The Other Place

(An updated version of an old favorite.)

Noises. Echoes off the wall, metallic and distant.

I'm far away. I'm not here at all, not really. I'm just passing through. Just inbetween dreams.

These walls. These cold, damp, dark walls, they aren't really real. Neither is the blood I'm lying in. Blood from the brain is the hottest, I think they say.

No. That's probably not true. Still, I can pretend.

My skin is grey-white. Like mold on old bread. It looks rubbery, too, kind of like the skin of a dolphin or a whale or a seal.

My right eye is swollen, half-shut. I can only see the floor from it. The dirty, bloody basement floor with all its grime and cracks.

I can't feel my legs. I can't feel...anything, really.

My other eye is fully open and with it I can see a light far, far away. It's very dim, like the sun is at twilight. A violent, cursing orange. I wonder how long it's been on.

Where is Anna? She was here before. She was holding me, the pain still fresh and my many wound raw. She ran her fingers, covered in my blood, through my hair to soothe me and I felt safe despite the agony. Where is she now? Did he get to her, too?

Why did he do this? I never saw him before the cemetery. The would-be séance. He came out of the shadows while I read the words. Tipped his hat, an old fedora, and then he was on us. How long ago was that? Have I been here hours? Days, weeks? Maybe time doesn't exist here. Maybe I'm nowhere. Maybe I'm dead.

There is a slow breathing. The soft, dead wind of autumn moving fallen leaves. I am a fallen leaf and the Fedora Man has come to blow me away. A small bullet in place of wind. Or maybe a knife, if I'm lucky. He's not used either so far. If he did this to me, that is, but I suppose it's stupid to assume anything else. The man, his hat covering a demon visage and stone-cold eyes, he must have done this.

Scars on my chest and back and limbs. My intestines are slopping around in my belly.

Where is Anna?

A chilling, pristine clearing of the throat. A throat probably thick with dust and cobwebs. The Fedora Man looms over me, on the side my swollen eye is on, out of my line of vision.

"Have ya gone there yet? Have ya seen 'em?"

The voice is androgynous. Maybe I was mistaken calling him a man. It doesn't really matter, though.

I try to move my neck, to see him looking down at me from underneath that damned hat that reminds me of 1930's film noir. But I can't move. It hurts to even try. I just lie here, cold and numb and confused. Am I supposed to answer? I can't feel my tongue.

If I could answer, I'd say no. I'd tell him no, I haven't fucking seen anyone. But I can't.

What does he want? Why am I here?

"Ya haven't gone through far enough. You're still aware of it here, aren't ya? Let go a-that. Embrace the other place."

I don't want to be here. I want to get out of this place. I want to find Anna.

Where is Anna?

I want to shout it out at him. I want to scream it into his unseen ears until I create a little sonic boom in his skull and and his brains come spewing out the back of his head. Backwards projectile vomiting. For what he's done to me, he deserves that. Just take Anna out of whatever shadows you've put her in, Fedora Man, and let me fucking go.

"There's no way ta get out. I need ya ta go there. I need ya ta see 'em. See 'em and ya can leave. See 'em or.."

He pauses for a moment, clicking his tongue like the hands of a grandfather clock. Pondering, Fedora Man? I thought people like you never had to do something like that. That's for us normal people. Not you genius psychotic mastermind fucks. I thought that reality was painted on your brain, Fedora Man. I thought the world was in the palm of your hand. You need me? I won't play.

"..Or she'll have ta die," he finishes. "Go away ta the other place or I'll kill her. Slow. That's the way it goes. I'll cut her up nice and neat unless ya go there."

No. Anna. Don't hurt Anna. She's innocent. She was just there. I was the one with the book. I was the one who went to the grave. She's innocent. She just wanted to be with me. So don't you fucking touch her.

"Do we have a deal? Keep quiet if ya agree."

He laughs at that. Clever one. It's easy to crack all the jokes when the cards are all up one sleeve and some girl's life is up the other. I hate you, Fedora Man. I hope I get the chance to put a gun to your obscured face. I want to hear the pulpy explosion as your head turns inside out. Then, I'll be laughing.

"Alright, then. Time ta go. Go back ta sleep..."

I can't fight him. I can't do anything. I just have to lie here as he does something to the back of my head. Almost like he's digging or twisting inside my brains to work me a certain way. A perverse wind-up toy.

I hate this loss of control. I hope Anna hasn't had to go through this. I hope she's safe, escaping right now as he tinkers with my cranium.

The last thing I think is that I wish I'd never found that goddamn book.

--

I'm far away. I'm not here at all, not really. I'm just passing through. Just inbetween dreams. I'm a wisp of smoke, a ghost on the wind.

I can feel what's going on now, but I wish I couldn't. This is the other place, where the Fedora Man wanted me to go.

I'm lost in some kind of strange ocean that really isn't an ocean at all, tentacles of half-invisible leviathans all around me. I feel a current, like a warm hand flowing through me. Like a surgeon poking at my guts. There are noises, too. A terrible cacophony. The screeching of birds and nails. Screams of the dying.

Where have I gone?

There is a kind of thunder here. Where there is blackness one moment, a burst of white air puffs into existence, like the breathing of some enormous and multi-faceted entity. When the whiteness appears I see thin things, something between skeletons and eels, floating, moving through the chasm I've fallen into. They're making all the noise, I'm sure of this. But it is not just meaningless moans. Their horrible clamor is a language of sorts and, God forgive me, I can understand them.

I hear whispers;

"Their world decays."

"The great trek draws near."

"The torment! Ecstacy within their pain. It makes us strong, it makes us strong!"

"Can you feel them? They tremble at our presence."

"The veil is thinning."

This I hear from many places around me, the voices all shrill and wicked with glee.

These things are dark scavengers, as I have read. Moving from world to world through this place, their home and great transport, to feed on violence and sorrow and hate and pain. Was this what the Fedora Man wanted me to hear? Why? Why?

The things are akin to descriptions in the old book, the one I stole from him. They have no real name, but the book refers to them as "evil slithering things, like the snakes upon Medusa's brow, with skin like liquid obsidian glass". Viral beings who contaminate, kill, and feed. We are their main dish. They will only move on when we are no more.

I don't want to be here. All I want is to be safe with Anna in my arms.

How does this all connect? What does the Fedora Man want?

Something must be going on. The skeleton things, the Glass Medusas, are quickening, moving faster, fluxuating in this dark sea. I can hear their voices pacing with insanity.

"Not one of us! Not one of us!"

"A passer. It does not belong."

"Cut it loose. Break the mortal bond."

I've been caught. I have to get out, I have to find my way out. Where is the Fedora Man? Damn him for this.

The tentacles, once liquid and translucent, are now very real and tightening around my thin chest.

I can't breathe. I'm...I'm drowning.

Anna. here...Anna...

Anna.

--

Awake.

The dream-doors are shut. I am again in the house of my soul.

The basement's cold, wet floor burns my skin, it's sudden sensation unexpected. I look around. It's still dark but for that tiny orange light. The Fedora Man is somewhere nearby. I can feel the pain in my chest from the tentacles in the other place.

I was not asleep. I was not asleep.

I cough, vomiting up what seems like black water from my stomach. A raw, salty taste frees my trapped voice and I slowly and weakly rise with a scream echoing off the metal walls. I cry out to the Fedora Man, curse him over and over, and demand to see her. Demand to see Anna, to be set free. I have seen your other place, I shout, and I will never go back.

That strange laugh. It pierces through the darkness of the damp room.

I can't take this anymore. I lash out, try to take a blind swing at the creature that's taken me here and pushed me into the shadow lands, but I cannot find him. The orange light bulb swings overhead.

"Why do ya think I sent ya there?" the Fedora Man asks. "Why do ya think I've kept ya here, beaten ya, starved ya, made ya stew in yer own sad shit?"

I stand in oblivion, lost to some looming truth. There is something off about this basement now. Something completely wrong. I walk awkwardly towards nowhere, hearing scrapings against the metal walls.

Why? I ask. Why did you do it?

The Fedora Man doesn't answer. He just stands somewhere close, probably watching me with a sneer under that Dick Tracy hat of his.

"She's dead, you know. I killed her days ago."

The words hit me like bullets. I fall onto the floor, some of my wounds opening up again and bleeding. I shiver, my mind dissolving to save the rest of me from the pain.

No. Anna. Not Anna. No...

"Don't ya get it yet?"

I shake my head. I know he sees me despite the darkness.

"Ya were the bait."

A moment later, a countless number of lights shudder on, as if breathed to life by some enormous and multi-faceted entity.

White air. Echoes.

Before me, lining the immense metal walls, are things of indescribable horror. It's better if I don't, but I can't help but do so.

The tentacled things, the ones who tried to drown me, are the largest, like barely stable mutant whales. But the skeleton things, see-through like jellyfish, they're the masters, they're the ones who are in control.

The Fedora Man has opened a doorway. Now the Other Place is free to spill into and infect our world. And it's all my fault. I was the key.

I don't want to be here. I want to escape, to be with my Anna.

Far away. Far away.

I watch in blank, uncaring horror as one of the leviathan things, the Drowners, whiplashes its dripping mammoth tendril towards me faster than my eyes have time to blink in reaction. It wraps around my chest and I feel the pressure against my ribcage and pelvis and shoulder blades. It's crushing me, crushing me into human burger.

The Fedora Man laughs his creepy, stupid laugh.

Yeah, you won, Fedora Man. You outsmarted the dumb, naive, jackass college kid. You made him steal your book, mad him try to speak to the dead, you know, just for a good gag, and then you snagged him and his girl. Way to go. Hoorah, hoorah, hoo-fucking-rah for you.

I'm starting to lose feeling in my body again. Everything's getting darker. Blurry. It's so hard to breathe. Excuse me if I cut this narration short.

...I wonder what the prick did with Anna's body...

This is it. I'm leaving. Opening dream-doors. House of the soul for lease. Barely used. Cheap. Make your offers now.

I'm going. Far away...