‘I haven't got all day, kid.’ The bounty hunter strode forward, the buckles on his boots clinking and tinkling. ‘I haven't had a Wanderer in months. Funds are running a little low.’
‘I'm a Wanderer - I walked in here without being invited…is that it? I only...I only wanted some stuff for my flat, I...Why? Why...’ Lucy shook her head, trying to tie together some of her loose thoughts so that they made at least an inch of sense. All the while the man in black approached, and with each step he took, Lucy shuffled nearer to Toby - her only protection. ‘Why didn't you know? Why weren't you trying to-’
‘I'm new.’ replied Toby with some force. ‘This was the first day they left me on my own. This is my luck, this is my luck all over...’ He turned to her and took her hand in his. ‘If he gets you, I'm sacked. RUN!’
They turned and bolted, but if it had not been for Toby's fierce tugging on her hand, Lucy would never have run. People with weapons should not be fled from: they should be given what they want, to avoid the shooting. That had always been Lucy’s philosophy, at least.
As if to emphasise her thoughts, another gunshot resounded behind them, cutting through the air. Lucy screamed and stumbled, covering her head with her spare hand. To her left, she saw a chunk of hardened gravel explode into a small mushroom of sand and dust as the bullet made contact with it.
Shrieking, she staggered and suddenly released Toby's hand, rather than holding onto it tighter.
He called her name, but Lucy ran. She ran hard and fast, desperate to find somewhere, anywhere, that made more sense than here. She wanted to believe she was having some kind of episode - she would take that over being shot at any day, but an un-ignorable part of her knew that this was all very real.
The landscape was flat, but as she ran, listening to the roars of anger from the bounty hunter, she noticed on the horizon bright white rocks of curious shapes and sizes, silhouetted against the sunset. She made for them now, so focused on her goal that she tuned out the sounds from behind her. She hardly noticed the sudden lack of gunshots as she arrived in the strange jungle of odd shapes - which she finally realised was not dotted with rocks after all.
Chairs, tables, lamps...Every piece of household furniture one could think of was splayed around her, creating a jungle much more chaotic than the average Ikea, but also not dissimilar. Lucy slowed to view her strange surroundings: just as her hand reached out, to touch a desk chair tipped on it's side, she snapped back to the matter at hand - and promptly leapt behind a bureau. She couldn’t hear Toby, or their terrifying attacker, and she was too scared to look. The eerie silence scared her more than the gun shots ever could, and she wrapped her arms around herself – feeling safer for it.
There she stayed, breathing in and out, chest rising and falling in her panic. Lucy brushed her hair from her face, cradled her cheeks in clammy hands and began to cry. She cried for her sanity, for the changes she was forcing herself into, for the sense that none of this made, and that she so wished it did.
Like any moment of realisation, Lucy's came at the strangest and most inconvenient of times; on her own, leaning against a bureau in an Ikea wasteland, hiding from a bounty hunter who wanted her for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Why had she been in Ikea in the first place? Purchasing items to represent a change she wasn't yet ready for? Totems to place around an unloved and unhappy flat? She lifted her face up, and her eyes took in the furniture that surrounded her once more. Bedside tables tipped on their heads - pots for plants that didn't need watering and so served no point - desks with drawers and pockets that would go unused – and, of course, wall sconces and patterned dustpans and brushes - pointless decorations to enhance the average.
Her juddering cries ceased slowly, and she sniffed. The tears stuck to her cheeks like cling film, thickened by her mascara, and so she wiped them, letting out the occasional pitiful gasp.
No, Lucy realised slowly. She didn't need to change, not until she was ready.
She stood up suddenly, so sure of herself in that second that she had forgotten entirely where she was. Spinning around, Lucy saw, a short distance away now, Toby and the bounty hunter, grappling. One of the younger man's hands was wrapped around the hunter's, preventing him from pulling the trigger of the weapon. No punches had been thrown, and would not be thrown, not while the possession of the gun was in question.
‘You Stitchers are all the same. Useless! What good is it going to do, sending the Wanderers back? We'll only end up with more of that crap, the furniture that leaks through. Why don't you send that back, hm?’ There was a tinge to the voice of the Hunter that twisted Lucy’s stomach uncomfortably. She had a strong feeling that he was capable of so much more than he let on.
She took a lamp in hand, tossed it from palm to palm and strode bravely towards the two men. All eyes went to her, and the struggles turned to tension as they held onto each other tightly and watched Lucy approach. It was only her who could break them apart.
‘Let him go,’ Lucy snarled, raising the lamp as threateningly as she could manage. The Hunter looked startled at first, but then he grinned – that was more unnerving.
‘Oh, alright then, Wanderer.’ He threw Toby away from him suddenly, wrenching the gun from his grasp in the process. Toby whirled and stumbled, staggering to a halt against Lucy, who looked him over.
‘Are you alright?’
There was the click of a loaded gun, causing Toby and Lucy to look up. The weapon was aimed right at them, so close they were staring right down the barrel.
In that second, Lucy endeavoured to make the quickest decision of her life. She tightened her hands around the neck of the lamp, and swung it low, dipping her entire body so that she was beneath the nose of the gun. There was a bang as it fired, the sound mixing simultaneously with the thud of ceramic to stomach. Lucy was sure she felt the short breath of wind from the bullet whipping through the air, tickle the top of her head, just slightly. Detailed dreams.
The Hunter lurched backwards, released a pained grunt and fell to the floor, horribly winded. Lucy dropped the now mostly shattered lamp and looked to Toby.
‘It'd be nice to know where I saw you in real life. I heard once that our brain picks up the image of a person and places them into your dreams. I'd like to thank you.’
Toby gave her a bemused look; one that Lucy was sure wasn't visible simply because she had surprised him.
‘Usually Wanderers just stagger about, bumping into things.’ He looked down at the Hunter, who was holding his stomach, eyes tight shut. His sunglasses lay at the side of his head, having skittered away in the collision. ‘That's what they told me, anyway. Maybe they were lying.’
Lucy nodded slowly, amused by him, surveying the surroundings casually now.
‘So where is this supposed to be, anyway?’
‘This is the wastelands,’ replied Toby. ‘It's where most of the gaps come out, for some reason, and so the Hunters swarm here.’
‘They've not got much to do with their time then,’ commented Lucy, noticing less and less the smells in the air, and the feel of the light breeze in her long hair. Even Toby was looking less solid. The world was fading. She narrowed her eyes and observed him closely as he continued.
‘Wanderers aren't sighted often, and if they are? They'd make millions parading someone like you around.’
Lucy nodded slowly, understanding now. The reality of the situation oozed into her subconscious, coming through the gates with great ease as other weights lifted themselves from her mind.
‘I thought other worlds were supposed to be.... I don't know, nice and different.’ She said, slightly pensive.
‘Sorry to disappoint you. A tear in the fabric of reality can destroy civilisations... because people are greedy.’ Toby ran a hand through his hair and let out an exasperated huff.
‘People are greedy,’ agreed Lucy. ‘Can you get me back, yet? I have stuff to do.’ She glanced around at the overturned furniture, cluttering and surroun
ding them, and a smile curled her lips into a Cupid’s bow. ‘Stuff I’ve finally got around to understanding.’
‘Don't get too excited, it's only a parallel world,’ Toby replied, deadpan. Lucy's expression forced him to check himself, and he hastily gestured to their surroundings- to the chairs, the madness. ‘Funnily enough, the new gap's come out here.’ He pulled something from his pocket, and with bemusement, Lucy saw it was a yo-yo.
‘Really? Really? A yo-yo? You're just being silly now.’
‘It's the best way to find the gaps, and it's fun. You've got to get your kicks somewhere.’ He rolled it out of his hand, the string extended, and the yo-yo tumbled towards the ground. Toby tipped his hand this way and that, the toy bouncing up and down, and he looked towards Lucy with a childish smile. ‘Can you do tricks?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘I haven't played with a yo-yo in years.’
‘You should,’ Toby replied absently, flicking it forward. It leaped through the air, still anchored by the string. ‘This one's called 'around the world', but if there's a portal nearby, it never gets that far.’
As if to back up Toby's point, the yo-yo paused mid-air, the string looped around it pulled taut. It quivered, an unseen force tugging on it with all it's might. Lucy's eyes widened.
‘You weren't kidding.’
‘In my line of work, you can't kid.’ Toby gestured casually ahead of them. ‘Go back through, and I'll close it behind you.’
Lucy took a couple of hesitant steps forward, ducking past the hovering yo-yo, and she turned one last time, with a slight frown on her face.
‘Surely you'd have a right job, cleaning this wasteland of 'Wanderers'? Ikea is full of these portals, right?’
Toby shrugged in reply, looking far more casual than Lucy would have expected.
‘You'd be surprised how many people follow the outlined tracks in Ikea; why do you think they make them in the first place? Even they don't trust the fabric of reality. A place like Ikea is bound to have a Narnia or two. Too many wardrobes.’
Lucy nodded slowly. These were the present facts, even if they were beginning to blur around the edges. The fading world had brought her an epiphany, something she had never thought would come to her in Ikea, or even in a parallel wasteland at the close of a chase.
‘And you're going to stitch this up when I'm gone? This portal?’
‘Getting you back is the stitch.’ Toby reeled in the yo-yo, catching it in his open hand suddenly. He wrapped the string back around it as he spoke. ‘So you're kind of the Stitcher, here.’
Lucy looked back to the supposed location of the doorway between worlds. She was sure she could see the air ripple just slightly, not dissimilar to the quiver of air as gas rises. She should have been frightened to go back, to return with her new frame of mind, her new understanding of her own wants and needs, but she couldn't find it in her. Lucy wasn't scared at all.
‘You never know,’ she said, without turning back, taking another step towards the portal which sandwiched between two desk chairs. ‘I might wander off the path again sometime.’
‘I'll be here.’ Toby answered brightly from behind her. ‘But I think you're quite good at doing it alone.’
Lucy knew she was, and that was her final thought as she stepped between worlds, and emerged on the other side.
Thank you to…
Our families,
for coping with our mad ramblings
James,
our glorious cover artist and supportive guru
Sam,
for invaluable advice
And to Neil Gaiman and Stephen King,
who inspired us to start writing in the first place
About the Authors
Jenny and Victoria have been friends for over a decade now, bonded by a love of cake and of course, stories.
Jenny has an HND in media production, but ran away to sell toys and write novels after being expected to learn about the inside of televisions. Victoria, meanwhile, has worked in and around books since her mid-teens; she devours books like biscuits and now wants to write them too – surprising.
Most of their stories are set in their fair city of Manchester, which they believe does not get enough literary credit. They both have brown hair and glasses, but are definitely not sisters – stop asking.
Follow Short Lived on twitter @shortlivedtales
Or visit the Short Lived website at www.shortlivedbook.co.uk
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