Beach Day

19: Escape From Dreaming

That's when the monster makes its appearance. The lights flicker again, and there it is: eight feet tall and gooey, pulsing deep pink goo full of teeth and covered in gaping, dripping mouths.

She takes it in for a moment: beautiful and wonderful and near-primal and reaching for her. Oh, she wants to get her hands on it and see what makes it tick. There just isn't time, though.

Tiff sighs and pulls herself up the ladder, trying not to look back at what she must leave behind for the pursuit of the real and the truth.

This is such a chore. She wants to stay here, with the thing writhing up the ladder after her. She wants to immerse herself in her dreams like she used to. It would be so much easier to stay unaware of all this. It would be easier to have not gotten involved at all.

But who would she be if she didn't do this kind of thing? If she hadn't dragged Eddy to the library to read about local fairy tales so long ago? If she didn't do everything in her power to learn the truth and help the innocent? If her notebook weren't as much of a mess as she is?

She isn't much of a savior. That's Drake's job. Drake, who fought assholes in high school to protect the people around him. Drake, who pulled Percy Mathew's head out of that toilet. Drake, who stepped in to stab the nightmare version of Ruth Sheridan when he barely knew Tiff. Drake, who lit the donkeys, who flew the plane, who saves people because it's a part of who he is.

Tiff isn't sure she can say the same about herself. She was always more the kind of person who froze, who took the insults on the chin, who lashed out just as badly as she had been hit. That isn't noble. It isn't even nice to look at.

It wasn't her place, was it? Her role was to put her hand too close to the flame to see how it blisters— not to wield it expertly, not to save the world on her own. There's a reason she was never chosen. The story isn't hers. Like a line to a circle, she's only tangential to it.

She pulls herself up higher, realizing a little too late that the ladder from her subconscious isn't nearly tall enough to reach the rift. She could do something stupid, or she could find a different way.

Oh, who is she kidding? Both options mean she does something stupid and irreparable.

The B-movie monster gnashes its teeth at her, nipping at her heels through the short boots with the dress shoe soles. That's a new development. She knew it was chasing her, but not that it was willing to try to bite her feet like a little freak.

She smiles at it, making her peace with the fact that it will kill her. Her subconscious mind may be trying to tell her something, but all she's hearing is that she loves monsters. That's the only truth here. Even as she thinks about it, she hears the voice of the Guardian of Balance in her head and echoing in the room, breaking the immersion of the fantasy (as immersed as she could be while trying to walk out of it). She really does love hunting monsters and shit.

"Are you satisfied? Have I learned my lesson?" she yells, shaking a fist at her subconscious.

There's only one way out of here, and that is through. She just has to find a way to get through it.

She winces, remembering all the times she has messed up by taking foolhardy action. As long as nobody's here to see her mess up if it goes wrong, nobody really needs to know, right? Nobody will find out. That settles it, then.

She puts one foot on the topmost rung of the ladder, where there is nothing for her to hold on to. There goes the second foot and her wobbly sense of balance. Even though her proprioception is questionable at best, Tiff manages to stay upright by throwing her arms out and trying desperately to steady herself. Now or never, now or never. The creature grows closer, rung after rung.

She wishes it a fond farewell. She would blow a kiss, if it wouldn't make her fall. She needs to do the opposite.

Tiff launches herself into the air. She sails for a moment, like time freezes— Dream World magic augmenting the moment, she's sure— before she grabs hold of the lip of the rift.

Shoot. Her grip isn't strong enough. Not with these gloves and the ray gun. She shifts her fingers, trying to get a stronger hold so she can pull herself through. The ray gun falls from her hand; it tumbles from her fingertips, gold over green over gold, and hits the ground below.

Just like her phone. She can't keep dropping her gadgets. She has got to start putting things in her mouth so she can use her hands again.

Denny and Aiden were right. She really should work on her upper body strength more. With that and the jacket, it's a struggle to pull herself up and through without really having something to push off of. It would be easier if she had prepared— or if she knew how to make her lucid mind a little less grounded in her own limitations despite the nature of the world around her.

But she pulls herself through on aching arms and makes it to the other side. The lush green-yellow tones of the Dream World's endless forests stretch out around her as she flops onto her back and looks up at the sky. She doesn't know what it looks like through all the trees and the inherently-warped perception of her mortal mind. How could she possibly know everything? How could she see anything more than stars?

Now is as good a time as any, while she is catching her breath, to figure out where to go next. The mind is an odd place, but if she could just reach out to that poor dead mystery girl...

Well, she could ask her what she wants. She could ask her what she needs. She could help.

Something deep down in Tiff's chest knows that there is something wrong with the whole situation. She would love to get this done before Christmas, even if that's a terrible, horrible, and selfish thing to want. It is selfish to want to get this done so quickly. And so she must sacrifice everything she has for the sake of the greater good— but that doesn't mean she has to draw this out.

One deep breath, then another, until her heart and mind are both still. One more for good measure; she brings the walls of her own personal Jericho down.

Something tugs her in two different directions. Glowing strings, almost, that only she can see stretch off to the left and the right, leading her to different red-glowing rifts. Left, right, both call to her equally.

It's a flip of the coin, really, until that old adage taught to her by her grandfather and uncaring parents who only wanted moral purity and control comes to her head. It comes through stronger than she would like: choose the right. It's the kind of thing Suzy Menkins had on her little green ring shaped like a shield— the kind of thing the two of them could have bonded over if Suzy didn't hate her more than she hated Catholics and getting dirty (a bad trait for a Girl Scout, for sure).

And the emotion comes strongly, a swell in her chest she can't really describe. She used to call it the Holy Spirit; she used to call it faith. Now she just calls it whatever. Intuition, maybe.

But she follows it to the right anyway, brain trying to calculate the tension in the string she visualizes in front of her, pulling from the pit of her stomach. So she goes off to the right, to a break in the trees, and steps through the rift. She immediately knows she should have gone to the left.