SPLASH!
I hit the ground soaked in rain.
"Wait Rain?"
Cough! Cough!
I saw Ray sitting on the floor coughing up the water he somehow managed to choke on.
'What happened?'
Looking around, we were back in the cave.
Scenes flashed through my mind as I tried to recall how we got here.
Jerry. The girl. The tubes. The light.
Ah, I remember now.
It was right after our big old friend Jerry started camping outside our little manhole. We noticed parts of the cave looked unnatural and man-made, so we went deeper to see if there were any other exits.
Crouching beneath the uneven ceiling of the cave, we carefully moved forward until we came across a large opening.
Crossing it we found ourselves in a large space filled with massive cylindrical tubes. There were dozens of them—empty, many shattered. The soft ground squelched as we walked, dyed bluish green from what I believed to be the liquid these containers housed.
The whole area was illuminated by white glowing stones that pulsed as though they were alive.
It seemed we had entered a laboratory of some sort.
"Whoa, look at all these big... these big—what are these called again?" Ray turned to me.
"They're tubes"
"Ah, these big tubes are used for... used for—what are they used for". Ray turned to me again.
"They probably kept
"Uhuh, doesn't that mean they could be outside here with us right now?" I quipped.
Moving on to the next room after passing through the mad scientists' laboratory.
We entered a smaller room, the only thing inside the room was the tall pillars supporting it
There didn't seem to be any—
I froze, instinctively stepping back. Ray paused beside me, eyes wide.
A faint movement caught my eye. A figure, small, not much bigger than themselves, standing silently further in the cave.
Ray drew in a quiet, slow inhale. I felt it too, a mirror in his chest. It wasn't fear exactly. It was something older, something that felt like recognition.
'That's the girl I bumped into.'
From behind, she looked small, barely taller than us. Her skin was fair, almost pale in the dim light of the cave, and her black hair, cut short and uneven at the edges, caught the faint shimmer of the wet stone. Even so, there was something about her presence—quiet, precise, unnervingly still—that made it impossible to look away.
"That's Lila! How lucky are we to see her twice in one day?!" Ray tapped my shoulder.
"Okay. Okay!" I brushed him off, "who's she?"
Ray gave me a dumbfounded look. "How do you not know who she is?"
"Well, I don't."
Ray replied, shaking his head, "She's the youngest daughter of the Starling family, the owners of Twilight, one of the three leading sentinel agencies in the continent."
"That's fine and all but… what's she doing here?" I asked, peeking from behind the pillar at the figure standing eerily still while staring at the ceiling.
"Hmm, that's true, what's she doing standing there all creepily like that?" Ray bent over to peek as well.
Following her line of sight, we looked up to see the source of light in this room.
It was a large golden sphere of light.
We kept staring at the sphere wondering if there was anything special about it,
Like millions or tiny sparks swirling and dancing around inside in a hypnotic rhythm…
The golden sphere bathed the room in soft warmth. I felt my heartbeat slow, my chest lift slightly, and even my shadow seemed to lean toward it.
As its soothing light washed over us, I felt like I could stand there for an eternity.
Then I blinked—and the cave went black.
…
…
Cough Cough.
As the last droplets of the water Ray was choking on escaped his lungs he glanced.
And as he locked eyes with his partner, he took a sharp breath
The faint light from the wet stone caught Thomas's eyes. Navy, deep, and quiet—like embers resisting the dark.
Ray stared.
"Thomas?"
It was as if those eyes had swallowed the shadows around them holding them still. Inside, dozens of tiny sparks flickered, dying out and igniting each other. They danced around but never separated, connected in a silent rhythm only Thomas could feel.
'It's like I can feel everything all at once'
Ray stared.
"Your eyes…"
For a second, something moved inside them — not a reflection.
Not light.
"Ugh! I remember what happened now" Thomas massaged the side of his head.
Then, a warning blared inside his head, sudden and all-consuming.
"Argh!"
It feels like it's coming from,
Everywhere?
Suddenly gravity doubled.
Thump! Thump!
We hit the ground hard. Ray smashed face-first into the cave floor; I rolled onto my side, shielding my head. And just as suddenly as it had come, the weight vanished.
"Nnghh! I—I think something broke!" Ray rolled around the floor in agony.
On the floor, I took a glimpse at the girl just to find her walking toward a wall at the far end of the room.
'Where the hell is she going?'
Just as I was wondering if she had some screws loose upstairs, she got to the wall and simply… stepped right through it.
'WHAT?'
She just… passed right through it.
My mind raced.
'Did I just see a ghost or a was it a figment of my imagination?',
In the end I saw only two options, it could either be our way out or we would come face to face with people or things that don't want us to be here.
'Still, it could be our ticket home!'
My eyes lit up with hope.
Turning to my disoriented partner, I grabbed him. "Come on, let's go home" I urged.
"What?" Ray turned to me eyes glazed over with tears from the pain, "you found a way home?"
"Yeah..." I nodded, 'At least… I hope it is.'
As we approached the wall I got a closer look at it. It looked normal from afar but the closer we got to it the harder it was to focus on it. It felt like I was looking at something that was there but not there.
"Where is it?" Ray looked around, he had recovered enough to be able to walk on his own/.
"It's there" I pointed forward.
Confused, he stepped forward and touched the wall, "There's nothing the—" his hand passed through the wall and fell through, as though pulled by the hand.
As I watched Ray get sucked into the wall, I took a deep breath and stepped forward.
A familiar sensation overwhelmed me. The first to go was light, then sound, then... everything.
It felt like I was falling directionless through space.
I let out a sharp cry at the wrongness but heard no sound.
One moment I was real.
The next, everything I lived through felt like a mere dream.
It felt like I'd been falling for centuries and will be here for many more. Until I wasn't.
Sound crashed back first.
Then light.
I staggered forward out of a narrow alley, neon bleeding across wet pavement as the bustling night city roared back into existence around us.
I saw Ray sitting by the wall, his eyes distant as though suffering from shock.
I sighed, sat down on the opposite side and turned to the alley's exit.
Long store complexes and neon towers loomed overhead. The commercial district.
As I watched people walking about the bustling city scene so sure about their reason for moving forward. A thought passed through my mind.
'Life's still unreal huh'
Eventually, we began making our way back to the ward.
After a little asking around and sightseeing, we finally found a bus heading towards the estate.
Thankfully, not all the money we had on hand had holes in them.
By the time we got home, it was nearly midnight.
On getting back, we got a long lecture from Mrs. Brown.
She reminded us, as always, that men were perfectly capable of incubating children now. A miracle of progress. Three thousand years in the making.
After the two-hour lecture and cleaning duty for three months as punishment, we were finally told to get cleaned up and head to bed.
…
…
Entering my room the motion sensor lights switched on, revealing Noah fast asleep.
I closed the door behind me and exhaled slowly.
Even the afterlife has noise in it.
I walked to my bed and collapsed onto it trying to sleep and forget all my worries just to end up tossing around in my bed.
In the end I found myself staring blankly at the ceiling, wondering if life will ever be fair to me for once.
The noise was too much.
The sound. The bed. The wind. Everything was too much.
'What exactly happened to my body in that cave?'