Another story for Lewis Carroll's rabbit hole day

[renniek.livejournal.com]

Hi. I haven't posted on this group before because I don't normally do creative writing (although I've occasionally browsed, because I do read a lot).
I wrote a story for the Lewis Carroll rabbit hole day, and really enjoyed it. I've seen suggestions that these could be archived in this group, so thought I'd add it in, and hopefully get some feedback from you lovely writing people.

The idea for the first part was nicked from book 2 of Halo Jones (old 2000AD strip) in which there's a character who everyone stops noticing. I extended it out to include machinery as well as people.

There was no plan to the story. I didn't know there was going to be a second part until I had a sudden impulse to write it. The other bits were all the same, except the 5th, because I knew I had to finish the story off somehow. I had a rough idea for what was going to happen in this section, but little time to actually write it in - I got home at 11:30pm and had half an hour to write whatever I could and get it posted (although I did pop back in afterwards and edit it to tidy up the many typos).


Part one: 9:23am

Alarm didn't go off this morning, so I got up late, feeling groggy and bad-tempered. Dashed out to the car, but got stuck waiting to turn left onto Didsbury Road. The wait was even worse than usual - nobody would slow down to let me out. I eventually managed to nip out when someone decided to turn right into the garage before our street. I found myself wondering (as I often do when driving) whether anyone has any common courtesy any more. The motorway was even worse - 5 separate cars nearly crashed into me. By the time I got to Liverpool I was tense and shaken, badly needing a cup of tea.
So, then the car park barrier wouldn't open. I swiped my security pass, but the barrier wouldn't budge. I pressed the button to contact the security lodge, but got no answer - Ged (the security guard) must have been elsewhere in the building - it always seems a problem they only have one security guy for the whole department - there's almost never someone at the desk when you need them. I reversed back out of the car park entrance, nearly getting hit by another guy on his way in, and drove around the other Univeristy car parks. 20 minutes later, I still hadn't found a space anywhere and my nerves were getting ragged. I decided to chance sticking the car on single yellow lines while I nipped into the biosciences building to find Ged and get the car park barrier opened.
When I got up to the building, my pass wouldn't open the door. I swore loudly and profusely. Then I spotted Ged at the desk, and knocked, heaving a sigh of relief when I saw him get up and walk out of the porters office. He walked straight past the doors and headed off down the corridor towards the mail room. He didn't even look at me! By this stage I was starting to get nervous - something odd was going on and I didn't know what it was. I waited, watching through the glass, and after 5 minutes I was lucky - a lab tech came over to the building and let herself in. By this time, although I'd hoped, it wasn't really any surprise that she didn't hold the door or acknowledge me when I said good morning - I caught the edge of the door on time, and followed into the building. The lifts ignored me too, of course, but it's only a couple of flights of stairs up to our lab.
Once there, I had a door problem again. Access to the labs is strictly controlled, and once again my swipe card wasn't working. I waited near the ladies toilets until I spotted Anthea. I tried saying hello, but her face stayed competely blank - no reaction at all. Nobody could fake a total lack of response that convincingly. When she was on her way back into the office I slipped through after her.
So, I'm in the office now. None of them can see me or hear me - it's as if I'm not here. I don't know why I struggled so hard to get in - there's nothing I can do here that I couldn't do anywhere else. I've tried to be calm and rational. I've made a cup of tea. I've tried doing things - moving stuff around, talking to people, typing on their keyboards, to try to make my colleagues see me but it doesn't work. I've tried to cheer myself up - joking that at least I'm unlikely to get a parking ticket. That doesn't work either - I'm a social person, and I can't handle this. I'm already lonely. I'm frightened, terrified really, and I'm trying not to cry (absurdly - as if anyone would notice if I did). I hope somebody out there somewhere can read this. Please reply. Please help.


Part two: 11:51am

I sat around in work for a few hours, but it was just too weird being in the same room with colleagues I'm on good terms with - people I've known for years - while they ignore me. So, I walked into the city centre. I don't mind strangers ignoring me and brushing past as if I don't exist - it's just like visiting London. The doors thing is still very strange, though. I have to dart through immediately behind people to avoid automatic doors closing on me.
I can't buy anything - there's no way for me to attract the attention of shop assistants. Even screaming draws no notice - not even from the pigeons. I'm hungry, but I can't buy food. I could steal it, but I just can't bring myself to do it - not yet. I tried using one of the self-service checkout things at a Tescos. It wouldn't accept my cash card - didn't eat it, just didn't seem to notice I'd swiped the card at all. I tried the card in a cash point. Same thing - it didn't eat the card, didn't ask for my PIN, just spat it straight back out.
The other weird thing that I've noticed is that people have started to fade. Not just people - buildings, cars, benches, rubbish bins - everything. I have to pay more attention to be able to notice the things and people around me. Before, it seemed like the world was forgetting me. Now, it seems as if I'm forgetting the world. No, not forgetting - that's the wrong word. More like losing contact - drifting apart. It's worrying. What's even more worrying is that there seem to be other things there that I only notice when I'm not paying attention to the "real" world. I can't see these new things clearly yet - it's just a slight impression that there's something else there - a person or an object will look odd and somehow wrong for a second, but look normal again as soon as I focus on them properly. I catch glimpses of movement or hints of bright colours in my peripheral vision.
I spent 20 minutes riding up and down the escalators in Lewis's, trying to work out what to do and where to go. I went into the cathedral - both of them. Impressed by the beautiful architecture as always, but I wasn't noticed there any more than I had been anything else.The patches of coloured light from the stained glass windows in the RC cathedral seemed to dance and swirl around the floor, leaving me dizzy and breathless. I left, and sat on a bench in Lime Street Station, watching the people and the pigeons, wishing I could buy a coffee. I read all the adverts and posters in there - some part of my brain convinced that I should be able to find some hidden meaning in them somewhere -some clue that would tell me what was happening and how I could stop it. There was nothing. I walked into an internet cafe, found a spare computer and logged on. I wonder why the computer notices me typing, when the doors and the lifts ignore me. I wonder why I can still drive my car, but not use a cash point. Then I wonder if I can still drive my car. Maybe my link with the world is fading more all the time. This journal seems like my only solid link to reality, and from the replies it looks like some people can see it , so I still have some way of interacting with them. I wonder how long it will last.


Part three: 2:20pm

Curiouser and curiouser, as I think Alice said. No way to check right now if that's the right quote.
After several hours in the city centre I realised that staying there wasn't helping - things were just getting odder all the time. Ordinary people and cars seemed like vague blurs, that I could only see clearly if I stopped still and concentrated hard, and then they seemed to be entirely in black-and-white. The pavement appeared greasy and slick - it rolled slowly along, undulating in a way that made me feel queasy. Lime Street Station rumbled and roared with the animalistic snarls of the trains that jostled and shoved in and out. Rapid, darting movements flickered almost constantly in my peripheal vision. The whole world seemed to be moving, but at a jolting, uneven pace like stop-motion special effects. The RC cathedral was spectacular. Brilliant rays of coloured light shot out from the stained glass in the steeple, lancing up and into the boiling dark clouds that filled the sky. Sometimes I would clearly see angels - formed entirely of coloured light, carrying spears and banners of light, flying around the steeple. I was fascinated, but the more I watched the stranger and clearer it got, and with an effort I pulled myself away and trudged back towards the University.

As I said, I could hardly see people now, but I could see when the doors were opened - I could still dart inside in the short gap where somebody must have just stepped through the doorway. The biosciences building was not as I remembered it. Unnatural, unsettling smells and sounds emanated from the labs, strange concoctions bubbled in test tubes and beakers - the secure areas of the labs where pathogenic bateria were stored now seemed to be barred off with massive steel gates, as if restraining something far more threatening than an attenuated lab strain of E Coli. I walked through, thinking to head back up to my usual office. But then I heard a voice calling for help. This was odd - by now I didn't hear the people around me any more than I saw them, and I had yet to encounter anything in the strange new world that actually spoke to me.

I followed the sound of the voice, through into the old life sciences building, up countless flights of stairs, into an area of the building I had never seen before, and to a door that looked like it should lead into a broom cupboard.
I opened the door.

I saw a lab, shiny white and chrome, with a row of cages along one wall. Most were empty, or their occupants were hiding under piles of straw and bedding, but one cage held a white rabbit. He (and I know it was a "he", although I'm not sure why I know) captured my attention immediately. You see, if I concentrated hard as I looked at him, he was an ordinary little white rabbit, sitting in a pile of straw and twitching his nose and whiskers. But if I relaxed my attention, let my eyes lose focus, didn't concentrate, then he was standing on his hind legs, wearing a rather dapper waistcoat and clutching a pocket watch in one hand as he harangued me "Well, come on - let me out of here! I'm going to be late!".

Of course, I did no such thing. Instead, I insisted he told me where I was and what was going on. I was way beyond the stage where I was going to be phased by a talking bunny rabbit. I knew the second he was out of the cage, he'd be running off waving his pocket watch around, and I'd have no way to catch him - even before I got asthma, I was never exactly the worlds fastest runner. It was a long and complicated conversation, punctuated with a lot of arguing and haranguing on his part, and a lot of obstinacy on mine. Eventually, I persuaded him to tell me that I was in-between 2 worlds. I suspect that I can't interact with most people or things in either the "old" world or the new one I keep glimpsing, because they're firmly in one world or the other and I'm not really fully there. Some things seem to have an existence in both wolds - like the cathedral, and Lime Street Station, and (it would seem) some computers. He's in between the worlds too, but trying to get to the other one - because in my world, he'd be trapped as a lab animal. He says he ended up here by accident, but he won't discuss what happened - in fact, he got quite huffy when I asked and told me it was none of my business - it seems to be something he's embarassed about. So, it seems that I can either follow him into the other world, or I can try to return to mine, or I might end up trapped between the 2 worlds, like a kind of ghost, drifitng but never really fully in either world. He says that can happen, and he thinks that's the way I'm heading at the moment. Once he told me all this, I let him go, as per our deal. As he ran off, he shouted something back at me. He told me I have to go back to where it all started - to where I began leaving my world - if I want to return there.

My decision is obvious. Maybe I'm too attached to friends and family in my world, maybe I'm just cowardly, but I'm definitely going back. There's one problem. I can't start my car any more. I can see it, if I focus hard, but the engine doesn't start - doesn't react at all - when I turn the key in the ignition. I need to get back to where this started - but it started almost 40 miles away, and I can't help thinking that time is getting short. I can't get a taxi - they'd ignore me if I tried to hail one, and I can't use the phone - I can lift the receiver and speak into it, but the person at the other end doesn't hear. I'm going to have to try public transport. If I manage to get back to Manchester, I'll try to write again.


Part four: 5:45pm

After leaving the University, I headed towards Lime Street Station again, thinking of getting on a train. Overhead, the sky was growing ever gloomier and darker, contrasted by the almost luridly bright rays of light around the RC cathedral as the angels raised their spears and their banners in vivid shades of scarlet, acid green and electric blue. I could hear the angels now, blowing trumpets in salute to the heavens, although to me it sounded discordant and jangling. Across the city, the angels of the Anglican cathedral let forth a thunderous pealing of bells in response. These angels were not of light like the others, but massive, stony winged creatures that moved in a fast and almost reptilian crawl around the immense towers and buttresses (they never actually touched the building, of course, but seemed to hover always an inch or two away from it). The pavement seemed to pull at my feet as I walked, sliding like an organic, living version of one of the moving walkways you find in airports, as if it were trying to hurry me faster into the centre of the city. Its greasy, slick, pulsating surface seemed to suck at my trainers, and I tried not to look down because it made me feel nauseous. The road appeared like a torrent of black water - I was convinced that one step onto it and I would be dragged down underneath the tarmac, never to reappear. A gradual certainty that there were things lurking down there crept into my mind.

The journey to the station was fast, but as I reached the massive arches and heard the growling and snarling within I grew reluctant and nervous. My pace slowed, and I had to force myself to step into the station itself. As soon as I did, I knew I could never get onto a train here. They were bound to their rails, of course, leashed and fettered, but they were ancient and strong, and they could pull away from their places by at least 12 feet for several seconds at a time before they were forced back into submission. Their very breathing made the air rumble throughout the vast, vaulted hall, and they growled and snarled and snapped at the air, crunching and biting whatever they could get between their mighty jaws, bucking and rolling to crush anything that might cling to their backs or sides. They seemed to sense my presence as I hesitated in the doorway, and they immediately glared and strained towards me. It wasn't their movement that made me flee. It was the sense of their hostility - their terrible malevolence. I knew they would kill me, crush me into the rails that bound them there - which, I now saw, were already surrounded by piles of broken bones and the few ragged, torn remnants of flesh that had not been seized by brave scavengers.

So, I fled. I ran along pavements, ever wary of the black and thirsty roads. Crossing points seemed like raised bridges - narrow and lacking any handholds, where I had to edge cautiously to avoid losing my balance when (as often happened) the crossing suddenly lurched sideways as if in response to some whim of the road/river/artery beneath. Then, one of the banners that shot out from the cathedral illuminated a carriage standing in the road, just next to the edge, in a golden light that made me think of summer afternoons as a child. I stopped and made myself focus on the carriage, hard. Slowly, very slowly, the strangeness began to drop away from the world. The angels fell silent, the lights stopped shining from the cathedral, the road grew still, and I was looking at a National Express coach next to the coach station. Even more luckily, the destination said Manchester. I shuffled towards it. I had to move slowly - each time I wasted any concentration on my movements, I lost focus on reality, and the strangeness started again. Even totally focussed, I knew I could not risk stepping onto the road - knew it was a deadly risk even to step over it here, where there was no bridge to guard me. Even concentrating on the real, mundane world as hard as I could, I could almost feel the slithering and chittering of the things that lurked down in the tarry depths. Holding my breath, I slowly stepped over the gap, and onto the coach.

Inside, it seemed fairly safe, and I could relax slightly. Perhaps coaches are simply so dull and such a dampener to imagination and fantasy that there were few ways for the new world to intrude on me here. Whatever the reason, it became a lot easier for me to hold my grip on my own world once I was on board, and I had to face a more mundane problem again. The coach was busy, nobody could see me, and I didn't want to get crushed by someone sitting on me. Simple solution - find someone who's sitting on their own that nobody will want to sit next to. After a few moments, I spotted a middle-aged man in scruffy clothes who seemed completely absorbed in a copy of Asian Babes. Ordinarily, I would have avoided him like the plague - today he was perfect. Nobody is going to sit next to the pervy guy who's reading porn on a coach.

The rest of the journey to Manchester was fairly simple. I discovered early on that I needed to keep myself concentrating on my own world, and it was better not to look out of the windows - looking out of the coach made me see the strange creatures that were traipsing across the Cheshire countryside, the sparkling steam billowing from the ludicrously tall chimneys in Warrington, the glowing chasms that rent the ground near Huyton. When I saw these, I'd begin to lose my focus, and the coach would begin to grow insubstantial around me. Several times I had to save myself by staring at the pattern on the back of the seat in front or reading the terms and conditions of travel from a leaflet until the coach grew firm and solid once more. So, I wasn't looking out of windows as we went through Salford or into the city centre. I didn't look outside again until I was stepping off the coach, and trying to work out what to do next.

It isn't as strange as Liverpool. Maybe concentrating on the "real" world for so long has calmed things down - given me a bit of distance from the odd new world, or brought me back in touch with reality. But I doubt it will last - already I've seen the nymphs in the fountains at Piccadilly Gardens, and the ghosts of the dead mill workers marching endlessly along the cobbled streets that exist like shadows to all the roads here. I still have to get home. I've already decided not to risk the trains (not after Lime Street). Maybe a bus. I'm in an internet cafe again. It seems stupid - wasting time writing this when I don't even know how much time I have, but it makes me feel better to have some kind of link to people, and I get the feeling that it's vitally important. I don't know why, but feelings are all I have to go on now. More later, if I make it.


Part five: 11:59pm

I wandered up to Piccadilly Gardens first, thinking I could get a bus. No joy. The strangeness was rapidly reasserting itself, and my course was strewn with obstacles. The roads through Piccadilly were whitish - like ash or powdered bone - and great puffs of pale dust exploded up from the road surface every time anything touched it. I knew the dust was deadly poison. I knew I couldn't go close without inhaling it. Even if I made a mask, I couldn't tread on that road - not without sinking into the dust, perhaps sinking endlessly down, feeling myself shifting further and furhter downwards even as I suffocated. Once buses left Piccadilly Gardens, they went towards Canal St, where they crossed the canal on a bridge that looked like a glowing translucent rainbow. I knew that I couldn't tread on that bridge - that it wouldn't support my weight.
I headed towards the canal anyway, hoping to find another crossing. I didn't find one, but I did find a boat - a little wooden rowing boat painted an unlikely shade of bright green (although the paint was somewhat worn and cracked with age). It clearly belonged to the other Manchester, not to my Manchester. I hesitated, but as I turned round, trying to find a better, safer option, I saw a veritable horde of dead mill workers building up behind me, walking along their ghost roads. They were all brown and white - like in an old sepia photograph - and the effect of the light on them was strange - as if they were not touched by the light from the streetlights nearby, but were lit by sunlight or light from a lantern that was not visible to me, and that did not illuminate anything else around us. They reached towards me with a silent, pleading hunger, clearly drawn by my vitality. I backed away from them, and found that I was right at the edge of the canal. I had no choice. I stepped into my ridiculous little boat, and began to row west. From here, I had a plan that could get me home, if I didn't meet with any problems en route.

I rowed for what seemed like hours - I quickly reached the junction with the Bridgewater canal. From there I had to continue through Salford - where vast crowds of the mill worker ghosts shuffled along the canal banks with empty eyes - and south towards Trafford Park. The Trafford Centre rose up several hundred feet into the air - gleaming marble and crystal towers, pillars sheathed in cloth-of-gold, clockwork statues that gracefully twirled and pranced. It was a temple, I realised - a temple to gods of profit and avarice, marketing and desire. I drifted past, watching as hooded figures, tiny in the distance, abased themselves before their gods. I pulled on the oars mechanically by now, scarely noticing each individual stroke, just my slow, steady movement away from the supplicants. After this it was quiet and calm. There was occasional movement in the water - little eddies and swirls, small streams of bubbles, but I felt safe in my boat. I had a plan. In Sale, the Bridegwater canal is raised on an aqueduct to cross the river Mersey, which flows from there past Chorlton and Northenden. I didn't know the full route after there - but I knew it went across the bottom of Fletcher Moss fields, about 10 minutes walk from my house. Feeling as if I was in control of the situation, for possibly the first time in the day, I rowed on. Even the transition to the Mersey was simple - the boat proving light enough for me to lift it out ofthe water and carry it from the canal to the river. I had lost much of my fear and was starting to get curious about this strange new world - wondering what would have become of the pyramid in Stockport, or the new sculpture near the City of Manchester stadium, and whether the legends of Alderley Edge might have come alive.

It was several more hours and I was tired as I drew near to Fletcher Moss fields. I pulled up to the bank, and clambered out of theboat, which drifted off in the current. I turned my back on the river, and began to trudge up the field towards the path that led out of the park, past the flower beds, the tennis court and the botanical gardens.

As this thought ran through my head, I stopped in my tracks, fear - no, not fear - genuine terror suddenly with me again in full force. I'd forgotten about the botanical gardens. But now I remembred them it seemed so obvious. There was no other way now. I'd have to pss them.

I should explain. Several years ago I did some acid with one of my exes. The day afterwards, on a comedown and still tripping slightly we decided it would be a good plan to go wandering around Fletcher Moss botanical gardens. It wasn't. There were triffids in there. Every breeze that touched a leaf became the sound of their stalks rattling against the trunk, or became their stealthy movement through the undergrowth. In that drug induced haze, my childhood fears had returned to me. Now, walking up towards the botanical gardens, my mind was gripped by the same fear again. I just knew that the triffids would be there, waiting for me, with the same certainty that had told me the train-things in Lime Street hated me, or the mill worker ghosts just longed to touch something warm and vital and alive. I crept along as silently as I could, moving carefully, thinking "At least I can see".

As I got nearer to the gardens I could hear their rattling. As I crept past the flower beds towards the lane I could see the tops of one or two of them over the hedges. As I tiptoed near the tennis court, I felt and heard the first sting dash past my cheek. It didn't hit me, but a few drops of the venom stung my cheek and nose. I gave way to panic then, and went into a full sprint. I've never run so far so fast in my life. What I saw was just a blur. I know there were more triffids. I know more of them tried to sting me. I know some of them very nearly succeeded - I have the little venom burns on my arms and my neck to prove that. I know that somehow I managed to escape - to outrun them - to reach the house.

But when I got here, I didn't know what to do. You see, I scrambled up the stairs to my bedroom - my heart hammering now, sweat and tears streaking my face, desperate to get home. But this house isn't home. I thought I must have come through too far into this other world, so I've got back to the right geographical place - but it's not my home. I tried getting into bed - the place where it must have all started - but it felt wrong. I got up again, grabbed my laptop, got back into bed. And now I'm writing frantically because for some reason I know - just know - that I have to write a full account of what has happened - that somehow this account is key to getting me home. And I know I must do it by midnight. I can see the shape of it now, the words starting to twist into a circle, the centre of the circle seeming to drop away even as I type, and I can see through the centre - like it's a tunnel. Or a rabbit hole. A tunnel leading to the same place in the same house but in a different world. I can feel myself falling forwards. I think I've done it.