April 10, 2010 Edit: The story is all gone save Chapter 1. Feel free to reread Chapters 2 through the end, you might be amused.
Edit April 8, 2010: Just two days left before I pull this down. I've gotten response from a couple of you through various private means, but just reminding everyone else that might wanna steal this that on Saturday this goes away on the active Pavilion and the window on getting a free digital copy from me closes a week from this Saturday.
April 3, 2010 Edit: I know a couple of you have read this whole thing the way I posted it here, and I really appreciate those of you who've done so. I recently went through and did another small editing phase along with the addition of several minor scenes throughout the book (part of the plan to turn this from a standalone work into part of a series), but I won't be adding them in here or posting the story newly on the forum.
I'm also going to pull this one down in a week's time, because I'm going to be trying again to get it published, and failing that I'll self-publish, probably through Lulu. If anyone's interested in this version, take whatever steps you need to keep it. If anyone is interested in the final version, PM me an e-mail or something and I'll get it to you (still a few tweaks to be done). After two weeks I won't be giving it away anymore, either. I'm trying to motivate myself to really try and make this a viable career instead of just playing around as an amusing hobby, so after a time it'll be available for purchase through some means. Otherwise you gotta bootleg it. =V
That's all. Just remember, this is coming down in a week and in two weeks I won't give you a free copy anymore. Thanks again to anyone who's taken the time to read even a little bit of my work, and if you enjoyed what you read, all the better. I know I'm an amateur and there are many things better out there you could be doing with your time, and the significant time invested into reading a novel is not lost on me. I really do appreciate it. =)
_____
Original post below:
Here's the promised post of my novel. I'll update it with full chapters whenever I get around to it, but rest assured, the whole thing will be up here soon. Feel free to post any thoughts here or in my other Imaginari topic, as I'll probably be updating the both of them on a semi-regular basis.
The first few chapters include mostly stuff that I've already posted once before, in an old topic that I don't feel like necro-ing, plus it's gone through some facelifting since then, anyway.
For anyone that doesn't know what I'm talking about, I posted a topic for this in 2006, and added about 30 pages to it in the interim between 2006 and early 2007 (or so), but I finished the novel last September, and just wouldn't post it here 'cause I'm chicken. D=
The story itself is a bit of science-fiction/fantasy/mystery all rolled up into one strange tale of survival in a future where humankind seems to be extinct. The main characters, Addison Taylor and Winn Cox, must discover how they came to be here, and what their purpose is in this far-flung future without man.
Enjoy.
_____
*****
He awoke and found he must be dreaming. He sat up, rubbing sleep from his coffee-colored eyes, expecting to wake once again comfortably in his bed – tangled in his sheets perhaps – but in his bed. When the surreal surroundings did not dissolve into other dreams or even wink out as consciousness reached him, he shot up from the ground. Leaves stuck to his back and in his short black hair. A cold sweat formed on his nearly naked form: he wore only gray boxer briefs and white ankle-length socks. A cool breeze whipped through… wherever the hell he was, and gooseflesh erupted all over his skin.
He stood surrounded by trees, mighty oaks bigger than any he had ever seen or even known to exist. His arboreal prison was so tightly spaced that squirrels would not even be able to escape. His mind flashed red as panic struck. No exit! He bounded through a thick layer of dead leaves until he reached the circular wall of trees, searching for some obscured pathway out. Scour as he would no tunnel or path was to be found. Neither would he be able to climb out, as the branches did not even begin until thirty or so feet above his head. He began shouting, screaming for help that he already sensed would not come.
“Helloooo!” he screeched, his own echoes answering him in a peculiar metallic fashion. “Can anyone hear me?”
Standing in the center of his circular cell, he yelled and screamed and hollered until his lungs labored and his throat grew hoarse. A thinning canopy of yellowing leaves hundreds of feet above even the lowest branch shed little light in shafts that beamed onto the forest floor. He continued breathing heavily, but now that he had ceased panicking, he detected the familiar scents of forest that he remembered from his youth as a Boy Scout, and more recently from his forays into the city park. He willed himself to calm down and assess his situation.
He sat down among the leaves and received a new surprise: cold metal met his hands when he lowered down all the way. He quickly brushed away a large area of leaves to discover a shiny blue surface, no seams or cracks whatsoever. He frantically stood again, brushing away every inch of leaves until he finally found what he had been hoping for: a hatch. At least he hoped it was a hatch.
He stepped around the squared line in the otherwise smooth blue surface, like a predator circling its prey, waiting for the right time to strike. It occurred to him that aside from this square, there were no indents or outcroppings or handles or anything with which to open this, assuming it was a door – for he refused to believe it anything else.
Desperately he dropped to his hands and knees, searching for purchase with his fingernails and finding none. He scratched and scrambled at the indent. He pounded it with his fists and cursed at it under his breath until his right index finger’s nail got caught in the hair-thin line. He pulled back in frustration before realizing this and ripped half the fingernail off. He yanked his hand to his chest in frustrated agony as blood raised from the wound as though water from a newly discovered underground spring. It welled and then dripped once, twice, three times onto the cold blue metal. He renewed his assault against the portal beneath his feet, slamming hard on it with fists and stomping with socked feet. He had given up forcing his way through, but it felt good to rail against this unknown enemy.
Wiping tears from his face, he tasted salt and the rusty sweetness of his own blood. All at once he became aware of his truer, baser needs: hunger and thirst. Pangs gripped his body from throat to intestine, anguishing him further. His insides threatened to cave in, and he absently wondered how long he had been in this place if he was this hungry.
He lay back and sucked the blood from his rent nail. He tensed up as he clamped his teeth to the hanging nail. Then he winced as the nail tore free the rest of the way. With the worst of that pain out of the way, he spit the nail into the leaves and wrapped one of his socks around the tender flesh to stop the bleeding.
He waited for the throbbing agony in his finger to rescind before he allowed his mind to go to work. Okay, not panicking. Thinking, planning, figuring out. I’m good at this. Playing puzzle games in his spare time had honed his skill at seeing through mazes and patterns, and he discerned this to be a puzzle if nothing else. There had to be a key or switch or word that triggered the door to open, allowing his freedom. He rose to his elbows and looked around, thinking that maybe he missed a keyhole or a keypad somewhere, but still he found nothing but leaves, trees, and the cruel, cool, blue metal under him.
Shadows flickered across the ground as the gust picked up, and he noticed that these silhouettes had elongated slightly. Soon the sun would go beyond his sparse hole and he would be in utter darkness. He doubled his search effort, thinking to avoid a terrifying pitch darkness, but nothing he did or said or hit made a dent or a difference. Shadows now covered the whole circle in which he stood, and he understood that with such heights surrounding him, the sun would only shine in for a scant few hours. The day remained bright, but no light shone in on the pit he felt would be his grave. He collapsed against an oak, felt the rough bark on his bare back and resigned himself to rest a minute.
He saw it then.
An incandescent green appeared up through the leaves in sparse jumbles. “Clever,” he said aloud, mostly to keep his wits about him. He scrambled around to see what message had been scrawled all along the metallic floor, picking out symbol by symbol. It comforted him to see that the letters formed words in his own language, and his excitement grew as he uncovered a full statement. After discerning the last letter, his heart sank. It made no sense:
He said this aloud – in reverent tones, for some reason thinking it would help if said deferentially. He waited tensely but nothing happened. He repeated the line several times and still nothing. Tears threatened to overtake his vision as panic tried to win out again.
“I don’t get it!” he yelled. A single tear dropped to the glowing green “P” of “Path” and he stopped, realizing his error. “… Wait a minute. Capitals!” he shouted, as if someone stood with him in this circle. He rechecked the letters and reviewed what he now had:
R…E…P…A…I…R…
REPAIR.
“Puzzle indeed!” He laughed. Clearing his throat he said loud and clear, “Repair.” Nothing happened again for several very tense moments. Just as he thought to give up entirely and let the tears flow, a loud humming clicked on somewhere beneath him. The blue metal rumbled as unseen mechanisms did their supposed duties in the underbelly of this prison. Steam shot out from a corner of the square door – which rumbled in place – as it unlatched from whatever held it there. He had been expecting the door to slowly rise with a pneumatic hiss or to dissolve in some pseudo science fiction sort of way, but what happened was certainly not part of any movie he had ever seen. The door exploded from its place, rocketing up into the vertical tunnel, nearly taking his head off in the process. It shifted and shuffled leaves from their place before the wind caught it and it disappeared beyond the wall of his prison.
He looked down and almost collapsed with relief: a lighted stairwell wound down into whatever facility he was standing on. He had done it. He had beaten the puzzle.
Freedom lay somewhere below.
He reached out to the stairwell and descended, vowing to play more puzzle games if he ever found his way out of this alive.
*****
Down the stairwell the man clambered, so happy to be away from the circle of trees that he nearly tripped and fell the last few steps. Righting himself and peering around, he noticed at once that he had but one option, one path. The tunnel in which he stood did not look as he had expected (mysterious pipes and keypads and hidden panels and repetitive steam relieving pressure from some ancient relic of a science fiction movie gone wrong). Rather it looked as if it had never been touched by any detritus of use or abuse. He had no tools for measuring, but his eyesight said the pathway was perfectly straight and circular in shape for farther than his vision would allow. That cold, blue, seamless metal went on for what could have been forever, perfectly straight and featureless save for yellow-glowing half-orbs attached to the eight-foot high ceiling every few yards. In the confines of the closed tunnel, he was suddenly aware of his own body odor.
Determining not to lose hope in this metallic wormhole, he removed the slightly bloody sock from his finger; seeing that he no longer bled, he replaced the sock on his foot and began his journey. His first few steps caused his blood to stir and his pulse to jump, for the first light he passed under instantly flicked off with a small whirr. He stopped, but instinct took over. Fearing the lights had begun a chain of dousing he took off into the tunnel, not wanting to be trapped in this place with no light. Slipping momentarily on his socks, he nearly ripped them off until sweat gave them grip and he moved steadily down the tunnel. He kept pace with the orbs deluminating, never passing one before it shut down.
He chanced a glance behind him, wondering if he could still see the stairway leading into the cursed circle of oak – perhaps an escape back into daylight if he panicked – but the sunlight ceased and he saw nothing but darkness behind.
He slipped.
Another light dimmed as he toppled to the lower half of the circle and slid several inches before the sweat covering his body slipped away; his skin screamed as it came to a mind-piercing halt with the sound a tennis shoe makes on a basketball court. He hurried to get up, to keep moving, but the lights had ended their taunting race and he stopped, confused.
A thought occurred: a test to be administered. He stood up hastily, swallowed his fear, and took several steps forward. He stepped under the next light, which went out immediately. He laughed aloud, but trembled at his own echoes. “This bread-crumb trail is backwards,” he mused. “And where’s my Gretel?”
He stopped laughing when he realized that he had thought nothing of anything but his own base survival since waking up. Having taken it for granted all his life, he cast into his mind to find his name, worrying that by some terrible cliché it had been erased from memory, but he landed on it as quickly as thought of: Addison. Last name Taylor. Parents Wendy and Charles. He quickly scanned through the basics of his life, determining that if he had any amnesia at all, it was only of how he had come to be in the circle of trees.
It was not time to reflect, however. Addison walked on.
After a time he forgot that the lights winked out behind him. He walked and walked for what seemed hours – and probably was – until his throat screamed for liquid and his muscles burned. He tried not to think of the aches in his stomach. The growling never stopped, as if a lion stalked him every passing minute. He finally became tired and forced himself to lie down, cringing only a bit as his bare back touched the cool metal. Pondering his circumstances, he at once wondered how long he could keep on without water or food. Boy Scouts aside, he was no survivalist – given to panicking and wasting of energy – and to continue in this way might yield an exit, but mile after mile, he had begun to doubt that there really was an end.
Addison stood up again, feeling temporary relief from what may have been an all-day excursion. He followed the half-globes of yellowish light further into the never-winding tunnel. Not even ten minutes after his rest he came upon the first difference in the tunnel: an intersection, two identical blue funnels leading into his own in chicken-foot fashion. He had nearly missed both openings as neither was lit. The light-globes had gone out, or were never on. Where his own tunnel – and indeed, perhaps, not even just his tunnel anymore – continued on, there was still only one string of half-globes lit on the ceiling, but to either side of the glowing orbs another doused light lingered. He took a cautious step forward, wondering what the lights would do now that there was more than one; the single light went out, as usual, but nothing happened to the others.
Two others had already taken this path, and had made it at least this far.
He detected a faint scent in the sterilized air: perfume of some sort. Wildflowers, maybe. Excitement overtook him. Someone’s been through here, and recently! He took off at a wild sprint, hoping to catch up to the sweet-smelling woman in a matter of minutes. Presently the perfume became stronger, and he chanced a yell that he hoped would stop her. “Hello! Is there someone ahead of me?”
He kept his ears pricked for sound, but kept moving. For several frightening moments no sound but his own echo, his footfalls, and his labored breathing answered him. Then a faint but feminine voice shouted, “Hurry!” She sounded urgent. “The door is closing!”
Door.
An exit. His lungs burned as he pushed himself harder, the gooey saliva in his mouth and throat drying. He wondered if he would vomit. He kept on for another several minutes, each moment passing in a frantic haze. Aches became distant. He thought his vision began to blur, but was in fact mistaking daylight for that foggy lightheadedness he had read about in murder mysteries and suspense novels.
Moments passed. Addison was vaguely aware of the woman’s voice urging him on and the light diminishing. He thought he was fainting. Then he quite suddenly toppled over something hard and landed bareback on soft ground.
He had made it. Above his head he could see the circular doorway – what he had run into – close in on itself the rest of the way. He laughed and realized that he was crying, too. He tried to sit up, but dizziness set in and his body shut itself down. Blackness. That dreaded darkness.
He awoke feeling groggy. The dim view of the sun he had seen before passing out told him he had only been out a few minutes, maybe even a few seconds. Reminders popped up all over his body that he was dehydrated and famished: headache, blurry vision, aching lungs, growling stomach. In his weakness he forced himself to a sitting position and leaned against the circular doorway.
A woman – bare as the day she came into the world – sat staring at him from a good fifteen yards away. Her arms were wrapped around her legs, pulled tight to her chest, obscuring all private areas from vision. Addison turned red in embarrassment.
He had the feeling that she was looking him over just as scrupulously as he wanted to check her out, but all she said was, “Good. You made it. Now find me some clothes.”
_____
The rest is available by request for another week, and after that it will appear on Lulu at some point and if you wanna read it by then it'll cost ya. =P
Edit April 8, 2010: Just two days left before I pull this down. I've gotten response from a couple of you through various private means, but just reminding everyone else that might wanna steal this that on Saturday this goes away on the active Pavilion and the window on getting a free digital copy from me closes a week from this Saturday.
April 3, 2010 Edit: I know a couple of you have read this whole thing the way I posted it here, and I really appreciate those of you who've done so. I recently went through and did another small editing phase along with the addition of several minor scenes throughout the book (part of the plan to turn this from a standalone work into part of a series), but I won't be adding them in here or posting the story newly on the forum.
I'm also going to pull this one down in a week's time, because I'm going to be trying again to get it published, and failing that I'll self-publish, probably through Lulu. If anyone's interested in this version, take whatever steps you need to keep it. If anyone is interested in the final version, PM me an e-mail or something and I'll get it to you (still a few tweaks to be done). After two weeks I won't be giving it away anymore, either. I'm trying to motivate myself to really try and make this a viable career instead of just playing around as an amusing hobby, so after a time it'll be available for purchase through some means. Otherwise you gotta bootleg it. =V
That's all. Just remember, this is coming down in a week and in two weeks I won't give you a free copy anymore. Thanks again to anyone who's taken the time to read even a little bit of my work, and if you enjoyed what you read, all the better. I know I'm an amateur and there are many things better out there you could be doing with your time, and the significant time invested into reading a novel is not lost on me. I really do appreciate it. =)
_____
Original post below:
Here's the promised post of my novel. I'll update it with full chapters whenever I get around to it, but rest assured, the whole thing will be up here soon. Feel free to post any thoughts here or in my other Imaginari topic, as I'll probably be updating the both of them on a semi-regular basis.
The first few chapters include mostly stuff that I've already posted once before, in an old topic that I don't feel like necro-ing, plus it's gone through some facelifting since then, anyway.
For anyone that doesn't know what I'm talking about, I posted a topic for this in 2006, and added about 30 pages to it in the interim between 2006 and early 2007 (or so), but I finished the novel last September, and just wouldn't post it here 'cause I'm chicken. D=
The story itself is a bit of science-fiction/fantasy/mystery all rolled up into one strange tale of survival in a future where humankind seems to be extinct. The main characters, Addison Taylor and Winn Cox, must discover how they came to be here, and what their purpose is in this far-flung future without man.
Enjoy.
_____
Something More
by
Rick Cook
by
Rick Cook
*****
Chapter 1
He awoke and found he must be dreaming. He sat up, rubbing sleep from his coffee-colored eyes, expecting to wake once again comfortably in his bed – tangled in his sheets perhaps – but in his bed. When the surreal surroundings did not dissolve into other dreams or even wink out as consciousness reached him, he shot up from the ground. Leaves stuck to his back and in his short black hair. A cold sweat formed on his nearly naked form: he wore only gray boxer briefs and white ankle-length socks. A cool breeze whipped through… wherever the hell he was, and gooseflesh erupted all over his skin.
He stood surrounded by trees, mighty oaks bigger than any he had ever seen or even known to exist. His arboreal prison was so tightly spaced that squirrels would not even be able to escape. His mind flashed red as panic struck. No exit! He bounded through a thick layer of dead leaves until he reached the circular wall of trees, searching for some obscured pathway out. Scour as he would no tunnel or path was to be found. Neither would he be able to climb out, as the branches did not even begin until thirty or so feet above his head. He began shouting, screaming for help that he already sensed would not come.
“Helloooo!” he screeched, his own echoes answering him in a peculiar metallic fashion. “Can anyone hear me?”
Standing in the center of his circular cell, he yelled and screamed and hollered until his lungs labored and his throat grew hoarse. A thinning canopy of yellowing leaves hundreds of feet above even the lowest branch shed little light in shafts that beamed onto the forest floor. He continued breathing heavily, but now that he had ceased panicking, he detected the familiar scents of forest that he remembered from his youth as a Boy Scout, and more recently from his forays into the city park. He willed himself to calm down and assess his situation.
He sat down among the leaves and received a new surprise: cold metal met his hands when he lowered down all the way. He quickly brushed away a large area of leaves to discover a shiny blue surface, no seams or cracks whatsoever. He frantically stood again, brushing away every inch of leaves until he finally found what he had been hoping for: a hatch. At least he hoped it was a hatch.
He stepped around the squared line in the otherwise smooth blue surface, like a predator circling its prey, waiting for the right time to strike. It occurred to him that aside from this square, there were no indents or outcroppings or handles or anything with which to open this, assuming it was a door – for he refused to believe it anything else.
Desperately he dropped to his hands and knees, searching for purchase with his fingernails and finding none. He scratched and scrambled at the indent. He pounded it with his fists and cursed at it under his breath until his right index finger’s nail got caught in the hair-thin line. He pulled back in frustration before realizing this and ripped half the fingernail off. He yanked his hand to his chest in frustrated agony as blood raised from the wound as though water from a newly discovered underground spring. It welled and then dripped once, twice, three times onto the cold blue metal. He renewed his assault against the portal beneath his feet, slamming hard on it with fists and stomping with socked feet. He had given up forcing his way through, but it felt good to rail against this unknown enemy.
Wiping tears from his face, he tasted salt and the rusty sweetness of his own blood. All at once he became aware of his truer, baser needs: hunger and thirst. Pangs gripped his body from throat to intestine, anguishing him further. His insides threatened to cave in, and he absently wondered how long he had been in this place if he was this hungry.
He lay back and sucked the blood from his rent nail. He tensed up as he clamped his teeth to the hanging nail. Then he winced as the nail tore free the rest of the way. With the worst of that pain out of the way, he spit the nail into the leaves and wrapped one of his socks around the tender flesh to stop the bleeding.
He waited for the throbbing agony in his finger to rescind before he allowed his mind to go to work. Okay, not panicking. Thinking, planning, figuring out. I’m good at this. Playing puzzle games in his spare time had honed his skill at seeing through mazes and patterns, and he discerned this to be a puzzle if nothing else. There had to be a key or switch or word that triggered the door to open, allowing his freedom. He rose to his elbows and looked around, thinking that maybe he missed a keyhole or a keypad somewhere, but still he found nothing but leaves, trees, and the cruel, cool, blue metal under him.
Shadows flickered across the ground as the gust picked up, and he noticed that these silhouettes had elongated slightly. Soon the sun would go beyond his sparse hole and he would be in utter darkness. He doubled his search effort, thinking to avoid a terrifying pitch darkness, but nothing he did or said or hit made a dent or a difference. Shadows now covered the whole circle in which he stood, and he understood that with such heights surrounding him, the sun would only shine in for a scant few hours. The day remained bright, but no light shone in on the pit he felt would be his grave. He collapsed against an oak, felt the rough bark on his bare back and resigned himself to rest a minute.
He saw it then.
An incandescent green appeared up through the leaves in sparse jumbles. “Clever,” he said aloud, mostly to keep his wits about him. He scrambled around to see what message had been scrawled all along the metallic floor, picking out symbol by symbol. It comforted him to see that the letters formed words in his own language, and his excitement grew as he uncovered a full statement. After discerning the last letter, his heart sank. It made no sense:
Recite and enjoy, for the path is always open. I trust you understand.
He said this aloud – in reverent tones, for some reason thinking it would help if said deferentially. He waited tensely but nothing happened. He repeated the line several times and still nothing. Tears threatened to overtake his vision as panic tried to win out again.
“I don’t get it!” he yelled. A single tear dropped to the glowing green “P” of “Path” and he stopped, realizing his error. “… Wait a minute. Capitals!” he shouted, as if someone stood with him in this circle. He rechecked the letters and reviewed what he now had:
RecitE and enjoy, for the Path is alwAys open. I trust you undeRstand.
R…E…P…A…I…R…
REPAIR.
“Puzzle indeed!” He laughed. Clearing his throat he said loud and clear, “Repair.” Nothing happened again for several very tense moments. Just as he thought to give up entirely and let the tears flow, a loud humming clicked on somewhere beneath him. The blue metal rumbled as unseen mechanisms did their supposed duties in the underbelly of this prison. Steam shot out from a corner of the square door – which rumbled in place – as it unlatched from whatever held it there. He had been expecting the door to slowly rise with a pneumatic hiss or to dissolve in some pseudo science fiction sort of way, but what happened was certainly not part of any movie he had ever seen. The door exploded from its place, rocketing up into the vertical tunnel, nearly taking his head off in the process. It shifted and shuffled leaves from their place before the wind caught it and it disappeared beyond the wall of his prison.
He looked down and almost collapsed with relief: a lighted stairwell wound down into whatever facility he was standing on. He had done it. He had beaten the puzzle.
Freedom lay somewhere below.
He reached out to the stairwell and descended, vowing to play more puzzle games if he ever found his way out of this alive.
*****
Down the stairwell the man clambered, so happy to be away from the circle of trees that he nearly tripped and fell the last few steps. Righting himself and peering around, he noticed at once that he had but one option, one path. The tunnel in which he stood did not look as he had expected (mysterious pipes and keypads and hidden panels and repetitive steam relieving pressure from some ancient relic of a science fiction movie gone wrong). Rather it looked as if it had never been touched by any detritus of use or abuse. He had no tools for measuring, but his eyesight said the pathway was perfectly straight and circular in shape for farther than his vision would allow. That cold, blue, seamless metal went on for what could have been forever, perfectly straight and featureless save for yellow-glowing half-orbs attached to the eight-foot high ceiling every few yards. In the confines of the closed tunnel, he was suddenly aware of his own body odor.
Determining not to lose hope in this metallic wormhole, he removed the slightly bloody sock from his finger; seeing that he no longer bled, he replaced the sock on his foot and began his journey. His first few steps caused his blood to stir and his pulse to jump, for the first light he passed under instantly flicked off with a small whirr. He stopped, but instinct took over. Fearing the lights had begun a chain of dousing he took off into the tunnel, not wanting to be trapped in this place with no light. Slipping momentarily on his socks, he nearly ripped them off until sweat gave them grip and he moved steadily down the tunnel. He kept pace with the orbs deluminating, never passing one before it shut down.
He chanced a glance behind him, wondering if he could still see the stairway leading into the cursed circle of oak – perhaps an escape back into daylight if he panicked – but the sunlight ceased and he saw nothing but darkness behind.
He slipped.
Another light dimmed as he toppled to the lower half of the circle and slid several inches before the sweat covering his body slipped away; his skin screamed as it came to a mind-piercing halt with the sound a tennis shoe makes on a basketball court. He hurried to get up, to keep moving, but the lights had ended their taunting race and he stopped, confused.
A thought occurred: a test to be administered. He stood up hastily, swallowed his fear, and took several steps forward. He stepped under the next light, which went out immediately. He laughed aloud, but trembled at his own echoes. “This bread-crumb trail is backwards,” he mused. “And where’s my Gretel?”
He stopped laughing when he realized that he had thought nothing of anything but his own base survival since waking up. Having taken it for granted all his life, he cast into his mind to find his name, worrying that by some terrible cliché it had been erased from memory, but he landed on it as quickly as thought of: Addison. Last name Taylor. Parents Wendy and Charles. He quickly scanned through the basics of his life, determining that if he had any amnesia at all, it was only of how he had come to be in the circle of trees.
It was not time to reflect, however. Addison walked on.
After a time he forgot that the lights winked out behind him. He walked and walked for what seemed hours – and probably was – until his throat screamed for liquid and his muscles burned. He tried not to think of the aches in his stomach. The growling never stopped, as if a lion stalked him every passing minute. He finally became tired and forced himself to lie down, cringing only a bit as his bare back touched the cool metal. Pondering his circumstances, he at once wondered how long he could keep on without water or food. Boy Scouts aside, he was no survivalist – given to panicking and wasting of energy – and to continue in this way might yield an exit, but mile after mile, he had begun to doubt that there really was an end.
Addison stood up again, feeling temporary relief from what may have been an all-day excursion. He followed the half-globes of yellowish light further into the never-winding tunnel. Not even ten minutes after his rest he came upon the first difference in the tunnel: an intersection, two identical blue funnels leading into his own in chicken-foot fashion. He had nearly missed both openings as neither was lit. The light-globes had gone out, or were never on. Where his own tunnel – and indeed, perhaps, not even just his tunnel anymore – continued on, there was still only one string of half-globes lit on the ceiling, but to either side of the glowing orbs another doused light lingered. He took a cautious step forward, wondering what the lights would do now that there was more than one; the single light went out, as usual, but nothing happened to the others.
Two others had already taken this path, and had made it at least this far.
He detected a faint scent in the sterilized air: perfume of some sort. Wildflowers, maybe. Excitement overtook him. Someone’s been through here, and recently! He took off at a wild sprint, hoping to catch up to the sweet-smelling woman in a matter of minutes. Presently the perfume became stronger, and he chanced a yell that he hoped would stop her. “Hello! Is there someone ahead of me?”
He kept his ears pricked for sound, but kept moving. For several frightening moments no sound but his own echo, his footfalls, and his labored breathing answered him. Then a faint but feminine voice shouted, “Hurry!” She sounded urgent. “The door is closing!”
Door.
An exit. His lungs burned as he pushed himself harder, the gooey saliva in his mouth and throat drying. He wondered if he would vomit. He kept on for another several minutes, each moment passing in a frantic haze. Aches became distant. He thought his vision began to blur, but was in fact mistaking daylight for that foggy lightheadedness he had read about in murder mysteries and suspense novels.
Moments passed. Addison was vaguely aware of the woman’s voice urging him on and the light diminishing. He thought he was fainting. Then he quite suddenly toppled over something hard and landed bareback on soft ground.
He had made it. Above his head he could see the circular doorway – what he had run into – close in on itself the rest of the way. He laughed and realized that he was crying, too. He tried to sit up, but dizziness set in and his body shut itself down. Blackness. That dreaded darkness.
He awoke feeling groggy. The dim view of the sun he had seen before passing out told him he had only been out a few minutes, maybe even a few seconds. Reminders popped up all over his body that he was dehydrated and famished: headache, blurry vision, aching lungs, growling stomach. In his weakness he forced himself to a sitting position and leaned against the circular doorway.
A woman – bare as the day she came into the world – sat staring at him from a good fifteen yards away. Her arms were wrapped around her legs, pulled tight to her chest, obscuring all private areas from vision. Addison turned red in embarrassment.
He had the feeling that she was looking him over just as scrupulously as he wanted to check her out, but all she said was, “Good. You made it. Now find me some clothes.”
End Chapter 1
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The rest is available by request for another week, and after that it will appear on Lulu at some point and if you wanna read it by then it'll cost ya. =P
emote.
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