Tales from the Dark Parallel
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Let’s imagine that all human fears exist in a place between consciousness and nightmares. And if it is a place, what would it be like to exist there?
I’ve been reading a lot and I was writing even more and when I emerged from my home, I felt that something was off, but there was no putting my finger on it. The sky was dark, but I ascribed that to looming rain clouds that sprang off from the hurricanes churning the Atlantic. Everything smelled like decay and rot, like an old house that is long abandoned, drenched by a flood, then dried by the sun. The world was that house with the subtle smell of dirt, the smell of rot.
Everything looked the same. It was my neighborhood along the busy four lane road but it was dark from the clouds overhead, or that’s what I assumed until I looked up and saw no clouds. The sun was strange, like it was weeping bright tears of light that were falling away and leaving what appeared to be a waning crescent, which was all that was left of the sun.
I should have been alarmed, but I had to get to work and I worried about traffic. The roads were clear, though, and I arrived earlier than I thought I would.
The doors to the office were chained and I didn’t know what to do because I forgot my phone, so I sat out front and looked around myself. I just waited.
And then that got boring so I got back in my car to drive home, but the road home was changed, or maybe I took a wrong turn.
I ended up on a street in a neighborhood that was abandoned. All of the houses were boarded up, until I came to one that wasn’t and I decided to get out to investigate. It seemed that I was the only man in the world and I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t.
I knocked at the door of the house that looked pristine compared to the others. I could see lights through the windows. I leaned over to peek into one and I jumped out of my skin to see the face staring back at me. Scarred flesh on the face resembled the folds of a brain and there was a hat with a brim that tipped down below the eyes. The mouth didn’t have lips, but purple slits that split to reveal gnarled teeth.
“Come in,” it said like a growl, then I saw a single blade, not a knife, but like one side of a scissor that moved like a finger to beckon me inside.
So eager for someone else, I went inside and I was surprised at the sight. The house looked normal from the outside, but inside looked like the place where all the smells I had noticed earlier came from. There were stairs up to the second floor and it was all covered in swampy material, vines that snaked the banister and rotting leaves covering the stairs. The ground of the first floor was black and when I moved over it, it felt like earth beneath my feet. There were errant vines hanging from the ceiling and then I noticed that water was rising around my feet. Then I heard the children singing. It was a nursery rhyme that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when it is sung slowly.
“Welcome.” I heard; it was the same growl from the face through the window.
I looked around myself and when I turned back toward the door I had entered, I fell back into the water surprised and scared. There was a man there, in a striped shirt (black and red) with that hat on his head, still covering his eyes. He lifted his hands and each finger had long sharp blades extending from them. And then he lifted his chin up and I saw his soulless black eyes.
“Now you die…” he started and I tried to move, but then, his mood changed and suddenly the murderous gravity of our interaction evaporated.
“Is that you!” The man said, voice still rough and gravely, but he was noticeably excited. “Where the hell have you been?”
I shook my head fast, obviously confused. The man took off his hat and I saw his head was bald and charred like the rest of him. The water I was in started to subside and all of the errant growth receded. The house became a bright place, like the outside and it was really nice to be inside.
“Let me help you up,” he said extending a hand and I grabbed it absently, avoiding the blades.
“You look confused,” the man said.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“You know where you are. You were born here. Just like me,” he said like we were old friends.
I was told that I was born in a hospital off a highway.
“I’m not talking about your body,” he said like he could hear my thoughts. “You were made here before you found your body.”
I didn’t know what that meant but it was good to have a friend.
“Sit down.” The man said smiling. “You want something to eat?”
I watched him walk to the kitchen and when he opened the refrigerator, it was full of severed human heads. The man chuckled, “I’ve been busy.” He knocked the heads out onto the floor and then he produced a sandwich that was already made on a plate. It was cut into two triangles.
“I made this for you.” He growled as he stood over me with the plate, and his blades scraped against it. “I know you like peanut butter.”
I took it and ate it. It was good. Chunky peanut butter.
“Why did you stay away so long?” he asked me and sat next to me. He looked sad.
“I don’t know how I’m here now,” I said.
“Everyone is going to want to see you.” he said.
“Who is everyone?” I asked.
The man hugged me suddenly and I felt like I was in a familiar place.
There was a knock at the door and we both shot looks toward it.
“You should go.” he said and the menacing look returned to his eyes. “I have a new guest.” He smiled and I could smell the blood that would be spilled in that house.
As I stood from the couch, the man disappeared and the lights began to dim to nothing, and the waters started to rise on the floor. I waded through it to the door and just as I was turning the knob, I heard the man’s voice though I did not see him again. “Don’t leave without saying goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” I said.
“Before you leave…” he said again.
I twisted the knob and opened the door and there was a young woman standing there with curly dark hair. I was staring into her eyes and she panted with her mouth open, but she stared right through me like I wasn’t there. I waved and she did not react.
“Excuse me,” I said, but she walked right through me, like one of us was just an apparition, and I couldn’t tell which.
I walked through the door and my car was no longer on the street. Just as I looked back at the house, the door snapped shut, closing the woman inside. I heard her scream. Cue the hairs on my neck.
* * *
Tonight:
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Silas, the man who is made of money, the man who heralds the coming beast, exists in a world parallel to this one, where things are different. Things are dark.
Silas in Hell: “It is a short drive and Silas looks out the window at the world passing him by. The whole thing has gone to shit, he thinks. If clowns aren’t stalking people, then crazy young folks are having sex and committing suicide in public. What has the world come to, he thinks. But it is not a real question. He knows the answer.”
– – –
The story of the man with the preternatural ability in the dark parallel starts here, and in a very familiar place. On the planet Druont!
Remarkable: “Belfrat 9 worked diligently and in secret to complete the device that many other Druintes thought was unnecessary. Eris idea for the dark matter manipulator was considered to be redundant in a society with such advanced technology that Druintes can easily have anything they desire through atomic reconstruction. ”
– – –
Wouldn’t it be nice to see what you wanted in the mirror? But what would it mean that our reflection is merely a trick of perception?
Mirror: “But one day, after she got out of bed, woke her husband and the kids, and weighed herself, Pam was shocked to see the woman staring back at her in the mirror.”
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