Unreal City (14 page)

I focused all my energy into the soil beneath my feet. Before my eyes the autumnal scene blew away as if by a great gust of wind, and in its place sprouted up a green forest. Vines curled, wildflowers blossomed, towering pines creaked, and moss spread out beneath my feet like a carpet. The longer I focused, pouring out all my love and longing and memories of her life, the hotter the energy around me grew. It was curling around, growing larger and healthier from the nutrients in the soil and the green world above it. The longer I poured that light energy into the ground, the weaker I began to feel. When I could no longer expend anything more, I stumbled back. I panted, feeling everything that I remembered about my sister pulsing in the ground before me, incubating with every beat of its artificial heart.

At once I regretted my choice, and turned back to face Felix. He must have known what I was doing, and I wondered if it would amuse him—but nervousness had replaced his glimmering smile. Burning eyes were fixed on the ground where Lea was, which had begun pulsating gently. He turned toward me, defeat in his eyes.

“Sarah, why did you do this?” he lamented, sounding broken-hearted.

“I just wanted to see her again!” I cried.

In response Felix hunched to the ground, resting his head on his paws as a look of deep sadness passed over his too-human face. He shut his eyes and remained there, still as stone.

Before I could object to his leaving me to deal with this uncertain situation on my own, the ground behind me began to rumble. I turned just in time to see it split apart as a head of blonde hair rose, speckled with fragments of dirt and roots. She came up from the earth, straight backed and smiling, dressed in the clothes I’d last seen her in. Her eyes were there, Lea’s eyes—the ones that looked just like mine, except with her own unique softness behind them.

I let out a wail, a desperate mixture of anguish and joy. I’d forgotten how beautiful she was—how healthy and put-together she’d always looked. I stumbled forward when, at last, she had completely risen out of the ground and stood upon her mound of disturbed soil. She was serene, silent, a delicate and unassuming smile on her lips.

“Lea. Lea, say something to me,” I begged, resisting the urge to leap forward and take her into my arms.

“Sarah, I missed you.”

I ran forward then and pulled her into a tight embrace. It was all there: the smell of the shampoo she always used, the length and texture of her hair, her bony shoulders. She was back with me, she was safe. I could see her again and touch her. We could laugh together again and the raw, aching pain that up until now had never let me rest would be nothing but an unpleasant memory. This would become the real world and that other terrible place would be the nightmare that I only visited briefly to keep my body alive and pay the price for my unending bliss.

“Oh God, Lea. Lea it’s you. You’re back with me. You can’t ever go again. You don’t know what it’s been like without you,” I murmured into her shoulder, laying my head upon her collarbone. I felt her wrap her arms around my waist and hold tight, but there was something mechanical in her response.

I opened my streaming eyes, my heart feeling like someone was twisting it around until all the muscles threatened to fall apart with the tension. I leaned deeper into her and felt the solidness of her chest give way a little. I let go at once and drew back in horror, spotting a crushed depression where my head had been.

“
Lea!
” I wailed, wanting to reach out for her again, but afraid my grip might crush more of her.

Her expression never changed. She was still calm and smiling, but as I watched her, more of her flesh collapsed inward. Her cheeks sunk in, her bones crumpled forward, and the skin around her neck began to shrivel up.

I could hear myself screaming as I fell to my knees. The black, filthy yellow of necrosis crawled across her as she continued to implode. Her blue eyes were eaten by rot for minute after excruciating minutes, until she had become nothing but a clean, pearly skeleton continuing to stand upright before me.

I howled as I cowered on the ground, unable to tear my eyes from the odious sight. As her bones stood poised, the plants around her feet began to stir. Rapidly they snaked and curled around the bones, reaching up to claim her. A tree sprouted from below, pushing her skeleton upward. In seconds she was cocooned inside of the hollowed tree trunk, just a pillar lifting into the air, draped in soil, bark, vines, leaves, grass, and flowers. The lichens and spongy moss attached themselves to her bones and grew around Lea’s cleaned corpse, until she had become part of the plant system of my garden. Yet the human shape remained visible as the tree grew only a few feet higher than me. Out of her eye sockets grew two white flowers, and even then I felt as if she were watching me.

I lay upon the mossy ground, sobbing, and the plants grew over my body too, curling around my wrists and through my hair. Flowers fluttered up around my couch of damp flora. Peering through my tears, I could see Felix had gone. I couldn’t feel him anywhere, so I lay back on the ground and let myself weep until my senses were almost numb. I couldn’t remember when it started happening, but all too late I became aware that the plants were pulling me downward into the plot of churned soil from where the artificial Lea had quickened. I screamed, trying to fight the plant life, but it had grown too tightly around me. I was going into the ground whether I wanted to or not.

I shut my eyes and willed it to stop, to have my garden return to my absolute control, but it would not obey. My feet went under first, and not even the most violent of kicks would slow that downward pull. I was hiccoughing now, trying to claw my way out of the sinking hole, but my fingers only tore through soft soil. I rolled onto my stomach as the vines curled around my torso, and felt my shoulders get swallowed by the ground. The light was starting to fade. There was dirt in my throat, choking me, stinging my eyes and worming its way into my ears. I was being buried alive, going deeper by the minute, and feeling my heart thunder inside of me against the oppressive, smashing force of the earth. Weight pressed in from all sides and I lost the ability to breathe or see. I was suspended, frozen and suffocating in the blackness of this subterranean trap. The voice of Arthur reverberated around in my skull.

This is a prison.

I wanted to scream, I wanted to fight, but my throat was blocked up with dirt. I was suffocating, feeling every jagged, throbbing pain, but I knew I couldn’t die down here. Roots were crawling around me now, attaching to my skin and sapping my blood. A root pushed through the ground and pierced right into my chest and stomach, branching out and growing into my body’s systems and pathways. Below me, I could feel something pulsing and beating—that same life energy. There was another world below the surface, and I could sense it was filled with things that pushed the boundaries of what a human mind could comprehend. And it was pulling me inward, hungry, wanting to assimilate my energy as a part of it. I was being slowly eaten by Unreal City.

At that moment, my panic and agony and frustration reached a screaming crescendo and power swelled within my chest. With a mighty push, I reached deep within the well of my own thoughts and found a memory of quiet. This world was mine. I was in control. If it was swallowing me and trying to ingest my essence, it was a monster within me that was trying to accomplish this. If I had created that monster, however subconsciously, I still retained mastery over it. With mighty force I pulled my hand away from its pathetic reach for the surface, cut through the earth as if it were mere gel, and grabbed onto my necklace.

As soon as my fingers touched the metal, I felt a bolt of electricity shoot through my body. The darkness that surrounded me shattered like glass. A light brighter than anything that should be perceived by human eyes blew past me—as if it were energy from the source of Unreal City: the luminescence of pure creation. It disintegrated the soil inside of me, burning away the roots as I became flooded by its rushing force. My awareness melted away into oblivion.

I AWOKE IN
my bed, my chest heaving and my body drenched in sweat. A harried glance out the window told me it was a little past dawn. I mopped my brow with the back of my hand and saw Felix staring at me from the corner of the room. His trademark grin, however, was still not present.

“You—” I gasped, heavy with the memories of being packed into the ground of Unreal City. “You left me there. How could you leave me?”

“I never left you, Sarah,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “You sent me away.”

I didn’t have the energy to argue with him. I dragged myself out of bed and down the bunk ladder. The screen of my laptop glowed with a slideshow of photos, many of them containing Lea. I closed the lid, the sight bringing back vivid memories of her flesh rotting away before my eyes.

I didn’t have time to process what had happened up there—
down there? Over there? Where is the City?
—before the ringing in my ears began once more, so shrill I collapsed on the bottom bunk, clutching my head in agony. The ringing persisted.

“Felix, what’s happening to me? What happened in my garden?” I begged, not strong enough despite my discomfort to get up from the bed that Lea would never sleep in.

“Right now your brain is adjusting to the new way that you experience reality. It will start to pick up aberrations on this side of things. They are essentially ‘bleed-throughs’ from realities. You’re aware of them now because of your heightened sense of perception. You will see or feel bits of displaced energy that haven’t quite been …
processed
,” Felix explained with a hint of that sadistic amusement. “They cannot harm you, though. What happened back in your garden was an illustration of what takes place if you let your subconscious grievances or desires take over your mind. They take on a will of their own because you allow them too much license, Sarah.”

“That would have been
great
to know beforehand, friend,” I sneered.

“You never asked.” His smile was cruel. I stared at him, gauging his burning, hungry gaze. He was a parasite, a wicked parasite
….

“Go. Go.” It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him to leave me alone for the remainder of my life, to let this all be a terrible, beautiful memory and go on with things, but I just
couldn’t
. I needed to know more, and the fear that I might encounter more drowned victims without my supernatural partner by my side was considerable. Felix had told me that he could fight...that he could
kill.

“Yes, Sarah?”

“Go—stay in there for a while. Don’t come out until I tell you,” I said, pointing to the wardrobe on the other side of the room.

Felix looked somber. “In there, Sarah? Why? Have I misbehaved?”

“Just
go
. I don’t want to see you for a while.”

“Sarah, you won’t let me starve, will you?” he pleaded, his ears going back.

“
Go
,” I commanded with a still pointed finger and Felix slinked across the room, opened the wardrobe with his paw, shot me a final look of malicious distaste, and shut himself inside.

I needed to figure out what I was going to do. I sat down at the desk, noticing I had a text from Joy. She had heard about my episode at the crime scene from a friend of hers in the crowd and wanted to know if I was okay. We sent a few texts back and forth, and in an hour’s time I found myself sitting on the old, rusty playground carousel, talking with her.

We spun and talked about trivial things—the painted words
seek your bliss
flashing by—and decided a trip to the beach was in order. She was stressed with our project due next week and midterms already around the corner. I found it hard to share her feelings of anxiety over these now-trivial matters, but I sympathized nonetheless. We took a Zip Car down to the city and walked along the boardwalk while sipping smoothies. I brought my camera along, capturing moments here and there—capturing Joy’s image and along with it proof that we had known each other. Just in case.

It grounded me to be in this peaceful setting with her. Her good mood never seemed to fade. Once we reached the boardwalk we headed down to sit in the sand.