This was a fun espisode, finally able to tackle a piece of art by one of my favorite artists, Simon Stalenhag. I explain in the video, but I’ve read his books so felt that writing a story in a universe I was intimately familiar with as a bit of a cheat, as it would have informed the story too much, I think. Not necessarily a bad thing, but starting fresh makes it more challenging, and that’s part of the reason why I’m doing this.
This is also in celebration of his Kickstarter that launched not long ago, called The Labyrinth.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1192053011/the-labyrinth-new-narrative-art-book-by-simon-stalenhag
I hope you check it out and support a great artist, and I hope you enjoy the story.
Thanks for reading.
Artwork by Simon Stalenhag
https://www.simonstalenhag.se/
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what is done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time, and keep it as raw as possible. If I decide to publish later, all of these will go through formal editing.
The Story
The hallway quaked. Plaster or concrete or something else trickled into Alice’s hair, and she stopped.
Jonas and Andy turned around.
Andy, the smaller of the two, shielded his eyes from the harsh overhead lights. “Come on, Alice. I wasn’t going to say anything.”
Jonas sniggered, then masked it with a cough, then a sneeze, which could have been real considering the air was still heavy with particulate.
“We’re almost there,” Andy said. “It’ll be cool. Promise.”
Alice nodded and spit out her upper lip. A bad habit she’d been trying to kick. Chewing on it, sometimes until it bled. She was embarrassed to admit she liked the taste.
Alice followed the two boys, keeping to their shadows so hers wouldn’t look so massive, so disgusting, stretching and expanding like it always did when it caught her in the right moment. Which was always.
She ran her fingertips across the ceiling, noting how much coarser it was than the floor and the walls, where other hands and feet had worn it smooth. It was a secret only she knew. Maybe Karl, too, but he hadn’t ventured this far in some time, and last she heard he was sick with the red cough. A simple but visual name that she both enjoyed and dreaded.
The hallway quaked again, more intensley this time, shaking free loose pieces of the wall. Luckily, Andy and Jonas didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to blame her. They were enamored with the game of play-knife fighting with two of the chunks that had fallen near them into elongated shapes, close enough to represent knives for two boys of fifteen.
She dreaded fifteen. She was only fourteen, but another year could mean another inch or two. Would she even be able to live here anymore?
Andy and Jonas rounded a corner painted with orange and white stripes. She squinted to read the stenciled lettering on the corner. Nothing she could decipher.
The hallway sloped down, the ceiling staying behind, which afforded Alice more than enough room to stretch her arms, feeling a draft from somewhere on her fingertips.
“Told you,” one of the boys said from a pale green square of light ahead. The overhead lights had dimmed a while back, either from the height or power. But this light was bright enough to illuminate the floor between her and the boys, which had stretched to dozens of feet.
“If he finds out …”
“He won’t … I told you that … sleeps like a rock and …”
“…sure? I mean … or something, right? There has to be …”
Alice followed their voices and the light until both became overwhelming. She waited a few seconds, eyes closed, but not too tightly, enough to let some of it through her eyelids.
“Oh, man.” It was Jonas, who breathed words more than said them. “This is so cool.”
“No way,” Andy said. “Let me try. No way it’ll work on you.”
Alice opened her eyes to see Jonas slipping off his clothes. Wait, not his clothes. Clothes over his clothes. It was a suit, tethered by a thick cable coiled on the wall.
Andy had a helmet on, visor black, polished, reflecting every detail she could see, but bowed and warped, while Jonas kicked off the last of the suit, arms crossed, lips a flat line.
“You’re not even going to help me?” Andy shook his helmeted head and bent over to pick up the suit.
Andy shrugged it on, the legs pooling around him, the arms limp tentacles at his sides.
Jonas coughed out laughter, doubling over, pointing as he tried to catch his breath. Andy slumped, then tried futiley to make it fit, folding things over, tucking things in, even attempting to use the hose as a belt and jamming excess behind the large pack that he had donned in a final hope that everything was going to work out.
Jonas, his breath found, decided to help his friend. He patted Andy on the back with understanding. “It’s still cool,” he said. “Maybe they have others. I’m sure they do. They go on–“
“Wait,” Andy said, looking at Alice, her too-defined reflection looking back at her from the helmet’s visor.
Andy looked at Jonas and Jonas reacted like he could see Andy’s face through the black glass with an excited, open-mouthed nod.
“No,” Alice said. “No way.”
Andy and Jonas had the suit held upright by the shoulder, happy with the front measurement, then checking her back. She felt the suit’s shoulders touch her own, the hem of the pants touch her own.
She wanted to protest, but before her mind convinced her mouth to speak, they lowered the helmet over her head. Her breathing quickened, then slowed. There was pressure on her back and the muffled sounds of beeping, which resolved into a steady hum.
She wanted to scream, she wanted to punch and kick, she …
She breathed like she never had before.
She walked, was led. She didn’t fight. Why didn’t she?
Her vision turned white and then dimmed to the same clarity her lungs enjoyed.
“Go on …”
“Look … at … that …”
“… I …”
” … wait …”
Their voices took flight, gone.
Sagging buildings rose to her sides from a bed of fine ash, sprinkled with dark stones, paving a road that lead to windowless cars and …
It was even taller. Above the buildings. It could touch the stars, if there were any left. Was it from the stars? Jointed appendages held up an broken, sphereical mass, bowed in defeat. Tubes hung from its belly. She looked down at her own tube, looked back at the footprints she didn’t remember making, looked at the slack. So much farther to go.
She walked. More delicious air pumped into her helmet. It tasted so sharp and sweet. The closer she got, the bigger it got, and the smaller she felt. Jonas and Andy’s shouts barely broke her reverie, and then she hushed them.
“Shh.”
Alice wasn’t afraid. She pulled her shoulders back, standing tall, and smiled.