I ran my fingers through my wet hair and took a deep breath to try and center myself. “Alright,” I said to no one, “Don’t panic. We can figure this out.”
“Who’s we?”
My heart surged into my throat. There was someone else in here with me; a woman… clinging to the ceiling above the door. What?
She stared at me, her long, dark hair drooping, her wide eyes shining brightly like they had reflective surfaces. I had no idea how she was holding herself up there, but it looked like she was using her bare hands and feet, like some kind of weird spider-person. In an instant I realized that I couldn’t sense her, I couldn’t hear her pulse, her breathing.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” I said, my words bouncing off the walls like gunshots.
She blinked at me and cocked her head to the side in a childlike manner. “You really should learn to look up,” she said. “Nobody looks up, that’s why it’s so easy to get the drop on them. You have a very strong magical aura. Strange, considering what you are.”
“My… what?” I asked, still stunned.
“Your magic aura. Why is it so strong?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I’m saying that a lot lately.”
“Hit your head?”
“Something like that…”
As I looked up at this strange woman hanging from the ceiling, I realized something. She didn’t make me feel the same way the other people I’d met tonight made me feel. I wasn’t overcome with the urge to leap across to where she was and dig her spleen out of her body with my fingernails.
That’s new.
“Who are you,” I asked, my eyes narrowed, “And what are you doing… up there?”
She shrugged. “I’m up here because the floor is gross,” she said, “I’m not sure mother would be happy with my answering your other question, though. I’ll have to ask her.”
“Mother?”
The stranger shut her eyes, breathed deeply, and then started… swaying. Left, right, left, right. I watched her, partly curious, partly dumbfounded. What the hell was she doing?
Her eyes sprang open. “Mother says I can talk to you.”
“Wait, whose mother? There’s no one else in here.”
“Mother is mother, and she’s everywhere.”
“Is mother… this place?”
The girl smiled a wide smile. “No. This place tries to block me from speaking to mother, but she’s more powerful than it is.” She paused. “My name is Azlu,” she said, seeming a little more encouraged to talk now, “What’s yours?”
“I don’t know,” I said through my teeth, “And that’s the last time I’m saying those words today.”
“Have you said them often?”
“Ever since I woke up in this place.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Woke up?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t wake up here… I guess I just don’t remember how I got here, or where I was before I got here.”
That wasn’t true. A flash of memory had hit me like a metal spike to the side of the head, but I wasn’t about to tell this stranger how I saw myself standing in a bloody room, or how much blood they’d had to wash off me moments ago.
“Well, if you don’t know who you are, you don’t remember how you got here, or why you’re here, it’s safe to assume you’re guilty of the crime of being one of us.”
“One of us?”
“Outsiders… from the other side of the rift.”
Another sharp stab of memory came racing toward me like a bullet. More blood, the squelching of claws tearing through flesh, a flash of white light. I turned my head to the side and shut my eyes, trying at the same time to fight the pain off and concentrate on making the vision clearer. But it was like juggling knives without handles, and the memory faded, leaving me with an aching head.
“Is your brain broken?” Azlu asked.
“You could say that,” I said, frustration building inside of me.
“I would help if I could, but our brains are very different. I don’t know how to fix yours.”
“I don’t need fixing. I need to get out of here.”
Azlu shut her eyes, tilted her chin up, then nodded at… no one. “Mother wants me to tell you something.”
I didn’t understand. Was mother invisible, or was this woman insane? Both were possible, I guessed. “What does she want to tell me?”
“She wants you to remember who you are.”
“It’s not like I haven’t tried.”
Azlu’s reflective eyes opened. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Go deeper than that, further than that. She wants you to know who you were before you came here. She says this place will try to break you. It will use the things that hurt you to attack your soul until you lose all will to escape. You can’t let it. You have to remember, it’s the only way you’ll find the strength.”
I stared at this strange girl, frowning, my heart starting to race. “My brain is all messed up, do you understand?”
“I do. I was like you, at first. Lost. Alone. Frightened and angry. When they found me, they took me, beat me, and threw me into this place. But my memories came back. Slowly, over time. The more I knew about myself, the stronger I heard mother’s voice. Now she is with me always, and I’m not alone anymore.”
“And I can hear mother’s voice, too?”
“No, silly. I am Arachnon, you are… not. We are different.”
“You can’t tell me what I am?”
“I wish I could, but mother won’t let me.”
I took a step toward her, my body tense with anticipation. “What? Why not?”
Azlu shook her head. “She thinks it will be better for you if you learned for yourself, if you found your own strength.”
Every bone in my body yelled attack, but I couldn’t. I had to stop from lunging toward her and venting some of the anger bubbling inside of me, even if my whole body was shaking from the effort. I backed up again, pressing my back against the wall and sliding to the floor, defeated.
I was done talking to this girl, tired, sore, and angry; so angry, I couldn’t tell whether I was hungry or not. Small blessings, I guessed. Looking around where I’d sat down, checking the floor for signs of wetness, I decided to lie down and curl into myself, sighing some of the tension away and enjoying the silence.
While it lasted.
“You really shouldn’t sleep on the floor,” Azlu said.
Sighing, I tucked my hands under my head. “I don’t see another choice.”
“Do you want to sleep up here?”
I opened a single eye and stared at her. “I can’t.”
“You can.”
“No, I can’t. We’re different, remember?”
“I can help you, if you’d only ask.”
“I don’t need your help.”
I shut my eye again, but movement in Azlu’s corner made me spring upright. She skittered across the ceiling on her hands and feet, zipping from one corner of the room to the one directly above me. I watched her, my entire body on edge again. When she stretched her hand out toward me, I flinched away from it. It was dripping with some kind of strange, translucent goo.