Cardium was dying. His body had long since started showing the effects of the negligence being forced on it. He had given up trying to get water from the slight dew that built up on the stone cliff; he resigned it to be as useless for survival as anything else there, wherever ‘there’ was. Nothing he could even consider eating resembled food in the slightest, save for the earthy smell of the cedar trees and their branches reminding him of root spices. He might have liked a walking stick, but none of the limbs on the ever present cedars were low enough to snap off and he could never find any laying on the ground. He didn’t even try to use the dark red grass for anything.
So on he went, although he was also letting go of walking as well. His body was always protesting any form of movement, even when still. He knew that his body was running on fumes. It had been simply too long since he had eaten or drank anything, and it was very painfully apparent to him.
His pattern of moving and resting had shifted, now favoring resting much more than trying to make any progress along the cliffside. When he did build up the will to lug his body it was always growing slower and for less time. His vision wasn’t helping as it had started to blur a little, maybe from the exhaustion, he thought. Cardium thought that he might get used to it, in much the same way you get accustomed to wearing 3D glasses outside of the theater, but every passing minute continued to prove him wrong. He started to think that he was never finding his way out and that there really would not be an end to this prison, although the blood red grass and unmoving sun had already tipped him off to that.
Cardium had also stopped sleeping. He found that it gave him a headache at this point, or at least worsened the one he already had. Just another ailment for the pile, he supposed. He nearly fainted once but caught himself just as he was drifting off and forced himself up. He had started running through things he’d be sorry to miss which led into prayers; although he had never been a praying man, he felt that it was appropriate. Cardium had no hopes of leaving.
And then he saw someone.
There was a man nearly out of sight, sitting on the edge of the cliff. Cardium’s vision snapped into a razor focus and his legs suddenly felt like going at a reasonable pace again, like his brain had woken from a nap and ordered them back to work. He started running, which quickly turned to a sprint, which quickly went back to a jog after a stabbing pain made itself known in his side.
As Cardium grew steadily closer to him, the man noticed him and stood up. He was wearing a black dress shirt, white slacks, and put on a white suit jacket as he got to his feet. Oddly enough, the man in white had matching white hair that almost shined in the eternally-afternoon sun. Even stranger to Cardium, though, was the shiny-rainbow tie he wore. It wasn’t any one distinct color anywhere on it, like a piece of a muddied disco ball constantly shifting hue; almost iridescent.
Cardium tried to say something, but couldn’t. His mind was too overwhelmed with emotions that he couldn’t identify and his throat was too dried out and wouldn’t have let anything out had he thought of anything anyway.
“Hello,” said the man in white, with a hint of confusion in his voice. He paused, but Cardium still couldn’t answer, instead opting for a frantic look and staggered breathing.
“So, uh,” the man continued in an awkward manner, “How did you get here?”
Cardium hesitantly looked behind himself, unsure of what exactly he wanted to convey. The man looked over Cardium’s shoulder in the same general direction.
“Well that’s unfortunate. I’m guessing you didn’t choose to come here?”
Cardium’s throat worked up enough moisture to be able to answer.
“No,” he coughed out, almost too raspy for him to understand himself.
“I figured.”
“How are you… here?” Cardium ventured, his voice starting to return to what he wanted.
The man was apparently too busy to hear Cardium, rifling around in his suit jacket, checking his pockets for something. Cardium thought that the man in white’s attitude wasn’t quite appropriate for the situation.
“Well…,” the man began again after a moment, “I don’t seem to have it on me.”
“Have what?”
The man in white ignored him.
“I figure you want to get away from here.”
Cardium nodded frantically and stepped closer to the man dressed in white. “Let’s see.”
He looked nowhere in particular, seemingly deep in thought. Just as Cardium was about to check if he was still alive, the man snapped his head back to him.
“Well, looks like your best bet is down there.”
The man twirled his hand in a circle, with it landing pointing a finger down past the cliff. Cardium was suddenly a little less ok with leaving.
“Wait n-no, I really don’t think-”
“This is the right way, trust me,” the man in the white suit said nonchalantly as he put his hands onto Cardium’s back. Cardium tried to back away, but found that he couldn’t force his body to move.
The man in white pushed.
♥♥♥
Cardium didn’t process what had happened for a second, and when he did he started screaming. Or rather, he tried to scream but produced only a voiceless exhale that one would do on a rollercoaster.
The fog that he had often glanced at and been anxious toward sucked him downward like a whirlpool that was determined on bringing down a ship. Cardium wasn’t used to the feeling of freefalling, especially for as long as he was. It was an odd sort of feeling that almost calmed him and steadied his mind but he suspected that it was probably the adrenaline doing that. He couldn’t see anything beneath him, save for more fog compounding upon itself. He thought to himself that he was surprised at how long he had been falling and if he was going to hit something soon.
Which is precisely when he did.
The fog had turned into a mist which had now turned into an ocean. It seemed to Cardium as though his entire body had become drenched the instant he touched the near pitch black water. Everything he knew about surface tension told him that he should have died a few seconds back, and so he quickly decided that surface tension had been lying to him up to now. It only occurred to him a few seconds later that his problem of dying of thirst had a solution surrounding him and to his surprise found that the sea he was swimming in wasn’t salt water. He was overjoyed as he drank as fast as his body would allow.
Cardium was overtaken by such relief that he forgot about how his body had been nearly refusing to move a couple minutes ago. He quickly remembered as he found his legs unable to tread water beneath him and his relief was replaced by a creeping anguish. He started sinking despite the half powered flailing his limbs were attempting.
His mind filled with formless thoughts of panic that prevented him from focusing on any single thing and instead forced him to try and sort everything all at once, resulting in him failing in every respect. His thoughts went back to prayer as he thought of how ironic his new situation was compared to the last. He filled his lungs with as much air as his throat could get in before his head disappeared into the inky blackness.
Cardium couldn’t see himself while submerged, only a blankness that didn’t look to have any depth, with shapeless hues of color drifting in his peripheral vision; it was beautiful in a terrifying way. This compounded on top of the other anxieties pervading him shook the air out from his panic riddled chest as he involuntarily tried to take a breath. What he now doubted was water flooded into him as he continued to sink lower, now doubting if there was anything to sink down from at all. His mind went quiet, maybe the adrenaline again or maybe his head was giving in too now. A deep, sinking despair set in that felt like it had been held back for a long time, only now breaking the dam. Cardium’s hope dissipated as quickly as he had got it back not even 10 minutes prior.
♥♥♥
Cardium’s eyes slowly opened as he felt himself falling again. As he blinked out the not-water from his eyes he found himself in a blue void now, a much more comfortable sight than the grayness he had been in… is it appropriate to say “not too long ago”? How long ago was that? Cardium wasn’t sure. It couldn’t have been too long since he still felt wet and was still falling; but how was he here now then?
At this thought he noticed that the blue void wasn’t as much of a void as his first impression had made it seem, as he saw clouds and a skyline before him. He was relieved to see some semblance of normalcy before him. They grew upward, returning to a more familiar perspective to Cardium, another very welcome sight, when he crashed into a dumpster.
After taking a moment to let all of the built up shock dissipate he thought,
Thank god this trash is so soft.
Immediately after hearing this run through his head it was hastily followed up with,
I don’t wanna know what’s in here, I don’t wanna know.
After giving himself a few minutes for everything to stop hurting as badly he stumbled out of the dumpster with all the strength of a man who hadn’t had food or water for what he felt to be at least a week. He glanced back at it, almost thinking it worth it to see if he had damaged it before deciding that that wasn’t a priority. Cardium looked around. He and the dumpster stood in an alley, nearly alone. A couple doors shrouded in darkness which lead into the buildings on either side stood dead, with more trash bags scattered around.
Should get a bearing on things, need to get situated.
He limped his way towards one end of the alley, finding that the impact with his trash savior had left him another part worse for wear. He had gotten used to walking in pain. As he made it to the end of the alley he tried to get a sense of where he was.
Cardium found himself on the sidewalk of a road in what he thought to be a business district of a city; not “big city” type of city, but maybe a college town? He couldn’t quite tell. Shops lined the street in front of him, squeezed together in the buildings they housed. Cars lined the edges of the street, leaving a narrow gap between. A building a ways off to his left (a bank he didn’t recognize) had a digital sign showing the date and time.
JUNE 14TH 3:06 PM
No, he thought, No, no, there’s no way I was in there for 20 minutes. 20 fucking minutes.
Cardium’s mind went blank with a wordless rage and fear. There was nothing for him to really think, nothing that he could reason to make any sense. He felt his small hold on reality starting to slip again and needed an anchor. His eyes darted for someone so he could try to get himself back to normalcy. The first person he registered was a man walking out of a coffee shop. Cardium made a break for him.
“Hey!” Cardium’s voice was back enough by now thankfully. “Hey, I, uh”.
The now startled man holding a cardboard cup looked at Cardium like he looked absolutely horrid, which he did.
“I- hey, can you tell me if it’s the 14th? I really don’t think it should be.”
The coffee man’s mouth hung open silently while his eyes nervously looked around; Cardium was losing him.
“I was there way more than a half hour so it shouldn’t-”
At this, the coffee man started to back away from Cardium. Cardium went to grab him and plead for help.
♥♥♥
Cardium found himself on the sidewalk of a road in what he thought to be a business district of a city; not “big city” type of city, but maybe a college town? He couldn’t quite tell.
After finding himself thinking about if this could be a college town he remembered where he was a second ago, which was about 40 feet in front of him across the street. His eyes went back to the sign on the bank.
JUNE 14TH 3:06 PM
What… the fuck? How…?
Once again, he couldn’t think of anything to really make sense of what was happening. He stared at the clock seeing if it might change for fear that it might not. Was he still… there? Was it pulling him back? Could he have hallucinated what just happened? No, he didn’t think so. He stood stunned for a minute before seeing the coffee man walking away from the coffee shop briskly. Cardium made a break for him.
“Hey!” he shouted, “Do you know what-”
♥♥♥
Cardium found himself on the sidewalk of a road in what he thought to be a business district of a city. His eyes darted to the bank sign.
JUNE 14TH 3:06 PM
He looked around for the coffee man again. He wasn’t on the sidewalk; instead, Cardium saw him sitting down at a booth inside the coffee shop through the window. Cardium made a break for him. He raced across the street, stormed through the coffee shop door, and beelined for the coffee man’s booth. Cardium’s eyes shot daggers as he approached.
“What the hell is going on, man?” Cardium whispered shakily, sliding into the seat across from the coffee man.
The coffee man stared at him with a perturbed look for a minute before saying,
“Do you… remember? What just happened?”
“Yeah man, it’s been 3:06 for like, at least 3 minutes now and I keep teleporting back to that alley.”
“Are you…,” the coffee man started hesitantly, “Can you…”
“Listen, I’m the one who’s gonna need answers right now,” Cardium began rambling. “I’ve had a really long… I don’t really know how long it’s been but I swear it’s been more than 20 minutes. I was on that cliff for days man, my guts fuckin’ ached and it… hurt, and then I met this weird guy in a white suit who pushed me into an ocean I think and-”
“White suit?” The coffee man perked up when Cardium mentioned him. “Did he have a weird tie on?”
“Yeah, it was all rainbow-y. Do you know him?”
The coffee man stared straight through Cardium, his eyes growing wide; Cardium had no idea what was going on behind them. Finally, the coffee man spoke again.
“Come with me, I’m buying you a drink.”
♥♥♥
End of Part.
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