I briefly glanced at Caroline, then looked back at Azarias. “What do we do first? The part with the forehead cut or the part with the boxes?”
He replied, “Fince said that dropping the boxes has to come last, but it also has to happen within a short time of the rest of the steps. That means we should prepare them now. I think it’s easiest if we keep up the ruse just a bit longer. He coughed and said to Caroline, “We’re all going to enter safety pods that will automatically open when the danger is over. We Explorers found them some time back, and it’s a blessing we have them now.”
He scrambled up the wall and pulled eight of the boxes off the ceiling. He laid them next to each other, and climbed into one himself. He gestured for Caroline and the other two captives who were conscious to get into the boxes. Two of them did without asking any questions. However, Caroline had never gotten the end of my explanation when we had been talking earlier, so naturally still had that on her mind. I was starting to regret having that conversation at all, considering I spouted lie after lie after lie.
Azarias saw that I was fumbling for words and stepped in, saying to Caroline, “On Earth, Spiders aren’t dangerous because they crush you with their limbs. They’re usually dangerous because of their venom or poison. The giant spider we know well also has that ability and can disperse its venom into the air as a wide spray. The only way to be safe is to seal yourself off until it dissipates. Don’t worry, it won’t take that long, and you’ll have enough oxygen inside.”
Caroline looked at me for confirmation with worried eyes, and I nodded. I found myself sighing with relief when she climbed into the long box and shut it behind her, closing herself in. Azarias and I looked at each other, then at the overweight man who was unconscious. I whispered, “How does that even happen in the first place?”
“Well, you’d think since nobody except for one person has shown the enjoyment of food, that this one would lose weight. But some people can’t control it, and by that I mean genetic factors are at play. Although who knows whether any previous standard of genetics or metabolism is valid in this strange world. The strange part isn’t that there’s an overweight person among us, but that there is only one. I mean, it’s not uncommon on Earth. Setting all that aside, it’s going to give us a practical problem. We hadn’t considered that someone we would grab would be too large for the boxes.”
I replied, “It’s still possible. The requirement, as I understand it, is that the bodies have to be enclosed. We can modify something to make it work.”
I pulled more of the boxes off the ceiling and took them apart. Azarias and I used the nails and stripped boards to create a new box that was much larger. As we were in the middle of constructing it, there was a noise from inside the box with Caroline in it, and similar noises were coming from the other two boxes. “Hey, it’s getting hard to breathe in here. Can I open it up for a second to get some fresh air?”
We had overlooked that the time taken to work on this box would lead to their oxygen running out. We were almost done, though, so we picked up the large man and dropped him inside, then hammered in some nails. There were even more questions from the other boxes about the loud noises. Finally, the lid on Caroline’s box started to come open. Azarias suddenly dropped Octavian’s legs, ran over to that box, and slammed it down shut with his foot. He hammered a bunch of nails into the lid. I dropped the big man’s head and did the same for the other boxes.
Now they were pounding loudly, and the talking was turning into shouts. I finished loading the large man into his box and felt something strange right as I was about to finish. As I grabbed his stomach, I felt a hard object bulging outwards; there was something trapped underneath the skin. But I had no time to think about this; I shut the box and slammed the nails in with my fists. Choking sounds were coming from the other three boxes. “Enza, what’s going on? Let me out of here,” said Caroline.
Right then, the large man woke up, and the new box started rumbling. “Damn it, Octavian, it would have been easier if you stayed asleep,” said Azarias.
Octavian, huh? So that’s his name. I wonder why Azarias remembered it. I guess he did ask everyone for their names that time; some of them probably stuck out.
With the help of Aleksi and Flox, we carried the four boxes up the stairs and set them on the plank, then rushed back to where Fince was waiting. He dramatically drew a line across each of our foreheads and collected the blood. He then broke off a piece of onion and held it up under our eyes. There was a stinging sensation, and I couldn’t help but cry, but there were no emotions to my tears.
Fince wiped the mixture across his eyelids. As soon as he did, the other three and I raced up the stairs to the plank. The cries coming from the boxes were barely audible now. Azarias was in the lead, and without warning, he stomped down on the far end of the plank. For a second I thought that the entire plank was going to break off, and that Azarias had just killed us all, but he had targeted his impact carefully, and only the end broke. The boxes tumbled into the void, and the last faint croaks disappeared completely.
As I stared at the boxes falling, I didn’t feel anything at all. My heart was entirely clear and entirely cold. But then they disappeared completely. There was a qualitative difference between seeing the last faint spot as it dropped away and seeing nothing there at all. It was that moment that it hit me.
A wave rushed up my spine, and a tremor ran through my chest. But before I even had time to feel terrible, there was a loud mechanical creak from inside the building. The tram was slowly grinding into motion along the pulley. It had worked. My heart dropped as I raced back into the hangar.
Azarias was standing at the top of the tram and waving his hand at me. “Come on, Enza, no backing out now; if anyone’s going to make it on before it leaves, it’s us four.”
Flox and Aleksi ran past me toward the tram. My legs moved to follow, even if part of me wanted to stay. I raced up the side and climbed into the hatch, taking one last look behind me at this side of the Chasm. All of the Explorers who were waiting outside the building had come in to wave us farewell. I couldn’t bring myself to wave back and only stared. Azarias pulled me down through the hatch as the tram crossed the point of no return. There was nothing below us now, unless you count darkness as something.
I slumped into the red chair and put my head in my hands. A grand journey was ahead, but how could I be excited?
An image repeated over and over: four bodies forced into boxes and cast into darkness. I tried to imagine the color of their eyes, but while they were still alive, I hadn’t paid enough attention to them to take note. I looked at the eyes of my three fellow killers. These were colors I could see, so I didn’t have to remember. Even so, they didn’t look so colorful, even though no frequency had changed.
Azarias kicked me in the shin. “Cheer up. We’re not the ones who deserve to be sad, remember?”
He was right, so I wiped away the tears that were fighting to leave my eyelashes. What I did deserve to feel was scared. Where we were going, how long it would take, what kind of danger we would face- these weren’t questions I had answers to. I searched for those answers as I looked out the tram window, but could barely see through the material. Even so, I knew that only darkness was being hidden from me.
The darkness I know of, and the darkness I can only imagine. To embrace both is the price I pay.
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