by J D Jacobs
“You’re still sweating. What was it about?”
He hesitates to answer, maybe out of shame. “Terra. I dream about her every night. I always fall back asleep before you wake up.”
I forgot about her. She was Cody’s one and only love, so I feel like I’m invading his personal thoughts with my next question. “What was it about?”
“Similar to the ones I always have: she was alive, we were still together. Usually in these dreams, she dies somehow, but this one was different… I was the one to die, not her. That’s never happened in my dreams before.” Cody looks up at me. “What about your dream?”
“I think my dream told me a way to get on the thirteenth floor.”
17.
Cody and I quietly exit our rooms and head to the staircase at the end of the hall. We have to be extremely vigilant about not being spotted. Being caught wandering at 3 AM would raise serious questions.
We don’t speak as we make our way up the stairwell. I want to ask him about Terra, about how she died, why her body was on the outside of Westwood’s wall. And I’m sure he wants to ask me about my dream, how I found a way to reach the mysterious floor. But neither of us speak, trying to keep as quiet as possible. Even if we make it on the thirteenth floor, what if whatever-it-is that awaits us is something we instantly regret pursuing?
But like I said, there’s no reason to be afraid. Besides, if this weren’t the way I died, Xander would stop me from climbing these stairs right now.
We make it to the rope that poorly blocks off access to the twelfth floor, and Cody motions for me to lead the way. We make our way up the stairs, spotting the spray of bullets on the wall in front of us. I don’t think Cody realizes how close he was to being shot. Or maybe he does and that’s why he’s as quiet as he is.
Cody and I barely sneak our heads up so we can see the door to the thirteenth floor. The door above us is wide open, with the same huge man that shot at Cody earlier positioned toward the door. Luckily, he’s fast asleep, slumped over in his chair. He must have been on 24-hour watch duty once he saw some kid get a little too close.
As we watch the sleeping man, I notice one of the bullets from earlier lying at my feet. I bend over to pick it up and study it in my hand. These bullets are rubber. I consider telling Cody this, but decide that he may misinterpret that information as an excuse to be reckless. Although rubber bullets aren’t as deadly as regular bullets, I’m sure they don’t feel good.
“Now what?” Cody asks in a low whisper.
“I don’t know…” I whisper back. “In my dream, I let the rope ladder down. I thought that it would still be there when I got here.” I’ve had dreams before where I was able to accurately recreate an environment that I’ve never physically been to. I feel the thirteenth floor looks exactly like it did in my dream, and I feel that the rope is in the corner right next to the door.
Cody shakes his head in disbelief and blinks heavily. “Wait, what did you just say? You dreamt that you let a ladder down, and you thought you let it down in real life? That was your plan!? Are you kidding me?”
“It’s happened before. Sort of.” I don’t let Cody’s skepticism get to me. My mind is too busy furiously searching for another way on that floor. “I can’t explain it right now. You have to trust me, though. There’s a way to get on that floor, I know it.”
Cody responds with an agitated shrug. “Forget your stupid dream!” he harshly whispers. “We either need to find a way on that floor or go back to our room. The longer we stay here and stare at Big Ugly up there, the more danger we’re in. So either quit with your weird dreams, or–”
“My weird dreams have gotten us farther than anything you’ve suggested, thank you very much,” I interrupt him, hostility in my whisper. “If you don’t believe me when–”
This bubble of tension that we’ve created is popped when we hear the sound of the guard yawning in his chair above us. Cody and I pause, then quietly duck our heads out of sight.
“Dude, listen to me,” Cody whispers as we peek our heads out to have the door in our sight. “This whole thing about you reliving the past, dreaming weird and terrifying things, talking to people who aren’t there… It’s starting to worry me, man.”
“I have an idea,” I interrupt his pity party for me. “It’s risky, but it might work. I’ll need you to check your watch. In exactly three minutes, throw your shoe at the door and get that guard’s attention without him spotting you.”
“I just want you to be safe, man. Honestly. I don’t want you to go crazy,” Cody disregards my idea that I’m sure sounds absurd to him and continues the pity party that I wasn’t able to bust up.
“Will you please listen to me? You have to trust me. In three minutes–exactly three minutes–throw your shoe and then hide. I need you to do that.”
“Look, man, this doesn’t sound like the best–”
“Promise me you will get that guard’s attention in exactly three minutes.”
Cody finally catches the severity of my command. He swallows hard before slowly nodding. “Okay, I will. But don’t do anything stupid, man. Please don’t get yourself killed.”
“Get his attention and we’ll both be fine.” I then turn away and head to the eleventh floor.
I stride across the carpeted floor to the opposite end of the hall, no longer concerned with waking people up. I’m about to talk to somebody anyway, so my secret spy mission is about to be discovered.
I make it to the elevator and step in once the doors open. I take a deep breath to gain my composure, then push the red emergency button.
“Grandsmont emergency service. What’s your emergency?” The voice is of the same guy who read me the same line earlier today, so that means the guard isn’t also the emergency operator.
I take another deep breath, shaking my hands to rid of any nervousness in my body. I sure to God hope my gut is right about this. “Polly says her back hurts.”
Silence pounds against my eardrums as I wait for a response. If it doesn’t work, I still have time to stop Cody from throwing the shoe, but I need it to work. I begin to sweat at the thought of the emergency operator inspecting me through the elevator camera like I was some stupid, injured animal that got lost in the wilderness and is cluelessly waiting to be preyed upon.
“They gave you permission?” the operator asks me, his voice sour.
Oh, God, don’t lie. The worst thing I could do is lie. But what do I say? “Polly said her back hurts.” Repeating the line isn’t a lie. Plus, it also distinguishes me as a stupid, injured parrot.
Without another word, the elevator zooms upwards. Oh my God, it worked. I can’t believe it. I’m still profusely sweating, but I try to remain poised.
The red emergency button stays lit up. The elevator doors slide open. The thirteenth floor now lies in front of me, awaiting me to walk down its carpets. The floor looks exactly like it did in my dream. Painstakingly identical.
I hop off the elevator and approach the nearest room. I pull the doorknob just to see if the door is locked, and it is. However, strangely enough, I notice that it’s locked from my side, not from the inside. I consider unlocking the door and heading inside, but I remember that Cody is about to throw a shoe and I have to get ready for my next step.
Other than the sleeping guard at the other end of the hall, the floor is empty. I make my way to the same exact branching corridor that I saw in my dream. How my dream was able to predict this, I don’t even want to know, but I take a step down the perpendicular corridor and hide behind the corner, peeking my head out and waiting for Cody to get the guard’s attention at any moment now.
After a few lingering seconds, I see a shoe fly through the open door and plunge itself squarely on the guard’s face. The man violently shakes from being startled and surveys the hall for the culprit. I pull my head back behind the corner, and I fear that he might have caught a glimpse of me. If so, I’m absolutely screwed.
I slowly peek from behind the corner. The m
an has turned his attention to the stairwell, his assault rifle equipped and ready to mow down the culprit responsible for the shoe. I tip-toe quietly but quickly toward the man. I’m not sure if he’ll lose interest in who threw the shoe by the time I reach him; if so, I’m even more screwed since he already has his gun ready. The guard is about to turn around, but another shoe flies toward the guard, hitting the side of the stairwell wall, this time. Cody must have tossed it over his shoulder and focused more on staying hidden. The guard blindly fires bullets down the stairwell at nobody.
Now’s my chance. I sprint toward the guard, the gunshots loud enough to drown out my movements and his thirst to kill more dominant to him than his awareness of what’s around him. I make sure I have enough power behind me, then I push him full force out the door. The man is plunged toward the stairs, where he flails down them and crashes into the wall, almost exactly like he did in my dream. He lands on his head and his body awkwardly props up against the walls.
I see Cody stick his head out from the bottom of the stairs, carefully watching the guard to make sure he’s dead. “Jaden…” His voice is empty, scared of his own words. “…you killed a man.”
Adrenaline thumps in my ears as the realization hits me. I killed a man. We’re in even more trouble with this city now than we were before.
The rope ladder is folded up in the nearby corner, just as it was in my dream. I reach over, attach the ends of the ladder to the hooks in the ground, and push the ladder down. While I’m doing so, I hear a sharp gasp come from below me. At first, I thought it was the guard, breathing air back in as he comes back to life. But no, the sound is much worse than that.
Cody is petrified, frozen in horror. He slowly raises his hand to point at me but his arm is trembling too hard for him to control it.
The fear transfers to me as I feel a hand placed on my shoulder. My breaths come out heavy and in intervals as I slowly turn around. There, standing above me, his tatted left arm extended to grab my shoulder, is Miguel Ricardo, scowling at me in utter rage. Before I can even move, his hands lock together behind my head and push down, throwing my face into his uppercutting knee.
The force throws me back, but he grabs my arm before I can fall over the hovering doorway.
My eyes are now drowned in flooded tears that won’t escape my sockets. Blood running over my mouth, it drips down my chin and onto the floor. I assume there is another man next to Ricardo that I initially missed, because Ricardo calls out to him.
“¡Matar al hijo de puta!” Ricardo commands him. At first, I assume that Ricardo is telling his man to do something with me, but I hear the man by Ricardo’s side climb down from the doorway. I hear Cody’s footsteps take off as the man climbs down, and once the man safely reaches the ground, his heavy footsteps accompany those of Cody’s.
Ricardo pulls me up to my feet, which is a hassle. One blow and I’m already broke. I don’t have the energy or desire to stand and fight back; I’m in too much pain. My sight is finally coming back to me as the built-up tears finally stream down my face, and I’m eye-to-eye with the leader of this city.
Ricardo clasps my cheeks, puffing them and my mouth out. “A little birdie told me you might be up here, and that birdie was absolutely right! Ahh, you curious little boy,” he taunts me. “You had to go put your nose where it clearly didn’t belong.”
“What did you tell that man?” I try to shout through my forcibly puckered lips, but I end up spitting blood all over Ricardo instead. Ricardo punches me in the face with his open hand for doing so.
“Don’t worry about your friend,” Ricardo tells me as I recover from the blow. My head rattles, and I can feel my eye throb and my face rise from where he hit me. “No need for him. He had no business being in this city anyway.” He clamps harder down on my cheeks, his fingers now stabbing my gums. “Just like you have no business being on this floor.”
“I won’t tell anyone about this floor,” I plea. Even if I wanted to, I don’t know what I would say about it. I still don’t know this floor’s purpose and why it’s so top-secret.
Ricardo laughs. “You’re goddamned right you won’t! You wanted on this floor so bad, so I reserved a room just for you!”
He unlocks one of the doors behind him and opens it. I struggle to escape the man, but it’s no good. He’s so much stronger than I had imagined.
He then pushes me into the dark room by my jaw and slams the door shut behind me, leaving me vulnerable in the darkness.
III. Imprisonment
18.
I rush to the door and tug on the locked doorknob. I pound on the door, screaming for him to let me out. I know he won’t. I then start screaming for help from anyone else. I know it won’t come. I’m wasting energy. I then focus my attention back to the room behind me. There could be something dangerous in here. Something deadly, something that could attack me any moment. Or someone.
I furiously pat the wall, looking for a light switch. After finding it and flicking it on, I turn around and shove my back to the door, ready to fight whatever makes this floor so secretive and dangerous.
But there’s nothing dangerous. It’s just a normal hotel room. Two beds, a table at the other end of the room, a mini fridge, closet, small bathroom. What is this? What is hiding in this room that is supposed to make this entire floor so restricted?
The possibilities surge through my head. What if there’s a deadly animal living in here, just like the ravenous dogs in Westwood? Perhaps the air is poisonous; maybe with Cozmin, maybe with something more deadly to me. What if there are dead bodies in here, possibly under the beds? They could be the dead bodies of the two men I saw being escorted to the Grandsmont. Or this could be some insane game. This could be like a scene from Saw where I have to do ungodly things to myself just to stay alive in this room.
I can’t bare to contemplate anymore. I have to find out. I walk in the bathroom first, investigating every square inch of it. Nothing suspicious. I then go to the closet. Nothing. I go in the living area, take both beds entirely apart, rummage through the nightstand by taking it apart, as well. I knock on the walls and push on the ceiling for any hidden openings. Nothing. I can’t find anything.
“Hey, pal, I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s 3 AM. You’re being incredibly loud.”
Oh my God, there’s somebody in the room next to me! I push my ear against the east wall and begin talking to it. “Please help! Ricardo threw me in this room, I don’t know what’s going on. I need your help.”
“If you don’t shut up, he’ll come back and make you. So for the love of God, shut up.” It’s a lady, relatively young, sounds like she could be in her late-twenties. Why is she on this floor with me? Is she the one that makes this floor so secretive? She clearly doesn’t want to talk right now, so I try and remain quiet. This lady could very well be on Ricardo’s side, so I shouldn’t piss her off. And she’s right, I don’t want Ricardo to come back in here. The last thing I want is another knee to the face.
I quietly inspect the rest of the room. Nothing suspicious at all, which in itself is extremely suspicious. I make my way to the curtains and pull them back. A sliding glass door separates me from my own personal balcony, and I slide the door back and walk outside.
The underground air of Avvil fills my lungs, but I’m in an unfamiliar place. The balcony to the room is small and has a single chair on it. The walls of the balcony extend five feet out from the railed ledge, I guess to prevent people from climbing room to room or from even looking at their neighbor. I walk up to the ledge and look below me.
I’m high up, but not as high as I would expect for me being on the thirteenth floor. The ground seems to be only a hundred feet below me. The filtered moonlight reveals a circled area on the ground; concrete forming a circular wall while the middle of the area is open and flat, reminding me of a coliseum that a college team would play basketball in. Directly across from me, on the wall on the other side of the coliseum, is a large screen that’s turned off right no
w. I don’t initially see any stands or bleachers, but after I lean over the rails, I can see that all of the bleachers for people to sit in are directly below me. This keeps me and the rest of this floor out of view from any people who were to sit in this coliseum.
But why is this even here? Why is there a coliseum constructed in the back of the Grandsmont Hotel? Is this what makes the thirteenth floor so secretive? The coliseum-like area is pretty large; I feel like it’d be very difficult to hide from the public. The people in Avvil must know about this place. If so, then what’s the secret to the floor?
I go back inside my room. I’m scared. Scared for why I’m on this floor, for what secrets this city is hiding, for what happened to Cody, and for what awaits me from Ricardo. I’m even too afraid to lie in the bed. What if Ricardo is testing me, wanting me to get comfortable so he can torment me even more?
I curl up in the corner of the room and fall asleep.
19.
The Ricardo Residence
Miguel Ricardo’s eyes shoot open once the blaring alarm clock jolts him awake. He slaps the clock off, slightly hurting his aching knuckles. He punched that Foxx boy a little harder than he had meant to last night. Miguel’s knuckles surprisingly hurt more than his knee does. And Miguel knows that he kneed the crap out of that kid.
Miguel rubs his eyes and arches his back, waking him up with a few pops coming from his slumbered joints. He stands up from the bed and heads to his bathroom. He turns on his shower and strips down, revealing several large tattoos that are hidden completely by his clothes. These tattoos remind him of another time, years ago. It seems like centuries to Miguel now.
He hops in the shower, the steaming water running over his sweaty body. He doesn’t have enough hair to wash, but he does so anyway. One full-body rub of the bar of soap and he’s now done with his cleaning duties. Now it’s just the water and his thoughts. Miguel’s thoughts haunt him every day, but he tries to remember the pleasant things that happened in his life before the Cozmin disease. He doesn’t like thinking about Avvil, this city that he took over. He doesn’t like reminding himself of what he’s done in this city and what he is currently doing. The only defense he has for his actions are that they were all done for people that he once loved.
