The following passage from my story Jackalopes takes place after the heroine, Jane, has entered the city of memories in order to find out just how she died and got into the underworld...
It has not yet been edited. As such, there may be spelling/grammar and continuity mistakes. Enjoy!
Jane
was taken back many years, thousands of years to moments just before
her death. Her eyes closed just before seeing the scene, a park in a
busy city. Behind her was some sort of elevated look-out platform, no
stairs in sight. From the other side her manager came running,
panicked as usual. This was her last living memory...
It
took Jane a good while to realize that she was indeed sentient again.
For a the last hour she had simply listened to the noise coming from
above her, but now she realized that the noise was speech and that
they were talking about her.
“And
now, we open up the path to the underground road…” somebody said.
“May
her path be easy and may it lead to Tymor!”
The
next thing Jane realized was that she could not move. She was locked
in the darkness and could not move a finger. She tried to scream for
help, but the blackness engulfing her was pushing against every fiber
of her body. Just as it felt like she was suffocating and drifting
away into nothingness, Jane felt the ground rumble and give away. She
was swirling down a vortex of rushing sounds, tossed like a ragdoll
in the fierce wind. Suddenly, all was still and Jane found herself
lying down on something soft and velvety.
Jane
was sleeping in darkness for many years. The air around her was empty
but cold and refreshing, and she did not have to think or feel about
anything in particular. The only thing that bothered her was some
sort of insistent buzzing that kept appearing more and more
frequently. Finally Jane felt that she had to wake up and get rid of
that stupid bug or whatever it was that kept bothering her.
Jane
fumbled in the darkness and found a wooden door. Opening it Jane
found herself standing in a long dark hallway which curved into a
sidewalk at an impossible angle. The corridor was mostly empty, but
Jane could not help noticing rusty beams and chains smeared with
dried blood. These things were always located near some sort of
window, but they were bolted down and impossible to open. How had
Jane arrived at this strange place!? No matter how hard she thought
about it, she could not remember anything except practicing for the
high-jump contest and then walking in the nearby park…
“Hello,
is there anybody there!?” she called out.
“I
was wondering...if anybody...could,
maybe”
Jane
was not only becoming afraid, but also close to panicking. There was
no natural explanation for her to be here or indeed, for the corridor
to bend that way. Jane tried to go back to where she had come from,
but the corridor ended with a brick wall. The wooden door she had
previously simply lead into some kind of dark labyrinth with dark an
terrifying shadows. They seemed to be moving and whatever was inside
them was chanting ominously with a tiny oppressive voice.
On
the wall was painted a giant mask an unnaturally wide grin, which
Jane was afraid to get close to. When the mask began to chuckle, Jane
turned and ran the other way. Near the corner where the corridor
began to curve Jane saw several weird things.
This
was her memories of being dead...
First
and foremost, there was a crack in the ceiling, exposing the outside
of the corridor. Jane tried to get a good look, but all she could she
was a vast expense of white, which blinded her in the dark corridor
in which she was trapped. There was also a mirror closed to the
crack, but a red piece of cloth was obscuring Jane´s face. Just
outside the crack was a great red eye, under which rested a single
white tooth. Recoiling in fear when Jane realized what she saw, Jane
took some time to understand what this being was telling her.
“Are
you going to linger here forever?” it said to her.
The
voice was harsh and shrieking, without pity or mercy. Jane trembled,
her heart beating faster and faster and filling up to the brim with a
great dread, but finally managed to ask where she was.
“This
is nowhere, quite simply.” the being said.
“And
I am no one, and nothing.”
“No
one and nothing...” Jane repeated for lack of anything better to
do.
“No
one and nothing...”
Jane
did not understand. However, the cloth fell of the mirror and Jane
immediately saw why the corridor had appeared so crooked to her. Her
neck was bent to the side, hanging limply of the side of her head.
This
totally destroyed Jane, who broke down on the ground and began to cry
fiercely.
All
the while, the being on the other side of tried to gnaw through the
crack with its single tooth. Jane got on her feet and ran as the wall
crumbled and the corridor was filled with light. There were nowhere
to run, and the tooth gnawed at her neck…
Jane
awoke with a great pain in her neck. An old woman wearing a cloak was
bent over her, cradling her head in her hands. Her head seemed to be
on all right now, but it still hurt a lot.
“Stop
turning your head; it needs time to heal!” the woman said sternly.
“Thank
you” Jane said, relieved at seeing another living (?) person in
this strange place.
“Where
am I?”
“You
are in the borderworld of Xibalba, between the world of the living
and the dead. This is the dream cave, where all dreams are made. It
is here that shamans and prophets journey to find out more about
their deities and their realms...It is here they meet.”
“Does
that mean there is a small chance of me becoming alive again?” Jane
asked the crouched figure.
“None
whatsoever.” the figure said simply.
“And
the sooner you accept this, the easier it will be for you. You should
not be here; most souls awake in the underworld and not the
borderlands...No matter, these things happen and I will get you to
your appointment with eternity in a moment...then you can begin your
long walk...”
“Wait,
you haven´t told me your name!” Jane said, scared of being left
alone again.
“I
am one of the two who are dreaming” the person who had healed her
said.
“Now,
let us go...”
The
dream cave was full of pictures, some nice but most of them quite
eerie. Short dark figures wearing cloaks scuttled in and out of the
chambers thirty-two doors, and stairs where leading up and down to
places unknown. Nobody reacted to Jane, and she was told to wait.
They were carrying boxes and urns labeled with strange symbols.
Desperately trying to keep her mind occupied, she looked at the
etchings covering the walls, floors and ceilings. Jane particularly
remembered a series of picture with a group of rabbits on a field
crying, their face being stretched unnaturally by their sorrow. The
second picture was destroyed, but the last picture showed the field
again, empty. However, the grey picture had been painted with several
streaks of blood.
Finally
someone came for her. At first Jane thought it was the same woman who
had tended to her neck, but this one looked a bit older.
“We
will take you to the underworld now” the old woman simply said.
“The
fastest road is through the canals of the dream snake, from where all
resources needed to produce dreams are formed. Let us go now...”
The
elders strongly urged her not to look out and continue on her way,
but Jane´s curiosity was piqued. But one of the twin sisters took
her to the top of the dream cave and bade her look out of the window,
the only window to the outside world found in the cavern of dreams.
First Jane thought that the window was simply dirty, but on closer
inspection she found it to be images in a storm. They were tumbling
and blowing around so hard that the dirty dead ground had several
holes and even valleys dug up in it. In the middle of everything a
great rainbow dug through the borderworld and the images of dreams.
The rainbow had eyes, and a forked tongue...These images, which
dreams were made of and perfected in the delirious fumes under the
cave of dreams ranged from undermined rowboats to mincemeat
nutrition, overkills, innovations, noontide and chemosynthesis. It
continued showing all the things that this world and the imagination
of humanity contains, such as reproduced benzene all the way
expresso, transcendent cousins, synthesis shops, graters, Thor,
submarine, scrawls, firehouses, pacifier, honeyed comeback, nightless
contradictions, misfeasance expressively swaggering, buffalos and
insufferable plasmodium (among other things).
Jane
could see some of the elders collect things to make dreams out of,
things such as compilations all the way to nonexistentialism, dog
cocks, overlanders, nonsatiation, pylons, autonomic approved
stockings, water dispensors, giant letters in the shape of the word
yeah, ordained declared spectators, cinematographic flies and turgid
robots. Somethings appeared from far away, things like excessive
Fredericksburgs to frothy whippersnappersl liquids,
palaeoclimatologist, reputations, overelegance dripping with bodily
fluids and flamboyant dehydrogenated killing syringe scissor-boots.
Some
things were disappearing from out of sight, things that were very
strange indeed, things such as abnormal caninis made out of diarrhea.
There were also things like angelic loincloths, muticous
forgetfulness, chivalrously dancing dolls, foregone fire and all
sorts of other things like that. Naming them all would be impossible
and great waste of time, so let us stop for now and return to the
important
things
Jane saw.
Jane
was standing in front of a door that opened to a black void. About a
kilometer down there was some sort of greenish-yellow energy field.
“Hit
that and you will be in the underworld” one of the sisters said.
“Make
sure you do not miss it, because if you do you will fall into the
void forever!” the other warned.
“Geez,
girls, you make it sound so easy...” Jane muttered, more to herself
than anybody else.
“I
really don´t have a choice though, have I?”
“No”
the two sisters said in unison.
“Now
jump!” the younger sister said, and that was that.
Before
jumping into the outer darkness and proceeding to the first pylon of
Tymor, Jane could not help but notice two other cave entrances going
downwards. Asking where these two roads led, as she wanted to put off
the jump as long as possible, she was told that they housed two great
treasures.
“These
two treasures, the shield and armlets are what allow us to shape
dreams and protect us from the nightmares The Goon weaves.” the
elder sister explained.
“It
was made eons ago by a great blacksmith called Prometheus, a man of
great foresight and mastery of the metals and the earth.”
Jane
was once again very surprised. Her father had many times told her
about The Goon, a sort of rabbit boogeyman that would eat naughty
rabbit children if they did not behave. Of course, her father had
never pretended that it was nothing but a story, but it appeared to
be real, which sent shivers down her spine. And above it all Jane
could just make out the warped form of the…thing that had chased
her in the corridor of darkness just after her death. It was just
floating all over the sky, from horizon to horizon.
The
big difference was that this time it had its horrible black maw open,
sucking the images into it (explaining why the dreams in one era is
not the same as in other one). The mouth of the beast had rows and
rows of teeth, each one set in a smaller and smaller circle in the
mouth of the beast itself. Jane fell back and wished that she had
not looked.
“What
in the world IS that terrible creature!?” she asked the elder.
“That
is Az, the one in-between planes of existences.” The elder
responded.
“Only
a few can see all of it without losing their minds, and it is a
punishment more severe than Hell to be eaten by it. This punishment
was forbidden by the gods as the laws were given in the beginning of
time itself, as opening portals to it allowed a bit of its essence to
slip through. Eventually it would eat everything...”
Jane
recognized the word Az. It was an ancient rabbit word meaning void,
but this true translation had difficulty conveying the fear and dread
inherit in the word. Jane´s grandmother had told her that when the
gods were born, space was full of noise and goodness, but now Az had
been eating most of it before being sealed away between dimensions.
Jane wondered if this was true…Realizing that it was now or never,
Jane took a deep breathand jumped into the void. She screamed as loud
as she could, but the whistling air drowned it out. The green took
her mind and body for its own and she was dead, taken by the underworld...
Read Jackalopes here:
https://www.wattpad.com/126934443-jackalopes-the-paradise-of-tymor
Read my main blog (including my other projects):
http://atspela.blogspot.com/
