Write a story that starts with emptying the wastebasket in the bathroom.
There’s a quest scroll in the bottom of the trashcan, under the bag, and I pause putting in a new bag as I stare at it. Since it’s being observed, the scroll changes and begins to glow with golden light.
“Congratulations,” a genderless, lightly accented voice says. It doesn’t make sense, but it sounds like it’s coming through the light, echoing and warm. “You’ve been chosen to embark on a magnificent–”
I lunge before it can finish, heart thundering against my ribs, and wrap it in the black trash bag. It’s warm to the touch, even through the plastic, but once I get it properly bundled, I can’t hear or see it which means I’ve managed to contain it.
For now.
I abandon my cleaning cart, shouldering the bathroom door open too quickly. It nearly takes out a high schooler lurking behind it.
“Watch it,” the girl snarls, shaking out the hand that had caught the door before it connected with her face.
“Be grateful,” I tell her, shoving the garbage bag bundle under my shirt. “I’m, like, basically saving your life right now.”
She scrunches her nose. “What?”
I don’t answer, instead hurrying towards the principal’s office. Sometimes the sorcerer or witch or whoever sticks around after planting them and I definitely do not want to run into them.
“Principal Flag!” I skid past the receptionist and kick the door open, arms wrapped around the quest scroll under my shirt. “We’ve got a problem!”
Principal Flag nearly throws her brush across the room at my sudden entrance, a blush rising furiously along her cheekbones. “I told you to knock!” Her horse hindquarters stamp in irritation and she hastily smooths her long, centaur skirt back over them.
“Sorry,” I pant, coming to a stop in front of her desk. “But this can’t wait, we’ve got a problem. I found a–a quest in the girls’ bathroom.”
“It’s actually a gender-neutral bathroom now,” Principal Flag corrects, seemingly on reflex. “The students voted and I think it’s quite wonderfu– did you say you found a quest?” She pales. “Was it–was it activated?”
“No,” I say. I carefully pull the bundle from out under my shirt, dropping it onto her desk. “I’m the first to come in contact. It tried to give me the Chosen One speech.”
Principal Flag’s hands hover over the black plastic. “God, it talked? Did you feel a compulsion? Depending on the strength, we could be facing quite the adversary here.”
“I don’t know.” I pull up the visitor’s chair, legs still shaking. “I’ve already been a Chosen one, you know that, a compulsion wouldn’t work on me.” I shake my head. “We can’t let whoever did this try again. A quest scroll ruined my life, our lives, I don’t want that to happen to a kid.”
“I remember,” Principal Flag says grimly. “I’ll be damned if I let some thousand-year-old warlock make off with one of my students. Not. In. My. School.” She trots around her desk to the cabinet. From there, she removes a black, metal box. “First, we’ll destroy it. It’s times like these that I’m thankful we have so many helicopter parents on the PTA. They practically give us the money for these.”
I watch as she opens the box. Dark, rolling steam pours from it and across the desk. When it touches the trash bag, the air begins to smell of burning plastic. Principal Flag picks it up, wincing as the heating plastic burns her fingers and drops it into the box.
“A CURSE,” the scroll shrieks from inside the box. “YOU HAVE DEFIED THE ANCIENT–”
Principal Flag slams the lid back on, locking the thing down. The thing is still shrieking, but the words are muffle and neither Flag or I are susceptible to half curses. Not since our childhoods.
“It had to be an inside job,” I say after the screams begin to die out. “You’ve got the school locked down and I would have noticed anyone sneaking in.”
“I agree,” Principal Flag says. She’s still glaring at the box, mouth a thin line. She looks back at me, grey eyes sharp. “Whoever planted it is a monster. There’s no way they didn’t mean for a kid to find out.”
“Giving quest scrolls to minors is against the law,” I say. “We could call the police?”
Both Flag and I stare at each other for a long moment. Then we burst into laughter.
“A Successful?” Flag howls. “Oh my god, can you imagine what a Successful would say?”
I wipe tears out of my eyes. Successfuls were people who completed quests, generally the light and fun ones that made good day time drama. “Oh,’” I say in a falsetto, “’I’d have killed to have a scroll as a kid. It’s such an honor. They’re starting off right!”
We laugh more, the sound verging on hysteria. Neither of us had the good fortune to be quested with a return the stone to the mountain scroll. We’d gotten something much, much worse.
“Oh, that’s good,” Flag says, dotting under her eyes with a tissue. She sobers slowly, chuckles dying out. “No, we won’t go to the police. I think that us two Unsuccessfuls will do the job nicely.” She grins and there’s something dark in it, darker than one might expect from a highschool principal.
I know that darkness is reflected right back in my smile. “I’ll get on it.”
There are Successfuls, heroes and martyrs who come back stronger and better after getting a quest scroll.
Then there are Unsuccessfuls like us who, if they come back, come back much, much worse.
“In my culture, death is not the end. it’s more of a stepping off point. You reach out with both hands and Bast and Sekhmet, they lead you into a green veld where… you can run forever.”
I fought to keep my eyes on the road instead of the thing in the
rearview mirror as the speedometer ticked higher, higher. Even so, I still
caught glimpses of it out of the corner of my eye: some polymorphic shape,
flowing in and out of itself.
It was gaining on us.
As it got closer, I started to notice individual features. Teeth,
a wing. A face, or…not faces? But every time I thought I saw something
distinguishing in what I now thought had to be more than one creature, I
quickly lost track of it in the swirling cloud.
Aesa continued to fire at the swarm, and it seemed to ripple
with the impacts. It didn’t slow down.
Suddenly, Aesa jumped on the hood of the car. I swerved in
shock, nearly spinning out of control, but Aesa remained firmly planted where
he crouched. His dark eyes locked with mine.
“Whatever happens, keep driving,” he ordered. Then he turned to
face the road, coat swirling around him. He reached out, hands clawed as though
he was trying to tear the air apart. The air began to shimmer and warp as he
strained, the muscles on the back of his neck standing out.
The swarm was getting closer, and individual members of the
group were breaking off, getting closer, closer.
Then Aesa screamed.
Energy pulsed through my being, and I saw reality rip in front of
me. I had no time to react, and the next thing I knew, we were hurtling
through.
I could feel the pressure around me once again, but this time it
was neither soft nor gentle. It pulled at me: my hair, my skin, my eyes, dragging me
backwards like a rubber band. Then the pressure snapped, and we were through to
the other side.
This place did not look anything like the fields and mountains
of the landscape of the inbetween I had seen before. The terrain was warped,
rocky, and violet-grey, the sky a strange olive green. I jerked the wheel to
avoid twisted outcroppings and instinctively hit the brakes.
“Keep going!” Aesa yelled, “We have to draw them in!” And so I
gasped a prayer and stomped on the gas as my tiny vehicle rocketed through the
alien landscape.
We gained a little breathing room as the swarm was forced to
fight their way through the hole Aesa had ripped for us, but they quickly burst
through. Before, we’d had the advantage of a straight, clear highway; now we
were slowed as I desperately swerved through the uneven terrain of the other
place.
And now, I could hear
them. They muttered and shrieked almost words, echos of hunger and hatred and
an ancient fear. However, Aesa didn’t fire on them even as they neared,
crouching in wait on the trunk. Finally, he reached out again, and the hole he
had made in reality began to shimmer and knit itself back together.
Distracted by the sight, I was forced to jerk the wheel to the
side, barely avoiding a large rock which suddenly loomed before us, sending us
between the walls of a canyon. Horrified, I realized that the canyon appeared
to empty out into nothingness.
“Aesa!” I screamed. He turned, sprinting to the front of the
car.
“Just keep going!” He told me.
The swarm was right behind us now. Gas pedal pressed to the
floor, I stared helplessly as we speed towards the edge of the cliff. Tires
kicked up violet dust and pebbles before spinning uselessly as we hurtled over
the edge. For a moment, all I saw was the olive sky. As we began to fall, I saw
a deep abyss beneath us, sparkling with neon flame. I closed my eyes, the
screams of the swarm enveloping me.
A moment later the pressure embraced me again, and by the time I
opened my eyes we were flung back into the world. Gravity shifted, and instead
of falling nose first, we crashed wheels down into the middle of a field of
wheat, deploying my airbags as dirt spraying around us and we skidded to a
stop.
Aesa flung up his arms to seal the hole, but the swarm was
already forcing its way through. Three managed to squeeze their way through
before the final cracks glistened and disappeared, severing another as they
did.
Aesa drew his weapon and fired off three shots in quick succession,
the final stray exploding into a grey mist beside my window.
I clung to the steering wheel and breathed as the wheat shivered
and stilled. Everything fell silent. Aesa sighed, slumped his shoulders, and
fell off the back of my car. I threw open my car door and tried to run to him,
but my legs gave out. I fell to my knees and vomited.
On the ground beside me, the last remnants of the thing bubbled
away into nothingness.
Breathing heavily, I crawled over to where Aesa lay, crumpled.
He seemed almost ethereal, more a shadow than a man. I reached out a trembling
hand to touch him.
“No,” he whispered, “no help, not safe, just, rest, a minute,
please.”
I drew back and let myself sink into the crushed wheat, moving
only to try to spit the foulness out my mouth.
Finally, Aesa stirred. When he spoke, I could barely hear his
voice.
“We need, get back, people. Safer.” I dragged my eyes to his
face. He wore a thousand-yard stare. “If, I can’t, another. Need others.” He
began to drag himself back to the car, and I followed suit. I shoved the
airbags out of the way and strapped myself into the seat.
I reached for the steering wheel and then stopped, trembling.
“What was that thing?”
Aesa didn’t look at me.
“I’ll tell what I can later. Rest now. Please.”
I looked at him sitting there, barely present, as though he
might fracture at lightest touch. I pushed away my fear and made myself go
numb.
I pulled out onto the highway, speeding away from unspoken
terrors and a field of crumpled wheat.
