Story
Lucid Chapter 2
Chapter two: Ghosts Among Men.
Ila floated thinly above the ground, no conscious, no body. She just WAS. Nowhere. Everywhere. Her conscious was spread across the world, her body far behind on the ground.
“Ila,” soft-spoken words pulled her down to the ground. “Ila.” A hand lifted Ila’s chin. A face folded by wrinkles smiled down at her with crinkled eyes, sparkling with old wisdom, skimming her up and down. “You’ve grown.” The man said sadly. Part of Ila thought she should be scared of him, but an odd sort of familiar kept her rooted down.
“Who are you?” His face fell and he slowly removed his hand.
“Of course you wouldn’t remember.” He whispered, more to himself than to her. “But if you’re here, then…” He trailed off as horror lit his eyes.
“Then what?” Illa’s throat tightened. Suddenly, she felt cold and empty. The longer she stared at the man, the more she saw through him.
“Come quickly, Ila. There isn’t much time, and there is much to explain.” Wrapping his hand around her wrist, Ila let him pull her behind him as he ran through the rocky terrain, surprisingly quick for an old man.
“Where are we going?” Ila pulled her hair away from her face as it slapped her cheeks. More importantly, where were they? Despite the familiarity of it all, Ila was certain she’d never been there before.
“To see the one person who can explain better than I. Your mother.” Ila stopped dead in her tracks and wrenched her hand free. She folded her arms and glared, demanding an answer.
“You know my mother?” Impossible. Ila’s mother abandoned her in India, on the steps of an overcrowded orphanage and never showed her face again. As far as Ila was concerned, her mother and father were an American couple who couldn’t conceive a child, and chose to save one from a life in the system.
“Knew would be more appropriate.” The Elder stared off into the distance with a blank stare. He danced around her questions absent-mindedly. He was off in another world, reliving moments he couldn’t show Ila.
“That isn’t funny.” Ila wanted to wake up now. She chanted it over and over in her head as if her words could jump-start her mind. I want to wake up now. I want to-
“I’m afraid your dreaming trick won’t work here. This isn’t a dream.”
He motioned for Ila to follow him to the crest of a large hill. Reluctantly, she climbed to the top. Pebbles and blobs of ash crumbled under her feet. She stared out to the world below her. The rocky terrain smoothed out into an endless gray sheet of nothing. Translucent blobs moved ungracefully through the air, some alert, some weary. They resembled nothing, mear specks of illusion. The man turned to Ila and waved a flourished hand across the landscape. “Welcome, Ila, to the Vorus afterlife. Your mother is waiting.”
Slowly, the blobs took shape. Ila’s eyes sorted them into humanoid figures. “They’re ghosts.” Ila whispered. If she stared hard enough, kept her eyes focused on one figure, staining not to see through it, Ila could make out the shape of a human.
“We’re ghosts,” The elder corrected as he caught the eye of one of the ghosts. A sharp flicker of recognition passed between them, and it floated obediently to Ila’s side. When it drew closer, the form materialized. A small, curved nose hooked over a patch of freckles. Narrow eyes glimmered behind long eyelashes. She looked strikingly like Ila, faded as she was. Her pupils and irises were merely pale glowing orbs, whitish blue. Skin and hair alike was a pale contrast to Ila’s. Faded. A person who had been bleached into translucency.
“My precious child.” She spoke gently, a floating voice, thin as it passed through the hollow air. She wrapped her arms around Ila’s shoulders. They were cold. “Why are you here?” Her voice turned into one of heartbreak. Was this Ila’s mother?
“I don’t know.” Ila pleaded desperately. “I was asleep. I dreamed I was fighting monsters and I didn’t win. I want answers..”
“Was it of other-worldly hideousness?” The elderly man asked. “Claws and scales and talons?”
“How did you know?”
“That was no dream. The Ogra are no figment of your imagination.”
“That’s impossible.” No such monster existed on earth. No possible lab mutation could create a race like them. Only the twisted mind of a human could imagine a creature as bloodthirsty and ruthless, cruel as the Ogra.
“Nothing is impossible.” Ila’s mother cut her off and took over the lecture. “You do not dream like normal people. Since you were a baby you had one skill, a vital skill, that kept you alive while others died. You can break the fourth wall.”
“The Fourth what?” Wasn’t that a comic thing?
“The Fourth Wall is the barrier that separates realities. It is impenetrable, unbreakable, unreachable for all, save the Ogra, the most bloodthirsty monsters in every reality. And, you.
“By the time you were born, we knew our extinction was inevitable. We had the best weapons, made of Amnirite, the only metal able to kill the Ogra. We had evacuation measures under way. We barricaded and bunkered and fought. But the Ogra are many, strong, bloodthirsty and ruthless.” Ila’s mother broke off, raising a bent finger to her lips as if to hold back words.
“We survived the siege for several days, but we could not win. Our last hope of survival, our last hope of our species continuing, was you. A miracle child, who could break the Fourth Wall and live on another reality.” The man said. Ila knew she should feel bad. An emotion evoking speech had been presented, and she was simply staring at the presenter, slack-jawed, likely catching flies in her mouth. Everything was happening so fast that Ila barely had time to comprehend the story.
“To be completely honest, I’m still caught up on the so called mother,” Ila said, pointing to the ghostly woman, though not out of spite. Her brain was in overdrive, processing information at the speed of molasses, spitting out files like a faulty printer. She could practically see the red warning lights flashing behind her eyes.
It wasn’t that Ila never dreamed of a world where she met her real family. Ila dreamed about her mother all the time. But every time, her parents turned out to be demons in disguise, hideous monsters that wore the skin of her genes. Ila always woke up then, making an attempt to crawl away from her inner demons. She pinched herself and begged her mind to shake the dream loose before she had to watch her parents dissolve again. Even so, she stayed firmly planted in the fictional world. It made it easier, somehow, if her parents were evil. She could cope, stay planted in her identity.
“This isn’t a-”
“Dream, I know, you said that. It’s the Vorus afterlife or whatever. Except it is a dream, because I’m human, and I’m not dead.” Ila cut the elder off and folded her arms over her chest. The elder and woman exchanged a worried glance.
“There’s something you should see before you say that.” The woman pulled a compact mirror out of the translucent folds in her dress. Ila blinked, off-put by the fact that a ghost would carry a mirror around with them. Flipping it open, she revealed the reflection of Ila’s neck. Red flesh protruded unevenly, torn open to reveal a hole where her esophagus should be. Dried blood sprinkled her neck and chest like sadistic confetti.
The Ogra had ripped her neck open. Ila’s eyes followed the mirror up to her face. If the ghosts below were translucent, she was invisible. Wisps of her ghostly form curled away with the wind. “But it was a dream,” she whispered. How could the Ogra kill her? Only a dream, only her imagination. Sure, sometimes Ila woke up with scratches and bruises, but they always faded. This was permanent.
“It wasn’t a dream.” The elderly man repeated. “You broke the Fourth Wall and traveled to another reality. What happens to you there is permanent, though you can heal wounds quickly in your home reality.”
Hand covering her holed throat, Ila glared at the man. “How would you know that?”
Her ‘mother’ stepped in and laid a hand on Ila’s arm. “Because we designed you that way.”
“Designed me? Like I was some sort of sick experiment?” Ila snapped.
“I gave my baby to the Grand Elder so that he could equip her to survive.” Ila’s mother motioned to the elderly man. Her tone turned defensive. “Sometimes it came with repercussions, but my baby would be able to live. She was such an honor to us both. But now you’re dead, a warning come too late.”
“It’s not too late,” the elder said. Ila had a feeling he was the aforementioned ‘Grand Elder.’ Maybe she was in denial, but she wasn’t shocked to be dead. After the initial surprise, there was just…acceptance. Maybe it was the dreams, maybe it was a cynical outlook, maybe it was pessimism, but Ila never thought she’d make it past eighteen. Imagining herself at twenty, thirty, was like looking into a black hole. The cold pit in her stomach was more of a I-told-you-so than sadness. The Grand Elders claim fell on barely listening ears.
“I’m dead.” Ila said patiently. “That’s sort of a permanent thing.”
“Not for someone like you,” The Grand Elder pulled Ila behind him as he charged across the landscape. Her ghostly mother followed a few steps behind, lazily, in no rush. Maybe she wanted Ila to stay. Cresting another hill, the Grand Elder skittered to a stop. An obsidian obelisk peaked into the sky. Blood red stone engraved the words ‘Here lies a reminder to all who resist.”
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vision - June 19, 2016, 9:58 pm
Nice story. i love it. Please continue writing for the story lovers.