DAVID'S POV
My body floated but felt hard, beaten and weathered. Arms swollen, stiff and blistered in the glare of the sun. My palm flattened out and pressed against the rough surface of a hot, splintered plank. I could hear gulls and smell the salt water that soaked air. The sun blinded my dry swollen eyes so I kept them squeezed tight. All I could see was my red-eyelid glow. And it wouldn’t stop with its damn blinking…
I woke up with a jerky start with a beam of light glaring in my eye. Only it was not the sun but a penlight…one of those one’s doctors use to check if you’re conscious after a blow to the head. I couldn’t make out the fuzzy form of the person wielded it beyond the blaring light, only that the hand holding it was feminine.
“How you holding up, soldier,” the doctorish -type female cackled. That voice. It was familiar but…not.
“P-P-Pepper?” I asked and blinked and tried to get my bearings.
But this time it was Atticus who snapped in his gravelly growl: “Pepper doesn’t exist—”
“—What do you mean? She doesn’t exist?” I interrupted with a yawn and turned my head where his voice had penetrated the dark. I could almost see him now, his hazy body hovering to the left of me. My eyes began to adjust but the room was quite dark with only a spastic low fluorescent light hovering above.
“I saaaaaayeeeid,” Atticus said elongating the vowels for emphasis, “that according to Pepper, you no longer exist.”
The walls of the room were beginning to become tangible around me, and I could see we were in some kind of utility or boiler or access room based on all the pipes zigzagging along the ceiling. I could then make out the gurgling sounds of a water heater and suddenly my dream of floating on an infinite sea began to make sense.
“What does she mean by that?” I asked perplexed, looking back at the female doctorish type person who was now stuffing the penlight in her pocket and turning her attention away from me towards Atticus. I couldn’t make out her features from all the blind spots still twinkling in my vision except she was slim with a wide mouth and upturned nose. Her hair was long and dark but hard to tell the shade.
“It means she thinks you are an asshat, Asshat!” the woman remarked and I blinked at her again feeling unstable as if I should know who she was but the face kept bleeding in and out of shape from my still sore vision. The woman turned to Atticus: “He’ll live,” before turning on her heel and walking out of the room.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I croaked with a whine, now getting annoyed.
Atticus’s shoulders grumbled with laughter. “Sometimes you need to take things at face value. Not everything has a double meaning, my boy,” he snickered while slapping my shoulder roughly, “You fainted. I asked for her to check in on you. That is all.”
“Hmm,” I replied, “Is that all.” I sat up and realized I had been lying on a decrepit tweed upholstered couch with tears in the fabric where the yellow foam crumbled through. Exactly the type you would expect to find in a leaky boiler room.
Atticus hobbled over to a duct-taped dark green swivel chair and then slammed into it with the violent force only the invalid can muster. “You need to eat something,” Atticus nodded towards a mottled and peeling TV tray between us where a bowl of mushy looking…mush rested in the most unappealing way under the buzz of the fluorescent light. Is there an appealing way for mush to rest?? I wondered.
“What is it?” I sniffed.
“Prison food,” Atticus replied.
“Am I a prisoner?” I asked only half-jokingly.
“David,” Atticus said gravely and with a hint of sincere concern that I found personally alarming, “You are locked in a prison of your own making. Now eat.”
My tummy rumbled as if on cue so I picked up the bowl.
“And once you are done eating that,” Atticus replied, “You can use the spoon to start digging yourself a tunnel. Or your own grave. Same difference.” He began to laugh at his own joke but I didn’t find it very funny. The taste of the cold mush didn’t help my humor at all. It may have been oatmeal or quinoa or concrete powder for all I knew…my tongue was too dry to taste anything.
“So…how long have I been gone?” I asked, wondering if time worked differently between worlds, judging by the looseness of my pants. Had my body been wasting away the whole time I was crossing over? My mind darted back to all the dishes that had been scattered on the floor that I had tripped on while making my way out of the lab.
“Gone?” Atticus inquired with an eyebrow raised, “What an unusual concept.”
I was getting weary of Atticus’s vague meanderings so I grumbled, “Fine. Gone as in: ‘the lights are on but nobody is home’ if you prefer.”
Atticus roared with laughter, “Oh David, sometimes I wonder if you understand physics at all.”
This Atticus two-step was beginning to get as stale as the mush in my mouth. “Is the fuse fixed? I want to go back—“ I started.
“—Go back?” Atticus tittered.
“Go back to finding Em—to doing my research as soon as I’m strong enough,” I cried.
Atticus howled at that statement. I swear if this spoon hadn’t been so blunt I might have stabbed him with it there and then. When his cackling finally died down, he looked at me with sober regard again.
“My dear, David,” Atticus said my name in such a tender way it made my skin crawl, “I don’t think you are even aware of where you are. Or where you are going. What’s up. What’s down. You wonder where your ‘lovely fish has gone?’ Not once imagining you might be swimming in her very aquarium as we speak.”
I stopped eating and sucked in my teeth. Was he alluding to what I think he was? And then…something flickered in my brain.
“Bubbles,” I said under my breath.
“Bubbles,” Atticus replied.
And then I realized I was still in a cymatic bubble back in my world. Which meant, the body I was currently inhabiting had been sitting on the floor in cymatic bubbles in this world. And judging by the wasting way of this body, maybe more successful at it than I had been… at it longer, than I had been. And then I had a queer feeling on the back of my neck. What if this world’s ME was in MY world right now … being more successful with Emma than I had ever been??
But if he had a head start in crossing over does this mean that my world was an offshoot branch of his reality? Or his mine….? Or… BRAINASSPLOTION!!!
I tried shaking my head clear. It took a while for when I looked up at the old codger opposite me, he looked peacefully napping with a little devil smile in the corners of his mouth.
“You aren’t my Atticus at all,” I said softly.
To which he replied with a low hushed whisper without ever opening his eyes, “Oh, I am everyone’s Atticus.”
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A/N
Hey guys! Sorry this is so late...I've had such a hard time getting my sea legs back after finishing that crazy production schedule. Apparently I need two months to recover after eight months of working night and day. But I'm just beginning to feel like my old self again so hopefully soon will be back in the swing of things.
Coming up next week is a special chapter/s arc where you will be introduced to a new Emma who is largely featured in the drama series. Kind of her backstory with David.
Our youtube video experiement was a miserable failure. Only 27 hits. But it tells us that likely the counter is not wrong as we thought and perhaps we just lost 4000 hard core readers. There could be many reasons for this including our own issues of not being regular enough and being taken off the featured list. Hopefully we can prove ourselves again and get those readers back (and then some).
For now, we will finish part two on Wattpad. Part three will be bundled with Part 1 and 2 as a print book and digital download for sale: which was always our intention. Part three is a sideways story to part two...where we find out what Emma is up to while David is pursuing her across the multiverse.
The first issue of the 5 part graphic novel is coming along. I hope to share some teaser images with you soon. We will be posting them on Facebook so please be sure to follow our page.
C
P.S. Does anyone read these???
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