A Place Called Nowhere

Chapter 2: The Tangle of Life

A rut can be a dangerous thing to get stuck in, especially with someone else to feed the pattern. In Nowhere, depression, decay, and emptiness are alive. They consume and transform the people caught in it. Life becomes a meaningless blur. This is what happened to John and Robert, two roommates living in an apartment high above a city long abandoned. They had forgotten the circumstances that brought them together some time ago. They remembered that Robert was the one who came to John’s dingy apartment looking for a place to live. Robert had a path in life that brought him here, one governed by desperation and a lack of resources. John, however, was rooted to the spot he was in. A stagnant thing, with no purpose or direction in life. John and Robert found they brought out the best in each other. In John, Robert found a sense of stability, a home. In Robert, John found a reason to move and explore the world. These are the memories they kept with each other even after the collapse began.

The decay of reality happened slowly at first. Nobody noticed it coming. Then, all at once, everything seemed to fall apart. Time and space held no meaning any longer and entire communities would vanish overnight into the encroaching mist. In the city, many braved the streets in search of more stable places to live. Robert would’ve been among them had John not intervened to stop him. The world was ending. The weight of that realization crushed John. They were adrift and alone in an unending sea churning with malevolent force, threatening to capsize them and send them plummeting into oblivion. Robert wanted to jump overboard and try to swim to shore. John held Robert tight. Begged him to stay put. This apartment was their refuge. It had been before the collapse, and it would stay that way forever., if only they would stay together. So Robert stayed, enjoying the stability of the warm apartment, with John at his side. They clung together, as reality collapsed around them. As their memories faded. As the city outside their window disappeared and showed only the swirling, dark mist where the world once was. They held each other so long that their bodies began to twist and morph together. They coalesced into a single form, growing and growing until they filled the single room of their apartment. Eventually, they forgot that they were ever different people. They forgot that there was ever a world outside of this apartment, that fell further and further into disrepair. They couldn’t distinguish between their own thoughts, they thought as one.

This is the state they were in when, one day, a knock came at their door. They were alarmed by the sound. They shuffled and squirmed until one of their arms was at the long unused door knob. With difficulty, they twisted it and opened the door, craning their necks until one of their heads could see their visitors. Two children, a girl and a boy, their skin was dark and their hair was a tangled mass of curls. They looked tired, worn, and ragged, their jackets were tattered and had scraps that hung off them. The children, on the other hand, saw a terrifying creature with two faces, both twisted in a grim mockery of humanity. They stood in frozen terror for a moment. Somewhere in the roommates’ collective minds it felt a pang of pity at the helplessness of the children.

The girl waited for the creature to do something, but it only sat there, watching them with its blank, hollow eyes. After a moment, she decided that the creature had no intent to harm them.

“H-hello,” she ventured, “I’m Lucy, this is my brother, Matt.”

“Why are you talking to it?” Matt whispered to her.

“We were hoping to find a settlement in this city,” she continued, ignoring him, “but we lost our path. Do you know of any here?”

John and Robert attempted to speak, to tell them that there were no settlements here, to their knowledge. To apologize to these children, who must have come a very long way to get here. However, they had not spoken to a living soul in quite a long time - they had no need to speak to each other anymore - and so had long ago forgotten how to speak at all. They gargled and rasped out of their mouths, their words stuck on their tangled throats, and they said nothing that the children could understand.

The noises alarmed the children. Matt made a move to leave but Lucy kept her place before the door. Realizing she had no intention of leaving, Matt reluctantly stayed in place, fearing the worst.

The creature made another attempt to speak to the children. They tried harder and harder to form words in their malformed, slack mouths. Again, they made no sound that Lucy or Matt could recognize as speech.

“Lucy, can we please just get out of here?” said Matt, backing into the wall behind him.

Lucy only looked on at the creature, curious at its human-like features and clear attempts to communicate. It wasn’t a monster, that was for sure. Could it be a person?

John and Robert grew embarrassed by the encounter, and increasingly wanted the children to leave them. They wanted to be alone together and forget the world outside their apartment again. They writhed and struggled to close the door, but Lucy pushed it open and stepped in.

"Lucy!" Matt reached out to grab his sister but missed as she walked in. "Are you crazy? Let's get out of here!"

Lucy walked cautiously in the limited space of the apartment, taking care not to step on any of the creature's limbs that sat tangled upon the floor.

"Why did the path take us here," she said to herself. "There has to be a reason. Nothing is accidental."

Somewhere in the roommates’ minds the thought, can't they just go away , rattled. They didn't know which of the two of them had thought it, but the thought, I want to help them; I feel bad for them , answered back. Their body twisted to bring one of their faces closer to Lucy's. She flinched. A pair of wide eyes stared into her, mouth hanging open. The skin of their face was pulled back by the tight coiling of their necks. The two roommates hadn't seen another person in a long time. They'd forgotten what people looked like.

Lucy was backed against the wall as the creature towered over her, its four eyes staring into her. Her eyes darted back and forth between the creature’s two faces. She looked the creature all over, frantically taking in its harrowing appearance. The mass of flesh that was wrinkled and tied together like a grotesque, rubbery knot. The noodly limbs strewn about the floor, overlapping each other like fleshy cables. The creature backed away, noticing the fear in Lucy’s demeanor. Lucy relaxed a little and started to study the apartment. It was dingy and small, a thick layer of dust covered everything. Lucy noticed the desks that were shoved messily against the wall and forgotten. There were framed photographs on them. She reached over to wipe the dust off and saw that they showed two normal looking men, very close and happy. They must have been from before the decay of reality. She looked back over to the creature huddled in the corner. She studied its two faces. She felt her own pang of pity for the creature.

She straightened up and asked, summoning all her confidence, “can you show us the way through this city. We’re lost.”

The two roommates thought on the question for a moment. Then, they stood up on something resembling their feet and shambled their way up and out the apartment, squeezing through the door. Matt screamed and pressed himself against the wall to avoid touching their sweaty skin. As John and Robert shambled down the hall, they made a noise that even Lucy and Matt could recognize as a call to follow. Slowly, with much trepidation, Lucy and Matt followed John and Robert down the hall, down the stairs and out onto the streets.

The fog between the buildings was impenetrable, blown along by a cold wind that whistled through the streets and alleys. John and Robert felt a strange satisfaction being outside again for the first time in an impossibly long time. They shivered as the cold air brushed their naked skin. They rolled and crawled their way down the streets, following the points where the thick fog seemed to break and give way to some visibility. This was the only indication of where a path could be headed. Lucy and Matt followed along. For them, there had been no such breaks in the fog. Their path became obscured among the labyrinthine layout of the city.

As they all crossed a wide intersection they heard a rumbling. It rattled the streetlamps and shook the ground they stood on. Lucy and Matt looked between each other as the rumble grew more intense. The two roommates continued their crawl, unperturbed, until it was at the middle of the wide intersection.

A horrible screech sounded as the rumbling hit its peak. A pair of wild, glowing eyes appeared in the mist. The rumble grew into a cacophonous thunder as a half-rotted bull charged towards them. It rammed into John and Robert, its horns jamming into their side with full force. The impact sent them flying hard enough to separate the two into pathetic, flailing masses of flesh that came crashing down as the bull charged off. The whole thing happened faster than Lucy or Matt could process.

John lay on the street, splayed out with his spindly limbs stretched from one corner to the other. Robert hung from a lamppost behind Matt, his fingertips stretching down and grazing the pavement. John reeled from the impact and his violent separation from his roommate. He struggled to pick his head up, but his feeble noodle of a neck was too weak to lift the weight of his skull.

Lucy walked over to John, stepping around the scattered strings of his arms and legs that filled the intersection. She knelt down to meet his eyes. They were filled with shock. A thin puddle of drool dribbled from his mouth, which was open wide enough for his jaw to touch the pavement despite his head facing straight upwards. A pained gurgle sounded from him. Lucy looked over to Matt, who was poking at Robert's rubbery torso hanging from the lamp.

John felt a distinct emptiness eating away at him without Robert. It dawned on him how cold the world was without Robert's warmth, how helpless he was without his strength. He let out a stifled cry as tears dripped from his eyes. Lucy watched the man before her weep, his malformed features twisted in a haunting display of agony. She reached out to touch his forehead, flinching before his tight, rubbery skin before gently placing her hand on him in a comforting gesture.

Matt grabbed one of Robert's arms and disinterestedly yanked his body off the lamppost, sending him crashing down with a dull thud. Robert let out a pained groan. He grabbed Robert by his wrist and dragged him over to Lucy and John. Robert shot a glare towards Matt, who ignored him.

Matt and Lucy gathered John and Robert up into neat little coils and carried them, each taking one of the men. They walked along the path before them, taking care to stick to the sidewalk.

The path took them all into the old subways beneath the city. Platforms floated freely in the dark space, train tracks winding above, below and between them. A cacophony of sounds boomed in all their ears as the locomotives rushed along their twisted little paths. Lucy and Matt carefully jumped between platforms, timing their jumps to avoid getting hit by the rushing trains between them. The platforms bumped and bobbed with their shifting weight.

Lucy jumped first, Matt followed. Over and over again. Carefully. Methodically. Avoiding the trains. Neither knew where they were headed, or how long they were going to carry the two strange men they'd found.

Lucy stumbled on a stray piece of loose concrete, sending her flying onto an adjacent platform just as a train passed by, separating her from Matt. She hit the next platform so hard it was sent flying through the void. They lost sight of each other.

"Matt!" Lucy got up and shouted into the dark, but the platform was falling further and further away from the others.

Matt stood, frozen and alone in the void, his sister gone. Robert sat on his back, drooling, trying to say something, slowly remembering the words.

"John!" he tried to say, "where is he? What happened?"

Matt only heard grunts and moans, and was beginning to get annoyed by the feeling of wet spit on his back. He stared up. Nothing but blackness, no hint of a ceiling. No telling how deep they had gone. He looked down. Same story. His sister was gone. Lost in the gaping void. He was alone, and worse, without purpose. No one to follow.

Robert was engulfed with terror. He had just watched the most important person in the world to him disappear into the darkness without a trace. After spending so long merged into one, they were each alone and at the mercy of a warped and dying world. Matt’s feet were rooted to the spot. Robert’s were noodly and useless anyway. They were helpless.

There was a time when Robert had drifted freely around. In a world long forgotten, in a time much saner and kinder than this one. He’d had no home, and no family. That older version of him was better suited to survive in this new world than he was now. John had changed him. Given him a home. He grew into John, grew roots that tethered him to the spot, their branches intertwined. There was no going back to how he was. No way for him to undo the ways John had altered him. He longed to be free again, but he was unsure if he ever could be now.

Matt looked over the platform, the toes of his shoes hanging off the edge. He noticed a thick black cable running out from below the platform and up into the darkness above. It looked sturdy enough to hold a person’s weight. Matt followed the cable with his eyes. He stared up into the darkness, wondering how far it went. There was no telling if his strength could hold out long enough to reach the surface again. Robert followed Matt’s eyes, and guessed what he was thinking. Escape. Right now, escape was all Robert would let himself think about now. He wanted to keep moving, even if his own legs couldn’t. Matt thought only of seeing Lucy again. If she could survive down there, she would find a way to the surface. That’s where they’ll meet up again. He didn’t let himself consider the alternative.

Matt stepped down off the platform. He grabbed the cable and let himself slide off, trusting the cable to hold his weight. It was a dangerous gamble that paid off. Robert was startled by the motion. He wrapped his noodly arms around the cable to keep from falling down. They hung there, swinging in the darkness for a moment. Once Matt caught his breath, he started to shimmy up the cable.

Lucy and John lay on the cold concrete. The platform descended into the darkness and they were powerless to stop it. John’s mind swam in a fog of fractured memories. In his mind he saw the first time he met Robert, the times they spent together before the collapse of reality, when everything became a blur. They had been together so long, their minds had melded together, memories fractured and shared. Now, John’s own memories were coming back, only his. He remembered Robert, for the first time in a long time, as someone separate from himself, the way he was the first time John saw him. Tired, alone, and very disheveled. John could tell Robert had lived a hard life, though, he tried to hide it under nice clothes and a carefree smile. He had come looking for a place to stay in the big city. He’d seen an ad John put out in search of a roommate. John’s circumstances had changed and he could no longer afford the apartment on his own. Already they needed each other, right from the very start.

The platform touched down onto solid ground. John dimly felt the ground beneath him jostle suddenly. He was still lost in himself. Lucy stumbled onto her feet, glancing wildly around. They were in a vast cavern that expanded out in all directions. As she searched for a clear way forward, John thought more of Robert’s impact on him when they lived together. Robert was adventurous, impulsive, to an almost anarchic extent. He had profoundly upset the stability John was used to. At first, John resented him for it. Robert didn’t have a care in the world for anyone or anything. He would disappear for days on end only to turn up half conscious and nearly braindead, needing another day or so to recover. Eventually, John started to tag along out of sheer concern for Robert’s safety, and to keep him more restrained. John was surprised to realize how fun Robert could be to hang out with, how easy he was to talk to, how comfortable John was opening up to him. Robert didn’t have a single judgemental bone in his body, and wore his heart on his sleeve. That was when they really started to connect.

John wasn’t prepared to develop feelings for Robert the way he did. It happened before he was even aware of it, and the realization that he loved Robert hit him like a freight train. Robert was outgoing, adventurous, everything John wanted to be. He started going with Robert everywhere, no matter what he was doing. Robert didn’t mind, of course. He just enjoyed the company. He completely failed to notice how John felt about him, though. He was pretty self-absorbed, and didn’t spare much thought to the feelings of others. When John finally opened up to him about how he felt, Robert was caught completely off guard. He got incredibly flustered in a way that, in hindsight, John found very cute.

Lucy decided to pick a direction at random and stick to it. She gathered John up, waking him suddenly from his reminiscing. She walked on and on for what felt like forever. There was a distinct possibility that they would be stuck here for all eternity. Lucy didn’t let herself consider such a possibility. For John, it was all he could think about. The prospect of never seeing Robert again terrified him more than the thought of dying. It was Robert that first got him to come out of his shell. To venture into the world and connect to the people in it. Before he had been his own little island in a vast, lonely sea. Then reality began to break down, and that awful mist consumed everything. That world he’d begun to connect too had suddenly collapsed around him, and that island became the only safe place for him to be. Robert always found it unnatural to stay in one spot. He had been so insistent on going out to take his chances. It was suicide to go out there, they both knew that. Perhaps Robert didn’t care, but John did. In the end, John convinced Robert to stay put, to live in John’s little world. John rooted him to the spot, tethered him. And they stayed in that place where nothing mattered. They lost themselves in it.

Lucy finally approached the edge of the cavern. Before her stood the opening of a narrow cave. She went in. The place was damp and cold and very claustrophobic. Even finding a direct footpath was difficult with the uneven rocky terrain that partially buried a series of train tracks. Lucy leaned her hand on the adjacent wall beside her for balance and felt a series of thick cables running along it. John adjusted himself to tighten his grip on Lucy’s back. In this place, he suddenly felt more in danger than he ever had before. Despite the narrowness, the coldness, the inhuman loneliness, there was something indescribably alive in this place, like they had crawled into the mouth of a living creature and were now lost in its bowels.

The place grew tighter and narrower as Lucy went on. Eventually, it grew so bad that she had to crawl on her hands and knees. Still, as she went on, she noticed the passage start to trend upwards. If she kept going, maybe she would reach the surface again and be reunited with Matt.

Gradually, the passage grew steeper and tighter, until she was crawling straight up with the walls closing around her. She pressed her feet hard against the rock, trying to hold herself and John up through sheer pressure against an unforgivably smooth surface. Any protrusion on the surface was a blessing, it meant a place to rest her weight as she wriggled her way up, her hands fumbling in vain to find purchase. Progress slowed to a crawl at this point, and the crushing loneliness bore down on her as she contorted herself in any way she could to keep from slipping. Her muscles ached, the weight of both of them took its toll. There was no sign of the surface above her.

John realized he was holding her back. He was keeping her in the cave just as he kept Robert in his apartment. Perhaps he and Lucy would share the same fate. Trapped in this cave forever, merged together in helpless complacency, their identities lost. There was no safety in that. It was a spiritual death. Another way for the void to consume you. John let himself slide from Lucy’s back, ready to embrace oblivion himself. Lucy shot her hand out and grabbed him. The force of the motion caused her to slip and she lost her grip on the walls. John caught her in his hand, his rubbery appendages keeping him tethered to the wall. He began to wriggle himself up the tunnel, Lucy dangling from his long, rubbery hand. His soft, noodly body had a much easier time getting through the crevasses than Lucy did. Lucy was shocked by the turn of events, but it came as a welcome break for her tired body. She let herself rest as John made his way up.

Matt climbed his way up the cable, carrying Robert on his back. The light of the outside world shone above, taunting him with the prospect of freedom. No matter how much Matt climbed, the light never got any closer, and he could feel his body getting ready to give out. Robert clung tighter to his back, anxious and impatient. Freedom lay just above their heads, yet this boy didn’t have the strength to reach it, and Robert himself was helpless. He wasn’t used to being so helpless. Pained him to think there was a time he could’ve survived out here alone, instead of having to depend on a child. Matt’s grip slipped. He began to fall, but Robert caught the cable before they could plummet. Death was waiting at their heels. It would take them both if they couldn’t find their way out of this place. The boy can’t do it on his own, Robert realized. He would need to do something, but what could he do in this state?

Matt took hold of the cable again and began to climb. There was a crushing futility in his efforts that, on top of his fatigue, was sapping him of his will to go on. The light above stood defiantly still, refusing to budge to their efforts to reach it. Robert tightened his grip on Matt’s shoulder, causing Matt to grimace and pause in pain. There was no hope of them ever reaching the surface like this. Robert would not have his freedom, and he would never see John again if he kept clinging to this boy. The immeasurable time he spent clinging to John flashed before his eyes. The crushing isolation. The two of them, stuck together, unable to escape or move on. Unwilling to let go.

Robert unfurled himself from Matt’s torso and let himself fall.

“Hey!” Matt shouted after him, “what are you doing?!”

Silence. Robert disappeared into the darkness, leaving Matt alone, clinging to the cable in the cavernous void.

A sound of flapping wings rose up from the darkness and broke the silence. A large eagle emerged at blinding speed.

“What-” it grabbed Matt by the shoulders as it soared through the air.

They reached the light and emerged into the open air beyond. The city stretched out beneath Matt’s feet, the misty air filled his nose. The eagle dropped him off on the streets below. Now Matt got a good look at it. It was twice as large as he was. Its feathers protruded from a layer skin that sloughed off in pieces as it stood. Its eyes were still recognizably human.

“I didn’t know you guys could do that.” Matt said, “wish you’d told me earlier.”

John crawled out of the narrow passageway, carrying Lucy in his loose, noodly arms. He let himself sink into an amorphous puddle. They both laid there, breathing heavily, taking in what had just happened. John marveled at the thing he just did. With his desiccated form, he pulled them both out of that seemingly infinite pit. He never would have done something like that before. After being stuck in one spot for such an enormous length of time, he had long since lost faith in his ability to do anything at all. His life was hollow, and still, like the rotted out corpse of a dead tree. Stuck but not growing, giving nothing. Robert came to him seeking shelter, but John provided none, only trapping him in place until he was as hollow as John. Where was Robert now, John wondered. Did he escape from that pit or is he still trapped inside, helpless. John decided that Robert probably did escape. After all, John had escaped, if he could do it, so could Robert.

If Robert had indeed escaped, was it even worth it to try and find him? Perhaps he would be better off without John. He had, after all, had so much of his life stolen from him by John's cowardice. An eagle passed by, far above John. It's large wingspan blocked out the sunlight peeking through the thinning clouds. It was the first living animal John had seen in ages. It was calming to see such an animal flying so free. If Robert had found a way out of that pit, if he too realized he could move freely on his own, he would have no need for John. Robert would be a lot happier without him.

John moved to his elbows and began to turn his soft body over. When he was on his flat, pancake of a stomach, he began to crawl away from Lucy. Robert could be free, but he couldn’t. He crawled back to the mouth of the pit he’d escaped from. He got the girl out, that was the important part. Now, he had nothing left. It would be better if he were alone. He’d find some dark secluded crevasse to hide in, and then disappear into the void, forgotten and alone. The eagle passed overhead again. It circled the area, surveying it. John felt its cool shadow block the warm sun. He kept crawling.

The eagle swooped down, grabbed John in its talons, and swept him off the ground. The sudden air blew through John, his body flapping in the wind as he climbed higher and higher. Was this a monster? Was it going to take him away and devour him? John wanted to panic, but he no longer had the strength to do even that. What a joke, all that work to get out of the cave, only to be carried away by an oversized bird.

John brought his tired eyes up to see the creature carrying him. It wasn’t quite a bird, it only had the shape of one. Its skin peeled away more and more as it flew, revealing feathers underneath. Its eyes were recognizably human.

“Robert?” John said, his voice hoarse from disuse.

The bird met his eye. The expression was warm and glad. Robert had returned for John after all. John gave the bird a tearful smile as they flew.

The first day that they met, Robert invited John to go out with him. He didn’t mention where they’d be going, he didn’t really know himself. He wanted to wander aimlessly, directionless and ready to discover whatever they happened to come across. And he wanted to do it in the company of a friend. John had admired Robert’s boldness, but refused at the time. He was afraid. He had always been afraid. He wanted to escape the confines of his little world but he didn’t know how to face the mists of uncertainty that lay outside it.

Now, soaring through the air, feeling the wind around him, in the embrace of the man he loved, he wondered what he had ever been afraid of. He slipped free from Robert’s grasp. The wind carried him on. Piece by piece, he felt his useless flesh slough away, revealing feathers that carried him through the air.

Lucy watched as John and Robert flew away from the city, wondering what would become of them. She had no idea that people could transform like that. She thought only monsters were capable of such things. What did it all mean? What had happened to the world that could make something like this possible? Could this happen to her and Matt someday, if they spend too long wandering in its wastes? These were the thoughts that troubled Lucy as she made her way through the streets of the abandoned city. The structures loomed large over her, and wind passed freely through the shattered windows. She found Matt sitting on a curb, apparently waiting for either for the path to bring Lucy back to him, or for him to be eaten. Whichever came first. He seemed so helpless without her. What would happen if they also became as inseparable as John and Robert?

Matt jumped up excitedly when he noticed Lucy approaching. He ran over to hug her tight. Lucy felt the tears in his eyes and he pressed himself into her. She gave him the most reassuring smile she could conjure, and ran her hand over his hair in a comforting gesture.

When Matt had calmed down, they began to walk down the path once again, leaving the city behind them.