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Lighthouses on the Edge of Infinity

Chapter 4: Up

By Sebella SigelPublished 4 years ago 7 min read
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Illustrated by Julie Warnant

“So yeah, an El Chupathingy can be a Slendercabra now. Have fun with that one.” Doc slurred, the Char Man definitely feeling the Irish in his coffee. “Your turn. Whatcha got for us, mole man?”

“Don’t call me that. I have my reasons for avoiding topside. Humanity is a plague.” Jacob glowered. The room remained unimpressed. “This was sent to me via another hacker who wishes to remain anonymous.”

“Course he does, the little chicken shit.” Doc laughed hoarsely.

“Anyway…” Jacob shaded as he hit the play button. “It goes something like this…”

You know the little things you might notice? The kind of things you notice on your way to work, things you see every day, but don’t really acknowledge or process. I heard that people don’t really ever look up or down. I wish I had never started. It was one of those things, commonplace and yet, not. Always there but never quite seen. I made the terrible mistake of looking up as I walked under an overpass. I must have seen them before, I am sure of that now. I saw them clear as day, but never could quite fit them into my head space.

Footprints.

Footprints over my head, over everyone’s heads in the cement ceilings, like someone naughty had taken it upon themselves to leave their mark while the stone and cement was still setting. All while defying gravity and the very human limitation of walking on walls like strange lizards.

I can’t tell you why I noticed it that day, but I did. I remember looking over at my fellow city dwellers to find them all steadfastly face forward and head down. I was alone in that observation in a constantly moving crowd. That day I resumed putting my own point of view back in place, staring at the tangible space in front of me like my life suddenly depended on it. Silly me, it had.

That first day, I promptly forgot about it as soon as I got to work. Life has no patience for such things, always moving onward and upward to the next thing, better or otherwise. I went about my day as usual, and lost track of the strange occurrence in the maze of social interactions and phone calls. Simple as that.

I can’t tell you when I noticed it again, but I did, like I was always meant to. It stayed longer with me this time, this horrible realization as I studied the footprints in the ceiling. I tried to process it, attempting to make it into a bizarre prank, or some sort of obscure art statement. Nothing I came up with sat well in my head though, probably because no one else was looking at it. Eyes and head locked in their own settings, others milled around me blind to the wonder above them.

I wanted to point it out to someone, anyone really, but I was left with the idea of ‘what if I was the only one who can see it’. That thought was enough to shut me down, drop my courage like it was cutting into me. I walked off again, body bowed to the accepted terms of social sanity, the clause in this contract that we all hold to stating that we did not bother others with bouts of the crazies. People who broke with this tended to be locked up in white rooms, and are given lots of drugs until them felt better about their notions.

A tangle of thoughts like a memory scab, I picked at it, poking and prodding at what was bothering me until it bled. I tried to make sense of nothing. I should have let it go, not obsess about it. Even worse I tried to rationalize it. Then I started to wonder where the footprints went and where they had come from to begin with. My thoughts took the roads less traveled and got lost for it.

I made the executive decision to get other people involved, an impressive move of a coward on my part. As the saying goes, misery loves company, but I have found desperation breeds the compromise of morals. I broke social contract to involve another. My victim was a familiar stranger, someone I saw everyday on my walk to work. We all have them, people we see almost on a daily basis in passing, the ones who we give names, like ‘guy in orange hat’ or ‘lady who sings to herself constantly’. I chose ‘guy who thinks he can wear leather well’ because he paused long enough for me to do so.

I asked him what he saw, high over our heads, terribly there for anyone to see for themselves. He looked up, and was instantly caught in the same fresh hell that I was. I knew he had actually looked because his eyes grew wide with realizations that hadn’t been there before. He confirmed my fears, making them grow threefold by asking me if I knew where they went, or where they had come from. His voice was heavy with more questions, the herd trying to fight their way out of his mouth, greedy for air.

I had no answers for him, countering his inquires with my own. We met no common ground between us, my sudden ally soon becoming resentful of me for dragging him into this. We parted company not on the best of terms, him shaking his head as if trying to clear it. I left to the island of my own sanity, not that its stability had been confirmed. I wasn’t about to tip over into the abyss. I had found my footing in life by making another question their own, and I was a worse person for it.

My walk to and from work became a trial of sorts, a testament to my brittle courage and resolve, or my own stupidity. I could have gone a different way, should have gone a different way, but whether from sheer stubbornness or me clinging to some semblance of normalcy, I stayed the course, day in and day out.

I might have been able to let it go, chalk it up to a fluke or an imagining of my own making, if the footprints stayed where they were. They kept changing. Even worse, they kept growing in number.

Where do overpasses end? They meet the dirt eventually to turn into proper roads, but is a gap where asphalt meets earth. I know because I found it, because I couldn’t resist any longer. I followed those footsteps to see where they went. They ended in the dark, their entryway a hole in the ground, barely big enough for a regular sized person to squeeze through.

I don’t know how long I stared into the darkness, but it was long enough that it started to stare back. I realized this too late. The decision to try my luck at dabbling into life’s mysteries was made for me. It happened so quickly, I didn’t even have time to scream.

Not like it would have mattered.

So ‘now what?’ you ask? That is a very expensive question, and one I don’t think you want anyone seeking payment on. I will give you this little piece of unsolicited free advice though since I have taken a bit of your time for my story.

Don’t look down. Don’t look up. Don’t look unless you are ready to see.

“So the disappearances are getting worse in the cities?” Malone broke the story’s ending silence first. That was never a good sign. It usually meant something was on the move.

“Abductions are up thirty percent.” Jacob confirmed, pulling up that graphs. He projected the images on the closest grey wall for all to see.

“Sounds like it’s time for a round of Molotov cocktails.” Spook laughed ugly and loud. “You know I love me a happy hour.”

“That’s your answer to everything.” Nicki sneered, no love lost between the two.

“You can’t argue with what works. Let's keep this moving. Who’s next?”

monster
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