oily liquid. Its golden bulbous light illuminated the room with a sickly, vibrant yellow. It towered over us, then lowered itself to face me. Beyond comprehension, beyond any thought or feeling except for extreme pain, I dumbly stood there and looked up at it. Its bulbous light opened, each layer peeling away like a blossoming flower, revealing its black tendril-like stigma, dripping neon green.

  Before I could clearly see the emerald liquid in front of me, the creature snapped forward, shooting the stigma straight into my eyeless socket.

  Thousands, millions, no! billions of vivid blue stars ripped open and rained down upon me, exploding as they reached the periphery of my vision, then I saw, I saw everything…

  VIII

  I fought back the tears that began to swell. Standing in front of room XXXIV, the embedded gold becoming a blurry yellow, I tried my best to keep my composure. I bit on the end of a strand of my hair, while I fidgeted with the hem of my skirt and adjusted my vest. God, I hated my job, the feeling of being just an object to undress in their minds.

  Even the way they said my name with a twinkle in their eyes, or sly grin over their fat faces made me shiver. “Samantha…”

  Damn these men, all these old, obese pigs who come in here with their perversion to look at barely legal women. They hope to catch them in the shower, or during love making, or even going to the bathroom. Disgusting.

  Taking a final breath and wiping the tears away, I put on my best superficial smile and opened the door. The room was dimly lit by the emergency lights.

  Mr. Gre
tzel laid on the chair, relaxed, his muscles untoned, with his gut hanging out over his brown belt. The Experience was doing its duty, giving him the sight of the young Anna Scott. He was nearly forty and still peeping on women half his age. Filthy man.

  As I undid the machine, leaning over him, I looked down at his blotchy skin. Sweat covered his forearms. God he was really into it, because of what? Of the good sex he just witnessed? Of Anna doing her business on the toilet? Or was he into worst things? Like scatting, or something even more disgusting than I could imagine.

  “Mr. Gretzel” I said, gently, soothingly, to bring him back from false-reality with calm and ease.

  “Mr. Gretzel, there was a storm, it knocked out all the power. Time to wake up.”

  He stirred, his eye moved randomly underneath its lid. He clenched his pudgy hands into fists, then released, then clenched again. His legs moved briefly, as if for the first time. He looked like a giant baby. As I undid the last strap on his left ankle, he opened his eyes.

  He asked what happened with the slur of a drunk.

  “There was a power outage, even our backup generators went out. A storm rolled in, a good one, and you know how that goes.”

  I straightened myself, pushing down my skirt against my legs, and looked down at him. One brown eye met me, the other was nothing more than a fleshy socket.

  “How was your—

  —day? Good, good. But look Joe, you're always calling me about someone new. Jessica This, Jennifer That. Hey, don’t give me that but Tommy we’ve been friends since high school bullshit, Joey. I don't got time to keep watch on your jerk-off materials. I got a job to do.” I spat, then hung up, tossing the phone onto the passenger seat. I looked over the wheel, up through the windshield, to see the blue sky changing to a pastel purple. Beautiful, simply beautiful.