Just That Space Below

Part 2: Hanging On

I walk along the edge, but this time, I'm not alone. I could fall, but I would land in the icy waters below. There would be no slow, soft landing, just a painful smash of ice cracking beneath me. Part of me would rather that world be real. The other side says no. I only wish I had gotten to stay, to see the new revolution. I hang on to the parts I still have of that dream. But it wasn't really a dream no matter how many times I tell myself that it was. It feels like it actually happened. But it did happen. Even if I was asleep. John stands next to me. Marcella too. She's not very fond of us being friends with her brother, but that doesn't matter. After what John and I have been through together, It's impossible to not be friends with him. It turns out, he had the same dream too. When I get home from school that day, I reach into my pocket and I find a napkin. How did this get in there? But it can't be real. It is still only a dream no matter how real it seems. The napkin still has the same flowery print as the one in my dream. I pull it up to my nose and smell that wonderful, familiar paper smell.

That night, I go to bed early. I keep my thoughts focused on thoughts of John, the platform and below and soon I fall into a deep sleep and my dream continues.

We're running. Faster than I have ever gone before. My chestnut hair flowing behind me as I run. Step by step. Up and up and up the stairs. It feels like I will never stop. John is with me too. When we reach a landing, I stop for a moment to catch my breath. My lungs are sore from inhaling and exhaling so much. The world spins around me as if for one moment, It is as if i'm stopped. But I know we have to move on.

"C'mon." John says as he grabs my hand. He doesn't speak with anger as I would expect him to. He still has that same calming voice he always uses. Soothing is the best way to describe it I realized. I have never been so tired while sleeping before. Is it even possible to be tired in your sleep? It must be or else how am I tired?

"Just a couple more floors." he assures me. We keep on going. I notice that he isn't out of breath like I am. I'm slower this time, but I'm still going.

"Last...floor." he says as he pretends to struggle with running to make me feel better. Once we reach the floor we are heading to he stops and opens a door and beckoned me forward.

I spot a drinking fountain to the left of the hallway and I take a long, cold, moist drink. It's like aloe on a sunburn. I have my moment of peace just for a little until John taps me on the shoulder telling me that it is time to go. Time to keep on moving.

"Where is everyone else?" I ask John still no completely able to catch my breath.

"Up ahead. We go up those stairs many times each day. By now, we're used to it." he tells me.

"Why did you stay behind?"

"I have my reasons." he tells me giving me an odd sort of look and then we keep on walking down the hallway. I spot a sign next to a door to some stairs that indicates that this is the twenty-ninth floor. Twenty-nine floors? That's crazy. We never have more than two floors on the platform. Even that is a bit tiring going up all of those stairs. Besides, on the platform, we have enough room.

We finally come to a room and John holds the door for me as I enter and he follows behind me. Clyde, Devon, Susan and Amy are all in the room already and they don't appear to be the slightest bit out of breath.

"What took you so long?" Asks Clyde with a bit of annoyance in his voice.

"How long were we?" John asks, his eyebrows narrowing in concern.

"Well, um twenty minutes." says Devon looking at his watch as he walks over to us. He mutters something about how we should go to the window but instead John starts laughing hysterically. I decide to laugh along with him just because this might be the first time he has laughed, or well at least that I have heard, so the joke must be pretty funny.

"We were gone a day." he whispers to me so that no one else can here.

Just him saying that makes me laugh more, but I am soon told to stop by the look on Susan's concerned face. I can see tears streaming down her eyes. She seems way more upset than everyone else.

"What's wrong?" I ask her trying to sound as sympathetic as I can, which is hard due to the fact that moments ago I was just laughing and now I am all the sudden trying to take things seriously and understand.

"My family... My friends... all of my memories... and we just, we just destroyed them." she sobs.

"It's okay," John assures here. "You will get to see them again, It's better that they're here instead of prisoners on the platform." he raises his eyebrows to look concerned, but his voice doesn't sound that way.

"We have to go outside." John says after a while of looking out of the window.

"Not the stairs again," I moan.

"No, this time, we can ride the elevator." The word seems familiar but I'm too much in the dream to know what it is so I give him a confused look.

"A box that can take you to different floors, you know, an elevator." John reminds me.

"Oh yeah, now I remember. Wait, why didn't we just take that up here instead of running up all of those stairs?" I ask him a little angry that he made me come up all of those stairs so he can watch me make a fool of myself. A bit cruel once you think about it. Kind of like having the medicine to cure a disease but keeping it all to yourself even though you are healthy.

"It was too risky." he simply said

"What do you mean?" I ask him

"At the time, we were using most of the power to activate the weapon, it would have been dangerous to ride in it with very weak power." he explains as we begin to file out of the door, into the hallway. We head to a large stainless steel door, only the type of metal it is made of's name is quite ironic due to the fact that the door is covered in dirt. John presses the button and I can hear the slow moan of the elevator coming to life and it slowly crawling up to us.

The doors open with a slight ding, but it's a bit drowned out by all of the other noises the elevator is making, just trying to stay on this floor. Once we're inside Devon presses the button and the elevator begins it's slow, noisy journey back to the ground floor. We're all quiet. I can tell it's time to be quiet and all serious again. The only sound I can hear are the elevator's struggle as we pass through the floors without a word to each other. I begin to open my mouth to break the silence, but I decide it would be better not to.

After what seems like hours of elevator screeching, wheezing and moaning, we finally reach the floor that contains the dining, conference, and my room. It's familiar to me but in indescribable way it somehow feel different to me. We go through the door to the outside, where it's almost night fall. The sun is setting with it's familiar warm pinkish glow.