𝙰𝙻𝙴𝚇 𝚁𝙰𝙼𝙸𝚁𝙾 𝚂𝙿𝚄𝙽 𝚃𝙾 𝙻𝙸𝙵𝙴 in the pastoral ruins of a verdant field. She'd fallen three hundred feet from deep within the vagaries of a category-five tornado. Her body, cold and drenched, whirled and pivoted through the air, ducked and righted into the heart of the storm, before launching across the sky as a far-reaching projectile.
Screaming. Stinging eyes.
Was this how she was going to die? Dead before she even figured out how she got here? Would she ever see her school friends again? Experience true love? Get married, have kids, grow old, die the right way? All of these questions clashed against one another as she witnessed the earth inch closer and closer to her face.
THUD!
Her body struck the ground all right, but with the force of a pillow. She gasped as tears surfaced in her eyes. After a moment, after recognising she was still alive, she pulled herself up to her knees, running shaky fingers through her short, black hair. She looked up and saw the tornado surge across the grassy landscape, hurling debris every which way.
Slowly, the twister faded, and above the luxuriant expanse resided a starry patch of moonless dark. Her sight trailed down to her knees, and then to a couple feet in front of her. She saw something—a fabric—and crawled over to it. It was her black beanie, still in good condition, dry by the feel.
She tweaked it around her ears and brought herself up to full height. In the distance was more grassland, nothing else.
I'm alive?!
Off to the left stood a well-lit farmhouse composed of oak and stone. In the front yard was an abandoned tractor and pieces of industrial machinery, likely smashed and fragmented across the acreage on account of the recent windstorm. The rain had remained, prying needy fingerholds of grass and mud from the earth. Puddles washed in like uninvited guests, each winking in the light of a streetlamp settled on the edge of a dirt-path road.
However, the closer she inspected the puddles, the more she recognised that these reflections were not alone; there was something brighter, something significantly more purple, flashing in the background of each spill. Gathering enough strength to push herself upwards, Alex looked off to the right. Arms outstretched on either side of her body, she sucked in a deep breath, her eyes popping open. There in the distance hovered, or perhaps stood—it was honestly quite difficult to tell—a magical ring of stars, nebulae, and quasars. And although she wasn't sure of it, there appeared to be a slow yet methodical rotation at the centre. A spiral. It cast a radiant glow over the sky, kind of like a double rainbow, substituted with blues, purples, greens, and all sorts of spectacular pinks.
Eyes beginning to water, heartbeat dropping to a manageable rhythm, she sank down to one knee and ventured a glare over her right arm. She had been dressed, from head to foot, in snappy winter clothes. Her beanie snatched her taut yet malleable hair in cosy warmth. A couple inches below was a grey scarf blowing fiercely against the storm. Wrapped neatly from shoulder to shoulder was a puffy black jacket glazing in the Spiral's scintillating shine.
I feel so . . . God, what is this?! Am I dreaming?! No, I can't be! I'm here! I can feel it!
Despite the faint, shadowy darkness, Alex saw her breath manifest on the air. Shivering, she spun around to the farmhouse on the other side of the field and cried, "Is anyone out there?!" with all the bravery she could muster. She was certain nobody would answer. It was just calming to hear her own voice once again, making the loneliness of the situation feel less so.
Arms crossed tightly, shivering, she paced across the farmland, scrawling mental notes of the environment. A tree lay grimly rattling in the haste of the cloudburst. Fastened to the hefty bough was a wheel gyrating by a piece of rope. A wodge of metal stabbed into the timothy grass, perching against the tree bark. Alex had seen something similar to this on the news in 2035 when Orlando's gorgeous sunny weather had been ripped apart by a hurricane. The roof to some suburban home had peeled off and flown into the wind piece by piece, the parts ending up on the other side of town. Luckily, nobody was hurt; it did, however, leave large sheets of metal across the neighbourhood.
Thinking of this, she hopped over the fence and bolted for the front door, hoping the storm wouldn’t catch her. Her shoes squelched heavily through the wet and muddy landscape. Without knocking, Alex threw herself inside as quickly as possible, though not quickly enough to stop a vagary of rain from forcing itself into the building. It splashed on the wooden floor and left a miniature pool of water along the hall. The door banged against the wall, and swiftly Alex gripped the handle, slamming it shut.
She took in a deep breath and leaned against the hallway panel, unsure of what to do.
The golden light of the chandelier twinkled peacefully in her eyes. She slid down against the wall and hitched her back against a coatrack, staring off into empty space, trying to make sense of what happened.
She drew her knees into her chest. Everything went quiet. Even the rainstorm outside seemed a murmur to her now. Nothing but the sound of her own soft breaths could be heard. She raised a hand and inspected it, thinking that if she were dreaming, it would no doubt be distorted. All fine.
How can any of this be real? I mean, it can't be, right? It's a dream.
She shook her head, clenching her fist. She closed her eyes and sighed, then opened them, finding movement at the bottom of her soles. The puddle along the hallway floor wobbled slightly. Huh?
She unballed her fist and the water stopped moving.
"What . . .?"
Am I going crazy? Did the water just . . . did it just . . .?
She stared at the palms of her hands with beady, unsure eyes. She shook her head again, picked herself up off the ground, and wandered through the hallway. Up ahead and to the left was the living room. Alex hadn't noticed this at first (her eyes never left her hands), but when she did, she stumbled over to a coffee table opposite an unlit fireplace. In the centre of the table was a crystal vase ornamented with violet-blue X-shaped patterns. But wait a minute: she'd seen this vase before. Somewhere in her past. It was there, idling, someplace hazy and just out of reach.
She grabbed the vase and set it on the carpet. She removed the puffy jacket from her torso and draped it over the table, exposing an old, extra-small black T-shirt that was tight against her chest and biceps. She ran a quick glance over her forearms, expecting to be bruised from the fall, but found nothing worth noting. Nothing. But how could that be? She'd fallen from the sky, which was already difficult to grasp, and now the world wanted to tell her that she was completely unscathed?
A pang of anger and panic darted through Alex's otherwise tense body. Wriggling back, she stood up into a run and made a beeline for the kitchen—she assumed it had been the other room just up ahead at the end of the hallway. The door creaked open hastily. On the other side was a kitchen sink with a leaky faucet tapping into the overflow hole.
The kitchen was a small, enclosed space the size of a garage. An oblong-shaped dining table dominated most of it. On either side of the table, and at the front and back, were wooden armchairs. They looked like the sort you'd expect to find in underfunded schools.
In an instant, she cranked the faucet and drank from the tap. She swallowed the stream not all in one go but instead in narrow-mouthed sips. She closed her eyes and hovered in total darkness, figuring that at a moment's notice she would regain consciousness and return to the real world. And that had to happen. It surely would.
Of course it didn't. Eventually quenching her thirst, she recoiled. An unfamiliar feeling surfaced in the deep chasms of her soul. She hurled over as if to vomit, and then as if to hold her sides and laugh, and then as if to do a summersault. She wrenched her shoulders and groaned.
She levitated. Water slithered around her body in a series of winds, coming to a close at the formation of a diamond-shaped aura. The water swirled and gurgled audibly; it was as though a waterfall had been pouring around her in great spills. Her eyes turned from a gimlet green to an icy blue, and her lips, hair, and fingernails turned blue unanimously. The beanie fell to the ground, soaked and tattered. By the time she understood what was happening, she let out a cry and—
SPLASH!
The aura of water exploded viciously, overturning the kitchen table and flinging wooden chairs into the wall, one of which had lodged into the panel itself.
Alex knelt down on the floor, panting. "What's wrong with me?!" she cried. "Ah-ah-am I some freak? What the fuck is this?"
But she'd already asked that question before, had been asking it over and over and over again in her mind. Is this some fucking schizophrenia bullshit? Am I in a coma?! I need answers, and I need them 𝘕𝘖𝘞!
Just then, a window shattered behind her. Something struck her in the nape. Her hands hit the ground and she let out a yelp of pain and then cursed. She pushed herself up and turned back expecting to see someone standing there, someone who could give an explanation for all of this bullshit. No luck. Just a paper-covered rock resting at the side of the overturned table. She reached down and unfolded the paper, only to back up.
The rock vanished into a million tiny particles. Just. Like. Dust. She glanced around as the particles took off into the air.
This wasn't real. It couldn't be. Looking down at the piece of paper now gripped firmly in her bony hands, Alex registered that she was in a game. The Reach Project. It took her all of ten seconds to read the bulky text. When she finished, she said, mouth agape, "A game . . . What the hell do you mean a game?"
Meanwhile, the storm had ballooned in magnitude. The walls to the farmhouse creaked and groaned under the pressure of a fearless onset of winter gales. The curtains surrounding the fractured kitchen window blew inwardly towards Alex's forehead. She could have stayed in that position forever, listening to the storm while lost in a pit of wordless thought, but when a stroke of lightning scratched its fire across the night, she stumbled back to reality. A shutterflash had blinded her momentarily; the lightning must have been close. Gasping, shivering, Alex tossed on her puffy jacket and stepped over the windowsill from which the rock had been thrown. There was a slight expectation that a man would be waiting there wearing a disturbing aura of ambiguity—an all-black outfit perhaps, and maybe a mask for good measure. But no one was there. The rock had forced itself in on its own. Was it God who did this?
The Spiral, she remembered from the text. That's where I need to go! That's my only way out!
Alex hurried around the farmhouse and stood alongside the tree with the wheel-swing. Off in the distance was the Spiral, now shining greenly in contrast to the plague of terrible weather that had infected the land. She felt her vision narrow the further she examined the entity, not because it was too bright, but because it seemed to sap her of power. It was as if her life force had dwindled to a flicker and her mind was in a constant state of fog. But she remembered her control, her relationship with water it seemed—a bond. Had the game given this to her? Most definitely, she believed. There wasn't a question about it. And if it was her only ticket to making it out of here, no doubt—No fucking doubt!—would she use it. Thinking of this, relaxing her muscles and letting her arms levitate at her sides, she massaged her thoughts. They became less and less menacing as time went on. And although the weather raged, she managed to prevail—at least there was a heavy emphasis on the hope that she would prevail. Inhaling deeply, she tightened her fists. Rainwater swirled around them like dragons. A trickling sensation sizzled throughout her body, and the longer she held this position, the more intense the feeling became.
More and more rain channelled around her body, taking on the form of a human-shaped aura. It reflected the light of the Spiral and cast jackstraws of ultraneon green beams across the field. A thrumming noise later, she screamed.
The rainwater that surrounded Alex's body exploded as one massive waterbomb. It shotgunned the wheel-swing off its tree and sent it flying into the farmhouse. The storm followed; all the rain and wind and freezing cold were blown away by a large pocket of warmth. Alex felt it seep into her skin. With her eyes, hair and lips blue, she hovered above the ground. Silence. Silence.
Water dripped onto the dewy grass like the end of a leaky drainpipe.
Opening her eyes, Alex's face shapeshifted into one of shock, then into one of terror. She dropped onto the ground, picked herself up once again, and gazed out into the distance. The purple-black night was finally undisturbed, and she could see where all the stars were leading: the Spiral. Stratus clouds flew overhead quickly enough to where their movement was observable to the human eye. They did very little to put her mind at ease, but they did something. They let her know she was still standing.
Folding her arms, Alex thought, I have to get help, and fast.
