Atlas (Splintered fanfiction)

Chapter 10

Chapter 10 

The Alice nightmare finds me while I'm sleeping . . .

     But I'm not alone this time. Jeb carries the stolen sword, hand-in-hand with Alyssa, and we race down the path toward the Caterpillar's lair. The thorns that once snarled and ripped my pinafore elongate into leafy eels. The serpentine strands wrap around our legs and carry us upside down to the chessboard. Our bodies freeze into game pieces. A hand appears, wearing a black glove, and moves us from square to square. It picks me up to claim checkmate, but Jeb comes alive, slashing at the fingers with the sword to free me. 

     The bloody digits fall one by one and morph into caterpillars. Jeb and I race back to the path. The mushroom waits in the center, cloaked in a web. The caterpillars beat us there. They tunnel into the cocoon, filling it until it writhes — a living, breathing thing. A razor-sharp black blade slices from within the webbed casing. Whatever's inside is coming out.

     I awaken, startled and gasping for breath, and blink against the sun's brightness, shining white against the vivid cerulean blue of the sky. My hands are clenched into fists, and I calm my breathing. What woke me up? I was so close to unveiling the face in the cocoon — the one I've been waiting years to see.

     Yawning, I focus on the here and now. Sometime in the night, I must've ended up in the hull with the others, because I am facing towards Jeb and Alyssa in the rowboat. He pulled Alyssa against himself, tucking her under his chin. Somehow, though, I ended up between them, embraced by both my sister and her future boyfriend. All I see now is a close-up of his tank on one side, and Alyssa's green shirt beneath a red bustier. They're both still asleep — well, Alyssa is. Their arms are wrapped around both me and each other.

     Yesterday comes back to me in pieces: the rabbit hole, the mutant flower garden, the ocean of tears. Everything.

     I snuggle into their embrace, enjoying the sensation of being cradled for the first time in my life since I left Pleasance, Texas, determined not to wake Alyssa or alert Jeb to my consciousness so I can pretend things are simple and perfect for just a few minutes longer.

     The boat rocks and I realize that's what woke me. Not a gentle, riding-on-a-current movement. More a something-heavy-sloughed-over-the-edge-and-is-watching-us movement . . .

     I freeze — as rigid as the wood beneath us.

     Guttural snuffles fill the air, like those of an asthmatic bulldog — of which I have met plenty. The warmth of the shining sun on my shoulders turns chilly as a shadow falls across us. My heart does a somersault, my breath catching in my lungs. Before I can even think about moving, Jeb snaps into action, rolling us toward the bow and jerking us to our feet. He was awake the whole time, as expected. Alyssa is jolted awake by his movements, and I hold her close to me.

     "No way," he says.

     My sister and I wobble with the boat's motion, and she holds on to Jeb's waistband with one hand and me with the other. I balance precariously on the very edge of the seat, and I peer around both of them.

     At first glance, our intruder looks like a walrus. He has two giant tusks with images of snakes and angry flames carved along the ivory. But beneath rolls of blubber, his lower half is a tangle of slithering octopus tentacles, covered in suction cups. It's as if someone snapped two different creatures together, creating an octo-walrus. He must weigh over five hundred pounds, and his body occupies most of the boat.

     As huge as he is, and with his tentacles hanging half in and out, the boat should be capsized. Jeb, Alyssa, and I should've been flung like stones from a slingshot as soon as he slithered aboard. Instead, the hull is level and drifting along the shining water as if the creature weighs no more than we do. Wonder what Isaac Newton would have to say about the jacked-up physical laws here?