01.001 Vision
Thursday, September 9, 2021
West 4th Street Subway; Greenwich Village, New York, United States
“Hey, don’t go down there. Charlie! Charlie!” Ella called out to Charlie — who had already jumped off the platform and was making her way to the subway tunnel. Ella had been frustrated waiting for the train as well, but hadn’t expected Charlie to start exploring the subway tunnels.
She could just make Charlie out as she looked over her shoulder and laughed, her voice echoing in the empty subway station, “I hear there are secret tunnels and strange stuff. Let’s do this!”
She held up her phone showing something, presumably the secret tunnels. It was hard to follow as her hand wasn’t steady, and Charlie was stumbling a bit anyway. She was singing the song from the club they had just left1, with half the lyrics mumbled over where she didn’t know the words.
“These aren’t yellow bricks, but let’s go!” Charlie followed that dubious statement by heading down the tunnel, her sparkly, clubbing dress shimmering a bit from the dull sodium lights as she disappeared into the tunnel. Ella didn’t know how Charlie had gotten down there and moved so quick in heels.
“Charlie, get back up here! Shit. You’ll get run over or electrocuted.”
But Charlie was already gone.
Charlie must have heard her as Ella could hear her calling back, “Come on Els! Everything criss” And restarted singing the song from the beginning when she ran into a part she didn’t know.
Ella muttered to herself, “Well that is some fucking cultural appropriation,”
Ella gingerly lowered herself down. If anyone was watching from the opposite platform, she was giving them an eyeful as the skirt rode up. Her heels made it difficult to get her footing, but there was no way she was pulling off her shoes here surrounded with broken glass, rat feces, and whatever else. Surreptitiously, she reached behind and pulled down the short dress over her ass and fixed her panties which were giving her a wedgie. Suddenly she had a newfound appreciation for practical clothing.
Ella began following Charlie down into the tunnel as quickly as she could manage.
I can hide along the wall or something, Ella thought, keeping eyes peeled in case of an approaching train.
She continued walking, stepping gingerly over the trash and being careful never to get close to the third rail. Somehow there was no train for far longer than she would have thought possible. Her sparkly sequin dress, way too short for this shit, the glitter from the club, and the sheen of sweat on her skin made her look like she was glowing in the dark tunnel.
“Charlotte… Charlotte! This is dumb. And fucking dangerous. Let’s get out of here…” Ella wasn’t exactly sober, molly and alcohol coursing through her, but she wasn’t so far gone this seemed like a good idea. “I know about an amazing after-party,” she lied desperately. “DJ Baby Bok Choy is spinning!”
“Funny shit, Ella,” Charlie called back. She was way further up in the dark tunnel, somewhere some of the lights had failed.
“Charlie, let’s get out of here. We have places to be.” Ella pleaded
“Do you see that? I’m going this way!” Charlie called back. Ella caught a glimpse of her at one of the many access tunnels off the main train tunnel. As Ella got closer, she could see a faint glow emerging from it. The glow flickered a bit and was orangish but also a bit different. She couldn’t quite figure it out. Maybe it was a fire?
Charlie was standing there at the entrance and Ella sighed in relief.
“Charlie, this is dumb, come on, let’s go.” Ella asked again. But Charlie grabbed her hand and pulled her further down the passage. The light was getting brighter and brighter.
As they got closer the character of the light changed. It slowly took on a more greenish color rather than orange. The walls changed from cheap painted cement to grey stones. And then, following Charlie’s silhouette down this very narrow corridor, Ella saw the outside: a bridge over large river. The sky was a vivid, intense blue above.
Was it the Hudson? No, because this cobblestone path, wending over a stone bridge, led to a castle that had never been in New Jersey. A decrepit pile of rocks with its towers falling down. It was almost Gothic in architecture, but also just a bit off in ways that Ella could not put her finger on. The gray stones were similar to the walls of the tunnel they had just come from. Instead of rectangles, it had a hexagon theme to it. The crenellations came straight down and then angled to meet at a point like half a hexagon. The windows were elongaged hexagons. Ella would bet that the towers that rose up were also hexagons.
Something about the castle, the sky, the grass around it, the trees, they all just felt so real, so vivid. Ella felt like it was the first time she had ever seen any of them.
Charlie had stopped at the tunnel exit and let Ella catch up. As Ella came alongside Charlie, she shaded her eyes, the glare was excruciating coming from the dark subway.
“Woohoo! Where the hell are we?” Charlie screamed loudly. Her voice slurring. “We must have been in the club later than I thought, if it is already morning.”
Ella looked up to see the sun - high in the sky, almost noon - and somehow a bit too large and pale for the glare. “Something weird is going on here. Let’s head back…”
“No way; we are so going.” Charlie took off, pulling off her heels and moving quickly across the bridge. Ella struggled to keep up and fell behind as Charlie went right into the castle doorway. The path itself looked clean, so Ella pulled down her face-mask, took off her heels, and took a step in the cobblestone.
Ella paused a moment at the entryway but the interior was dark and the light cut a sharp relief just past the threshold. “Charlie?” She called and the sound was oddly deadened. As if there was no echo to be had.
After debating a bit, Ella head inside, her shoes in her hands, pulling down her stupid glittery dress. In the middle of the day, the outfit that had felt amazing in the club; now it felt totally ridiculous. Ella felt self-conscious.
The entry was an enclosed hallway, dimly lit from the outside, small, weird vertical windows cut at intervals on each wall. “Charlie, where are you? " Even inside, the echos felt a bit dead, but somehow resonant at the same time.
She followed the hallway down to where it opened up into a large hallway with a double stairway. Charlie was there sitting on the floor sprawled out and throwing up into what looked like a very large vase. Her pale skin and pink cheeks were sallow in the light, her dirty blond hair disheveled.
“Ella,” Charlie said piteously, “Don’t let me drink so much next time…”
Damn, this was so not New Jersey. There weren’t castles in fucking New Jersey.
“Charlie, where the hell are we?” Her voice sounded cool and calm which was not exactly how she actually felt. She didn’t know how she felt.
“Els, this is amazing, right?” Charlie wiped her mouth and unsteadily got to her feet. “This has gotta be some rich asshole’s private place. Secret fucking castles…. Either that or I got totally roofied and am imagining all of this.” And with that Charlie lost it and bent over to start throwing up again right into what looked like another priceless vase.
Ella’s concerns started evaporating. She felt her feet just start drifting upstairs of their own accord. Charlie called something after her but Ella could not bring herself to acknowledge her.
She rounded the staircase walking past decrepit and moth-eaten banners and pennants. As she stepped up to the upper floor, tow beautiful carved ebony doors floated opened soundlessly.
Inside was a grand hall, set in black and white tiles, two golden chandeliers each the size of a small house hung from the ceilings with candles dripping wax as they burned. The flames were cycling through colors before settling into a white that had no business coming from a simple flame. There was nothing warm about the candles, the light had the same harsh, stark qualities of the sunlight outside the castle. The shadows in the room were sharply defined, crisp and razor sharp.
And, against the back of the room, sat a large piece of quartz faceted into a large throne. A lone figure sat on the throne, leaning on a scepter with a matching quartz crystal on top, a golden eastern-style pointed crown reflecting the harsh light from the chandeliers right into Ella’s eyes.
The figure muttered something incomprehensible and when Ella’s look of confusion had barely touched upon her face, the figure waved a hand over its mouth.
“I thought it was over? Certainly, the clock has no mercy for the past.” Quietly spoken, in a voice that sounded, well, like anyone’s. Except that where Ella’s voice had been distant and deadened when she spoke, the reverberations of this figure’s voice, echoed and reverberated far out of what one would expect.
Ella froze, the odd feeling having brought her to the door warring with some implicit understanding that to respond, to acknowledge, was to take an irreversible step.
And yet that awareness wasn’t enough in the end, the odd compulsion had her pull off her own mask, drove her in and she knelt to one knee, hand down, more gracefully than she had ever moved in her life.
“What is your name, young lady?” And this time the voice took on a cultured cadence. Like something from a 60s movie, that strange halfway accent between English and American.
Still looking down, she responded, “Eleanor. Eleanor Jindal-Witten.”
“Rise young lady. The past weighs too heavily on you. I’ll not have it make a slave of you.” The figure waved as if swatting away at a fly, and Eleanor shot straight up, the compulsion guiding her actions gone. Now fear held her straight, for when she beheld the creature sitting the throne, it was nothing human. Onyx black skin, glowing white slitted eyes that matched the scepter, two small holes where a nose should have been, and no ears. The golden crown had an inset gem which matched the crystal of the throne, but was slightly different, that slight difference bothered Ella more than it should have. The triviality of that detail snapped her out of silence.
“Who… what… where am I?” Her questions tumbled over each other. Her knees trembled some but the unreality of the situation maybe kept her from being too scared, she thought. And then she added the thought, maybe it is the molly, and… at least I am not peeing myself.
And the absurdity of that thought sobered her the rest of the way. Her senses shifted and were suddenly assaulted as she smelled decay and rot, the lights that were already so glaring became even more so, a keening that was just out of hearing became more present. The creature in front of her eyed her, his slit pupils dilating a bit and although she could feel her legs about to give way she managed to still stand.
“Young woman, how did you cross? We have been so lost, for so long… sleeping until the end, no returning should be possible.”
“Who… are you?” Ella whispered. The echoes louder than before.
“We? We are the old and forgotten king of many conquered lands. So long ago and so distant…” the voice faded to a whisper. But making Eleanor jump, the figure suddenly raised his voice, “and now, when we thought it was over, when we had slept for millennia, some child comes here. Why?”
Eleanor said, “… Sir, who… no, what are you?”
“Oh child, Eesha,” and the figure knowing her real name scared Eleanor more than it should have, given that even she thought of herself as Ella in her head, “you know so little and my time is ending despite you being here. We… no, I am sorry.” And he took that scepter in his hand with a reversed grip, and Ella started backing up as he threw it at her, spearing her right through her chest and driving her back to fall awkwardly, the crystal tip of the scepter or spear sticking out her back. The pain was immense, and Ella felt her vision fading quickly while the figure rose up and reptilian scaled boots stepped in front of her.
“Poor child….”
The next day
Ella’s Studio, Greenwich Village, New York, United States
Ella shot out of bed, gasping. Her hand went to her chest, and she could feel a sheen of sweat. She was still wearing the dress from last night, one heel dangling from her foot and the other lost somewhere in the sheets.
“What the fuck!”
After calming down for a moment, she looked at the clock, “Oh shit!!” She scrambled off the bed, ran into the bathroom stripping off as she went and rinsed off fast, brushing her teeth in the shower to get the scummy taste out of her mouth.
“OK, that was a real bad trip… no more drugs for you girl.” she muttered to herself, toweling off and grabbing some jeans and a shirt before racing off to class.
The run from the Washington Square Village dorm over to the physics classroom by Washington Square, right through the arch, across the pathways, jumping over some passed out drunk guy and a bit of a bump through a small cultural event thing, and she just made it in a minute late.
Soon, Ella stood at the front of the class to try and drum in an introduction to cosmology into the undergrads in front of her. Her mentor had left a voicemail saying he was busy and how he was sure she had this. This being the first week as a grad student didn’t even cross his mind.
After class, one of the students came up to her, the one she was pretty sure had a crush on her, “I like your colored contacts, light grey is kind of weird, but cool.”
Ella had forgotten her glasses, racing out this morning, and hadn’t really noticed. Maybe she had slept with her contacts although she didn’t have colored ones. Ella pulled out a compact to look at her very light grey eyes, “yeah… ummm… just trying them out.” she said shakily, “I gotta go to the bathroom.”
She raced out to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. “What the hell,” poking at her eye trying to catch a contact that just wasn’t there.
“Ok. What is going on… shit, shit, shit, ouch.” She took a good look in the mirror. Her eyes weren’t light gray, they were crystal white eyes, they looked like prisms with faint rainbow hues.The white crystalline irises were surrounded with a dark line around her cornea separating them from the regular whites of her eyes. She had a sudden flashback to her dream last night and the strange figure, the one that had stabbed her.
It took her an hour to calm down, before she went to the student eye center. They actually rushed her in without an appointment, and the doctor had her chin up on some brace thing and was shining a light on her eye.
“Damndest thing I have seen,” he said. “And you woke up like this?”
He had her read the chart: “PEZOLCFTD,” she rattled off quickly.
Her vision was 20/10 and probably even better. She had never gotten better than 20/150 without glasses before.
Then he made her put her head on another similar chinrest and it had a large dome like thing. Small lights would flash and she would press a button when she saw them. The doctor yelled at her not to move her eyes when doing a field test since he couldn’t map her blind spot.
“There is nothing wrong as far as I can tell. Your vision is too good if anything. Are you sure you normally wear glasses? Normally I would think this was some sort of strange crystal deposition disease, something that I would have to look up. But then your pupils wouldn’t move and I would expect inflammation and cloudiness in the vitreous and, or aqueous. Ultrasound was strange though, like it was scattering, see this distortion here.”
Ella didn’t really follow what he was saying. The doctor was more talking to himself than her and he looked a bit shaken.
“I am going to order some blood tests and have you do an MRI. Want to check if it is some sort of auto-immune disease just to be sure. But I don’t think you should worry quite yet… Hmmm overnight iris depigmentation?” He kept talking, working through a differential diagnosis, but none of them fit.
Ella focused in on the part where he said he didn’t see anything wrong. Six hours later, she left with a preliminary negative MRI, a doctor very excited to write a paper on her, and a promise to come back to get her lab results back.
A thought struck her, and she ran back to the clinic just before it closed to get a contact lens sizing and an order for some colored contacts to hide her eyes. He handed her a few samples to start with. She went with hazel, because why not?