were there.
Through closed eyes I could sense this world. The ground beneath me was hard like rock and the surrounding sound was an eerie, roaring silence. Worst of all was the smell. The stench was pulsing and alive, the rotting residue of a trillion bacteria nauseating me. It was terrible, awful.
“Open your eyes.” Ash’s voice was quiet.
I followed his instruction. Gasping in fear, I took a step backward. We were on the edge of a cliff. The very edge, only feet away from where we stood, disappeared into a dark chasm, its void screaming.
“Shh,” Ash whispered, squeezing my hand. “We’re safe.”
My eyes were stinging, beset upon by the dense, swirling smog that besieged from all sides. The air was like acid gas.
“This place is insane,” Ash breathed. “I knew that our luck wouldn’t last. Josephine’s subconscious was beautiful. Eli’s subconscious was fascinating. But this is terri –”
“Ash,” I interrupted, turning to his whirring dreamcatcher. “I’m ready. Just point me in the right direction.”
Nodding his understanding, Ash pulled me forward so that we approached the cliff’s edge. Its rocky contours cascaded downward into nothingness. Ducking low to the rock, Ash fell to his knees and crawled even closer to the edge. I followed him. Still, nothing could be glimpsed below.
“He’s down there,” Ash whispered.
I shook my head. “How am I supposed to get down?”
“Rope,” Ash breathed. “There has to be a rope. Hold on.” Retracing his steps, Ash stood. “Be right back.” Moving slowly back along the cliff’s edge, Ash began searching.
“Be careful!” I hissed. For some unknown reason, our voices had become identically hushed. Ash returned. He was carrying a large bundle over his shoulder. I squinted through the gloom. “Rope?”
“Even better,” Ash said. “A rope ladder.”
“Good,” I replied. “A rope was going to be terrible.”
Ash fastened the rope ladder to an outward jutting piece of cliff rock. Fortunately, I had never feared heights. Regardless, I didn’t allow myself to contemplate the strength of Ash’s knots. Tugging the ladder for security, I climbed onto the apparatus. I already knew I would be journeying alone.
Ash shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” I replied.
“Remember,” Ash began, distracting himself. “You can’t tell him or touch him. You can only show him. You know what to say if you get into trouble. You will awake safe and unharmed. Annie –” Nearly over the rim of the cliff, I poked my head up to look at my boyfriend. Was the tear on his cheek just a product of the stinging smog? “I’m proud of you.”
“Ash, I –”
“Go!” Ash insisted.
Heeding him, I lowered myself further.
I descended into the abyss. Step after step, rung after rung, I kept moving. Dark void poured in from all sides, drenching me. The cliff wall was alone visible apart from the ladder itself. The violent, polluted smell traveling upward bloodied my nose and the acid smog wreaked havoc on my vision, making it difficult for my crying eyes to see the next wrung. I had to close my eyes against the barrage. Sightless, I descended still further. After what felt like hours, I opened my eyes.
I could see the bottom. Distracted, I stopped. The scenery below was incredible. Surrounding me were multicolored mountains. Some rose nearly to my height on the ladder. Others were shorter, appearing crushed inward as though exploded by dynamite. Patches of flat space wove between the mountains, creating pathways. Closing my eyes again, I continued down until I reached the bottom. I stepped from the ladder, coughing on the acid air. I opened my eyes.
It was a landfill.
Heaps upon heaps of garbage were everywhere, building higher and higher into the sickening sky until they appeared mountains. What I had perceived as walkways were patches of ground unhindered by trash and covered with dirty, gray sand. The path beneath me stretched in two directions.
I had to get moving. This subconscious afflicted my every sense. The horrible stench, the masses of garbage, the acid air, and the screaming silence combined to attack me. Wiping my eyes, I considered both directions. Choosing the right side path, I began walking hurriedly. Caleb was here somewhere.
A refrigerator passed on my left side while an array of torn, dirty clothes was piled on the right. Further along, the sliding door of a van passed on the right while a menagerie of plastic flowed from the left. The sheer amount of garbage was gross and unbelievable.
Finding nobody, I allowed my pace to slow. I was traversing an enormous landfill and failing to find Caleb. What should I do? The answer crashed in my head. I had experienced this problem before. Refueled, I continued on my path, my eyes stretching to a broken clog on the road.
“Caleb!” I shouted. “Caleb!” The silence that followed was complete. Looking over my shoulder, I continued. “Cale –” But his name died on my tongue. Brain blurring in disbelief, I stared at the deathly horizon.
There, growing like a titanic red vine turned to rage was a fire, its body spewing black smoke into the poisoned sky like a rabid dragon. Taking an involuntary backward step, I tripped over a juice carton and fell to the ground. My nerves zapped, I jumped to my feet and ran.
Survival was the objective now. I had to distance myself from that burning menagerie of flame. So long as the path existed, the only fast lane amid the garbage, I could outrun it.
After awhile, however, I allowed myself to slow and eventually stop completely. My brow was sweating and my eyes streaking with the accelerated acidity of escape. Wiping them, I panted the sickening air. I could feel the poison in my lungs.
“Hi,” said a voice.
Seizing up in shock, my consciousness could only feel numb limbs and risen hairs. My muscles had cast me into a solid. The voice had been high but male, the voice of an early teenager.
“I heard you,” the voice continued.
I found my body again. With closed eyes I turned toward the voice. For once I was ready for the monster that awaited me. I opened my eyes. Confused, I stared around. Nobody was there. Only trash heaps filled the center and periphery of my vision. But there had been a voice. Blinking several times, I cleared the acid from my eyes. And then I saw him. He was sitting on a flat piece of scrap metal, his back facing a mountain of debris.
Caleb was neither frightening to behold, as Josephine had been, nor horrifying to behold, as Eli had been. Caleb was filthy to behold. He was so filthy in fact that I couldn’t even glimpse skin or hair around the trash that coated his entire body. His form was the shape and size of a boy, but all else was covered in garbage.
“You – you’re Caleb?” I gasped.
He nodded. “You’re not here to hurt me, are you?”
“No,” I said. “Of course not!”
He looked relieved.
Approaching him carefully, I saw that one of his trash coated hands was holding a stick. He played with it absently, carving up the gray sand around his feet. One foot was a ripped tissue box and the other a smashed remote controlled car.
“May I sit?” I asked.
“I guess,” he said.
I sat down next to him on the scrap metal. I was attempting to unscramble my brain and concentrate. Caleb’s stick continued to glide over the sand. I had to start somewhere. “Why are you covered in trash?”
“I’m not,” he said.
Watching him, I saw that even his eyes and ears had been entirely covered over with garbage. One of his eyes was a plastic bottle cap pierced with a tack, the other a Reese’s cup wrapper, its pupil a scrunched piece of tape. One ear was half of a juice box, the other a broken container of floss.
“Yes you are,” I contended. “Why?”
“I’m not covered in trash,” Caleb repeated.
“Of course you are,” I said, gesturing to his midriff which resembled multicolored paper Mache and then to the used straws that erupted from his head like hair. “You’re covered in trash, Caleb. How??
?d this hap –”
“I’m not covered in trash,” he interrupted. “I am trash.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “You’re what?”
“Trash,” he repeated. “I am trash. Not covered in it.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I shook my head. “Nobody is trash.”
He shrugged. “I am.”
I needed to understand Caleb before I could help him. The problem was that I didn’t understand him yet, or what he was telling me. I had to stall for time while I thought it over. “What is this place?”
Caleb blinked. “Home.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“My whole life,” he said.
My brain was a congested highway of question marks. I couldn’t think in this place, couldn’t reason. Sensing my weakness, the deafening silence pushed against me from all sides, bludgeoning my resolve. Regardless, I was not yet conquered. Thinking hard, I gazed in the direction I had come.
Horror hit my heart. Leaping to my feet, I gestured in terrified shock. “Fire! Fire! There’s a fire! We have to run for it!” I had been so distracted by Caleb that I had completely forgotten about the blaze. The fire was larger now, a red vulture on the horizon line, indiscriminate and hungry.
Caleb slowly looked up at me. The flames were getting closer every second. They had appeared unnaturally fast, spurred forward by the demons of the abyss. We had to move.
“We have to run!” I gestured to the fire. “It’s right there!”
Caleb gazed into the flames. “The fire has always been there.”
I stared at him, disbelieving. There was no time for this.