Bliss’ house was not in the Enclave itself, but was within walking distance. Within a few blocks, the decrepit houses of Bliss’ neighborhood transformed into renovated apartment buildings, sleek restaurants, and finally the busy streets and office towers of the business district. These streets were laid out at slight angles, instead of the perfect grids of the surrounding districts. This asymmetrical, uneven design allowed a section among a cluster of buildings to remain inaccessible without being noticeable. If approaching from one side, one might assume that an office park was on the other side of Hatchet Offices. If approaching from another, it would be easy to assume that there was an alley behind Hal’s Wings and Sports Bar.
There were several access points to the Enclave, usually in out-of-the-way corners and unmarked doors. The one we usually took was through an otherwise-unused office in a parking structure. This was the route we took the first time Bliss took me back to the Enclave.
The inside was like an old-fashioned downtown, a winding brick road lined with black lamp posts and rows of shops, restaurants, and apartments. This road twisted and narrowed, then widened into squares and parks. When I walked it, every time it seemed I was nearing its end, I discovered some new tunnel or alley, leaving me to wonder how far it stretched and how much of the city it covered.
“How can something so big stay hidden?” I asked Bliss on our first visit. “Can’t people from those offices see it?”
Bliss shrugged as we sauntered along. She was more interested in trying to decide what to show me. “Normalcy handles that. I don’t know how they operate. Could be illusions, or some system that redirects attention, or probability manipulation. They probably erase the memory of anyone who wanders in. As for the offices, for all I know, Normalcy owns them all. I’ve seen them successfully cover up huge attempts to reveal the Hidden World; a message written on the moon’s surface, a forest growing within hours in a huge city, fictional characters coming to life and crawling out of books. They must have resources, both monetary and supernatural, beyond even what I can imagine.”
I shuddered at the casual mention that Normalcy would manipulate people mentally. “But why? What’s the point of keeping it hidden?”
Bliss shook her head. “Normalcy doesn’t explain why the rules are what they are, they just enforce them.”
I thought about how I had longed to be part of the Hidden World before I even knew it existed. I wondered if I had had a brush with it before my abduction and been made to forget. I wondered how often that happened to people who longed to see the impossible.
“It’s not fair,” I said.
“No, it isn’t,” Bliss agreed.
The people of the Enclave looked ordinary enough on first glance, but after a few seconds, the details would quickly emerge. There might be a man with unusually old-fashioned clothes talking to a man whose skin was striped like a tiger. A robot might be seen feeding bread to birds which had human-like hands in place of their feet and argued with each other in gruff voices.
On my first visit I found myself staring at all of the people, amazed by how much bigger the universe suddenly was. While I had been part of the Hidden World for ten years, my experience was still very narrow. I had only just learned that magic was real, that creatures from fantasy and horror actually existed. Despite the pain of my loss, I found myself laughing with delight. Part of me suddenly looked forward to my new life.
From that point forward, when boredom became overwhelming, and started to turn into despair as I tried to imagine a future and only saw loneliness and meaninglessness, the Enclave became a place of comfort. I would wander its shops, sampling ice cream that left me floating in the air or buying a book from an alien planet. At night, the streets would be packed with people wandering between bars and dance clubs. Anise would take me to these clubs, where she took drugs which granted visions of past lives, and danced to songs so frenzied, the DJs always cut off the track before the last note lest it drive the dancers mad. I was afraid to indulge in either. The Enclave was a world where rules didn’t exist. For a time, I could escape the bonds of Normalcy, of my own mind, even of the laws of physics and exist in a place where, since anything was possible, I might have a future.
