Getting Lost

One of the things I most love about writing--really, it's the one thing that makes me keep sitting down and banging out words--is the way that writing can take you out of the wider world, and bring you somewhere else entirely. When the writing is really going well, when you're caught up in the world of your imagination, the Real World sort of drops away. It's like a veil get's put up around you, and everything outside of your own mind fades, becomes indistinct. During those moments when you're fully immersed in what you're writing, it's like you're living in two worlds at once.

I spent a lot of time there yesterday, in that in-between space. I took a break from the fantasy novel to work on a horror novelette I'd started years ago--it's actually one of the projects I'd begun around the same time I wrote The ElectroLive Murders--and I got so wrapped up in it that I didn't break free for six hours. And then, later that night, I sat back down and got sucked in again.

I'm hoping to have the horror novelette--which I'm calling "Cool Blue"--finished and up on Kindle in the next few weeks. But because I had such a good time there in the "otherworld" yesterday, I thought I'd post a piece of what I brought back:

Jeff walked to the curtain, pushed the beads aside with the back of his hand. It was darker behind the beads, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust. Little by little, details came to him.

The room was long and narrow, like a hallway. Aquariums lined the walls, in three tiers on either side. Nearly every aquarium was lit up, and the dim glow coming from them provided the room’s only illumination. It was a dreamlike light, shimmering and blue, filtered through water. The air in the room felt moist, cool, and heavy with the sound of liquid—dripping, splashing, rushing—all deadened by the hum of a hundred pumps.

A mop and bucket sat on the floor, the head of the mop in a dirty puddle, the handle prone, pointing toward Jeff. It looked like someone had dropped it and left the room.

“Hello?” Jeff called out again. He stepped in, letting the beads fall into place behind him.

Something flashed at his head, and he spun toward it and threw his arms up to shield his face. It was a fish in a top-level tank, darting at the glass. “Shit,” Jeff said. “You’re a bold one, aren’t you?” The fish, thick-lipped with a fat lump above its eyes, backed off and then charged again.

He walked past its tank, looked in another tank teeming with a school of silvery fry. They massed together, the shape of the school shifting and changing, individual fish occasionally dipping onto their sides to reflect the light. It looked like a single living thing, broken into a swarm.

Farther down Jeff came to one of the darkened tanks. He put his face up near the glass, peered inside. Hidden amongst a pile of rocks, something glimmered. Jeff rapped his knuckles against the tank’s front. The glimmer turned to a dim red glow. Beneath the glow were dozens of dagger-like teeth.

“This place is a trip,” Jeff said to himself, and proceeded down the row.

When he got to the bucket and the fallen mop, he stopped. Why would somebody just drop the mop and leave it? Wouldn’t they worry someone might slip on the puddle and sue? There hadn’t been anyone to guard the register, up near the door, either. Where had everybody gone?

“Hello” Jeff said aloud. “Is anybody here?”

He wasn’t surprised when nobody responded. All the same, a funny feeling had begun to creep along the back of his neck, and to stretch on spider legs out toward his ears.

Jeff looked around the dim room again, back toward the way he’d come in. The beaded curtain was still swaying lazily, and the sunlight glimmered beyond it. On the other side of the room were two doors, one at the end of either row of tanks. The door on the right wall stood ajar, a black ribbon of darkness all that could be seen of the room within. The door on the left was closed.

Jeff turned to the beaded curtain, watched the strands sway. Then he turned and walked toward the door on the right, put his hand on the cold knob, and pulled it open.

It was a closet-sized bathroom, with a toilet, a sink, and a single naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. Jeff’s hand crawled along the wall, searching for the switch. He found it, flipped it, and flooded the little room with glaring light.

The floor and the walls were covered in white tile that magnified the bulb’s harshness. The grout between the tiles had gone dingy gray. An old mirror stood above the sink, black eating away its edges. And in the sink, and the toilet too, was a greasy red mess that stank of brine and blood.