by James Sperl
But she hadn't budged.
Clarissa took stock of her environment. It was familiar yet eerily different. She saw the doctor's desk and a chair, a cabinet. She could even see the table she had lain down upon, though now it was curiously devoid of something—her. She looked closer and discovered there were no walls. Instead, impossible blackness had replaced them and extended into infinity.
Clarissa gathered what she could of her wits and tried to reconcile this bizarre new place. Awareness seeped into her consciousness, every moment giving way to a greater understanding of where she was and how she had gotten here.
A pill. She had taken a pill. But for what? She was in a doctor's office. Had she come there on her own? For what purpose? Was she sick?
The answers trickled in. No, she wasn't ill or seeking treatment. In fact, this wasn't even a real doctor's office. Not anymore. The truth was like an electric shock to her brain.
She was here.
She was in the Nothing Place.
The reality jolted her senses. Suddenly, she recognized she was cold. The air was damp and smelled of something inexplicable. Industrial machinery? A bloody post-war battlefield? Salt and ash?
Clarissa stepped beyond the confines of the doctor's office into the pitch. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness once she put the recognizable objects behind her. As they did, she discovered the same indescribable architecture as from before: massive twisted columns that soared upward until oppressing black devoured them; panels or walls made from some strange material, all of which seemed to hover and separated nothing. In the shadows, subtle movements twitched and teased, the motions able to be seen only from the most peripheral glance.
Clarissa began to wonder if she had just made a terrible mistake.
But even as she thought this, a realization flashed to mind: she was consciously aware she was in the Nothing Place. If the pill did what Dustin claimed it would, then she should be able to exert some form of control over her surroundings, command them somehow.
She turned and faced the facsimile of the doctor's office and approached the heavy and unwieldy chiropractic table. Pinching one of its legs between two fingers, Clarissa thought: it's as light as a feather. She lifted. The table rose easily, Clarissa continuing to hoist it to head level.
Holy shit.
She flicked it as if discarding a cigarette butt. The table sailed into the darkness, swallowed whole. But within the blackness, Clarissa detected something else.
A light.
Ice blue and faint, it undulated in the far distance as if alive. Clarissa knew she should walk toward it—was supposed to walk toward it—but she was scared. So very scared. Who knew what awaited her there. But this visit to the Nothing Place was nothing like last time. This time was different. She had to remind herself: You have control.
She started walking. Though she couldn't see her feet in the blackness, she knew she was moving—and moving quickly. The tortured columns and peculiar shapes seemed to rush past her, as if her steps were somehow accelerated, like running along a moving sidewalk.
The light grew in intensity. It throbbed and bulged and became so prominent in size as she neared it, Clarissa had to stop lest she get too close.
It mesmerized her. And though she had never seen anything quite like it, she felt confident the shimmering light was a gateway. A portal. The brilliant, oscillating shape rotated and shifted around a central core, which was blacker than anything human eyes had ever seen. Surrounding the light were what could only be described as elegant machines, but of a design that defied explanation. Clarissa's pulse quickened when she realized what she saw.
The power source.
This was where it all happened.
She sensed activity from out of the corner of her eye. Black shapes moved against even blacker backgrounds. They skulked and sneaked in the murky shadows toward her.
Clarissa was through with her little adventure.
She pinched herself in an attempt to wake up, but all she managed to do was send a sharp jolt of pain up her arm. Her heart raced. She pinched herself again, this time, harder, and when that failed, she resorted to slapping. She smacked herself once, twice, and on the third try, she hit herself so hard across the cheek the sting made her eyes water.
Shit.
She couldn't wake up.
The inability to leave her dream state was something she hadn't considered. That magic little pill gave her some control, but it apparently had its limits. She wanted to leave the Nothing Place, to wake up back in the doctor's office, but nothing she tried permitted it. She was on the verge of succumbing to full-blown panic when the jarring sight of a woman wandering aimlessly in front of her stole Clarissa's breath away.
The woman shuffled forward, as if blind, her hands groping in the darkness for anything familiar. Her face was a mask of immortalized terror, her fear captured in every highlighted contour of her dread-filled face. Then she turned and found Clarissa.
She streamed over to Clarissa and reached for her, clutching Clarissa's forearms in white-knuckled fear. Tears raced down her cheeks. The woman mouthed something intended to be heard, but no sound passed through her lips. Clarissa understood her all the same.
Where are we?
Clarissa responded, but was shocked to discover that she was equally voiceless: I don't know.
The woman glanced around fearfully. Her nails dug into Clarissa's arms.
Is this the place? she mimed. How do we leave?
Clarissa shrugged and pried the woman's hands free: I'm not sure.
I don't want to be here anymore. I want to go home.
I know. Me too.
She saw motion again, this time overhead and a few paces in front of where the women stood. Registering Clarissa's terrified expression, the woman turned and peered into the darkness.
A massive shape darted to a side and was followed by two more. The woman shrank back. Her body trembled as she held onto Clarissa, who tried desperately to wake herself again, pinching and smacking herself violently, all to no avail.
The creature struck. A flurry of charcoal-black arms and other multi-jointed appendages swooped down and plucked the woman from directly in front of Clarissa. She caught only a glimpse of it as it attacked, but it was enough to know she didn't want to see more. The thing from the shadows yanked the woman upward at impossible speed until both of them dissolved into the inky blackness.
Clarissa's instinct was to run, to turn and pump her legs and arms until she couldn't breathe, but where could she go in here? The Nothing Place was an enigma of never-ending darkness. She was in alien territory—literally—an ant trapped in a universe-sized maze that she couldn't even begin to comprehend let alone see. She couldn't escape. She could only accept.
Dropping to her knees, Clarissa awaited her fate. She shuddered terribly. The human mind wasn't equipped to handle the imminence of its death. She had made a colossal mistake coming to this place, and now she would pay for it with her life.
An enormous shadow appeared in front of her. Clarissa didn't want to look at her executioner, but if this was her final moment, she wouldn't allow herself to spend it cowering. With the will of a thousand warriors, she lifted her head and looked at the creature that moved furtively in front of her. Her heart sank into the pit of her stomach.
Easily twice her size, Clarissa could only make out the terrifying creature by way of the light it blocked from the portal. Its horrible silhouette was in constant motion, its limbs and tentacle-like protrusions kinetic and restless, as if it was in a perpetual state of forming. If it had a head, Clarissa sure couldn't find it, which disappointed her. She wanted to see what passed for eyes so she could look into them at the moment of her end. She wanted this thing and all of its friends to know that the human species would not be an easy conquest. That they would fight until their very last breath.
For her part, Clarissa was content that she had at least tried to do something. She could leave this world knowing that this once-upon-a-
time waitress had tried to find a solution, had faced an otherworldly enemy on its own turf in the interest of all of humankind. For whatever that was worth.
She let her eyes fall shut and waited for the inevitable to happen.
But nothing did.
She opened them and found the creature. It was off to the side now and appeared to be moving methodically as if searching.
Clarissa frowned. What's it waiting for? Doesn't it see me?
Another creature joined the first. Neither made a move toward her.
Clarissa got to her feet. Still no reaction.
What the hell's going on? Why did they take that woman but not me?
Seizing upon the opportunity, Clarissa decided to make one last attempt to wake herself. Pinching and slapping had proven to be ineffective. She needed to do something more extreme, something that would cause so much pain her mind would have no choice but to shift from this plane of existence to wakeful consciousness.
Without hesitation, she gripped her left pinkie finger. She would snap it cleanly. If the surge of pain from that didn't do the trick, then nothing would. She felt the ring under her palm that Maxwell had given her at a Christmas party at Aunt Mae's and felt the inexplicable need to remove it. She glanced at the creatures, both of which drifted closer, then she zeroed in on her hand to remove the ring.
Something wasn't right.
She waved her hand in front of her face. She felt herself do it, but her hand wasn't there, even though it should have been. Clarissa glanced at her arms then investigated her legs and torso. She could feel everything she touched, each part of her body present beneath searching pats, but nothing was visible.
She couldn't see herself.
The realization came at her like a bullet.
If she couldn't see herself, did that mean the creatures couldn't see her either?
It was the only thing that made sense. Somehow, some way, in a moment of unrelenting fear and horror, she had willed herself—could it be true?—to be invisible.
Clarissa looked at the creatures again. They continued to move about aimlessly even though she stood mere feet from them.
Yes, that had to be it. She had exercised control in her dream state, not over an object, but over herself. This was a monumental discovery. If a person could move around the Nothing Place undetected, he or she might discover a way to destroy it. If they could do that...
Optimism swelled in her, but she couldn't get ahead of herself. She still needed to find a way to wake up and leave this place. Backing away from the creatures, Clarissa had just started to turn when the sight of something equally terrifying sent ice through her veins and caused her heart to thunder.
She could see her hand.
No, no. Come on.
She clamped her eyes shut and focused every fragment of her imagination toward becoming invisible. When she opened them, she hoped to discover blackness in front of her, but all she saw were both of her held-up hands, splay-fingered and shaking. She looked down at her legs and body—everything was visible.
What was happening? Why wasn't she able to control her appearance?
She concentrated with all her might, funneling every iota of thought into vanishing, but no sooner had she set her mind to it than both creatures seemed to turn in her direction.
Clarissa didn't wait to find out if they could see her.
She took off like a shot. She didn't know where she was going, but at this point, she really didn't care, as long as it was away. She fled into absolute blackness, the light from the gyrating portal behind her casting a faint glow over the strange structures.
Something moved off to the side. Something else dashed overhead. Clarissa sputtered to a stop, just as one of the creatures lurched into her pathway. She screamed, and even though she felt the breath leave her lungs and the air rip across her throat, no sound came out.
A second creature dropped down from the darkness, a third emerging from out of the creeping shadows.
This was it.
Clarissa remembered her oath to be brave, but it was hard to honor it at the moment. Somehow, she summoned hidden courage. Taking a step forward, she unleashed a noiseless tirade at the creatures.
Fuck you! she yelled. Fuck all of you! I know your secret! I know how to beat you! And if I can figure it out, so can somebody else! So go ahead, come and get me!
She was dauntless now. Death no longer scared her, her fear replaced by unadulterated rage. She would show these things what type of species they were up against, how human beings were not, nor had they never been, ones to simply lie down.
But just as she made the decision to embrace her fate, both middle fingers locked and loaded, all three creatures scurried off suddenly.
Clarissa had barely time to reconcile what happened when the world around her fell away. She plummeted through space and consciousness, the sense of falling yet remaining still toying with the logic portion of her brain.
She shot forward and screamed—this time, she heard it.
The table she had been lying on juddered as she woke. She breathed as if oxygen deprived, her wild eyes fighting to make sense of their surroundings—a desk, a chair, cabinets. She was back in the office. But she wasn't alone.
Two teenagers—one boy, one girl—stared at her from the office entrance.
The girl's blouse was unbuttoned down to her midriff, the boy's T-shirt half-tucked into unzipped jeans. Clarissa shared their expression of shock. They hadn't expected to find anyone here, let alone a shrieking woman waking from a horrific dream (was it a dream?). Before Clarissa could say the first word, the pair eased through the doorway then charged down the hallway.
Clarissa collapsed back onto the table. She lay there for a long while, until her body stopped quivering and her heart didn't feel like it would rupture. She held up her hands to make sure she could see them.
It was too bad the kids left so suddenly. Clarissa wanted to thank them for saving her life. Had they not entered when they did and disrupted the dream, who knew what would have happened to her. She chuckled silently then burst into relieved laughter. It was too ironic. If not for the raging hormones of two teenagers, it may very well have been Clarissa who was fucked.
CHAPTER 59
Clarissa's mind was awhirl. Her experience and what she had learned was all she could think about. There may be a way to beat them. She didn't know what that way was just yet, but the fact that she had been able to move about in that strange world undetected filled her with hope and possibility. She needed to tell the others.
They wouldn't be happy when she told them what she had done—some less so than others—but after the initial shock and anger subsided, Clarissa thought they would be just as encouraged by her experience as she was.
She considered how she would tell them. She ached to share her secret—right now—but at this time of night, or rather morning (it was almost 2 a.m.) everyone would be at the Sleep Zone. It was somewhere she should have been as well. Just thinking about sleep made her eyes droop. Though her heart still raced, fatigue and the lingering effects from Dustin's pill had her craving a place to lie down. Her news would have to wait until morning.
First, though, she needed to stop by the Babies 'R Us daycare. She had a certain note to retrieve and set on fire—
The person she slammed into seemed to come from out of nowhere. The woman stumbled and crashed hard to the ground.
“Oh, my God!” Clarissa exclaimed. “I am so sorry. Are you all right?” She held out her hand to the fallen woman. “I get so wrapped up in my own little head, I forget to look up.”
“It's okay,” said the woman, whose long blond hair draped her face. “It happens.”
Clarissa pulled her to her feet. “Are you sure you're okay? I really clocked you a g—”
Words caught in her throat, as the woman forearmed the hair from her face. For the second time tonight, Clarissa's world had been rocked.
There were so many things she wanted to say, so many quest
ions that rushed forward, but from all of them, she could only squeak out a single word:
“Val?”
* * *
Clarissa set a cup of tea down in front of Valentina on a corner table in the Barnes and Noble library. At this time of night, mercifully few people browsed for reading material, which gave Clarissa a chance to ask the million and one questions she had without having to scream them over the top of a chatter-filled room.
Valentina raised the teacup shakily to her cracked lips and sipped. Clarissa studied her friend. She looked like hell. What had it been? Four days? Five since she last saw her? And in that short span of time, Valentina had withered to a shell of a person. Clarissa shuddered when she thought about what Valentina would tell her.
As if hearing Clarissa's inner voice, Valentina looked up from her tea to catch Clarissa gaping at her. “What?”
“Nothing,” Clarissa said, looking away briefly. “I just...I can't believe you're actually here, sitting in front of me. When did you get here?”
Valentina set the tea down. “Earlier this evening.”
“You just got in today?”
“Yeah, maybe...” Valentina searched the air as she thought. “...four hours ago?”
“Four hours? Are you here with anyone?”
“No,” Valentina said with a shake of her head. “No, I...” She looked at Clarissa with such earnestness, such profound regret, it nearly brought Clarissa to tears. “Look, I know I fucked up, okay? I shouldn't have run off.”
Clarissa gripped Valentina's hands tightly.
“Don't say any more about it, all right? It's in the past. Things got...a little out of control. But you're here now. You're back with us.”
Clarissa never thought she would hear herself say those words, but it was true. Whether by Divine Intervention or pure blind luck, Valentina had re-entered her life, and Clarissa couldn't have been happier. She missed her friend.
“So how did you end up here?”
