Sun and Moon Make Headway

Spenca POV

Shasta had pulled me in. It looked like that stupid bag man had given her a way on board. He probably said he could find her family, something she wouldn't be able to resist. The smart lady in her knew she didn't have enough time to explain and ran with instinct. So, I shouldn't be mad, but I wasn't going to take being brought on board something I didn't know lightly.

I heard the bag man's groan as I inspected the room. It was completely some kind of metal structure and the door was sealed.

“Why did you bring him?” that bag man whined as he stepped away. “He is too wild to be brought back to board.”

He talked like I wasn't even there. He'd regret that later, once I found out how to get out. “How get out?”

“No way, you, wild man, are going back.”

He was making fun of me. No one made fun of me. I tried to hide the smile as I heard a small eep come from his mouth. I wasn't going to be anymore gentle here than I was on the surface. “Where we?”

“Ship 564. Transport division.”

“Try again.”

“It's full of baggers like me and people that haven't been placed in the games yet.” He scratched his ear. “I don't know what you want here, you'll hate it. No one can override the systems, it's beyond our technology. We're just animals for testing their psychological exams.”

Shasta was interested in something else besides getting out. She went over to a gigantic monitor that took up almost a whole wall and messed with some buttons. “Dreams. Truth.” As she messed with the buttons the monitor changed. It was a gigantic computer. I remembered computers, but I never saw one like that. The bag man moved over towards her.

“I already told you.” He moved to a link title dream analysis. “See? Nothing new.”

“Unknown?” Shasta gestured toward the screen.

“Nothing's unknown. There should be some tiny scans in the whole system for everyone.” He dug through the computer into different links, but . . .unknown scanning. Cannot scan. “What?”

“What does that mean? Shasta asked.

“It means we cannot even scan your brain. That's impossible, no one keeps the aliens out of the human mind. Were an open book to them. How can you possibly be dreaming something that isn't accessible to their science?”

How indeed. Shasta had revealed what she had been dreaming, but this place could not even access it? Shasta got the bag man to help show them out with a little help from me. We ran through hallways, ducking into different rooms. We didn't know what to do next, but staying in that room was not an option.

For over a decade I had been living in the jungles of Game World. It was time to find out who was responsible and why.

We both ducked into a bathroom and hid in a stall. It was similar to what I remembered on my planet. Two lady popped in there gossiping about something. I looked out the crack of the stall to watch them put make up on their face.

“I would give my left arm to be placed in Luxury World,” the one on the right said. “I told them that and they pulled out this large chainsaw.”

“Oh my gaw, what did you do?”

“I didn't really know if it was a joke, but I want nothing more in life to end up there. It's a hell of a lot better than the others. Or, imagine Game World? I'd be dead within a day.” She bounced her hair up. “I am sleeping with everyone with any authority, but I still haven't been able to find the aliens involved. You?”

“Not doing that, I can't believe you.” She pouted at the mirror. “I wouldn't have the looks for it anyhow. What about your arm though?”

“I almost did it. Repelling as it sounds, the rest of my life lived in the bliss of Luxury World would be worth it. We got up to it almost beginning, but they said that they had no use for limbs. Can't psychologically test a limb.”

“Damn. I would have considered that too,” her friend answered. “Damn, do I miss our planet.”

“Yeah but at least we lived.” Neither of them looked at each other again for a moment, shifting around with that wording. They both left the room silently.

Losing a limb to end up in a world? I looked over toward Shasta. We survived fine in Game World, but I didn't know anything about others. I didn't want to. As soon as we found out about her family and memories, we needed to head back.

“Losing a limb. They would risk limbs.” Shasta looked back at me. “Is that really it then? No talk about Earth at all except missing it. Stan the bag man was right, wasn't he?”

“Two lady probably right.” I knew that knowing the truth, really hearing and seeing the truth in those lady would be hard. I stopped believing I could return many years ago. My family was simply history, my school was just in the back of my mind. Memories. That's what I had. Shasta didn't even have that though. Nothing but a name. “Now what?” What did she want to do now?

“In there.” The bag man pointed to the stalls and we were surrounded as more people knocked the doors in finding us. I growled but they had weapons I could never have. They grabbed us and dragged us back to where we were.

“Two back to Game World,” one of the men said as he kept his weapon trained on us. “Don't mess around. Everyone has their place.”

“What happened?” Shasta asked. “Why did you zap my memories?”

“I'm sorry, ma'am, but you don't want to know. Memories were only wiped for those still in their dimension in the end.”

“In the end of what? I want to know who I was!”

“Fine, I'll remove the blockage, but you'll regret remembering when the faeries fell.” After that phrase, a button was pushed and they were gone again.

Shasta's Memories

///I came back from school one day. There was nothing special going on and I was just going to head in to make myself a sandwich. I felt something small hit my shoulder though. It hurt slightly, like someone threw a rock at me.

I looked down but couldn't quite make it out. It was like a miniature little person from a dollhouse. Strange thing for someone to throw. I picked it up and looked at it closer.

It didn't feel like a plastic piece, and it was too detailed to be something like that. It stared back at me, its eyes frozen with death. It couldn't be. “Mom?” I called for my mom and dashed inside the house. “Mom, look at this!”

“Shasta, don't charge into the house like that. You know better.” Wearing her usual frumpy clothes she was in the kitchen getting a head start on dinner.

“Mom.” I held the little being out to her. “Look at this.”

My mother glanced at it. “It's a toy.”

“It doesn't feel like a toy. Feel it.” My mother refused to listen though. “Mom.” She groaned but felt it's arm. Astounded, she didn't know what to say. “That must be an expensive little doll.”

“Dolls don't feel like skin mom.” I moved it's hand back gently, watching it's fingers naturally follow. “It's a little human.”

“Get it out.”

“Mom―”

“Get it out now!” she yelled at me. “I don't know what it is, but get it out now, Shasta.”

I headed outside to the back porch and scooped up a handful of dirt. I placed the human beneath it, still unable to come to terms with it. I had found a dead miniature human.

Right beside the grave I just made, another one landed. It was similar to the first one except it had a tuft of black hair at the top. Only a little though, like the rest had been cut off.

“We at the nightly news want to remind our viewers not to pick up the dead remains,” the anchor said on the TV. It had been three days later and miniature humans fell like light sprinkling all around our area and in other parts of the world. There were people claiming they were faeries, and others claiming they were small aliens that must have had a gigantic ship. Even more believed that there was some rational explanation for it all.

“Turn that off,” my father said as he picked up a soda next to him. “Everything always has an explanation, I don't see why everyone is getting worked up. We'll figure it out one day. Where's your mother by the way?”

“At Jen's,” I mentioned casually.

“Do you know what she wanted to eat yet?”

“I don't know.” Sometimes we ate out on weekends, and at other times mom had something planned she wanted to fix. I moved away from the TV and headed out the door to Jen's. Mom and Jen were great friends that only lived a house away so it wouldn't take long.

When I arrived though . . .///

Spenca POV

“Shasta?” I tried to wake her up. Ever since we were dropped back to Game World she had fell into a deep sleep. She was starting to mumble something, but it wasn't my name. It was someone else's.

Shasta's Memories

///I covered my mouth in fright when I checked up on my mom. Sitting out on the back porch, I watched from the alley. The scene. I couldn't register it to myself. Jen had my mother's blood all over her, tearing at flesh while my mother's eyes were on me. Dead.

She was dead. My mother's best friend was eating my mother.///

Spenca POV

“Here.” I held onto her tightly as Shasta began to cry out and jerk around. I could hear the pain in her voice, but I didn't know how to help. All I could do was hold her, hoping that the moment would soon pass. Shasta, please. I don't want to see you this way.

Shasta's Memories

///”If you notice a change in the eyes,” the reporter said on the TV. “Then please call your local hospital and warn them. The sick will be picked up for treatment.”

I said nothing as I watched the TV. The sick. They actually called them sick people. “They are zombies.”

“Shasta, not now.” My father was having a hard time coming to grip with the loss of my mother too. I just stared at the screen, wishing I could burn it all down. The sick. They were zombies, but no one wanted to say it. Zombies didn't exist. Zombies weren't real.

If they weren't real, my mother would still be alive. No one can tell me some virus is making people want to eat each other. And treatment? That's a laugh, there is no treatment. When they became zombies, they should be put down. Not hauled away in an ambulance to get help. “They are zombies.”

“Zombies don't exist, it's a sick virus,” my father insisted.

“Like the faeries?” I challenged him as I stared back. His eyes were cold with anger.

“There's no such thing as that.”

“That's what they are,” I said. I stood up and approached him. “Have you looked at the pics online of them? They have traces of bone that is crushed in their back. It probably messed up their flying. They are falling to their death because they lose their ability to fly.”

“I'm going to bed.” My dad stood up and headed off. His answer to everything was to go to bed.

Spenca POV

Shasta murmured faeries as I held her. So, they did give back her memories. They must have been so painful by the sound of it. I rubbed her soft ear and brought her into my lap. Her whole body was trembling and covered in goose bumps.

Shasta's Memories

///”No entry.”

“My daughter is only sixteen―”

“She still eats food, no entry!”

I held tightly onto my father's hand. I didn't care if I was sixteen, the last three days had been hard and I just needed his hand.

He threw me into the shelter, but screamed as one of the shelter keepers chopped off his hand. I heard the sound of shots behind me and stared at the ground. I bent down and held his hand.

I didn't care if I was sixteen. I just needed his hand.///

Spenca POV

With a gasp like she had just began to breathe, Shasta woke up. Thank goodness. I stroked her cheek as she looked at me. “It's been gone for a decade.”

“Planet?” I asked her. She nodded and grabbed me around my neck. She hung onto me like she was going to die if she let go. I rubbed her back as I tried to comfort her. She couldn't stop shaking and the tears never ceased. Not caring about anything, I rocked her softly in my arms. I wanted to tell her so much that it would be okay. The past was over, and we had each other, but it sounded empty. I knew that emptiness. Hold her. All I could do was hold her until this rediscovered pain washed away.

Shasta's POV

My dreams used to start in a hospital, but then they often came as the jungle. Now, I could feel an empty planet. A house demolished up ahead. It was my planet as I had last seen it. A barren wasteland with nothing but structures of what used to be.

“You need to be with Spenca.”

I turned around and stared at the children who always showed up there. “It's all gone,” I said with tears still streaming down my face. Even in my dreams, I could not escape. “It's all gone.”

“Your world is gone,” the Moon said, “you have known this. We have told you.”

“Not everything is gone though,” the Sun uttered. “Shasta, you've got to listen. I don't care if you even believe were real or a dream anymore. Maybe we are your subconscious trying to tell you what you need to hear. I don't care what you want to believe, but you must―”

“Why?” I cried out at them. I screamed at them and grabbed the dirt in my hand. I tossed it at those ingrates. “It's gone!”

“Yours, but not his!” the Sun shouted back.

“He does not reside on your planet.” The Moon walked closer to me. “He is from a different dimension. This is only a testing ground, yes, but there is so much more at stake. This whole dimension isn't just jungle. His planet is out there. So similar to yours you could adapt comfortably to it. The current dimension you are in is too close to stay in. It will be next.”

“Then . . .” I coughed, feeling the blowing dirt enter my lungs. I gave up on fact. Faeries and zombies were real. It was time I give them the benefit of the doubt. Children visiting me in my dreams could be real. “What do I do?”

“Share your feelings. You've been with Spenca for a time, share how you feel, then express it.” The Sun shrugged. “That's all. Let nature take over.”

“His planet?” I looked at them with hope. “A planet like my old one?” The tears I was crying hurt even harder. To dare to hope, it hurt more than anything else.

“Nightmare King owes me. I'll find a way if I can.” The Sun nodded at the Moon and they faded away.