Author: Jon Westfall

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Chapter 12: Occupation and Preoccupation

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Mrs. Corum’s mind was working frantically. She needed to complete 6 more before she stopped. Sara Beth dutifully called them out.
“Uh, 32”
Mrs. Corum thought for a few moments.
“1024”
“33?”
“1089. Make them farther apart, it’s more challenging”
“OK
 98”
“Ooo
.. 9604”
“73”
“Hmm
 5329”
And so it went for at least another few numbers before Mrs. Corum decided to take a break.
“How long is it taking me?”
“About 10 seconds”, Sara Beth replied.
“I can feel myself getting faster!”
Sara Beth was happy to be of help, but really saw no use to what Mrs. Corum was trying to do. G-ma happened by at that moment and seemed to have the same thought.
“What on earth are you doing?”, G-ma asked. Sara Beth braced herself to hear the same thing that she’d heard a few other times already from Mrs. Corum, as she explained it to her, to Jamie, and to Ryan. G-ma was out of the loop on this one.
“I’m teaching myself to mentally square two digit numbers as fast as possible”, Mrs. Corum replied.
“Why?”, G-ma asked.
“Because I remember reading about it years ago, and even remember hearing the steps, but never actually practiced it enough to do it quickly. You see, it’s based off of figuring out the easy calculations and then adding numbers together. Take that last number that Sara Beth gave me – 73. I’m gonna round that down to the nearest multiple of 10 – 70. Then I add whatever I took away, 3, and get 76. I multiply those together in my head – 6 times 70 is 420, 70 times 70 is 4900, add those together to get 5320. Then I take that little bit I shaved off earlier – 3, square that and you get 9, hence 5329”.
G-ma looked at Mrs. Corum like she was crazy, which unfortunately, Mrs. Corum took to be confusion.
“It’s really quite simple – take 32 for example – I shave off 2 to get to 30, then do 30 times 34 which is 1020, then I add 2 times 2, and get 1024”.
Before Mrs. Corum could do another example, G-ma stopped her.
“OK, dear, I get what you’re doing. But why are you doing it now? We don’t exactly need a lot of math done here in Julie’s mind. Why bother with this?”, G-ma asked.
“Because I need something – I need something to keep me interested. Spending time today learning this has made me forget all about where we are and what we’re up against. I realized it yesterday when we played Ryan’s game – if we do things that remind us of home, home doesn’t seem so far away.”
“You memorized weird math tricks at home?”, G-ma asked, sincerely.
“No, but I used math, and I taught it, and this would have been a fun trick to use at parties”, Mrs. Corum replied.
“Teachers have the wildest parties, I guess”, G-ma said with a chuckle.
There was some truth in what Mrs. Corum said, whether G-ma wanted to admit it or not. They all needed a good diversion to keep them from getting too stir crazy in Julie’s mind. This was as good as any, G-ma decided. She sat in with Mrs. Corum during her practice from time to time, but never got as fast as her younger companion. And while Sara Beth didn’t particularly try to learn how to do the math trick, she found after awhile she could do the same calculation, albeit a bit slower.
Over the next week, the group of five sat in their spots near the mountain range, watching it light up and fade away. It was especially beautiful at night. They also found, to their surprise, that a walk back toward their old spots seemed to take less time. Perhaps they’d found a shortcut or perhaps they were experiencing the same effect that G-ma talked about happening to her. The world here seemed to be very pliable, large and small based almost on nothing more than a whim.

The five had been camping, if you wanted to use such a term, by the mountains for about a week when Sara Beth brought up something that, unknowingly to her, the others had thought of as well.

“It’s less active”, she mused.

“I think you might be right”, G-ma replied, “Definitely seems like it was more active when we first got here. Sky seems a bit dimmer during the day too.”

“What do you think it means?”

Ryan jumped into the conversation, unexpectedly, “I think we’re reading too much into things”. The rest of the group seemed to differ.

“No, these things matter, Ryan”, Jamie replied.

“They certainly seem to”, Mrs. Corum added.

Ryan shrugged his shoulders. The rest of the group had noticed that Ryan seemed a bit less hateful of Julie over the past few weeks, but certainly wasn’t her biggest fan either. They suspected that being in Julie’s mind may have simply started to wear on him, perhaps causing him to like her to some extent. While they read this as like, the real truth wasn’t as positive. Ryan had simply become disinterested in Julie – he didn’t dislike or like her. He just wanted out of her brain. He had come to the realization that whether Julie was happy or sad was irrelevant. Whether she moved a lot or moved very little didn’t matter at all. It was more important that he keep his eyes on the prize: Finding a way out. So far he hadn’t been that lucky, but thankfully he had found other ways of handling his depression than lashing out against Julie, drawing the ire of the rest of the group.

Returning to the debate at hand, Sara Beth spoke again.

“I wonder if maybe summer vacation finally started, and Julie is spending time being lazy without having to think of school.”

“Not my sister!”, Jamie said firmly, “She was always a ball of energy during summer break – we’d go out and play, sometimes Dad would take us places when he had time, and even if we were cooped up inside, we’d find ways to run around and be crazy – Mom always hated that at the end of the day”.

“Maybe Julie isn’t into that as much, dear”, G-ma said, “She is getting older, maybe she is doing things with her friends – talking with them on the phone, texting them, all things that aren’t as active as running around like an indoor tornado”

Jamie gave that some thought, and turned her face down. Maybe G-ma was right, maybe this summer wasn’t going to be as much fun as the previous ones had been, now that Julie was nearly a teenager.

Mrs. Corum made a different suggestion.

“Maybe Julie is playing more with Sara Beth, outside of school and daycare, and they’re not as active”.

Now came Sara Beth’s turn to look sad.

“What’s wrong”, Mrs. Corum asked.

“If it is summer vacation, than Julie isn’t playing with me”, Sara Beth said quietly.

“Why?”

“Because I’m not going to be around to play with”, Sara Beth replied.

Over the next few minutes, Sara Beth would relay how her parents had told her, a few days before she had come to this place, that they were planning on moving near the start of summer – around the end of June. She was going to be living in Chicago, a long way away from where she grew up, and she’d have to make new friends. Her parents were sorry they had to do this to her, but her dad had taken a new position with a department there, and it was a big promotion, and they were all making adjustments so he could make more money. Sara Beth didn’t care about the money though – she wanted to stay where she had made friends. At least she could bring Sonic with her, but she couldn’t take Julie.

“So if it’s near the third week in June”, Sara Beth said slowly, “I’m not around to play with”.

The group commiserated with her, although in a strange way, the move wasn’t necessarily a big deal anymore – Sara Beth lived inside of Julie’s mind. She couldn’t move away if she wanted to, irony not lost on Ryan as he sat watching from the outskirts of the group.

He had been keeping track of the time – he knew that it wasn’t the third week of June yet. Just as Mrs. Corum had her love of math, Ryan liked knowing the stages of the moon. He’d been following it since he was a child, and knew it’s cycle well. Based on the last time he’d seen the moon, he knew only about 3 and a half weeks had passed. It was the first week of June. The others, in their excitement over the events of the past week, had accelerated time. He felt like correcting them, but then wondered what the use would be. He didn’t care about the mountain range, didn’t care about Julie, and certainly didn’t think anyone here should care about time. He’d simply been following it too long to easily forget.

Turning his attention back to the group, he found them still talking about the mountain range. Finally he couldn’t listen to them drone on anymore about it, and got up, walking away from the group and the mountains.

It was several moments before anyone realized he was gone. In the end it was Jamie who decided to follow. The other three women figured that there wasn’t any harm in her tracking him down. After all, what sort of trouble should you get into in a world where there was no pain.

Jamie caught up with him fairly quickly.

“Where are you going”, she yelled as soon as she was within range.

“None of your business”, he replied, “Go away”.

“No – you’ve got to tell me what you’re doing. Why don’t you care anymore about the Mountains? Why don’t you participate with the group? A few days ago you came up with that game – that was fun – why don’t we do something like that again?”

“You ask too many questions, Jamie”, Ryan replied.

“I just want to know what’s up with you”, Jamie said strongly.

“Nothing! You know what’s up with everyone here – it’s all the same – Nothing! We sit and we watch stupid mountains all day, or we talk about how what we do impacts Julie. I don’t care about Julie anymore. I didn’t like her when we first got here, and now I just don’t care anymore. I think I’m just going to go insane, and I’d rather go insane alone”.

“If you go insane”, Jamie said slowly, “Then 20 percent of the entire population of this place goes insane. That’s not good for all of us”.

“I don’t care what’s good for all of us – there is no good as far as I’m concerned. Now Go away! Go back to those other crazy women who care too much about things they can’t change. Just leave me be”. Ryan said, as he started walking faster.

“Are you going to come back?”, Jamie said.

“What? Back to the mountains?”, Ryan asked incredulously.

“Yes”, Jamie replied.

“Why should you care?”, Ryan said angrily.

“Because I do – because maybe I’m just as mad as you are, I’m just keeping it together better. Maybe I want to know you’ll be around to balance out things. Will you come back?”, Jamie said. Honestly she didn’t know how much sense she was making. It seemed to her, though, that Ryan, despite being the most ornery and hard to get along with person in the group, still played a vital role.

“Sure, I’ll come back”, Ryan replied as he kept walking.

Jamie wasn’t convinced. Running at him at full speed, she tackled him, taking him down to the ground. As he tried to push her off of him, he found her to be surprisingly strong. Much stronger than a girl her size should be.

“You can’t leave until you promise to return”, she cried.

“FINE – I’m just going to go for a walk, but I need some time ALONE”, he said as she pinned him to the ground.

“OK”, she said, releasing her grasp.

“I’ll be back before tomorrow night”, he said quietly. She didn’t ask him why his walk was going to take that long, and if she had, he wasn’t about to tell her.

 

“I’m back”, Ryan called out.

The others looked up from where they were sitting, surprised to see him in such a good mood.

Jamie ran up and hugged him, Ryan was relieved this time he didn’t end up on the ground.

“Where did you go?”, Mrs. Corum asked.

“I just had to go clear my head”, Ryan revealed with a smile. “I needed to sort some things out”.

“All of us are different”, G-ma said with a grin, “Some of us just need more space than others, I suppose”.

“How’s the mountains”, Ryan said, gesturing up to the peaks above.

“A little more active this morning”, Mrs. Corum replied, “But last night they were really quiet – for a few hours before it dimmed. If those mountains are her activity level, then she’s not doing much far in advance of falling asleep”.

“Maybe she’s sick”, Ryan replied.

The thought hadn’t really crossed the other’s minds, even though it could explain a lot. Since they didn’t see too many differences in the overall world other than the darker than normal sky, they had fixated on something happening to Julie, but not necessarily something on the inside. Thoughts about what she might be doing or feeling emotionally seemed to be their most common theories to explain the inactivity, they hadn’t thought much about the fact she might just be ill.

“I know I don’t move around much when I’m sick”, Ryan replied, “and I feel a little down because of that. Maybe everything is just natural – and she’ll be feeling better soon”.

“Perhaps”, G-ma replied. The group was clearly shocked, once more, than Ryan had some sort of insight into the group that the others hadn’t. He was the most unlikely person to be coming up with these revelations.

“I don’t know what you do on your walks, Ryan, but you seem to really get a lot out of them”, G-ma continued.

Ryan looked at her with a grin

“I guess I never really knew how useful walking and ordering your thoughts could be until I came here. I don’t know how, but a good walk seems to do me wonders”, he replied.

“We all have the things we do to stay happy, or at least to stay sane, dear. I say if you’ve found something that makes you feel better, go for as many walks as you need.

“Don’t worry, I certainly will – just don’t be worried if you don’t see me for a day or two. I’ll always return”. In his mind Ryan knew he would always come back, because despite how he felt when he left the group, for some reason he was always compelled to walk back. He still didn’t quite understand how it all worked, but it was keeping him from starting a giant fight, and from having a giant breakdown. And he had, so far, kept it under control.

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Chapter 11: The Mountains

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Mrs. Corum had a nagging thought about an area of the landscape they’d yet explored. Weeks earlier they’d thought of heading toward the tiny dot of difference on the horizon, perpendicular to hers and G-ma’s spots, heading away from the light valley. They’d started that direction but, upon realizing that it was farther off than they assumed, and finding Sara Beth, they decided to head back to more familiar surroundings. It was funny how the more familiar surroundings made them feel better, when the whole place was so wholly unfamiliar. But, Mrs. Corum supposed, perhaps not everything was totally different here. Some things, like a love of the place you know, may hold true. Continue reading “Chapter 11: The Mountains”

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Chapter 10: Repression

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After that dim, the core group spent much of the next day trying to regain their composure. Ryan and Jamie basically ignored each other, with Sara Beth, G-ma, and Mrs. Corum wishing they could go back to a time before such tension existed in their group. On one hand, they all felt bad for Ryan in that he was an angry soul that nothing in this realm could placate. How could one go about living any sort of normal life in the mind of someone he disliked, with the feeling being very much mutual. On the other hand, Ryan had done very little to ingratiate himself to the group, taking the information he was given and using it to his own ends, seldom trying to work out any of the questions the group still had about this place. He would go off on long walks, now alone since Jamie had decided to stay with the other women. Continue reading “Chapter 10: Repression”

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Chapter 9: Escape

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“Come over here”
“Why are you whispering”
“Just follow me”
“I don’t want to”
“Just do it”
“Fine”
“We’re gonna get out of here.”
“How?”
“I have a plan.”
“It will never work.”
“Sure it will – just because they think it won’t you’re gonna believe them? They don’t know everything. They think they do, but they have it all wrong.”
“What makes you so sure you’re right?”
“Because I know how she thinks – I know what she’ll do. I know her better than anybody here.”
“Hey, what about me? I think I know her pretty well!”
“She’s ignored you for years, she’s all about the special one. You’re closer to me than you are to her!”
“No way!”
“Face it, it’s true. You with me or not?”
“What if we get hurt?”
“Well, we might – but eventually we’ll win. We’re stronger. Just stick with me – you’ll see.”
“I hope you’re right about this.”

Julie McKay was an interesting subject to ponder, and for the five people trapped in her mind, she was really the only subject to ponder. Slowly a picture emerged of the average 12 year old girl, written by those who arguably knew her best, the people stuck in her subconscious.

On one hand, you had Julie the ‘good kid’ who had been through ‘rough times’ in the past, as evidenced by the school counselor’s report that passed through Mrs. Corum’s desk months ago. Family was stable, but her mental health wasn’t always. Mood swings, impulsivity, and other issues in slightly higher than normal concentrations.

On another hand, you had Julie the friend and sister, with both Jamie and Sara Beth thinking of her in that regard. An extremely uneasy truce had developed between the girls. Having not met before, they simply had what they had heard of the other to understand their new brain companion. Sara Beth had heard that Jamie was a whiny annoying younger sister who would bother her older sister incessantly. Jamie had heard about the almost-god-like Sara Beth, whom her sister looked forward to seeing each day after school. It wasn’t surprising that neither was that warm to the other.

On yet a third hand, you had Julie the granddaughter, sweet and perpetually stuck at age 4. G-ma knew what she’d been told about her oldest grandchild, but still didn’t quite believe it. She hadn’t ever met her in person at age 12, she’d only experienced the tremors and floods of the mind. It was just easier for G-ma to think of her as 4 rather than 12.

And finally, on the last hand, you had Julie the crazy annoying girl in class. Ryan didn’t know quite why Julie annoyed him so much, but he knew it was insanely enjoyable to torment her. Adult level sadism has nothing on adolescent, and Ryan was merciless in what he would imagine doing to Julie in his mind. As many pranks as he could pull. As many ways to embarrass her in front of the class. As many jabs he could deliver as he saw her eyes begin to melt. Ryan was in control and he loved the power. The only thing that prevented him from executing all of his plans was the fear of getting caught, or worse, the fear of himself being humiliated again in front of his adoring fans and potential victims. To describe Ryan as a bully would be generous to other lesser bullies. He likely wasn’t in their ballpark or even their league.

 

“They’re gonna do it”
“How do you know?”
“I heard them. They didn’t know I was nearby.”
“They think it will work?”
“Yes, they’re pretty convinced. Well, at least one of them is, the other seems reluctant but will go along with it”
“I’m worried”
“About?”
“Well, I don’t think they have a chance in hell of it working. It seems stupid, but also seems incredibly dangerous”
“Why?”
“Think about it. If they do what they say they’re going to do, it’s not going to get them ‘erased’ or ‘repressed’ or anything like that. It’s just going to make her mad. And when she gets mad
”
“Things here get a little crazy”
“Exactly”
“But here’s what troubles me”
“Besides it being dangerous to us all?”
“Yes, besides that. I agree it’s stupid, and it can be dangerous, but in the end, we have absolutely no way to stop them”
“Well, I’ve thought of ways
”
“Now who has a plan that doesn’t have a chance in hell of working”
“Shhh
 keep your voice down.”
“They’re in their own little worlds anyway”
“Yep, but they don’t need to hear that we have a plan for fighting back, even if you don’t think it will work”

“Tonight right before it dims, OK?”
“Fine, we’ll try it.”
“You’ll thank me later!”

 

All day there had been an eerie silence among the group. The adults were busy chatting about their previous lives, joking about places they’d traveled and the colossal let downs they’d been. Sara Beth and Sonic sat a bit away from the rest of the group, playing a new game that Sara Beth had developed whereby Sonic wheeled his ball around in time with her guide on the tether. The goal was to see if the taught line on the tether would go slack, as the little hedgehog kept up with the predetermined path of his owner. It wasn’t much, but it was a diversion.

Ryan and Jamie seemed to have an uneasy truce, with Jamie apparently feeling it was better to hang out with her sister’s tormentor than her sister’s best friend. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ was apparently the philosophy she had decided to take.

The previous day had been filled with ‘group’ activities in a sense. After the pain incident, Mrs. Corum felt it would be useful for all five of them to sit around that day and discuss their interactions with Julie, and how their actions now might affect her still. Ryan seemed disinterested in much of the conversation, only curious if the older women had ever thought of getting out of this place. Mrs. Corum admitted that she hadn’t given it much thought since she felt it was probably impossible from the moment she arrived, however apparently G-ma had felt differently.

“It was 2 days after I arrived”, G-ma began, “And I was ready to do anything to leave this place. That was the day I realized that I could run here and not feel any pain, any exhaustion, or any need to stop. So I started running. I ran as fast as I could and as far from where I was as I could. I felt there had to be some exit, somewhere, that I could hit. Even if it were a wall, perhaps I could run up against it at full speed so many times it would finally break, or maybe I’d break, either way, the problem would be solved. Thinking back on it now, I passed the light valley we saw the other day, and I probably passed other things that I’ve now long since forgotten. The point is, I ran from dim to dim, day after day, direction after direction, and found nothing. Eventually I decided to just return to my spot, and found that I was only a day away from it. It was at that moment I realized that I couldn’t trust anything here. I could run for days, and then turn around, and be back at the spot I started at in a few hours of walking. I wouldn’t find any walls. I wouldn’t find any doors. It was all the same. The only thing I learned from that experience was that this place does change from time to time. When I came here, the ground was much flatter. The little hills and valleys didn’t really exist. All I can figure is that as Julie grows and matures, so does this place”

Everyone listened to G-ma’s story, even, surprisingly, Ryan. It was as though he realized that his original plan for escape had probably already been disproven. A sullen look came across his face as the conversation turned to the emotional feelings everyone had experienced, likely at the direction of Julie. G-ma realized that the small amount of warmth she had always felt was probably Julie’s familial love after Jamie reported feeling something similar. Blood was thicker than water, after all, and it seemed that even if Julie wasn’t always fond of being with her sister, she still cared a great deal for her. Sara Beth said she reported a similar feeling, but wouldn’t describe it as warmth, more like it was a light embrace. She described it as being tucked into something, a member of a group, which she felt probably was how friends of Julie’s felt.

Ryan, on the other hand, had to be prodded to share his feeling.

“Nothin’”, he muttered.

“Ryan, even though you’re probably not anywhere near Julie’s favorite person, I have a hard time believing that she has no feeling directed toward you. In fact, she probably has a major feeling directed toward you”, Mrs. Corum said.

“Nope, not a thing”, he relayed.

In reality, he was telling more of the truth than they thought. He did feel something, but it was best described as ‘loose ends’. It was a sort of eternal shakiness of the mind – Ryan continually felt as though something small may be off. He’d check his shoes, they’d be tied. He’d run his fingers through his hair, finding it mostly straight. He’d repeat whatever he was planning on saying aloud in his mind, worried that he was on the verge of saying something stupid or incorrect. It was never the feeling that something major was wrong, just a feeling of uneasiness. And it was driving him slowly crazy. He knew he had to find some way out of that subtle disturbing feeling.

So on the next day, when everyone was off doing their own thing, Ryan put a plan in action, recruiting the only one of his companions that wasn’t, in his mind, freaking insane. Jamie had been here with him longer than with the others, and while Jamie loved her grandmother, she also loved the idea of getting out of here. Jamie disliked Sara Beth, so Ryan figured he’d pass on trying to recruit her. And the old women, they’d never go for this plan. They wouldn’t be able to do it.

Shortly before dim, Ryan looked at Jamie, and they began to move farther off from the rest of the group. G-ma and Mrs. Corum didn’t seem to notice, and neither did Sara Beth and her hedgehog. By this point, Ryan and Jamie knew about the fact that sound dampened quickly, but hadn’t learned that Mrs. Corum and G-ma had trained themselves to hear farther than the rest.

As it turned out, they wouldn’t need to hear them to know what they were doing.

“You’re sure this will work”, Jamie asked, for about the seventh or eighth time.

“Yes, stop worrying!”, Ryan replied, “Just follow my lead. We’ll get Julie to push herself to forget about us. And when she does, we certainly won’t be here anymore. I’m hoping that we somehow get pushed back to our own minds, reversing how Julie got us here”.

“When did you get so sure of your scientific theories?”, Jamie asked sarcastically.

“Yesterday night, actually. I figured if there was a way to copy someone, there must be a way to push them back out, or for Julie to get us to copy ourselves back. Something weird like that”.

“You’re just doing this and hoping it works. And I’ll try it with you, but I don’t think it will do anything.”

“Just don’t chicken out”, Ryan said.

After they’d walked far enough that they could barely see the others in the distance, Ryan began his mantra.

He’d been practicing it all day in his mind. He’d remembered a time in 4th grade when another kid had bothered him on the playground. Ryan’s response was to create a sentence that combined all of the insecurities his target had. Realizing that most bullies were childish in their statement, and that the perfect zinger could incapacitate his victim more quickly, Ryan had refined this skill over time. Today he’d thought of all of the things that made Julie different and annoying to him, and he wrapped them all up in a vile, disgusting, sentence that was only correct in grammar, style, and syntax – not in moral or ethical behavior.

Jamie, upon hearing the mantra, was a bit taken aback. It was so cruel and biting that she was almost felt protective of her sister. Ryan motioned to her, and she reluctantly joined in. She felt a bit bad about it, but wanted out of this prison.

Off in the distance, G-ma, Mrs. Corum, and Sara Beth braced themselves for potential trouble. Astonishingly, they could hear what Jamie and Ryan said crystal clear, almost as if it was being broadcast over some mind wide public address system. About a minute into the mantra, the sky began to take on the copperish tone that Mrs. Corum and G-ma had noticed before the previous earthquakes. Sara Beth gripped tightly on to Sonic’s ball, the tether tied around her hand as well. But to the surprise of all five, the sky did not stay copperish in tone – it turned darker and darker, until the only hint of color was a streak of burgundy, with the occasional splotch of scarlet red.

“This can’t be good”, G-ma said.

Off in the distance, Jamie was beginning to waiver in her commitment to the cause.

“I can’t keep doing this”, she said to Ryan, as she ran back to the other 3 group members. G-ma grabbed on to her and held her tight. G-ma wasn’t happy about her granddaughter’s actions, but in the end, she figured there would always be time for a stern talking to after this passed.

Ryan, on the other hand, wasn’t phased in the least by the sky turning colors. He kept on chanting his mantra. Finally after an eternity of time, or so it seemed to the rest of the group, he gave up. As he approached the group, the sky began to revert to it’s normal color. Ryan expected a smug look of satisfaction on G-ma and Mrs. Corum’s face. After all, his plan hadn’t worked. He was stuck here with them. Instead, they looked at him in horror.

“What?”, he said, “I tried to get her to get rid of me. I wanted her to repress me or transfer me back or move me somewhere or something – why would she want me in her mind anyway??”

“Ryan”, Mrs. Corum said slowly, “Look at your arms”.

Holding his arms out in front of him, Ryan flipped his wrists down toward the ground. On the underside of each arm, red welts appeared slowly, starting at the wrist and snaking their way down toward his elbow. Blood appeared to start pouring out.

“I don’t feel anything”, Ryan said, just as Sara Beth shrieked.

They looked at her, and then themselves, just in time to see all of their arms beginning to bleed in the same manner.

“This hasn’t ever happened before”, G-ma said, not in her usual matter of fact tone, but in a tone that betrayed more than just a little bit of concern on her part.

By that point, it was time for the sky to dim again, as usual. As it grew dimmer, the five looked at their arms, hoping to see the bleeding stop.

Suddenly, about an hour after it began, it abruptly stopped. The marks, however, would stay for considerably longer.

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Chapter 8: Old Married Couple

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“I can’t describe it other than to use the word ‘bliss’”, G-ma said, reflecting on the experience.

“I think that’s pretty accurate”, Mrs. Corum added, “It was as if, for a moment, the entire world stopped, and I was basking in a warm glow. I didn’t want it to ever end”

For a few minutes, Sara Beth felt guilty that she had taken such measures to knock her friends out of the light they had been engulfed in. Sensing this after several minutes of talking about the glow and emotional effects of it, G-ma abruptly changed gears.

“But you did the right thing, Sara Beth, don’t get us wrong. We’re waxing poetic about something that wasn’t right. I don’t care where we are or what we think we want, human beings weren’t meant to suffer 100% of the time, or be high 100% of the time. It was as if I was on drugs, not that I’d ever known any of those drugs you hear about on TV. Closest thing I’d ever felt was the pain medication they gave me a few years ago when my back was out – and this was way more intense than that.”

Sara Beth was relieved to hear G-ma defend her actions. Mrs. Corum came around gradually as well, thanking Sara Beth for her quick thinking.

“I wonder what that place was”, Mrs. Corum mused.

“Still is – it’s right over there”, G-ma replied.

They hadn’t moved far away from the valley, it was still within sight just off in the distance. Sara Beth, this time, had a theory.

“It’s that place you go to right before you fall asleep, I think”, she began, “You know how it feels – you’re lying in bed and trying to get yourself ready to drift off. But maybe you’re too amped up, or maybe you’re distracted. So you start trying to relax, and eventually stumble upon on pleasant thought, one that makes you feel happy and content, and you fall asleep. That’s what it felt like to me, like that blissful state of relaxation right before you lose consciousness.”

The other two women thought about it, mulling the idea around for a few minutes.

“I could see something like that”, Mrs. Corum finally replied, “Or it might not be that pre-sleep state, it might just be that happy place we all think about – the enjoyable moments that we bring back up each time we’re sad or lonely, in need of a quick pick-me-up. I suppose that stepping into those moments may cause one to enter a state like we experienced – after all, those moments were designed to be the best our minds could come up with. It wouldn’t surprise me if we wanted to stay there, all the time”

“It was nice,” G-ma began wistfully, “But not for us to stay in. Especially not for the two of us to stay in and leave you here!”. It was clear that the longer she was away from the light, the more guilty G-ma began to feel for succumbing to it’s intoxicating atmosphere.

They decided to put the matter behind them, literally, and walk back up toward more familiar ground. Exploring would be done in future days, but for now, a return to places known was in order. Privately, each women reflected on potential uses for the valley, with G-ma taking the harshest stance. Over the next few hours, she would grow determined never to return to it under any circumstance, fearing that it would take what little humanity she may have left, turning her into a mindless hedonist. Mrs. Corum would think differently, wondering if perhaps, in limited quantities, the valley could be therapeutic. Straying into the light was dangerous, no doubt, but given the emotional tole this place could take out on someone, the prospect of a blissful few minutes seemed like it might have it’s place. In contrast, Sara Beth felt that both the valley and even the light may be useful in small doses (and with friends to back you up), but was not keen to try it herself. She thought, though, that if anyone were to ever go completely mad in this place, the valley might be the only way to help them. Over time the true abilities, nature, and limitations of the valley would be seen, with neither G-ma, Mrs. Corum, or Sara Beth hitting the nail on the head in terms of its best uses.

As they walked farther away from the valley and up toward Mrs. Corum’s old spot, they caught sight of something far off in the distance. It was odd in that it appeared to be moving. Nothing here moved other than the three of them and Sonic, so this was something potentially very interesting. They picked up the pace to try to catch up with the figure off in the future.

As they grew nearer, they were amazed – about 200 feet ahead were what appeared to be two children, walking quickly and talking in a very animated fashion.

“They can’t hear us”, G-ma reminded the group as Sara Beth began to call out, “We’re too far off”.

As they grew nearer, the forms took on more detail. Both children looked to be about the same age as Sara Beth. On the right was a boy, wearing what appeared to be a standard school uniform similar to the one that Sara Beth recalled seeing Julie wear. A red polo shirt and khaki shorts, with white socks and sneakers. Red was the same color Sara Beth wore at school, it was popular in that area of the country. She also surmised that it must have been hot whatever day he was copied into Julie’s mind – the shorts were likely only allowed during that weather. The girl, on the other hand, was not wearing the school uniform, or much of an outfit at all. She appeared to be clothed in an oversized t-shirt, slightly ratty with age, that stretched past her knees. It looked as if it might have been a nightshirt. She was barefoot, and her long hair was unkempt and wild. As she walked, she ran her hands up and through her hair multiple times, likely trying to straighten it.

As they drew closer, but still out of range to call out, Mrs. Corum and G-ma began to hear the conversation between the two children. Unaware of the women approaching them, the two newcomers were deeply engrossed in an argument.

“I don’t care what you think – I like her”, the girl said firmly.

“Her music sucks!”, the boy said in reply, “She’s just popular because people say she’s popular.”

“Is not – she’s really talented”, the girl replied.

“Talent?!? She sounds stupid – her voice sounds like someone ran my neighbor’s cat through the blender!”, the boy said, making simulated cat screeching noises.

“Stop it you idiot”, the girl shrieked. She was not a fan of animal cruelty, real or simulated.

“Make me!”, the boy replied.

“Shut up”, the girl called out.

From off in the distance, Mrs. Corum and G-ma were amazed at what they heard.

“It doesn’t seem like they’re too concerned with being here”, G-ma said.

“Yeah, they don’t seem to even notice it”, Mrs. Corum replied.

“What are they saying”, asked Sara Beth, who hadn’t trained her hearing to be as precise at the others.

“Something about a singer one likes and the other doesn’t, and the boy is talking about screeching cats”, Mrs. Corum said, looking toward Sara Beth. Sara Beth just shot a confused look back, “Yeah, I know”, Mrs. Corum replied, “Seems like they should have other things to think about, seeing that they’re here”.

With their backs to the approaching women, it wouldn’t be for another few minutes that they’d make contact. And with the conversation being so bizarre, the three ladies approaching wondered how to make first contact with their new guests. While they had no concrete evidence they’d been here longer than the boy and girl they approached, it certainly seemed that arguing over such a trivial thing wouldn’t be taking up the time of someone who had been here for awhile. It seemed more at home with the conversation of those who had just arrived.

Mrs. Corum and G-ma continued to listen to the two as they approached, but heard nothing important other than school yard taunting. Both of them began to appreciate the maturity of Sara Beth more and more as they thought of how these two might make life in Julie’s head a bit more untenable. Maybe they’d grow up quickly after realizing the magnitude of the situation.

Up until that very moment, the three ladies hadn’t ever considered that potentially the new arrivals in Julie’s brain would be less than stellar people. It appeared that Julie had selected people in her mind that would bring her comfort and peace, not people who would argue. Sara Beth, G-ma, and Mrs. Corum all felt as if the situation had been balanced before, and they began to wonder if these two might unbalance it. What if they decided not to be quiet during the dim hours? What if they decided not to be quiet at all? What if they didn’t want to join the ladies at all? The three of them had grown a bit dependent on each other, and the thought of finding two people at the same time, and then having both of them not want to join their small group seemed  crazy. But then again, all three of them had found each other alone, with the loneliness potentially drawing them in. These two had each other, although perhaps they didn’t really want each other.

They were approaching the two new children quicker now, within 20 feet. Mrs. Corum decided it was time to make contact.

“Hello” she called out.

Neither child stopped.

“Hello!”, she called out again, this time with G-ma lending support.

The children stopped abruptly. By now the women were just about 10 feet away from the pair.

The children turned, looks of surprise and worry on their faces. It was as if they just now thought perhaps others could be here in this place. The five of them stood staring at each other. Then, slowly, a look of realization came over the faces of Mrs. Corum, the boy, and the girl. Sara Beth and G-ma watched, realizing that all three of them seemed to know each other. The girl began to look relieved, as a small smile came across her face. Tears began to stream from her eyes. The boy had a different reaction – a sullen look washed over his face. He wasn’t afraid, worried, or panicked at all. But he definitely wasn’t happy to see the sight before him.

Mrs. Corum broke the silence.

“Ryan?”, she asked. The boy nodded.

“G-ma!!!”, the girl cried, running toward the older woman who, in surprise, stooped down and opened her arms.

“Where am I”, Ryan asked Mrs. Corum, with a slight twinge of nervousness in his voice. He knew he wasn’t Mrs. Corum’s favorite student, given previous events, and she wasn’t his favorite teacher by a long shot. In asking the question so abruptly, it appeared to the rest of the group that, perhaps, Ryan had just realized that he was in a completely new and different world than he had ever previously known.

“It’s kind of hard to explain”, Mrs. Corum began, “And all that we know are theories that we’ve come up with over our time here. How long have you been here?”

Ryan thought for a few minutes, and realized he had trouble remembering too far into the past. In fact, the only thing he could remember was having the stupid argument about music with the annoying girl he had found only several minutes before. He recognized her as someone from the grade below him in school. Now she lie wrapped in the arms of the old woman. ‘They must know each other’, he thought.

“Just a few minutes”, Ryan said, answering Mrs. Corum’s question.

“Then you’re probably a bit overwhelmed”, came Mrs. Corum’s reply. “For now, just know that we’re in a place unlike any on Earth, and that you’ll be OK here. We’ll talk about it more over the next few hours.”

Turning their attention to the other newcomer, the group watched as G-ma and the girl finished their embrace.

“G-ma, I’m so glad you’re here, I feel better”, the girl said.

The look on G-ma’s face was priceless, a look that the old woman felt would never return to her face as long as she stayed inside this place. But here it was, a miracle come true.

“Everyone, this is my grand daughter, Jamie”, G-ma said, verifying what Mrs. Corum had already suspected. Sara Beth nodded, acknowledging the presence of someone the same age and gender as her, but apparently not someone she already knew. Julie might have been Jamie’s sister, and Sara Beth’s best friend, but it did not appear that the two had ever met before.

“Welcome to our group, Ryan & Jamie. As Ryan knows, I’m Mrs. Corum, and as Jamie knows, this is G-ma, and as neither of you may know, this is”

“Sara Beth”, Sara Beth said, cutting Mrs. Corum off.

The group looked toward each other, each with a different perspective on events. If the children had been older, they probably would have shaken hands, however at this age, the immediate reaction was to stand and not appear too comfortable.

As he stood there, Ryan had a realization wash over him. Jamie’s grandmother was the same person he’d seen pick up Julie on occasion at school. He connected the dots quickly that they were related, and suspected they might be sisters.

“Jamie – are you related to Julie, in my class?”, Ryan asked.

The entire group waited for the answer that all but Ryan knew already.

“Yes, she’s my crazy older sister”, Jamie said, without the slightest hint of sarcasm on the word crazy. This emboldened Ryan.

“She sure is weird”, Ryan began, careful not to say too much more around Mrs. Corum, remembering what happened last time, “Are you a weirdo like her?”.

“No, I’m normal – she’s the crazy one!”, Jamie said.

Abruptly, as if lightning had struck, both Ryan and Jamie clutched at their stomachs.

“What’s wrong? What do you feel?”, Mrs. Corum asked.

“I don’t know”, squeaked Ryan, “It feels like my insides are on fire. It came on so suddenly”.

Jamie nodded in agreement. Neither of them had appreciated the connection that Mrs. Corum, Sara Beth, and G-ma had.

“This is going to sound weird”, Mrs. Corum began, “But I think I know what’s going on here. You two need to apologize to Julie”.

“Why are you making us apologize?”, Ryan asked incredulously, “She isn’t even here”.

“Yeah, she doesn’t know what we said”, Jamie added in.

“That might not be completely true. Just go ahead and apologize”.

“Fine”, Ryan said “I’m Sorry”, delivered in the signature sing-song voice that children used when forced to apologize.

“You have to mean it”, Mrs. Corum instructed.

“Just make it stop”, Ryan replied.

“I’m not controlling it”, Mrs. Corum said, “Julie is”.

Ryan’s face distorted – a rush of questions came over him, however in his state of pain, he felt compelled to listen now and ask questions later.

Both Ryan and Jamie began to make a heartfelt apology, or at least as heartfelt as pre-teens can make when they really don’t want to.

The painful feeling began to lessen inside each of them. Finally after several minutes, it had passed.

“What is this place?!?”, Ryan asked again, this time Mrs. Corum and the others began explaining it to him and Jamie, as they sat in a circle.

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Chapter 7: Trapped

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The three ladies didn’t say much for a long time after they heard G-ma’s theory. While it wasn’t the only possible explanation for the place they had come to know as a reluctant home, it was one that seemed to make sense.

A number of realizations would wash over each of them over the next few days, with each reacting to it in their own way. The first realization was that they were, and likely would remain, permanently trapped in this space. All hope of going back to their previous lives was lost. After all, it’s not like the mind has a backdoor that allows one to grab onto the spinal cord and ride it like a fireman’s poll, or perhaps a front door that lets one slip out of the mouth. No, they existed as incorporeal beings in the mind of a 12 year old girl. A 12 year old girl that they knew well and felt sympathy and even love toward, but nevertheless, a 12 year old girl keeping them prisoner.

They knew rationally that she hadn’t tried to do it on purpose. They knew that she had simply made a copy of them in her mind in the flash of a moment. Their personality and persona had split off from them at that point, and now a version of each of them lived here, while the other half (or majority, perhaps), was off living their life. Up until this point, none of the three victims would have described their life as 100% fulfilling – each had her own regrets – but they’d always banked on the fact that if there was a life of theirs to live, they’d be living in it. Yes, they might have died, but nothing in their existence ever prepared them to live stuck behind while the rest of them enjoyed the world. This feeling of being ‘robbed’ of a future outside Julie McKay’s mind deeply impacted all of them, with G-ma showing the most visible signs of distress.

G-ma had always been totally enthralled by Mrs. Corum’s stories about Julie, just as any grandmother might be. The love she had for her granddaughter was palpable and real, as was the guilt she felt when she thought she might have abandoned her in this place or back at home. Finding out that all of this time she was likely within Julie’s mind confused her emotions greatly. On one hand, she was able to spend time with someone she could not spend enough time with as a little girl. On the other hand, she had no choice in the matter. It nagged at G-ma that perhaps Julie could tell what she now thought, and while her thoughts in the past focused on how sorry she was to Julie, her thoughts now focused more and more on how angry she was at her situation. Not angry at Julie, per say, but angry at the situation she found herself in. G-ma loved Julie in the real world, but did G-ma love Julie when trapped in her mind?

Mrs. Corum, on the other hand, did not seem to miss her life as much as G-ma or Sara Beth. She was a woman nearly ready to retire, ready to move on to a new part in her life, and frankly, scared at what might come in the future. Here she lived a life without pain, without need, and without want (for the most part). She had friends in G-ma and Sara Beth, and while she supposed she might have wanted to travel during her senior years, this was a place like no other that any of her friends had seen. Aside from the periodic rainstorm, it was a pretty vacation spot.

Sara Beth felt robbed for sure, but had no idea what she necessarily was being robbed of, and G-ma and Mrs. Corum did their best not to dwell on it in front of the girl. At age 12, your reality is school and free time. You don’t yet find a huge interest in sex, or career plans, or family plans. You simply go to school and then you do whatever you find fun. For Sara Beth, she didn’t have to worry about school any longer (a good thing for a 12 year old), and she had all the time she could want to have fun (also a good thing). She had friends (G-ma, Mrs. Corum, and Sonic), and a pretty good imagination, to occupy herself. The only thing she ever knew she missed were her parents and family. And she wished for new friends close to her age. However she figured that over time they might arrive – after all, her host, Julie, was also 12, and likely would meet more friends over the next few years. Perhaps over time this place would get filled up with dozens of people Sara Beth could meet. And she didn’t have to worry about her pet dying, ever, which was pretty cool.

One day, shortly after G-ma’s theory, Sara Beth remembered something that might be important. They figured that they were near the beginning of June, if the dimming roughly corresponded to when Julie went to sleep. Naps could be explained by shorter than usual dims. Mrs. Corum had mentioned that her birthday was June 1, and she used the opportunity in her class to have a communal birthday party for all of her students, rather than have small celebrations all year. Julie had mentioned to Sara Beth that she was looking forward to this party way back in April. Mrs. Corum apparently threw a bit of a blowout that students would hear about all year. Slyly sneaking in educational experiences, Mrs. Corum could justify an entire day of fun, in which kids would learn math through buying and selling candy, learn reading through classroom-wide book scavenger hunts, learn social studies by electing a Birthday Manager, and learn science by dissecting birthday cake. The students didn’t even care that they were tricked into learning on this day, it was just fun to spend a whole day at a massive birthday party.

The three women realized that Julie would likely feel really happy that day, and that perhaps it would match up with the types of events going on in Julie’s mind. One morning, shortly after dim, G-ma felt a sudden onset of warmth. Realizing that this might be important, since Julie often called G-ma before special days as part of a ritual she’d done since childhood, all three began watching for signs of happiness, whatever that may be.

A few hours later, Mrs. Corum began to feel the warmth that G-ma had described. Perhaps this meant that Julie was in class and happy about something her teacher had done. Further evidence came when the sky turned a slight hue of blue, instead of it’s usual ashy gray appearance. It wasn’t the same copperish tone they’d seen before the earthquakes, and in deed, no earthquake came.

Toward the end of the day, the warm feeling left Mrs. Corum and came to Sara Beth, and oddly, little Sonic too – he spread out on his back and looked up toward the sky, with what you would swear was an expression of bliss.

After that day, it seemed to make sense that what they felt internally had something to do with what Julie felt. They wondered if the connection might go the other way, but didn’t dare try it. They didn’t want to accidentally hurt Julie, and bring about another earthquake, rain, or even a flood. And they began to fear what might happen if their counterparts in the real world hurt Julie – would it be taken out on them like some mystical voodoo doll of the mind. What if G-ma didn’t come through with the handmade gift she said she would on Julie’s next birthday? What if Mrs. Corum assigned a lower than expected mark? What if Sara Beth got angry again. What if Sonic pricked her? In an ironic twist, in a state that should ease the mind, given the fact that no pain was present in it, the threat of pain became a principal worry.

In addition to the worry the three women had of how Julie would treat them, came the realization that, if this situation wasn’t unique to Julie, they may have treated others in the same ways in the past.

G-ma began to wonder if that moment she so tenderly burned into her mind, of Edgar waiting for her at the end of the church aisle, might have captured a 20 year old Edgar forever in her mind. Certainly she could picture him clearly when she was on Earth, perhaps because she had him locked away in the vault of memories. And while she didn’t talk about it to the others, she suspected they realized that they might also have housed copies of their friends and family in their consciousness. Maybe this is why memories became so hard to recall when in this place. All of the years she had known Edgar, she’d had him mentally walking around her brain. A brain that presumably still belonged to the other G-ma in the real world. The copy G-ma, while able to think about things, didn’t have the advantage of copy Edgar, thus it took her longer to remember his existence than it otherwise would have. She felt a bit of relief after 2 years of guilt – after all, one doesn’t take it lightly that one forgot about their spouse for 6 years.

Small talk dominated those first few days, while the ladies sat, walked, or paced with nothing of importance to say. Too much to come to grip with. Too much to think about in such a short span of time for some of them. Mrs. Corum and Sara Beth had been there less than a month still, G-ma’s extra time, though, did not seem to help her come to grips with it all any easier than the rest.

“What do we do now”, Sara Beth asked.

The ladies were out for a walk. Growing tired of exploring, they were going to go back to G-ma’s original spot so G-ma could show Sara Beth her air knitting, describing the pieces that she’d done over her years of captivity.

“We keep walking until we get there, dear”, G-ma said with a smile.

But the time for small talk was over for Sara Beth, and she asked the question again.

“No, I know what we’re doing right now
 what do we do now that we know where we are”.

“I don’t think we can do much”, Mrs. Corum said.

“And the things we could do, we don’t know what the effect of them would be”, G-ma added.

“Am I going to grow older?”, Sara Beth asked.

It was a good question, one that neither Mrs. Corum or G-ma gave much thought to. The only one who had been here long enough to notice any signs of aging was G-ma, and she looked as befuddled as the rest.

“Dear, when you get to be my age, you kind of stop updating your mental picture”, she began, “Right now, you can probably close your eyes and imagine what you look like. Go ahead, give it a try”.

They women stopped, and Sara Beth gave it a go.

“Describe yourself”, G-ma said.

Sara Beth proceeded to describe herself, with good detail and accuracy – the other two women congratulated her on doing something she felt was not necessarily a big deal. Then G-ma completed her point.

“Dear, when I do that same thing
 when I close my eyes”, G-ma paused and closed her eyes, “I see a beautiful young woman in her mid-20s, bouncing all around the house getting things ready for her husband to come home. I see myself wearing my favorite house dress, the one that caused Edgar to be unable to keep his hands off of me when he came home” Spying the look of confusion or perhaps something else in Sara Beth’s eyes, G-ma quickly clarified “He’d hug me every day when he got home, and we’d eat dinner and talk about our plans. I see that woman when I close my eyes. Then I open them and look down at my hands, and realize that I’m not that woman anymore, no matter how hard I try to be. So you see, Dear, I don’t know if I’ve aged. I may have, but if I have, I’ve tried to block it out as best as I could”.

The three women smiled and chuckled at the last comment.

“And even if you had noticed changes in appearance, the biggest way we know our age is really the minor aches and pains!”, Mrs. Corum added, “And we have none of those anymore. So not only do I see myself as a young person in their mid 20’s, I feel like it too!”.

“Subtle benefits of this place!”, G-ma said with a laugh.

“Well that’s great for the two of you, but I’d like to see my mid 20’s. I’m still as short as I was in third grade. I want to grow taller, I want to be mature
 I want to have children
 and a family
 and more than this”. Sara Beth collapsed into a heap, with Sonic and his ball at her side. G-ma and Mrs. Corum sat next to her. They’d been wondering when she’d have her first breakdown over being in this place. Up until then, she would get sad and worried, but they could tell that this time she could actually appreciate the situation that she was in. This time she was realizing just what would happen to her, or in reality, what wouldn’t happen.

“There there”, G-ma said as she wrapped her arms around Sara Beth.

“Dear, you may not have grown taller, but you’ve definitely matured since you got here.”

The day after Sara Beth’s breakdown, the group decided to explore a new direction they hadn’t been to before. The older women felt it might be good for Sara Beth, and perhaps them as well. After all, this place held secrets that it seemed could be revealed at any time. Prior to Mrs. Corum’s arrival, it had never rained. Prior to Sara Beth’s arrival, the sky had never been anything other than gray, let alone blueish as it was on the day of the birthday party. Perhaps they’d meet a new friend, or discover a new land.

What they found, however, was a new phenomenon, one that would prove to be very beneficial while also very dangerous at the same time.

The trio (plus Sonic in his ball) wandered toward the unchartered lands. While they knew something was off in the distance in one direction, they decided time would be available to look into it later. Instead they went in the opposite direction, perpendicular to Mrs. Corum’s & G-ma’s spots. The horizon appeared utterly usual in its appearance, making it all the more attractive. Perhaps it held something that could not be seen from a distance.

As they got around 8 hours from where they started, they happened along an unusual formation of ground. Whereas ground in Julie’s mind tended to be lumpy, but seldom had hills or valleys, this almost looked like a steep drop. It lasted but a few feet, with a small hill on either side. Sara Beth decided that she and Sonic would roll down to the bottom, while G-ma and Mrs. Corum walked about 20 feet away, along the side of the ridge where it wasn’t as steep. When the three of them met up at the bottom of the hill, they realized something was different.

“I feel warm”, G-ma said.

“Me too”, Mrs. Corum replied.

“Yeah, me too”, chimed in Sara Beth. Perhaps Sonic was too, but he wasn’t talking.

“It’s different than on the day of the birthday – it’s not as pointed toward me”, G-ma said.

“Do you think Julie is thinking good thoughts about all of us at the same time?”, Sara Beth asked.

“I doubt it”, replied Mrs. Corum, “It wasn’t often she’d see all 3 of us together at the same time in her daily life. But now that you mention it, today might have been important to her. It’s around 5 days after my birthday party – that should put it around the last day of school. Perhaps Julie is just generally happy.”

“No, this is more intense than her usual happiness”, G-ma said. “Previous years I’d felt warmth at different times, times I now think were probably major milestones in my Julie’s life – perhaps her first day of school, her birthday, and others. But this is so much more widespread and intense.”

As the three stood and marveled, they had another realization.

“I don’t want to leave”, Mrs. Corum said.

“Neither do I”, Sara Beth replied.

G-ma stood there with her mouth slightly agape, as if she was experiencing something akin to joy for the first time in many months. The others looked at her as they realized a ray of light had enveloped her. They looked up at the sky and saw the most amazing sight – something that looked like the sun was peaking through grey walls. It had caught G-ma.

“Do you think we should do something about this?”, Sara Beth asked.

Mrs. Corum wasn’t sure. As she started to speak, the ray shifted, and now enveloped both her and G-ma.

“Hey
 you two
 HEY
.”, Sara Beth called. With every ounce of her being, she withdrew from the little valley. The feeling as she stepped back out of it was cold, almost as though she’d just taken a freezing shower. Within a few minutes, the feeling passed, however she had to fight the urge to step back inside the warm space of the valley. She watched as her two friends stay there, transfixed at the sun.

“I’ll just wait until it dims”, She told Sonic. “Once it dims, they’ll break free and come out with me”.

But Sara Beth knew this was a long shot. Somehow she knew that the longer one stayed inside the valley, the harder it was to leave. Within a few minutes, she realized she needed to come up with a plan.

“I’ve got it”, she proclaimed to Sonic, as she put his tether down. She walked about 50 feet away from the sharp gradient and began to run. As she got to the top of the grade, she took a leap, propelling her out away from the hillside and down into the valley. She landed squarely on G-ma and Mrs. Corum, before all three of them were pushed out of the light and back to the outskirts of the valley.

Immediately both Mrs. Corum and G-ma got up and began walking back toward the sun. Sara Beth needed to act fast. She quickly ran out of the valley to grab Sonic’s tether, which she then took and tied to the legs of her friends. Thankfully they did not move too quickly! Again moving a few feet away, she began to run toward the end of the tether, snatching it as she passed and toppling G-ma and Mrs. Corum as she dragged them from the valley. The three sit outside the valley, as the world dimmed. But to Sara Beth’s amazement, the sun beams never went away. They stayed there, bright and beaming.

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Chapter 6: The Link

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Hi Everyone – before we get into Part 6, I just wanted to thank those who have been reading the novel so far. I’ve come up with a name for it – “Cinereous”. I hope that you’re enjoying the book so far. This chapter clears up a few big questions, and asks a few more. Remember, in the end we’ll be at 30 chapters, so we’re getting a decent way in, but there is a lot more to come! If you have a chance, shoot me a message on Twitter (@jonwestfall) or leave a comment!

Best,

Jon.

Shooting up like a bolt of lightning had hit her, Mrs. Corum blurted out “I think I know you”, toward Sara Beth’s general direction.

G-ma and Sara Beth were taken aback. They’d been together for about a week at that point, and had decided, mutually, that they’d spend most of the dim hours in silence. The only time this place didn’t mess with how you thought was when you could devote 100% of your attention to thinking, and so minimizing distraction was the goal. The only one who didn’t get the memo was Sonic, who from time to time would move around in his ball and require Sara Beth to pull him out and cradle him for a bit.

Sara Beth looked toward Mrs. Corum, subtly asking if she was talking to her.

“Yes, Sara Beth, I think I know you, or rather, I knew you, in the past, before this place.”

They’d been over a number of common questions in the previous week. The only thing they hadn’t done was an exhaustive listing of names. Sara Beth lived in the next town over from G-ma, and Mrs. Corum lived slightly north. They didn’t see any immediate connection. G-ma and Mrs. Corum had mentioned their shared link in Julie, yet Sara Beth hadn’t recognized the name. So again they launched into a long discussion about where they may have crossed paths.

“And the daycare center, Other Worlds, was where I met my best friend”, Sara Beth began, telling the story of the last day she could remember away from this place.

“‘Other Worlds’,” Mrs. Corum began, “I remember I had a few students who mentioned that place. Seems like an ironic name for all three of us to be saying given where we are right now!” They all laughed at the ludicrous observation. The people at ‘Other Worlds’ weren’t thinking of this place when they themed their classrooms and common spaces in foreign and space landscapes! I visited a few times when I’d drop students off at the request of their parents”.

Sara Beth then began the retelling of the fight between herself and her best friend, and both G-ma and Mrs. Corum took more interest than in the past – actively asking questions of things they didn’t understand. They both supposed that when Sara Beth had originally been found, with this as one of the first stories they’d heard, they didn’t think of it as critically as they might now, a week later. At the time all they knew was that a frightened little girl was upset, and had been more interested in her emotional wellbeing than the facts of the story.

“Sara Beth”, G-ma started, “What was your best friend’s name?”

Sara Beth looked a bit sheepish, and G-ma knew instantly that she’d asked a question with a less than obvious answer.

“Uh
 I don’t think that’s important”, Sara Beth said, before launching into more of the story.

But when she naturally paused, G-ma again pressed the issue.

“I don’t know
” Sara Beth said casually, moving on in the story. This caught both Mrs. Corum and G-ma by surprise. Perhaps even Sonic too!

“Dear, you don’t know the name of your best friend?”, Mrs. Corum gently asked.

Sara Beth grew quiet. Finally she spoke.

“I never knew her name
”

“She never told you?”, G-ma asked.

“No
.”, Sara Beth began, her speech shaky as she suppressed emotions of sadness and guilt, “You see
, we met at ‘Other Worlds’ 6 months ago, and we’d see each other every day. But when you first meet someone, they introduce themselves, and you introduce yourself, but you don’t always know they’re going to be your best friend”.

“And once you do
”, Mrs. Corum said.

“You feel stupid asking them what their name is”, Sara Beth concluded.

“Oh dear, we understand”, G-ma said. It was a common enough occurrence, the forgetting of a name, but in the world of a 12 year old, when names of classmates are known from first grade on, one doesn’t think to remember new names outside the classroom. There are no teachers to call on new friends, however, and it’s quite remarkable how little someone refers to themselves by name. Poor Sara Beth had grown to care about a friend deeply that she couldn’t even identify by name.

“I always kinda hoped she’d give me a card, but then when she did for my birthday, she just signed it with ‘your best friend and Sonic’s Aunt’”. The older women could not help themselves from giggling at the irony of the 12 year old’s ploy and it’s failure to work.

As they finished the story, a thought struck Mrs. Corum.

“G-ma, I think there is a similarity between your story of how you got here and Sara Beth’s”, she said.

G-ma hadn’t told Sara Beth the story of the sweater yet, and couldn’t see any sort of connection. After all, there were no hedgehogs or arguments in her story.

“What do you mean?”, she asked Mrs. Corum.

“Both of you were with other people. Both of you were talking with those people. And both of you had a memorable moment happen. For you”, she said as she gestured toward Sara Beth, “it was a fight that was a major event with your friend. For you”, as she motioned toward G-ma, “It was a moment with Julie where she beamed up at you with pride over your sweater. Both moments are things that people would look back upon in the future”.

The other two looked at Mrs. Corum skeptically.

“Shame you still haven’t come up with your story, honey, or else we might be further convinced!”, G-ma said to Mrs. Corum.

“I may have come up with my story
”, Mrs. Corum replied.

G-ma looked shocked. They’d been together for nearly 4 weeks at this point, and Mrs. Corum hadn’t shared this with her. She would have remembered – it was, after all, big news in the world they all lived in.

“Well
 don’t leave us waiting!”, G-ma said with a tone that implied that this was definitely shared knowledge – there would be no secrets between the three of them.

“It’s embarrassing, and I’m afraid you’ll be mad at me”, she said to G-ma. G-ma was incredulous.

“How can I be mad at you? We didn’t meet until you came here”.

“Yes
 but it involves Julie”.

They sat there for a few moments, wondering if Mrs. Corum would say more. Finally she did.

“I suppose there really isn’t anything I can do about it now. I just feel bad about it, still.”

“I promise I’ll keep my emotions in check”, G-ma said. In her mind, she ran through a list of all the potentially bad things that could have happened between a teacher and Julie, and was prepared for the worst.

“Julie has been a bit different for the past few months”, Mrs. Corum began, “She seemed to spend most of her time in a bit of a daze. It didn’t affect her schoolwork, but the other kids did start noticing. I was worried, so I talked with our school counselor, and she told me, confidentially, that Julie had gone through periods of inattentiveness, mood swings, and mania over her entire time in school. They generally passed without incident, but teachers were made aware of it so they weren’t surprised if the girl with the normally high grades suddenly checked out for a month, emotionally, or if she became overly social, or if she began to have boundary issues with other kids. Julie is a wonderful young woman, but she has these moments”

“You were afraid I’d be mad that Julie wasn’t perfect?”, G-ma asked, confused.

“Well, I didn’t you’d be happy about it, but that wasn’t what I was afraid of”, Mrs. Corum continued.

“A few weeks ago, another student in class, Ryan, began to notice Julie was, well, different. And he wasn’t happy to let it slide by. Each time she’d blurt out something in class, he’d make a wisecrack about ‘that crazy one’. I’d hush the children, but never do anything more. He attracted a small group of kids who began to scrutinize Julie for anything they could pounce on – you know how kids are – and they’d take the opportunity to point out her impulsive actions, her mood swings, her quietness even. I kept the classroom in order, but between teaching and managing everyone in the room, I never had much time to do anything else. Finally, one day, Ryan said something that struck a nerve with me. Julie had been working on an assignment that asked the students to imagine their future families. She’d drawn a picture of herself and her two children, and her husband. When it came time to present, she told the class that she wanted to have two kids with her charming husband. Ryan, upon hearing this, yelled out ‘As if anyone would want to marry you, you crazy ugly thing!’ Julie’s mood immediately dropped from ecstatic over her future plans to heartbroken, and she began crying.”

G-ma and Sara Beth attentively looked at Mrs. Corum as she paused.

“I lost it. I launched into a tirade against Ryan. The kind of tirade teachers aren’t supposed to launch into anymore, or at the least, launch into only in private with a student. I told him that he was being a horrible classmate to Julie, and a despicable person for saying such a thing. I told him that I would ask him to apologize if I felt his apology would be worth anything, but that I doubted it really did. I told him that he should be amazed if anyone in the class would ever want to be friends with him after such a mean spirited remark. By the time I was done, Julie’s tears had subsided, but Ryan’s had just begun. I emotionally tore down a 12 year old kid who was just acting like a 12 year old kid. A cruel 12 year old kid, but I mustered all of my might to be a cruel elementary school teacher in return.”

They sat there in silence while Mrs. Corum looked down at the ground. Tears rolled down her face.

“Everyone snaps, sometimes”, G-ma said, “I don’t know why you felt that you should worry about my reaction, it sounds like what you did was perfectly natural”.

Mrs. Corum looked up.

“Natural, perhaps, but not something I should have done. And I didn’t think you’d be mad at me for yelling at Ryan. I thought you’d be mad at me for not defending Julie earlier. In retrospect, I could have done a lot more to stop him before it ever reached that point. I failed Julie as a student, and I feel ashamed and embarrassed at my behavior. And the next thing I knew, after that, I was here. I never had a chance to make things right”

G-ma let a moment pass before speaking again.

“There is no point in chastising yourself for this again and again, it was a mistake – we all learn from mistakes”.

Sara Beth had sat there quietly through Mrs. Corum’s emotional story. Sonic sat idly by as well, almost as if he knew something important was happening, and that he shouldn’t interrupt. Both G-ma and Mrs. Corum had grown quiet, and Sara Beth knew that it was time to speak up.

“I think
.”, She said as they looked toward her, “I think that I’ve heard that story before”.

“From who?”, Mrs. Corum asked. She feared that, if indeed they were copies, her present self my find herself in the unemployment line due to her little outrage, and that news may have spread of that fast. “Was a friend of yours in the class?”

“Yeah, I think so, I remember her telling me the story”, Sara Beth replied. “And another thing
”, Sara Beth took in a deep breath, “I think I know the name of my best friend”

Putting the pieces together, G-ma and Mrs. Corum looked at Sara Beth.

“My best friend’s name is, well after the fight, was, Julie”.

They paused, with Mrs. Corum breaking the silence.

“Julie told you about this?”, she said quietly.

“Yes, but you should know how she told me”, Sara Beth said with a upbeat note, “She told me all about how her teacher had stood up for her that day. That the other kids thought she was weird, and she’d been really upset, but that her favorite teacher finally told them off. She didn’t even remember everything you said, because she was still upset, but by the time she felt better, the rest of the kids were in shock and you were sitting behind your desk. She said that after school you held both her and Ryan back. You apologized to her for not stepping in earlier. She didn’t know what you said to Ryan”. The memories Sara Beth spoke from had become crystal clear over the past several minutes. Almost as though they’d been dusted clean and placed in the forefront of her mind.

“So I did make it right
 but my copy was made before that”, Mrs. Corum mused.

“Again with the copies”, G-ma said. “Its as good a theory as any, but it’s a crazy one”.

By this point, the dimness had passed and it was about halfway through the lighter cycle of the day. The women had stood and idly began walking toward their latest destination – a spot still very much far off in the distance. As they walked, their conversation turned toward lighter matters. They all knew their common link, Julie, and as best they could place, they’d come here during emotional moments in her life. They joked that perhaps Julie was a supernatural being that could zap them away from life and seal them up here somehow. But still they had no concrete idea about where ‘here’ might be.

“Julie loved recess”, Mrs. Corum said absentmindedly, “It would be about recess time now, I suppose”.

“She’d tell me about how she would play with her few friends at school during recess – they’d make up stories to tell each other”, Sara Beth added.

“She was all about stories, even as a little girl”, G-ma concluded. Of the three, the situation regarding Julie was probably hardest on G-ma. It had been so long since G-ma had seen her, and while hearing about her from Mrs. Corum and Sara Beth was lovely, it also stung.

As they walked, something in the sky caught Sara Beth’s eye. “What is that?”, she said as she pointed up.

A flash of coppery shimmer appeared above them. They’d barely had a chance to talk about it before the earthquake began. Similar to the one that Mrs. Corum and G-ma had experienced weeks before, however much more severe. The tremors knocked the women back and forth, far enough from each other as to not be able to hear. Periodically they’d believe it to be over and get up to wander nearer to the rest of the group, only to have a tremor knock them down once more. Finally the rain came, dropping buckets of water onto their heads. The ground couldn’t soak it up fast enough, with Sonic’s little ball floating slightly from time to time as water pooled under him. Thankfully once the rain had stopped, and the ground was still, and the dimness came for the night, the women had time to gather their wits. All three were thankful that they couldn’t feel the pain they would inevitably been afflicted with if they were still on earth. G-ma and Mrs. Corum wondered if that one might have been fatal if they hadn’t been here.

“I wonder what happened”, Sara Beth asked.

“No idea, but whatever it was, it was severe”, Mrs. Corum replied.

“We’ve been talking so much about Julie”, Sara Beth continued, “That I thought of how her moods would change from time to time. They’d start out as if nothing was wrong. Then a burst of intense emotion, and then she’d end up crying. It was weird that the weather here was almost exactly the same as that”

The women thought about this for a moment, when G-ma broke the silence.

“Mrs. Corum, I think the copy idea may truly be right
 I think I know where we are”

“Where?”, both Sara Beth and Mrs. Corum asked at the same time.

“You know how it is when you’re thinking about someone?”, G-ma began. The others nodded. G-ma spoke slowly and purposefully.

“It’s almost as if you place them in your mind, and you think about how they’d react to a situation, how they’d be if they were there. Sometimes you have them say things and control their behavior. Other times you just imagine them to have them near you during tough times.”

“What if sometimes you stole them away for yourself later? What if you kept a copy of them to recall in the future. We would have no idea how many times we’d been copied. How many of us there would be out there. We’d go on living our lives as if nothing had happened, with clones of us living out their days in the minds of others.”

“They wouldn’t feel any physical feelings, because they weren’t physically people”, Mrs. Corum added.

“They wouldn’t have any needs – I don’t think of my friends as having to eat, or drink, or use the bathroom, when I remember them in my mind”, Sara Beth said.

“Ladies
 I think I know where we are
 We’re in the mind of my granddaughter, your student, your friend, and little Sonic’s Aunt: Julie McKay”

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Chapter 5: The Meeting

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“No, I can’t say that it ever got that bad”, G-ma said. The look on Mrs. Corum’s face was a bit crestfallen, obviously she had hoped that G-ma might empathize a bit more. G-ma noticed. They had been talking about their former lives outside of this place, specifically the low points.
“I’m not saying I don’t see how it could be that way for you, dear, I’m just saying I don’t think I ever got to that point”.
“It was years ago”, Mrs. Corum said softly, “Right after I found out that I wouldn’t be able to have children. I guess it took a huge toll on me. At that time, it didn’t seem like a man would want to date you if he couldn’t see a future with you
 and they didn’t seem to see a future with me. I thought the world was ending – that no one would ever be interested, and that I’d be a spinster for the rest of my life”
G-ma didn’t quite know what to say. Mrs. Corum had been a lot more talkative over the last few days, ever since the rain storm and earthquake. It almost appeared that she had something she needed to talk out, but for the life of her, G-ma had no idea what that was or how to help. G-ma wasn’t used to serious conversations on mental health – her life had been mostly one of mundane happiness. It appeared that Mrs. Corum had been through some rough times that G-ma and her family only approached on rare occasion, and even then, were blessed to have pass quickly.
“I can’t imagine”, G-ma said. The words rang truer than most people would admit – in this case, she truly couldn’t.
Mrs. Corum and G-ma were lazily making their way back to Mrs. Corum’s original spot, planning to explore a new direction relative to it. They hadn’t seen any new or unusual weather events in at least 3 days, although they often looked up and squinted at the sky, wondering if they were missing some subtle shift of color. It was possible that they had become so attenuated to the world they lived in that that their sense had been dulled to it’s shifting nature. Or perhaps they hadn’t, but the ladies were simply all out of energy in a mental way, their bodies still fully powered as the moment they had awoken in this place.
They were both quiet for a few minutes, until Mrs. Corum began to speak.
“It just feels like I can think for the first time in years”, she began, “Throughout my entire working life I was consumed with the day-to-day world. Papers needed to be marked, students needed to be taught, bills needed to be paid, and I suppose that even leisure activities needed to be done. The TV wasn’t going to watch itself at the end of the day. Then I came here. Here I have no papers, no students, no TV. All I have is my time talking with you, and my own thoughts. You ever see that old Twilight Zone where the man is thrilled to have all the time in the world to read?”
“Yes, that’s the one where his glasses break right before he can start his first book”, G-ma replied.
“Yes. But in this case, my glasses haven’t broken. If anything, they’ve gotten sharper as I’ve got so much time now to think about things. I wonder how this place will change me, as I think about all that stuff I’ve ignored for so many years.”
G-ma hoped that the next question wasn’t going to be what she feared, but inevitably, it was.
“Have you changed since you got here?”, Mrs. Corum asked.
G-ma took a long moment that, to Mrs. Corum, would appear that she was gathering her thoughts. In reality, she was hoping something strange would happen again so that she could avoid answering the question.
No earthquake, sky color change, or warm fuzzy feeling came.
“I was afraid you would ask that”, G-ma began, “Yes, I have changed quite a bit”.
Mrs. Corum was somewhat taken aback by the abrupt reply and failure to elaborate. She weighed her options: Ask about how she’s changed, or simply let it hang there. In the end, she didn’t have to worry, G-ma had decided to open up.
“I used to be more extreme”, G-ma said as she sat down on the ground, indicating to Mrs. Corum that she planned on speaking for awhile. “I had wild mood swings day to day during my regular life. Before I came here, there were days I was no picnic to be around. I suppose now that I’m still no picnic to others, but at least I’m less annoying to myself. Maybe what you said about having time now to think is what it is. I can engage in the soul searching that I put off before”
For next few hours, G-ma let out all of the thoughts that, previously, had just been worked out in her mind. No one had heard the life stories, the philosophical rants, and the humorous musings that the older woman had pondered and pieced together over the past 8 years. It grew dim and then light again before they had finished.
After that conversation, Mrs. Corum changed her evaluation of G-ma. The woman had always seemed a bit too direct. A bit too sure of herself. It became clear, though, that this was simply because she’d had a lot of time to decide on what she believed to be true in this world and in her life outside of it. Mrs. Corum decided that speaking to G-ma was different only in that it wasn’t what she would say or do in the given situation. G-ma had a distinct viewpoint. Mrs. Corum wondered if she might, one day, have the same viewpoint, if she lasted long enough here.

“Here it was”, Mrs. Corum said of the spot of ground in front of them.

They had gotten back to her original starting point in the abyss, and had decided to explore a new direction.

“I was over there”, G-ma pointed, “but I always sort of wondered what was that way”, as she pointed sharply in the opposite direction. Previously they had walked perpendicular to the two spots they knew well, today the would start walking parallel, off into the distance neither had ventured. They could make out something far off in the horizon that looked different than the rest of the sky. It would be a journey of several days, but perhaps would be worth it.

They began walking. Today the conversation had been rather light. Some shared stories from their childhoods, and discussion of politics and religious beliefs (They figured that there was no way they were going to scare each other off, so they might as well approach these ‘friendship forbidden’ topics). As they walked, slowly the conversation turned back to the world they found themselves in.

“What do you think you’ll do the next time we find someone here?”, Mrs. Corum asked.

“You think we’re going to find others?”, G-ma replied.

“Well, we found each other”, Mrs. Corum said with a slight bit of cheer in her voice.

“Yes, after I’d given up on ever having that happen. I guess my perspective is different than yours – I think a new person arrives here every 8 years or so, to you, they arrive every few weeks”, G-ma pointed out.

“I suppose you’re right, but I keep getting the sense that we’re going to find others, and not just one, perhaps a dozen. We might even get to start our own community here. You could be mayor”, Mrs. Corum said with a grin.

“I never had the mind for politics!”, G-ma said with a laugh.

“Seriously, though, what are we going to do when we meet them”, Mrs. Corum said, directing the conversation back to her original question.

“I suppose spend the first day just explaining everything – we don’t know much about this place, but we may know more than they do, assuming they haven’t been here longer than we have. Maybe they’ll know more. Maybe your community of friends has been here longer than I have”, G-ma said, as the thoughts came pouring out. Evidently this was one topic she hadn’t fully discussed in her mind during the previous years of living in isolation.

“I wonder if they’ll all be from the same place we grew up?”, Mrs. Corum pondered.

“Aside from you and I both knowing Julie”, G-ma replied, “We don’t seem to have any other link than geography. It would be interesting to meet someone who came here from a more exotic locale than the boring places we frequented on Earth.”

“Do you think we’re still on Earth?”, Mrs. Corum said, half jokingly.

“Aliens again?”, G-ma said with a smile.

“No, but perhaps we’re on a different plane of existence. Maybe we’ve evolved!”, Mrs. Corum optimistically replied.

“No hope of that for me, dear, I’m devolving if anything!”

“Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know
 just seemed like something to say”, G-ma said with a smile.

As they walked further away from Mrs. Corum’s spot, a thought struck G-ma that hadn’t before. In retrospect, even if she had thought of it, she would have had no way to test it.

“Can you hear me?”, G-ma asked Mrs. Corum.

“Yes, why?”

“Just let me try something – stand here”

G-ma walked about 10 feet away from Mrs. Corum.

“Can you hear me?”, G-ma asked. Mrs. Corum nodded in agreement.

G-mailed about another 10 feet away from Mrs. Corum.

“Can you hear me?”, G-ma asked. Mrs. Corum started to nod, but then paused. A perplexed look came over her face.

G-ma walked back toward her.

“I saw you perfectly, you weren’t but 15 feet away, and I could see your lips open, and knew you were asking if I could hear you. But I couldn’t.”, Mrs. Corum stammered.

“That explains a lot”, G-ma said, and began walking, motioning Mrs. Corum to join her.

“I realized that whenever someone shows up in this place, one thing is generally on their to-do list as soon as they realize that they’re not in metaphorical Kansas anymore”, G-ma began, “They cry out. They scream. They yell. They curse. They make noise. Did you do that?”

Mrs. Corum blushed slightly. She hadn’t told G-ma that this was, indeed, something she did a few times during that first day. She called out, hoping others might hear her. In fact, a few times, she let out a yell so loud it surprised her.

“Yes, I did”

“But no one here heard you. Think about it – this land has some subtle rises and dips, but is fundamentally flat. We can see for perhaps a mile in any given direction. Sound should travel here just fine, but the distance it travels is tiny compared to the distance we can see.

Mrs. Corum was starting to put the pieces together as G-ma continued.

“So if there are others here, they might spend hours, or days, or weeks calling out, staying put where someone can find them, not realizing that even though they yell as loudly as possible, this place seems to dampen sound.”

“I wonder if there is anyway for us to train our ears to hear better”, Mrs. Corum replied.

“What do you mean?”, G-ma asked.

“I’ve taught my students in science about how the sense can become more highly trained. How they can adjust if need be. I wonder if we were to spend time practicing if we could train our ears to be more sensitive”.

“How long would that take?”, G-ma said.

“Got somewhere you need to be?”, Mrs. Corum smartly replied with a wink.

For the rest of the day, and the next few, G-ma and Mrs. Corum strained to pick up the smallest sound, often whispering to each other. To their amazement, it actually started to work. They could increase the distance between each other to 25 or 30 feet and be heard perfectly. They didn’t need to speak as loudly as they had before either. A light whisper was enough. It was almost as if super hearing was something this world found metaphysically cool, as a teenager might put it, and helped their minds grasp it quickly and easily.

Therefore it was not a huge surprise when they found themselves walking one day and having the following conversation.

“I just don’t know about
. Did you hear that?”

“Yes
”. The two women turned and pointed in the same direction.

They walked over a small hill, and found her sitting there, softly crying, a plastic ball with a missing piece lying to her side.

Mrs. Corum and G-ma turned to each other and shot a quick glance that communicated everything they both had rush through their minds. Who was this girl? Why was she crying? Had she been here long? What’s with the plastic ball? Where had she come from?

Despite all of these questions, the humanity in both women rapidly took over.

“It’s OK honey”, G-ma called out while they were still a few feet away. She didn’t want to startle the child and only make things worse.

“We’re here to help”, Mrs. Corum added.

Sara Beth looked up at them through tear filled eyes.

“Sonic got loose”, she sobbed.

“Who is Sonic?”, Mrs. Corum asked, showing a confused look to G-ma. G-ma, perhaps more skilled at pets than Mrs. Corum, picked up the plastic ball.

“Oh dear, the top came loose, didn’t it honey”, she said.

“Yeah
we were talking and I looked away for just a moment. He’s so small, and so gray, and so
 easy to lose in this stupid place”, Sara Beth proclaimed.

“Who are you?”, Mrs. Corum asked.

“We’ll sort all of that out later – right now we have to find Sonic!”, G-ma said, taking charge of the situation. Mrs. Corum stood there, admonished for her curiosity, but felt perhaps G-ma should take the lead here.

“Is Sonic a hedgehog, dear?”, G-ma asked.

“Yes”.

“You heard her – let’s fan out and look. We know he didn’t come by us in the direction we came – I’m sure we would have seen the little guy. I’ll head this way, my friend will head that way, and, this is really important dear, you need to calm down and start looking that way. There are 3 of us, we’ll find Sonic in no time.”

The search party split into three directions and looked, careful to walk over and prod anything on the splotchy gray ground that could have been a tiny hedgehog. Sara Beth was worried, but happy to have the help of the others. She had barely even started looking when she heard a voice call out “I found him”.

Mrs. Corum had walked back over to Sara Beth and led her over to where Sonic lie, seemingly content. “I
 uh
 don’t know how to pick him up”, she said. Sara Beth adroitly picked up her friend and placed him in the pink ball, making sure the top was tightly in place. They then walked toward the direction G-ma had headed, and found her lightly tapping a gray bump in the ground with her foot.

“I’m glad to see the crisis has been averted”, G-ma said, as she saw the two approach.

“What did she say”, Sara Beth asked Mrs. Corum.

“She said that she was glad our crisis was over”, Mrs. Corum replied, aware that G-ma was still too far away for Sara Beth to hear her.

As the three women and one escapee hedgehog came together, G-ma reached out and put her hand on Sara Beth’s shoulder.

“I’m glad that we’re all safe.”

Sara Beth smiled, perhaps the first true smile that she had produced since coming to this place. She looked up at G-ma and asked “Who are you?”

“My grandkids call me G-ma”, G-ma said, “And as I told my friend here when I met her, no one has called me anything else in quite awhile. Guess I like the sound of G-ma now”.

“I’m happy to meet you G-ma, thanks for helping me find Sonic”, Sara Beth said in gratitude.

“What’s your name, dear”, G-ma asked.

“Sara Beth”

Both women paused for a moment, mentally scanning their pre-abyss memories for a Sara Beth. They were both keenly aware that despite their hard work to fill in the gaps, this place was still somewhat messing with their mind. Sara Beth would be the one to break the moment of silence.

“Who are you?”, she asked Mrs. Corum.

“I’m just a misplaced 6th grade teacher”, Mrs. Corum said with a smile, “My name is Mrs. Corum”.

“I was in 6th grade, well, before I ended up here”.

“Were you?”, Mrs. Corum asked rhetorically. In her mind she further scanned her memory. Sadly she knew very few of the other 6th graders at her school that were not in her class. That amounted to around 30-40 more students. And even then, they had no assurance that Sara Beth had come from the same general area they had.

“We were just going for a walk, would you like to join us”, G-ma asked.

“I can’t”, Sara Beth replied.

This took the two older women by surprise.

“Why not?”, Mrs. Corum asked bluntly.

“Because I need to stay in this spot so they can find me”, Sara Beth said indignantly.

“Honey, I don’t think that’s how it works here”, G-ma gently said.

“How do you know?”, Sara Beth asked.

“Because I sat in the same spot for almost 8 years”, G-ma replied softly. “No one came for me until Mrs. Corum happened to find me a few weeks ago”.

“Well you see – you see – someone found you by staying in the same spot”.

The girl had her there. G-ma had to think quickly.

“Then I’ll tell you what – we can come wait at your spot today, and then tomorrow go on our walk again, and if you choose to come with us, we can come back to your spot every so often and see if anyone is waiting for you”. Sara Beth pondered the idea, and shook her head in agreement.

The three of them sat down, just as it began to dim for the night.

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Chapter 4: Sara Beth

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Sara Beth sat in the corner of the room crying, alternating from light sniffles to harder sobs as she tried harder and harder to tuck herself into a ball. She wanted to block out the whole world, and while successful in doing that, she wasn’t very successful in calming herself down. She never had actually gotten this particular method of coping to work well – she might push herself into a tight, small, space, but her problems remained as overwhelmingly large as possible.
It had been utterly cruel of her friend to say those things to her. All over some silly argument. Sara Beth grasped at the tether looped around her hand, tugging slightly on it to make sure she still felt resistance. She did, and it reassured her slightly in between hysterics. At least he wouldn’t betray her trust.
It had all started 5 minutes ago. The two girls had been playing with Sara Beth’s pet hedgehog, Sonic. Sara Beth never did quite understand why her parents felt it would be a fitting name for the hedgehog – it was something related to an old video game – but she was so happy to have a pet that she was alright with her dad trumping the naming rights. He had brought home little Sonic to her a few months before, along with all the appropriate hedgehog gear. Sonic was a friendly hedgehog, despite his spikes, and Sara Beth had become a good parent to Sonic, rarely holding him in the wrong way, rarely seeing the business end of his most prevalent defense mechanism. Sonic seemed to like Sara Beth, although one wouldn’t know how exactly to tell that from a hedgehog’s demeanor. Perhaps it was the way he would roll his little ball near to her when he was ready to go home to his cage, or the look on his face when she smiled at him (At least she saw a look on his face, others told her she was nuts). His ball had a small hole in which a tether could be looped. It made sure he didn’t roll too far away, and was very useful when your eyes are so full of tears you wouldn’t be able to see your new best friend rolling away after like your former best friend had.
“She’s jealous”, Sara Beth thought in her mind. “Jealous of Sonic and jealous of having a pet – her parents would never allow it!”. Each time Sara Beth would take Sonic out and let him play in his ball, her supposed best friend would try to snatch him away, play with him a bit too rough, or lightly push the ball around, throwing Sonic into a bit of confusion.
5 minute earlier, Sara Beth had had enough. Poor Sonic seemed disoriented and dizzy after being unceremoniously pushed by her friends foot.
“You can’t do that!!!”, she screamed as she snapped the tether onto the ball, in essence keeping Sonic tied to one spot, “He doesn’t like that!”
“How do you know – he looks like he likes playing with his Auntie”, came the sing-song reply of her friend.
“You play too rough with him, he’ll get hurt!”
“It’s fine Sara Beth, you worry too much. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him
 unless you made me really mad”, she said with a sly smile that Sara Beth couldn’t tell the true intent of. 99% sure it was a joke, but not 100%.
“You don’t care about him
 you just want to play rough. And
 and
. you don’t care about me! If you did you wouldn’t do it”
“That’s not true!”
“Yes it is”
“No it’s NOT”
“YES IT IS”
“NO IT’S NOT!!!”
Sara Beth mustered all of her courage and proclaimed:
“I HATE YOU! YOU AREN’T MY FRIEND ANYMORE! GO AWAY AND DON’T EVER BOTHER ME OR SONIC AGAIN!!!”.
She then tumbled to the floor while the other girl ran away.
Almost immediately, she regretted her words and actions. She was constantly told at school to act like an adult, but the impulsiveness of a child was still present at her age, and in this case it may have cost her a friendship she’d had for years. They’d practically grown up together, and while so often these spats resolved themselves, this was the first time either had used the H word. She hoped she’d hear her friend return and say something, anything, that would make things normal again. A long while passed and no timid small voice broken into Sara Beth’s balled up figure. This likely fueled her hysterical sobs that punctuated the silent sniffling in the empty classroom.
Eventually, she decided it was time to move on. To raise her head and get ready to go home. While she was old enough to be a ‘latchkey’ child, her parents were skeptical of how she’d do alone, so each day they dropped her, and Sonic, off at an after school program. They’d do some art projects, read stories, and have time at the end to work on whatever they like. From time to time, though, even the older kids like Sara Beth would have a breakdown, evidence that they weren’t quite yet the teenagers they aspired to be.
To her surprise, when she lifted her head, the room was darker than she remembered it. As her eyes focused, she began to realize that not only was it darker, it also wasn’t even the same room.
“Hello?!?”, Sara Beth called out, wondering if in her hysterics someone had come and taken her to another part of the school. She looked down and saw Sonic, still in his ball, still securely attached to her wrist. At least wherever she was, she had a true friend with her. Sonic looked up at Sara Beth in confusion.
Slowly she rose to her feet. Sara Beth hadn’t yet experienced her growth spurt that the others had begun to endure. Her small frame still spoke of childhood, not adolescence. It seemed to fit her well. Her blue eyes pierced through her pale complexion, hair neatly pulled back in the same pony tail that her mom had been putting it in for years. She wore her school uniform, today consisting of a simple red cotton dress, which sharply contrasted with the gray scenery around her.
She spent a few minutes wandering around before it hit her: She wasn’t at the school anymore. She wasn’t anywhere that she’d ever been before. She wasn’t anywhere that she’d ever heard about before.
She sat back down on the ground and tried her best to ball herself back up in the way she had been before, crossing her fingers. But when she looked back up she didn’t find herself magically back in the classroom, she was still in the barren abyss. Pushing her head back, she let out a long wail. The sobbing had returned.

 

“What should we do today, Sonic?”, Sara Beth asked her prickly friend. Sonic looked up at her, but failed to answer. The sky had undimmed and Sara Beth could make out the familiar splotch of gray that appeared almost directly over the spot she liked to sit in, the same spot she had been sitting in when she arrived.
“I’m so glad I have a way to keep track of you”, Sara Beth continued, “You’d be so easy to lose here”. Indeed Sonic’s grayish colors would act like natural camouflage if it weren’t for the ball made of light pink plastic that he lived in most of the time. When it got close to dim, Sara Beth would often take Sonic out and let him walk around the circle of ground enclosed by Sara Beth’s arms. She figured he needed his exercise, although he never stretched the way he used to when she took him out of the ball. Maybe he wasn’t as stiff.
It had been about a 2 weeks since Sara Beth had arrived. In that time she’d progressed through several emotional stages. For about the past 3 day/dim cycles she’d been mostly stable, and now found that talking to Sonic relaxed her.
“Maybe today we’ll go for a walk again”, Sara Beth proposed, “We’ll go see that spot that looks like a dinosaur before we come back here and wait.”
Waiting was all she could think of doing. If somehow she had been taken to this place, then somehow she could be taken away, right? It seemed so simple. The universe dumps you in a strange land you’ve never seen, somehow it should dump you back out. Maybe this was a crazy dream.
“You know Sonic, we have to wait right here, so that they’ll know where to find us”, she said with a forced smile, “What’s that? No, they’ll come back! I’m sure they miss us. Yes, even her – she’ll come back soon, and I’ll even let her be your Aunt again – I know she just made a mistake when she rolled you that last time”.
Sonic hadn’t eaten in 2 weeks, but of course, neither had Sara Beth. Sonic hadn’t slept, but neither had Sara Beth. Sonic hadn’t wept, but Sara Beth certainly had. Even on her ‘good’ days she still spent a good deal of time crying in some way. The long wails and sobs had subsided, but now the subtle tears of loss and longing had taken over.
Sara Beth’s parents were both busy people who loved her, but had very little time for her. Her father, an overworked police officer, was one of the most dependable people on the force. This meant he often was corralled into taking on double shifts, arriving home either right as Sara Beth had to go to sleep, or right as she was leaving for school. Every 9 weeks, when the school quarter ended, provided she got good grades, she got to ride along with him in his police cruiser for a special date with her handsome police officer dad. That was supposed to be three days ago, but the date never happened. She imagined him looking for her, missing their special ritual just as she did.
Her mom worked as a line supervisor at a local factory. She got off work around 5 PM daily and would pick Sara Beth up and go run errands. Some nights they’d go to the pet store to pick up something for Sonic. Other nights they’d just go home where Sara Beth would help her mom make dinner. She was old enough to start learning the sacred recipes her mother guarded with her life. Yesterday she was supposed to learn the secret to her mother’s sugar cookies.
“They wouldn’t leave me”, she told herself as the sky dimmed each night, “They’re looking for me”
“They’ll find me.”
Three statements she’d repeat time and time again, only to see the sky brighten each morning without a visit from her parents. The memory of them the only thing she could hold on to. Sometimes if she listened really intently, she’d hear something that sounded like voices in the distance, but they never came closer.
Sara Beth and Sonic had begun their daily walk, out over the small hill toward the place in the sky that looked remarkably like a T-Rex, if you looked at it the right way.
“It’s safe, Sonic”, Sara Beth would reassure her little companion as he rolled alongside her, “They’ll certainly wait at the spot for us if we’re not there, besides, it’s good to get out”. She had no idea if that were true – maybe it was good, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was the only thing that stopped her crying.
When they’d reached the T-Rex, Sara Beth noticed something she hadn’t before. The T-Rex was changing color. It was almost brownish, as opposed to the gray it had been.
“Something must be happening today!”, Sara Beth said to Sonic, “I bet it’s Mom and Dad! I bet they’re coming to find me. The T-Rex is telling me that’s true”. Sara Beth needed no further proof that this was true. What else could it be?
Sara Beth raced back to her spot. But all that awaited her was a rain storm. She picked Sonic’s ball up and held it close to her chest, keeping him dry from the rain as it poured forth. The rain started slowly, but it gradually increased in magnitude and force.
“What if this is punishment, Sonic?”, Sara Beth said, as water streamed down her cheeks.
“What if this is what happens when you push away your best friend? I wish I could tell her that I was sorry. I wish I could tell her that I didn’t mean what I said. I wish I could take it all back and see her again. I’d let her play with you – I know she wouldn’t be too rough. I’d invite her along with Dad and I – she’d be so excited to ride in a police car. I’d teach her how to make Mom’s cookies. It could be like it was”
Sonic looked up at Sara Beth, but even Sara Beth couldn’t infer emotion in his little face. As Sara Beth thought about her friend, momentarily focusing on their friendship and the fight, the ran slowly stopped. The sky returned to it’s normal shade, and Sara Beth looked out from her huddled mass covering Sonic and his ball.
It was at that moment that the most magical thing happened. It was the thing that would keep Sara Beth from almost certain insanity in the days to come. It was the thing that gave her hope that this world wasn’t as bleakly depressing as it appeared.
As she sat there, Sara Beth began to feel a warm feeling from within her. It was as if she was covered in a warm blanket. All of her worries about her parents and her friend evaporated along with the rain, and she swore that when she looked down at Sonic, he was smiling at her, his little snout pointed up so she could see the curve of his mouth. Suddenly she didn’t care if her parents ever found her. She didn’t care if she were stuck in this world forever. In that moment, everything seemed perfect and right, to the point she even wondered what she had been worried about moments earlier. The sky brightened, and Sara Beth could swear that it looked like a glorious yellow sun might come out from behind the thick gray wall. Slowly Sara Beth stood up, extending her arms out. She prayed this feeling would never end.

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Chapter 3: Similarities

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Mrs. Corum sat for a long time while G-ma happily air knitted. Finally she’d had enough.
“You know, I would have taken a nap to escape this, by now”, she said.
G-ma looked up from her knitting. “Funny how we realize that a lot of the time we spent napping, or eating, or any other mundane thing before wasn’t because of our need to do those things, but rather our need to not do them – to find anything else to occupy us”.
“Do you think we’re dead?”, Mrs. Corum asked.
It was the first time the thought had crossed her mind, and she mentally chastised herself for not thinking of it earlier. G-ma, however, appeared to have already thought it out.
“No matter what spirituality someone has, they imagine the afterlife to be different than this, honey”, G-ma started, “At the very least, there should be some torment or joy, purpose or interaction with some part of the Universe. Best I can tell, we’re not dead, although the thought crossed my mind that we might be stuck somewhere in-between life and death. In the end though, it’s those weird feelings we have when we’re near a spot we’ve been to before, or my emotional warmth, that lead me to think we’re still very much alive. I also had concluded that if I were dead, I’d meet someone at some point. You kinda destroyed that argument when you arrived”, G-ma ended with a smile.
“I don’t know why I didn’t wonder about being dead earlier”, Mrs. Corum mused, “Now that it crosses my mind, it seems like one of the first things I should have considered.”
“I didn’t think of it for at least a year”, G-ma replied. “It’s almost as if this place actively fights that thought away from you”.
“Speaking of actively fighting, that’s all I feel like I’ve been doing for the last few hours – fighting to remember a time before this place”, Mrs. Corum said softly.
“Damnedest thing, isn’t it?”, said G-ma.
“I kept coming back to one thought – if you and I are the only two here, is it because we’re somehow linked?”, Mrs. Corum asked.
G-ma paused for a moment, as if this time she was the one to have the revelation late to the game.
“I suppose it’s possible”, G-ma conceded. For someone who seemed to know a lot of this world, she appeared shaky in her convictions for the first time in Mrs. Corum’s presence.
“Maybe we should talk about our past, as much of it as we can remember”, Mrs. Corum suggested.
The women sat and spoke at length for several hours, each recalling their own personal history. G-ma had been born about 5 years earlier than Mrs. Corum, and they found they were both from the same part of the country – even being born in the same hospital. Aside from that link, though, most things were different. Mrs. Corum had worked all her life, never married, never had children, and socialized mostly with her students in the classroom, living a solitary life outside of it. G-ma married young to the love of her life, Edgar, had one child, John, and socialized almost exclusively with her husband and child until Edgar died. G-ma hadn’t ever held a job (well, a real job anyway, she’d worked as a teenager at a hamburger stand), and the only children she saw on a regular basis were Julie and Jamie.
Mrs. Corum was still having trouble recalling names of her students, so she began describing them. There was the little boy who was preoccupied with peeling glue from the top of glue bottles, cleaning the whole classes supply out of some sort of prepubescent OCD need. There was the little girl who couldn’t pronounce the word bird correctly, despite loving the creatures. And so on. G-ma humored Mrs. Corum as she told her stories, pushing back the urge to relate each one to an experience with her grandchildren.
“And this year, I’ve got one with one heck of an imagination”, Mrs. Corum started, “She tells the most fantastical stories, with such detail. It’s almost as if she plans them all out and rigorously rehearses them before hand”.
G-ma couldn’t resist this time.
“Oh, that reminds me of Julie so much”, G-ma started, “She would come over to my place when she was just learning to put together full sentences, and I’d listen to these broken stories that she’d tell.”, G-ma smiled while recalling the memory.
“Kids do that so well”, Mrs. Corum said, “Often they take what they see on TV and reinterpret it, re-telling it so that it scarcely resembles the original”.
“If that’s what Julie was doing, then she was mighty good at it”, G-ma replied, “I could never quite figure out where she got these ideas from. Her father wasn’t the most creative person, so I doubt it was from him. And her mom didn’t have time for such things either – too busy working. Such a shame when families break up and the woman must work”
Mrs. Corum wasn’t exactly a diehard feminist, but the last line tweaked her just a bit. She might have wanted to have had a life like G-ma’s, but she was happy in hers. By the time she re-focused herself on what G-ma was rambling on about, she was surprised to hear that G-ma had refocused her story back on little Julie.
Suddenly, as if a bolt of lightning had struck her, Mrs. Corum broke the story.
“My student’s name is
 Julie”, she said.
G-ma didn’t waste any time “An interesting coincidence, dear, maybe all Julies are inherently creative?”.
“What is your last name”, Mrs. Corum asked.
“You don’t think that’s really possible”, G-ma said as she realized what Mrs. Corum was insinuating.
“Is this world supposed to be possible?”, Mrs. Corum retorted.
“Alright
 McKay. My last name is McKay, as is John’s, as is Julie and Jamie’s”
The look in Mrs. Corum’s eye told the whole story. The women, who up until that point had been walking absentmindedly while talking, stopped, sat down, and looked at each other in disbelief.

G-ma hadn’t felt so free since before she came to this place. It was as if the weight of the world she’d been carrying for so many years was lifted.
They talked for hours, filling in each other’s memory. Verifying it was the same Julie McKay was first up, and everything checked out. From there it went to how Julie was doing, and by extension, Jamie. Mrs. Corum didn’t know Jamie, other than to know that Julie had a little sister a grade behind. G-ma was ecstatic to hear that Julie was alive, well, and a good student in Mrs. Corum’s class. They were so caught up in the discussion of Julie that they didn’t think about what their connection meant to each other, until finally Mrs. Corum remembered a small detail.
“Last Halloween, all of the children dressed up as usual, but Julie said something I didn’t even think about until now”.
“What was that?”, G-ma asked, intently. She waited to hear the answer, as she had waited on edge during the entire conversation. She craved more knowledge about her granddaughters, and badgered Mrs. Corum with her eyes to spill the beans as quickly as possible.
“Well, Julie dressed up as a witch, and when I asked her about her costume, she mentioned that her grandmother had helped her make it.”
“Wow, I only met her mom’s mom once, but she didn’t seem like the kind who had the skills or desire to help out with a halloween costume”, G-ma replied.
“That’s just it”, Mrs. Corum replied, “I think she was talking about you”
“How could she? She probably barely remembers me – I’ve been gone so long”
“What if you weren’t gone?”
“What do you mean? Of course I’m gone, I’m here with you”
“It sounds crazy”, Mrs. Corum conceded, “But what if, somehow, we were copied.”
“You on about aliens again? You can’t copy someone!”, G-ma replied harshly.
“But there isn’t any other way this makes sense. Think about it. If you had disappeared when she was 5, don’t you think that would have made news and a bit impact on a little girl? But she never mentioned it, and I never saw a news story about a local woman missing”
“You wouldn’t remember a news story about me from 7 years back! And kids are resilient, she probably made up a story in which I went away”, G-ma said in return.
“I don’t know”, Mrs. Corum mused, “I think there is something way stranger going on here than we know already”.
The ludicrous nature of the statement caused both of them to smile and laugh. It seemed way stranger than a world that existed in tones of gray, where you couldn’t feel pain except in your emotions, where you didn’t need to breathe or eat, where you didn’t sleep
 How could something be even stranger than that?
After several minutes, G-ma spoke.
“I guess anything is possible, since this place even exists
 and if you’re right, than I’m even more relieved than I was when I heard Julie was OK. I’m relieved because apparently, somewhere, I might exist
 OK
 maybe I might even get back there some day”
“Let’s not run too far with it”, Mrs. Corum replied, “It was just a thought, and as you said, it’s a bit unlikely that I’d even remember those things from years ago”.
“Yes, but I believe sometimes that you need to choose what you want to believe in, or else you’re going to go mad”, G-ma said quietly. “And I might just choose to believe that a world exists where everyone is OK, with the exception of clones of you and I, which are stuck here”.
“Well, it seems as reasonable an explanation as any”, Mrs. Corum said.
The rest of that day was filled with more discussion of Julie, Jamie, and some shared connections both ladies had. Mrs. Corum had met Julie’s mom and dad, knew they were divorced and had even met the man Julie’s mom was dating. G-ma, despite feeling that her own son wasn’t the best parent in the world, scoffed at the idea that the girls might have a stepfather at some point.
They had begun walking again, and eventually Mrs. Corum realized they had gone all the way back to where she had arrived in this world, days ago. Their mental map of the space they inhabited had begun to form a bit, and while they had no idea how big the space was, they at least found they could recognize the subtle changes in ground gradation, and tones of gray in the sky. What a crazy situation – this world that was so foreign was beginning to have some orderliness to it. Upon arriving at Mrs. Corum’s old spot, the two decided to turn sharply 90 degrees and head in a new direction. They even joked about spending the rest of their days just devoted to mapping this place out, like an intrepid and cursed modern-day Lewis and Clark expedition. That is if Lewis and Clark were female
 and didn’t need to stop to rest.

The journey of the intrepid explorers could best be described as monotonous. Day in, day out, they wandered. Occasionally they’d decide to switch directions, and sometimes they’d quiz each other about the mental map they were building in their head. They became experts at the subtle differences in terrain they found. A 2% grade drop was exciting, and splotches in the sky that resembled something were named accordingly. An equivalent of naming passing clouds, yet those clouds remained the same whenever one returned to that spot.
Mrs. Corum did, however, begin to notice some of the same things G-ma had spoken about earlier. Sometimes the ground did seem to shake slightly. Sometimes Mrs. Corum could easily dismiss this as her own stumble, but other times her and G-ma would both stop and look to each other, acknowledging what they both had just felt.
The two also noticed that the dimming seemed in some cases to be darker, and in other cases, it seemed to occur too early, or last for just a short amount of time. G-ma swore it had always been pretty predictable, so this was exciting news, if for nothing other than it indicated something different than the norm.
“Do you think there is an edge, somewhere”, Mrs. Corum asked G-ma one day.
“You know, sometimes I think there has to be”, G-ma replied. “And then I think about how the Earth wouldn’t have an edge if there wasn’t so much water
 one could just keep walking around it, eternally”.
“True, although I think we’re still quite away from walking around the Earth, distance wise”, Mrs. Corum replied.
“Especially since we like to double back sometimes”, G-ma said with a laugh.
As they shared the moment, they both saw something quite unexpected – the sky, normally tones of ashy gray, began to take on a more coppery tone to it. They both stood, in awe, as colors they hadn’t seen began to wash over the area above their heads.
“Did this ever happen
”, Mrs. Corum asked.
“No
 nothing like this
”, G-ma replied.
“Did you feel that
”, Mrs. Corum asked.
“Yes”, G-ma replied.
The feeling Mrs. Corum spoke of was a minor ache in her soul. The sort of way you feel when something is wrong but you just can’t put your finger on it.
“Same way I felt the day John called me to tell me the marriage was over”, G-ma began. “Just knew something was off that day. People would tell me I was crazy if I’d told it to them, but I knew a phone call was coming. I also knew it wasn’t going to be as bad as it could be, but it was bad – what’s the word for that kind of thing?”
“Foreboding”, Mrs. Corum replied, “Its one of the challenge words my 6th graders learn during their weekly spelling lesson. I always put it around the end of the year, and make an example of final examinations giving one a foreboding sense”. She tried to force a laugh, however the very real sense of foreboding she felt prevented that from happening.
Suddenly, the ground began to move. It moved faster and harder than both women had expected, and they lost their balance and tumbled to it.
“That would have broken a hip, if we were back home”, G-ma said as they both righted themselves and sat on the still shaking ground.
“How far out are we from where we both started?”, Mrs. Corum asked. G-ma always had the slightly better mental map. G-ma thought for a moment.
“About 2 days journey from my old spot, about 3 days from where you began”, she replied as she gestured toward each of the locations she mentioned.
“I wonder if we would have felt this there”, Mrs. Corum mused.
“Good question
 this is pretty far out for us, maybe this area just gets that sky color regularly and these
 tremors”, G-ma conceded.
And then, something neither of them had dreamed was possible occurred. It began to rain.
The rain came slowly at first, before it gradually increased to a moderate downpour. The women had nothing they could hide under, and thus just sat there, as the water washed over them. The ground seemed to soak it up, ending all fear they might have had of swimming back to their original spots.
“Why now”, G-ma said.
“Why not now?”, Mrs. Corum replied.
“I suppose – but for 8 years this place has been dry as a bone. Maybe once or twice the ground felt a bit soggy, but I always thought I was imagining that”.
“Perhaps it never rained where you used to stay”, Mrs. Corum offered.
“I guess
”
Gradually the rain let up, and the two women stood to take stock of the situation.
It was then they noticed that neither was water logged in anyway. Sure, they’d felt the rain, but their clothing was dry to the touch. Their hair was the same it had always been. They didn’t feel particularly cold, despite the normally comfortable temperature not going up.
“I’d expected it to be like coming into an air conditioned building after a storm”, Mrs. Corum said as they began walking again.
“Yeah, that cold feeling you get, even though the temperature inside is just fine”, G-ma replied.
“Do you think we should keep exploring, or should we head back to one of our spots?”, Mrs. Corum asked.
“Why would we head back?”
Mrs. Corum didn’t have an answer. It had been a crazy few days. First they’d found they had a mutual connection in Julie, then they’d seen colors in the sky, and finally they’d been rained on. Perhaps heading back to her original spot was a way of seeking safety.
“I don’t know”, Mrs. Corum finally replied, “I really don’t know”
“It’s starting to get to you, isn’t it, dear?”, G-ma asked with a knowing smile.
“I suppose it is. Is this what happens before a mental breakdown here?”, Mrs. Corum asked.
“Well, I’ve had my share of them, but they never included hallucinated weather events”, G-ma replied.
“Maybe there is a first time for everything”, Mrs. Corum said.
It would be the last words she audibly spoke for several hours, perhaps even days. She felt the frustration mounting and it wasn’t going to go away by returning to her original spot. It just needed to be dealt with over time. G-ma gave her space, both metaphorically and physically, trailing her as they continued to explore the world.

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