by Dalya Moon
“Austin,” I say. Of course I have no physical vocal chords, so I can't be making any noise. With no body, I have no physical presence. I don't know how I can see, without having physical eyeballs to refract and reflect light and send messages to a brain that's not here either, but this is not the time or place to question physics. I'm here.
I reach for Austin's hand, but my fingers pass through. “Hey, wake up. I came for you, Austin. I traveled here outside of my freaking body to see you. Don't you dare ignore me, or I'll ... I'll come in there with you.”
The pulsating line on one of the machines changes, or at least I think it does—I don't know what any of this stuff means. As I'm attempting to hold her hand, even though mine keeps slipping through, I feel something I don't expect: the sensation of my own arms and legs being held, as though someone is picking me up and carrying me.
How can I be getting carried by my arms and legs?
“Carl? Are you pranking me?” I look around the hospital room, but there's only me, Austin, and some bunches of flowers and cards. Three cheery silver balloons bob in the corner, but no Carl.
I check my arms and legs, but I don't see anything unusual, considering I'm a spirit in a pair of pretend jeans. My hip stings, as though I was dropped on it. New voices float around my mind, like the tail end of echoes in a big canyon, when they turn back in on themselves and stop having meaning.
“I'm not that strong, you'll have to help,” says a man's voice. “Get a good grip.”
Newt?
Pulling. My body—my real, mortal body—is pulling me back toward it, like the moon pulling the sea, and I am washing away, trickling out of this hospital room, away from Austin.
Did her eyelash flutter? I struggle to get closer, but I'm being pulled back, and ... folded. Folded? My consciousness expands in a brief flash of light and I know I'm being loaded into the trunk of a car. My body is being loaded into the trunk of a car.
“This is all working so well,” says the man's voice. It is Newt, Heidi's friend. Newt continues, “The best part is he actually thought the tea was his idea. Susan did a wonderful job, I'd say. We're really coming together as a team.”
“Stop complimenting your half-done handiwork,” Heidi snaps at Newt. “You're one of those people who quits halfway through painting a room to admire it, aren't you?”
I sense my physical eyelids cracking open, and for a second I see what's happening, as though watching picture-in-picture on a TV. It's night time now, and Heidi is dressed in black, like a widow or a ninja. The picture disappears just as quickly, but I'm still getting sound.
The lid of the trunk bangs shut, muffling their voices. In the hospital room, where I also am, simultaneously, I'm floating up against the ceiling, like one of Austin's get-well-soon balloons would if the ribbon were snapped. I hope Austin doesn't open her eyes and catch me like this, floating over her like some creepy ghost.
The sounds and images from my physical body are gone, and I'm cut off again, to my relief.
My ghostly head passes through fluorescent light ballasts and insulation, and my face is mopped by a janitor. Ptooie. How can I be tasting mop water if I have no mouth here?
I focus all my thoughts, all my energy on Austin. Go to her. Be with her. Never mind whatever Heidi and Newt are doing with your body.
I wave my arms and swim myself back down to her room, and not having any better ideas, I push down so I'm on top of her body. “Sorry,” I say, because what I'm about to do seems terribly rude. I dive into her, through her belly button.
CHAPTER 17
I'm no longer inside the hospital room, and yet I am … albeit inside Austin, like one of those Russian dolls inside another doll.
It's dark here, in this place. Someone forgot to pay the electric bill. I trip over a pile of things and realize I'm standing not on a floor, but on stuff. Tupperware bins, shoe boxes, stacks of clothing, old typewriters, cans of food, papers, and more, all tower around me. I squeeze between two columns that look like molding cheese but smell like maple syrup, as I edge toward a window that is the only source of light. Is this place inside Austin? I didn't expect her mind to be so cluttered.
At the window, I pull up the old wooden frame, looking for a quick exit from this room of forgotten things. I stick my head out, and I'm assaulted by a fire-hose spray of something that isn't water, but … tiny circles of colored paper. Confetti. The confetti stings my eyes, even though I know I don't have eyes.
“Austin, are you out there?” I lean further out the window, peering into the storm. Deep within the swirling confetti, white dresses are dancing, swirling. There are thousands, and they're as different as snowflakes, but they don't have any people in them.
There's no ground below this window, just miles of brick, so I haul myself back inside and shut the window.
The room's as clean as a whistle now, magically cleared out. I walk across the beautiful hardwood floor to a doorway.
Out in the hallway, I find a myriad of of doors. Now this is more in line with what I was expecting! I run down the hall, hoping to find one door that's different from the rest, but they're all different. I see tall doors, short doors, metal ones both old and new, and one dripping with what appears to be mucous. I keep running, past a door made from patchwork quilts, and one of decapitated Barbie dolls. Those are probably childhood memories, right? I crack open a door that is a giant whole wheat cracker, and find a restaurant full of stuffed animals eating soup while penguins waddle between the tables, offering freshly-ground pepper.
I close the door quietly.
If this place has some system of organization, it's nothing I've heard of. I run down the hall for miles without tiring, past thousands of doors. I trip over my own foot and go sprawling to the floor. The door beside me comes into focus.
This one is green and covered in layers of paint, just like the door at The Bean, except it's round, like doors in spaceships and fairy tales. I get up from the floor and look left and right, noting the other doors seem blurry and less real by comparison, while this one is in perfect focus. This must be the one that leads to Austin.
I turn the handle, and the circular door swings away powerfully, pulling me along.
My feet dangle over nothingness while I cling to the knob with both hands. My heart is pounding now, even though it can't be, and I'm struck with the fear I'll die in here and nobody will even know. My mortal body will rot away, soulless, and the media will blame video games.
I try to swing my body so I can get my feet back on solid ground in the hall, but the door won't budge. What's beneath me isn't nothingness at all. It's a swirling mass, brown and sickly sweet, like a compost pile full of coffee grounds, banana peels, and earthworms. I can't let the darkness touch me. My hands are slipping off the door knob.
“That's where the tumor was,” says a voice. Austin's face appears in front of mine. “Hang on.” She turns and commands, “Now, settle! Play nice.”
The brown turns to sparkling blue.
Before I can thank her, my head whirls, and we're on a sailboat. Together, me and Austin. “I'm on a boat,” I note with satisfaction.
“You're not wearing a shirt,” she says.
I explain that I left the house in a hurry. She's wearing sweatpants and a shirt speckled with smears of paint. She leans in to kiss me on the cheek, and when she leans back, she's dressed like the princess of a fairy world, complete with one of those sparkly head things.
“Too much?” she asks as she takes off the head thing—a tiara, I guess—and throws it to the water. A rainbow springs up from where the sparkling tiara landed.
“I'm not a wild animal,” I say. “You shouldn't have pushed me away. I ... care about you.”
She puts her hand on my cheek. Like the cure that takes away the pain, her cool palm draws away all my fears. “I'm not coming back from here,” she says.
“Then I'm not leaving.”
“You have to go,” she says.
“What, are you going to
make me? I don't see any bodyguards.” I cross my arms.
A whale surfaces next to us. With a deep, slightly bored tone, the whale says, “Everybody out of the pool.” The giant sea mammal opens its mouth, wider and wider, until the world is black with the opening of its mouth. Then, we are swallowed.
The whale's insides are cruel—sharp and scratchy, and smelling of gas. Everything hurts. My stomach is full of pain, as though I just ate an enormous pizza of agony followed by a slushy of regret.
Outside the whale, a horn honks, and the whale screeches its tires.
Tires? I'm not in a whale, am I?
No.
My arms are tied up and I'm in the trunk of a car. The alternating numbness and aching in my arms must mean I'm back in my body. The vehicle stops and a minute later, the lid pops open.
“He's awake,” Newt says.
“Really, Einstein? I suppose it was his eyes being open that tipped you off,” Heidi says. Man, she seemed so nice when we first met, but she can be a real bossypants.
I try to tell them they didn't have to kidnap me, and that I was going to come to them willingly, but the gag in my mouth is not helping. The gag tastes terrible, like that girl Missy's tongue.
Newt is fiddling around with a bandage or a cloth, and a bottle of something. Seriously? Is that actually chloroform? He's not going to—
* * *
Darkness and pain. I'm not in a whale, or the trunk of a car. I'm awake, but I'm not going to open my eyes.
A man is singing—no, chanting—and someone else is telling him he's doing it wrong and correcting him. That would be Heidi.
I'm tied to something.
Well, come on guys, let's get this party started.
I'm back in my body, after visiting the girl I love, who's never going to wake up from a coma. There's never been a better time to have my powers stolen and my memory erased—or better yet, be killed. As soon as I'm dead, I'll float back up out of here and go to Austin. We can sail together, on that sparkling blue sea, forever.
I can hardly wait. I wish Heidi and Newt would hurry up already.
“He's conscious,” Newt says.
“Is he crying?” Heidi asks.
“No,” I say through the gag. “My eyes are itchy.” The gag's been loosened a bit, and my speech sounds almost human, like a ventriloquist's dummy.
“There, there,” Heidi says, wiping at my face. I don't have to open my eyes to know she's using her spit on a hankie. Please, just kill me now.
“Watch out, there's another one,” Newt says. Something slaps against a hard surface. “Got it. Little bugger. Your friend stung me, but you can't, because you're dead, dead, dead.”
Heidi says, presumably to Newt, “His defensive power is kicking in, but it's a little too late, and he has no control over it.”
Around my gag, eyes still glued shut, I say, “What?” I'm flat on my back and tied down, but I don't know where. I struggle to look around, but my eyes won't open. Have my eyelids actually been glued? “What's happening?” I repeat.
“Your little bees, Zan,” Heidi says. “Bzz bzz, your bees. The ones you summon and control, like my lovely black crows, only you don't know what to do with your bees, do you?”
My eyes won't open, and despite my efforts, all I can muster from my face is what I imagine is a stern frown.
“Don't worry, it'll all be over soon,” Heidi says. “We had to work so hard, Newt and I. We investigated a good number of paths, but you're a lucky one. I nearly had you, back at the cottage, but your little bee and your little friend ruined all my nice plans. We had to recalibrate everything to get you here, like this … in this state.”
Around the wet gag, I ask, “Why can't I open my eyes?”
“Your spirit is weak from all the time you spent away from your body,” she says. “Silly boy. You're weak. So weak. Just relax and we'll make you all better.”
“Good,” I mumble. They said they'd take my power and my bad memories, but I know they'll take more. They'll take everything, and I ache so bad right now that maybe I don't mind. They can have it all. I surrender.
Newt asks about which bowl to set up for the blood and Heidi chews him out for not knowing it's glass, always glass, preferably crystal.
A female voice—not Heidi and definitely not Newt—whispers in my ear, “Are you going to lie there like an undercooked sausage? What a waste.”
“Austin?” I mumble.
I hear her voice again, but only inside my head. I mentally push away the sounds of Heidi and Newt talking so I can hear Austin more clearly.
Austin: I can hear your thoughts, you don't need to say it through the gag. It's all dirty and grimy and kinda yucking me out. I can actually taste what you're tasting, isn't that weird?
Why are you here?
To get your dumb butt out of this mess. I feel partly responsible, like the hostess who serves her guests too much wine at dinner and they leave and allow themselves to be kidnapped by witches.
Austin, I'm done with this life. I'm going to either be with you, on the spirit plane, or forget you. It's win-win.
She doesn't answer for several excruciating seconds. Finally, she says, still in my head, I have someone here who wants to say something.
My eyes are still closed, but I feel Austin near me, standing by me as she speaks.
Suddenly, I'm seeing, but through my closed eyelids. Austin is glowing, and a dog—a cocker spaniel with big, velvety ears—stands by her side.
Austin glows brighter and divides in half, as something glowing even brighter steps out of her toward me. This new thing is so brilliant, I can't make out any details. My senses are screaming to turn away for safety, like when you look right at the sun.
The glowing, painfully bright area speaks: Zan. The problem with your power, the one you access with your belly button, is it's only half-functioning.
This voice isn't Austin, but another woman. She's the one I've been hearing these last two weeks.
All you see is the bad, she says. Don't you want to see what you'll be missing if you choose to die right now?
No, I say, but my refusal sounds petulant, and I know I don't mean it.
You always were an obstinate child, the glowing woman says. She reaches forward with one blazing arm and plunges it into my center.
Mom?
Is that ... my mother?
I'm on fire from the inside. Someone turned on all the lights and cranked everything to eleven. This is not like any of my visions, or the inside of Austin's mind, or floating outside of my body. This is like one million music videos, shot straight into my veins.
I see everything.
I see Gran getting married, and the loveliest bride you've ever seen, even at seventy. Me, graduating high school, graduating college, and all the time, James and Julie by my side, sharing my happiness. There's an alternate one, a parallel time line, where I'm the same age but not in college. James is there and we backpack up mountains. And yet another, where I'm jumping out of a helicopter and taking photos with a camera that's yet to be invented. All these possibilities exist, and they're all real, and yet they haven't happened. And I know something: they won't happen if I don't get up.
Images flash by, of children—Julie's—and grandchildren, and golden retrievers, and sunsets, and cold mountain lakes.
Enough, I tell my mother. Overkill. I get it, I get it. I'm not going to lie here and let Newt and Heidi do whatever witchy voodoo they were planning. I'm going to get up and punch that old lady right in the face, and I'm going to keep fighting, are you happy?
Yes I am, says my mother, who's still glowing, but softly now. I'm happy, and I love you, she says.
Behind my mother, Austin puts one hand on her hip. I love you too, she says.
I try to run to my mother, but I can't move. That's right, I'm still tied up, strapped down to something.
Mom! I call out.
She's shimmering, fading at the edges, disappearing.
Don't leave me again!<
br />
She blows me a kiss. I'm with you always. She reaches one arm to me, sparks flying out of her fingertips. All at once, she turns into a tower of diamonds that explode, showering down on me. Strength, she says, from all around me. I give you strength to fight and see the good.
My hands. They're tied up. I don't like being tied up! From within my body, within my mortal lungs, I let out an animal scream as I rip my hands out of the restraints.
I blink, back in my body, my eyes adjusting to the dim lighting.
I'm in a basement, a partially finished one, with open wood supports visible along the ceiling.
Heidi's standing to my right. My body moves, seemingly on its own, and I punch the old lady right in the face. My left fist impacts her jaw, and her stone-gray face wobbles off to the side.
“Sorry,” I say, but Heidi doesn't say anything. She just drops to the ground.
Newt, who's wearing yet another ill-fitting suit, this one tweed, gasps and staggers back.
Please, let him be having a heart attack, I pray. Lit by flickering candles, his shocked face looks like melting wax.
“Are you okay?” I call out to him, feeling awful for wishing him ill. Maybe Newt's not so bad.
His back to me, Newt grabs a battle-ax off the wall, raises it over his head, and starts up with the chanting again.
“Oh, hell no, old man!” I yell as I attempt to jump off the thing I'm lying on.
One problem: I haven't untied my feet yet, and they're preventing my escape. I desperately grasp at the bindings around my ankles, but unlike the straps that held my hands, these ropes are thick and well-knotted.
“You're a waste of magic,” Newt growls. “Useless.”
“You're a waste of ... tweed.”
He narrows his eyes and raises the weapon higher. The glinting edge tells me this ax is definitely genuine, and not a prop for playing Dungeons and Dragons down here in this basement, as I had briefly hoped.
“Don't kill me,” I plead. “You can't get my magic out if you chop my head off.”
