Because this hiatus has dragged on quite long enough, thank you... Zaedah presents a future fic.
Throwing Bricks into Voids
Nothing strives for the appearance of danger as blatantly as a dark alley. In works of literature, in police logs and in practice on this rainy night, roofless corridors of brick and filth are where the demons hide in flesh and revel in the rot of disturbing deeds. Between two stone buildings, centuries old and worn into disrepair, the narrow gulf that divides them is encased in red brick during daylight hours. But where the moon cannot reach, the unyielding construction leaks with black.
They say midnight is the only garment for departing souls.
Eight bodies left their spirits here, separated from the burden of color with an abrupt shift in time and place. The dead become litter, mingling with the meaningless bits that life discards. There is a damp newspaper tumbling gracelessly from the far end, lifted by the wet winds of April but never traveling far. An object being pushed along by outside whims and never reaching its preferred destination through independent locomotion is to be pitied. Ultimately, such things are trampled are forgotten, replaced tomorrow by fresh ink and lies.
Dunham knows the feeling.
The soggy whip of loose hair into scanning eyes steals not her focus. Each section of the walls is catalogued for traces of another world, knuckles dragging over the surface to sample what should be solid and assuring. It is neither. Skin is absorbed into the face of the back wall, cells transferred from fingertips to the rough texture that disguises its lack of stability by promoting the flexible facade as a hallucination. Bricks of formed gelatin support thirty newly abandoned floors on nothing but promising illusion. Everything moves, the witness's statement reads. Everything bends as though molecules have commenced a war of avoidance with each other.
She's not afraid of the alley. She's afraid of the answer.
The events are occurring more frequently as lifeless time hobbles on. Olivia's cases have taken an exclusive lean toward these instances of dimensional scratchings. Something is trying to come through and her front line consists of only herself now. Yet here she stands, sniffing for the odor of present reality being shoved aside. There is a particular scent to the friction, worlds groaning to a burn in the manner of angry tectonic plates. Dunham is caught between the shifting flux and like this alley, it surrounds her with the taint of wrongs that are proving unfixable.
Most days, one world is too much.
Standing in the weighted dark of a night journeying without courtesy, Olivia is a sentinel guarding this space as though her attendance is sufficient cause for the void to open. She's seen it split once, reclaiming what it owns and leaving her untouched, bereft and mourning for what may yet exist. Elsewhere. Until she knows, Dunham will remain defiant and waiting in the residue where the haze of another universe has knocked and entered. Everything moves and she wills it to move for her. The law of averages says it must eventually open in the same place twice, exercising the familiar hot zone theory. While she always misses the initial event, her flight is swift in the conviction that a relapse is inevitable. It must want more than it takes.
It took all that she wants.
Her second sight picks apart the scattered debris, seeking a familiar hue among the pieces of humanity's hurry. But it's like reaching out to grasp perfume, fingers slipping through mist. If she squints hard enough, common items display their kiss of faint glimmer and while she can touch these things, they cannot lead her to the next destination. One step behind and years too late to stop the gears from cranking out a relentless conclusion. But the increased frequency of shredded space is false hope lain upon desperate hands.
He's trying to come back.
Stained pants and scuffed shoes become victims of new rain, which washes away the dirt everywhere but here. Still Dunham allows a moment of fancy when she lifts a hand where the hole must have been and imagines him standing on the other side. Searching for home. Reaching for her. The sight and the smell melt into taste; him demanding and playful and alive on her lips. Memories do no justice but that minute of resurgent flavor, always fresh at these sites, is worth the hassle and fury to arrive. One day she won't be too late. She will pull him from that place.
Or join him there.
Companion piece is in the works. Stay tuned...