The Viluverse - Chapter Eleven

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Jensen couldn’t remember where he was. He was sitting on a chair at a round white table, white all around him. Faint murmurs as if from distant conversations, but nothing else stirred in the stillness.

He had vague memories of falling, of being with someone, but they’d vanished, instead now replaced by the whiteness on all sides. He looked around: no doorways as he stared at the table.

A single white pillar connected it to the floor, perhaps retractable, he thought, as he looked underneath, examining it. He wanted to stand up but couldn’t, some force pinning him there as a doorway seemed to open to his left. Beyond it lay blackness and a solitary figure, or what appeared to be a figure, for it consisted only of a pair of rimmed glasses, walking toward him.

He could sense a smile as the glasses ventured over to him and sensed an arm reaching out with presumably a hand waiting, but he couldn’t be sure. Just another day in the Viluverse, he thought, astonished that he could deal with such things.

He reached out in turn anyway and, to his great surprise, found himself clutching an invisible but firm hand. He shook the invisible being, which seemed to smile again before it sat opposite him.

There was no chair to speak of, just the glasses staring at him, their black rims standing out sharply in the room.

He noticed he was clad all in white which seemed to undulate to black from one moment to the next, a pattern that disconcerted him at first, almost like an optical illusion, before he stared ahead at the spectacles again.

It seemed to grin.

“Mr Jensen I presume”, the voice whispered, sounding barely audible and almost inhuman in the silence. It whispered yet felt authoritative as he took in the strangeness of this situation.

“Yes, that’s me…at least I think”, he chuckled slightly, feeling like an amnesiac in wonderland, waiting for the Mad Hatter to appear at any moment.

A slight laugh came from the figure, who seemed to pull out some undulating papers which looked identical to his clothes, putting them on the table as it looked down, then back up again, smiling.

“Then this shan’t take too long Mr. Jensen, we hope you have had a pleasant journey so far.”

Jensen shrugged.

“I guess…though where the hell I am I don’t know,..all I remember is falling then….”

The figure interrupted him.

“Yes that is correct, you are now safe and in shall we say…a holding area for now, you will see more as you go along, have no fear.”

He said this almost reassuringly, and Jensen bought into it, or at least he thought he did, but another part of him had big question marks about the whole thing.

“Holding area…huh…like cattle you mean?”

He said this almost sarcastically but with a smile as the figure seemed to smile in return.

"Not quite…you will soon see, have no fear…but no more questions please, I simply need you to sign these papers and then you can be on your way.”

Jensen was intrigued.

“Papers huh…what kinda papers, and can I get a lawyer?”

He almost quipped the last part, and a quiet sound of laughter came from the figure, again whispering.

“If you wish…dream lawyers are increasingly hard to get on call these days, as I’m sure you may be aware, but if you have enough credit….”

“I don’t think I do actually…here, let me see it.”

The figure slid over the papers to him, which seemed to undulate even more, making them hard to read. He caught glimpses of words emerging underneath the writing - bigger and bolder, but they kept fading just as he had a chance to read them. He thought he caught “Antiquary”, “Solitude”, and “Danger”, the last one in particular alarming him, but the “being” assured him there was nothing to fear.

“Those are simply reflections of your own inner mind at this time and should be of no concern.”

Jensen supposed he ought to be relieved at this but couldn’t shake his unease and curled his mouth as the being slid over a pen, black and undulating again like the paper.

“If you could just sign at the bottom please Mr. Jensen, then we can be on your way.”

Jensen was frustrated and huffed in protest.

“I still don’t understand what this is about…I know…I know I was on a mission here, but everything seemed like it happened after a….”

“Dream?” the figure offered, smiling again.

“Yeah I guess…ah to hell with this.”

He signed the paper and slid it back over to the figure, a sense of unease growing but now dissipating like wind on a clear summers day.