1805 words "Walking the Edge" is a fantasy I wrote a long time ago. I suspect that everyone who writes sf/f at some point writes a variation of this basic story, and each of us, at the time, thinks it's terribly original. Originally published in Jackhammer, April 1998
WALKING THE EDGE
by
D. A. Houdek
There was a two story tall cockroach knocking on the window, wanting to come in. With a small portion of her rational mind Janelle knew that the cockroach (probably) wasn't real. Still, she was not inclined to open the window.
The others were sitting in a circle on the orange shag carpet. Janelle considered that it looked like orange sherbet, so the rug obligingly became orange sherbet. Janelle laughed, delighted at the cooperativeness of the universe.
She dived down to taste the sherbet and found herself sitting in the circle with the others (sherbet forgotten). They were all staring intently at a Coca-Cola bottle in the center of the circle.
"What are you doing?" she asked Daniel.
Without moving his eyes from the bottle he whispered reverently, "It's breathing."
"Wow," she said and watched the bottle breathe.
The Coke bottle happily breathed for its adoring audience for the next several hours. Janelle would have been content watching it except for two things; that damned cockroach still wanted to come in and a tiny part of her mind insisted that watching a Coke bottle breathe was silly.
***
Janelle was awakened by fingers of heat tapping on her face. Her eyes opened to the rising sun. Its heat pestered her. The pillars of Stonehenge cast striped shadows over the scene. Shaking off the last traces of the drugs, she sat up. Daniel lay beside her on the grass, with eyes closed and a foolish grin on his face.
Nearby a van full of German students sprawled. Vaguely, she remembered Daniel explaining to them how they were discovering America while actually traveling through Europe. She recalled that the explanation hadn't succeeded too well because none of the Germans spoke English and Daniel spoke no German. It didn't matter. They'd all grooved on peace, love and good hash.
She'd had a weird sort of flashback during the night. Creepy, crawly things had been coming out of the ground. Something freaky happened in the middle of the pillars, too. There was blood and wizards and stuff like that. Janelle rubbed her head. Maybe it was dream. She'd heard of flashbacks, but it had never happened to her before.
Oh my god! There was a crawly thing right now. Janelle jumped up and screamed. Daniel and the Germans leapt to their feet. To its dying day the tiny garter snake lived in abject terror of foreign college students.
***
". . . Paranoid Schizophrenia," the doctor told the group of trainees. Fifteen years earlier he, too, had manned the barricades at the U. His hair had been long and his feet had been bare. He'd protested for peace, love, whales, and for the end of bourgeois materialism. Somewhere along the line he'd traded it all in for a three-car garage and a really fine security system. At least his expensive sports car looked something like a whale--or a shiny, red mutant frog.
"Paranoid Schizophrenia," he repeated, looking at Janelle, "A classic case. The patient believes she hears voices. She sees things that aren't there and has grandiose ideas of her worth--that she's somehow extremely important. And because of this everyone's out to get her," the doctor paused, then told the only joke he knew, "Of course if everyone is out to get her paranoia is just good sense. The trainees laughed politely and followed the doctor on to the next patient.
Janelle heard what was said, but only faintly. It was hard to hear over the sounds coming from the force line in front of her. The doctor and trainees had seen a woman who looked far older than her years with short, straight hair that was very stringy and greasy. She had not responded to their presence but had stared fixedly at a point in the air in front of her and rocked endlessly back and forth.
The force line glowed green and powerful. It throbbed with an ancient power. The sound was unclear. She rocked in rhythm to its pulse to bring the voice in clearer. It was a language lost to time but she was sure she was close to understanding it. Then all the power of the ages would be hers to command.
Janelle held her hand closer to the force line. Strength from it flowed into her. Images bombarded her mind. she saw a Wizard raise his arms. He drew power from the force lines, commanded the power with words and funneled it through charms. The sky above the Wizard grew dark. Clouds sped in and rumbled.
A faint whiff of methane warned the Wizard. He whirled and threw himself down. The dragon sliced through the air where he had been. Flames seared the rocks. The Wizard rose and faced the dragon as it banked high near the churning clouds. He raised his arms. His mouth opened to utter the words.
Pain stabbed though her arm. The images froze. The voice ground to a halt. "No. No," she screamed as she tried to break free of the hairy hands. Hot swords stabbed at her. "No!" But the hands of the trolls held her. Jealously guarding their secrets. Keeping the power for themselves. Janelle looked into their ugly faces and screamed. Then all went dark.
The nurse nodded and the large orderly loosened his grip on Janelle. The nurse slipped the needle out of her vein and held it up. "Poor thing," the nurse said, "This is probably the only peace she gets." The orderly lifted Janelle into her bed.
***
They dropped acid near the ruins of a castle in England. Daniel and Janelle were one with the times and the universe and the revolution. Pot and acid weren't bad. They freed the mind. All that other stuff was just CIA propaganda.
The cliffs unnerved them a little so they camped on the side of the castle away from the ocean.
Daniel saw it first. To Janelle the figure was only a distortion in the air. Daniel dropped into a defensive pose.
Janelle watched him battle the air with an invisible sword. The last beam of sunset caught on the blade and she saw the barest glimpse of steel as Daniel slashed through the unseen foe.
"Behind you!" he screamed.
She jumped but felt only a tickle of whatever it was Daniel now battled. Janelle walked through a shadow world.
"Janelle? Janelle," Daniel sought her out as faint dawn colored the sky. She sat at the cliff edge feeling left out of the visions.
Daniel cocked his head from side to side as if uncertain that he was really seeing her. He still walked the dream world. She the insubstantial shimmer. "You have to come with me, I've found the key to the power. I understand now. We'll fly away together."
He tried to stroke her long brown hair but could barely make contact.
"I don't see it," she said mournfully. They were going to change the world together but now he was going on without her.
"Fly with me." He stood and took her hand. They faced the edge side by side and for a moment she glimpsed the vision.
Daniel flew.
Janelle stood for a long time staring at her hand still warm from his touch.
She lay down and slept.
***
When she woke it was still dark. Force lines were laid out in a multi-colored grid across the room. They were faint lines of blue and red and yellow. Janelle realized they must have been there in the daytime but were too faint to be seen. The strong green force line was gone, its power spent.
A voice droned in her head. It came from a blue line near her. The voice gained strength as she reached toward it but its message was no more clear.
She sighed in exasperation and dropped her hand down on her chest. Slowly she flexed her hand and stared at it. It was not covered with the taut, smooth skin of a twenty year old. The skin was mottled and lined. It was old.
She raised her hand to her short cropped hair. Gone was the sleek, brown hair that had hung to her waist. Her fingers traced lightly over her face, down her neck and over her body. This was not the firm, tanned body that had teased Daniel's eyes with low slung jeans and bare midriff.
"My god," she whispered. Janelle knew time had passed while she walked through the visions. . . but so much time? She got out of the bed and stood unsteadily near it. The force lines quivered. Faded. She was stepping back from them-stepping back from the edge of the other world where so long she had walked.
Janelle crept through the ward, studying the faces of the sleeping patients. Here. . . and here. . . and here. . . these faces she knew. She'd glimpsed them in the vision world. She took their charts from the ends of their beds. "Paranoid schizophrenics." She opened her own chart. It said the same.
She sat on the bed and looked toward the dark windows. She almost wished a giant mutant cockroach would knock. This world was so flat and colorless. The other was rich and vibrant and unpredictable. It was a world where trees had the souls of beautiful maidens, and wolves could become men. Could it have all been bad acid and paranoid delusions, she wondered?
She looked back down at the chart. Which was she to believe? She'd seen a Coke bottle breath and known it was unreal. She'd also seen Wizards battle dragons . . . and believed it.
Janelle smiled. She'd walked the edge of two worlds. Now she must chose between them.
The force lines were gone. The voices were gone.
Soon Janelle would be gone.
Red colored rays of heat beamed out from the rising sun to touch her face. she stood high up. High. Out of the muck of muddled thoughts of the people at ground level. Her vision was clear. Every angle was sharp. Each color lush. The texture of every surface was exotic and new.
Janelle threw her arms out and tasted the bold flavor of the sun. This was good acid. It was subtly different from the cockroach inducing acid of the Sixties. She felt her senses expand to encompass the universe. Her mind opened wide.
Force lines glowed around her. Voices swelled to instruct her. She heard the words and understood. It was within reach. The other world would be hers completely. She would belong to it. The lines gave her the power. The voices told her how.
Janelle teetered on the edge of the building.
She flew.
And there Janelle's story could have ended. But the thing of it was, she never reached the ground.
The End
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