[Original Novel] The Background of Your Memories, Part 11

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Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10}

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At last, the exit came into view. We smashed right through the striped wooden boom gates, swerving onto the street at ground level. The Grycler cast out two chains this time, again seizing us by the bumper. “Just fucking give up” the stranger growled under his breath.

Of course it didn’t. Once again he floored it, but the Grycler sent out yet another chain which snagged on our bumper, before it began slowly reeling us in. I briefly contemplated getting out. But there was no guarantee it wouldn’t just send another chain out and seize me with it.

I didn’t have to decide. The chains didn’t give way this time, but the bumper did. My stomach churned as the car lurched abruptly forward, the Grycler howling in frustration behind us. I continued to watch in the rear view mirror as it finished reeling in its unexpectedly meager prize.

I laughed and wiped the sweat from my face. He looked at me as if I were crazy. “You think that’s it? The Grycler is small potatoes kid. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” I brushed it off, still recovering from the abject terror we just narrowly escaped. The notion that we could encounter anything meaningfully worse than that seemed ludicrous...at the time.

“Where to now?” He initially didn’t answer, scanning the road with intense vigilance. As if expecting something in particular? Once satisfied we were relatively safe, cruising through the darkened cityscape with no other cars in sight, he spoke.

“We’re headed for the city limits. Just a vast, barren wasteland beyond that. But if there’s an edge to this place, something we can ram our way through, that’s where we’ll find it.” Seemed as good a plan as any, until I remembered why I came here in the first place.

“What about my parents?” He sighed, eyes still firmly on the road. “You may not like this, but...if they came through here and stayed in the city…” He trailed off, the following silence saying everything he didn’t.

“The only realistic chance they woulda had is to get out of the city, like we’re doing. If they’re still alive, they’re out there somewhere. If they’re smart they’ll make a fire or something so we can spot ‘em.” It wasn’t much, but it was something. A slim hope to latch onto.

“There’s...some sort of connection, isn’t there” I wondered aloud. “Between dreams and death, I mean.” For the first time since the parking garage, he looked away from the road briefly. His expression registered surprise, so I expounded. “If it’s them...if it’s really them...the only way they could be here is if this place is some sort of…”

I didn’t know what to call it. The idea seemed so clear in my mind but I knew of no word in the English language to express it with. A grey area between unconscious and deceased. A liminal realm on the border between the two, which our minds connect to only while sleeping.

Then again, it could all just be an unusually vivid dream. A vision of the sort that the so called God helmet is famous for producing. The uncertainty quickly became maddening. I needed to know if any of this is actually real! If it actually matters… If I should care about it or not.

Nothing I saw out the window gave any indication one way or the other. Just endless bland grey concrete office towers, windows lit up here and there by what I now knew to be picture tubes. How many of these even have people in them I wonder. Quite possibly just the one that I escaped from.

For what purpose? Why build all of this to give the appearance of a city? All just background scenery for the few floors that are actually inhabited, furnished and otherwise fleshed out. Try as I might, I couldn’t make sense of it.

As we approached the edge of the city, it only grew stranger. The buildings here were even less finished than the one we escaped from, gaping holes in the exterior revealing the shoddy patchwork mess of girders, pipes and wiring within.

In places, two or more buildings blended together. Whoever built them seemingly forgot what they were supposed to be. It still gave the impression of a city, but an increasingly abstract one. The picture tube windows thinned out as well, replaced by hollow openings, then simply by shallow carvings which don’t even penetrate the concrete.

I wasn’t sure at first, but my certainty grew by the minute. I recognized this. “Turn around.” He scoffed. “What are you, nuts? We’re nearly out of the-” But of course it was too late. The glare of oncoming headlights blinded us. A honking horn, screeching tires...then the impact.

The drive out of the city center proved mercifully uneventful. Buildings, or hollow facades masquerading as them, whipped by to either side as we made our way towards the wasteland. I noticed on the way that they were becoming less complete.

Some were missing substantial portions of their outer shell, permitting an unobstructed view of their haphazard interiors. Yet as I peered out the passenger side window at the bizarre imitation cityscape, something about it seemed suspiciously familiar to me.

I brushed it off. Every building naturally looks the same as every other, save for their varying degrees of incompleteness and increasingly…”LOOK OUT!” I shouted, upon noticing the other car bearing down on us. He slammed on the brakes, but much too late.

The other car honked its horn, then also attempted to halt its advance. There was just a split second of searing pain, then I blacked out. My last desperate wish was that I’d been faster. I’m never fast enough.

On our way out of the city, I began noticing aberrations in the design of the buildings. Like whoever constructed them grew lazier and less concerned with consistency as they built further and further from the city center.

I could see inside of more than a few. Whole sections of the concrete shell were missing, such that the framework of rusty girders and plumbing within were exposed to the elements. Does it rain here?

Just then I felt struck by inexplicable panic. Like there’s somewhere I’m supposed to be. Something I’m supposed to do? Or remember? I scanned the horizon. “There’s another car!” I cried. He swerved onto the shoulder of the road, just barely missing an identical streamlined black automobile that was headed in the other direction.

Something changed. Impossible to nail down, but I could feel it in my spine and in every little nerve ending. Like we just crossed some sort of invisible threshold. “Thanks kid, that thing came outta fuckin’ nowhere.”

I still couldn’t shake the feeling that some monumental shift had just occurred. The cityscape receded in the rearview mirror, the sky at last visible above us. Not a single cloud, nor any stars. Just a uniform, pitch black void.

“Strangest thing” I muttered. The other fellow asked me to speak up. “Oh no, it’s just...I got a brief glimpse of the people in the other car. For a split second I...I don’t know. I could have sworn it was my parents.”

He brought the car to an abrupt stop, reversed gear and did a three point turn. “Don’t do anything rash because of me” I urged, “I don’t really know what I saw.” He countered that it was entirely possible that I’d really seen them just now and that we had no better lead.

We sighted the car a few minutes later, just a black speck on the horizon. When it took a turnoff before reaching the city, we followed suit and wound up going around the city rather than back through it. The shapes of the buildings against the black, starless sky shifted this way and that as we passed. Almost like parallax, but the perspective looks all wrong.

Definite enough to identify as a city, but abstract enough that you couldn’t mistake it for one if you gave it more than a passing glance. No matter how fast we drove, it never seemed to narrow the distance between us and the car we were tailing.

I worried that it was just some sort of mirage, like the subtle shape shifting qualities of the city now once again behind us. I struggled to remember what I saw in the harrowing moments before we swerved out of the way. It was their faces, surely? A man and a woman, both wide eyed, the woman screaming.

Not that it made much difference. Like he said, we set off with no clear idea of where to go except away from the city. Even if my eyes were simply playing cruel tricks on me, we might at least meet others who managed to escape the city. Perhaps they’ll know the way out of all this?

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 12!}