September 9, 2021 - Greenwich Village, New York City, United States

“Don’t go down there.”

Charlie looked over and smiled. “I hear there are secret tunnels and strange stuff. Let’s do this!”

She held up her phone showing a picture of something. It was hard to follow as her hand wasn’t steady, and Charlie was stumbling a bit anyway.

“These aren’t yellow bricks, but let’s go!” Charlie prompted that by jumping down from the platform, her short sparkly, clubbing skirt flaring up as she somehow didn’t break the heels she was in.

“Charlie, get back up here. Shit. You’ll get run over or electrocuted.”

But Charlie had already started walking into the subway tunnel to the left; she was moving surprisingly fast despite picking her way over the garbage.

Ella yelled for her to turn around but Charlie just yelled, “Come on Els! Everything cris” And continued slurring, half singing some song from the club they had just left.1

Ella muttered to herself, “well that is some fucking cultural appropriation,” And grabbed the edge and lowered herself down to chase. Her heels made it hard but there was no way she was pulling off her shoes here surrounded with broken glass, rat shit, and whatever other crap laced the tracks. Her dress crept up and she could feel the sequins popping off. Surreptitiously, she reached behind and pulled down the short dress over her ass and fixed the wedgie she had given herself.

She hustled after Charlie who was making surprising time. I can hide along the wall or something, Ella thought, looking for an approaching train.

She continued after Charlie, proceeding down the tracks without seeing a train for longer than she would have thought. The glitter from the club and sheen of sweat on her skin reflecting the pale tunnel lights.

“Charlotte! Come on this is dumb. And fucking dangerous. Let’s get out of here…” Ella wasn’t exactly sober, molly and alcohol coursing through her, but she wasn’t so far gone this seemed like a good idea. “I know about an amazing after party we can go to,” she lied desperately. “DJ Baby Bok Choy is spinning!”

“Funny shit Ella,” Charlie called back, in the dark where some of the lights had failed.

“Charlie, let’s get out of here. We got places to be.”

“Do you see that” and Ella could see something: a tunnel off to the side that had the faintest glow about it. Orange and flickering - a fire?

“Probably some hobo burning shit. Let’s go.” Ella said, feeling a bit bad about the term. But Charlie grabbed her hand and started pulling her down the passage. The light getting brighter and brighter reflected in Charlie’s eyes.

As they got closer the light changed to something more green than orange. The walls changed from cheap painted cement to grey stones. And then, following Charlie, her silhouette leading the way down this very narrow corridor, Ella saw what was past them, a way outside, onto a bridge with a blue sky above.

Was it the Hudson? No, because this stone bridge, covered in cobblestone, led to a castle that had never been in New Jersey. A decrepit pile of rocks with its towers falling down.

And the sky wasn’t blue, but desaturated to a bright slate. The glare was excruciating coming from the dark subway and both Ella and Charlie shaded their eyes to try and keep it from coming in.

“Woohoo! Where the hell are we?” Charlie screamed loudly. Her voice slurring. “We must have been in the club later than I thought, if it is already morning.”

Ella looked up to see the sun - high in the sky, almost noon - and somehow a bit too large and pale for the glare. “Something weird is going on here. Let’s head back…”

“No way; we are so going adventuring.” Charlie took off, pulling off her heels and moving quickly across the bridge. Ella struggled to keep up and fell behind as Charlie went right into the castle doorway. She pulled down her mask, off her heels, and took a step in the cobblestone.

Ella took a moment at the doorway but the interior was dark and the light cut a sharp relief just past the threshold. “Charlie?” She called and the sound was oddly deadened. As if there was no echo to be had.

After debating a bit, Ella head inside, her shoes in her hands, pulling down her stupid glittery skirt that felt totally ridiculous in the daylight.

The entry was a hallway, dimly lit from the outside, small, weird vertical windows cut at intervals on each wall. “Charlie, where are you? " Even the echos felt a bit dead.

She followed the hallway down to where it opened up into a large hallway with a double stairway. Charlie was there sitting on the floor sprawled out and throwing up into what looked like a very large vase.

Damn, this was so not New Jersey. There weren’t castles in fucking New Jersey.

“Charlie, where the hell are we?” Her voice sounded oddly flat.

“Els, this is amazing, right. This has gotta be some rich asshole’s private place. Secret fucking castles…. Either that or I got totally roofied and am imagining all of this.” And with that Charlie bent over to start throwing up again right into what looked like another priceless vase.

Ella’s concerns started evaporating. She felt her feet just start drifting upstairs of their own accord. Charlie called something after her but Ella didn’t, couldn’t listen.

She rounded the staircase walking past hanging banners and pennants decrepit and moth eaten. When she reached the upper floor, she saw grand twinned doors that floated open soundlessly. Inside. Inside was a grand hall, set in black and white tiles, two golden chandeliers each the size of a small house hung from the ceilings with candles dripping wax as they burned cycling through colors before settling into a white that had no business coming from a simple flame. The light took on the harsh qualities outside the castle.

And, against the back of the room, there was a throne, of course. Quartzite facets cut from one large piece, a lone figure sat on the throne, leaning on a scepter with a matching quartz crystal on top, a golden crown reflecting the harsh light from the chandeliers right into Ella’s eyes.

The figure muttered something incomprehensible and when Ella’s look of confusion had barely touched upon her face, the figure waved a hand over its mouth.

“I thought it was over? Certainly, the clock has no mercy for the past.” Quietly spoken, in a voice that sounded, well, like anyone’s. Except that where Ella’s voice had been distant and deadened when she spoke, the reverberations of this figure’s voice, echoed and reverberated far out of what one would expect.

Ella froze, the odd feeling having brought her to the door warring with some implicit understanding that to respond, to acknowledge, was to take an irreversible step.

And yet that awareness wasn’t enough in the end, the odd compulsion had her pull off her own mask, drove her in and she knelt to one knee, hand down, more gracefully than she had ever moved in her life.

“What is your name, young lady?” And this time the voice took on a cultured cadence. Like something from a 60s movie, that strange halfway accent between English and American.

Still looking down, she responded, “Eleanor. Eleanor Jindal-Witten.”

“Rise young lady. The past weighs too heavily on you. I’ll not have it make a slave of you.” The figure waved as if swatting away at a fly, and Eleanor shot straight up, the compulsion guiding her actions gone. Now fear held her straight, for when she beheld the creature sitting the throne, it was nothing human. Onyx black skin, glowing white slitted eyes that matched the scepter, two small holes where a nose should have been, and no ears. The golden crown had an inset gem which almost matched the hue of the eyes, but that slight difference bothered Ella more than it should have. The triviality of that detail snapped her out of silence.

“Who… what… where am I?” Her questions tumbled over each other. Her knees trembled some but the unreality of the situation maybe kept her from being too scared, she thought. And then she added the thought, maybe it is the molly, and… at least I am not peeing myself.

And the absurdity of that thought sobered her the rest of the way. Her senses shifted and were suddenly assaulted as she smelled decay and rot, the lights that were already so glaring became even more so, a keening that was just out of hearing became more present. The creature in front of her eyed her, his slit pupils dilating a bit and although she could feel her legs about to give way she managed to still stand.

“Young woman, how did you cross? We have been so lost, for so long… sleeping until the end, no returning should be possible.”

“Who… are you?” Ella whispered. The echoes louder than before.

“We? We are the old and forgotten king of many conquered lands. So long ago and so distant…” the voice faded to a whisper. But making Eleanor jump, the figure suddenly raised his voice, “and now, when we thought it was over, when we had slept for millenia, some child comes here. Why?”

Eleanor said, “… Sir, who… what are you?”

“Oh child, Eesha,” and the figure knowing her real name scared Eleanor more than it should have, given that even she thought of herself as Ella in her head, “you know so little and my time is ending despite you being here. We… no, I am sorry.” And he took that scepter in his hand with a reversed grip, and Ella started backing up as he threw it at her, spearing her right through her chest and driving her back to fall awkwardly, the crystal tip of the scepter or spear sticking out her back. The pain was immense and Ella felt her vision fading quickly while the figure rose up and reptilian scaled boots stepped in front of her.

“Poor child….”

Ella shot out of bed, gasping. Her hand went to her chest, and she could feel a sheen of sweat. She was still wearing the dress from last night, one heel dangling from her foot and the other lost somewhere in the sheets.

“What the fuck!”

After calming down for a moment, she looked at the clock, “Oh shit!!” She scrambled off the bed, ran into the bathroom stripping off as she went and rinsed off fast, brushing her teeth in the shower to get the scummy taste out of her mouth.

“OK, that was a real bad trip… no drugs for you girl.” she muttered to herself, toweling off and grabbing some jeans and a shirt before racing off to class.

The run from the Washington Square Village dorm over to the physics classroom by Washington Square, right through the arch, across the pathways, jumping over some passed out drunk guy and a bit of a bump through a small cultural event thing and she just made it in a minute late.

Soon, Ella stood at the front of the class to try and drum in an introduction to cosmology into the undergrads in front of her. Her mentor had left a voicemail saying he was busy and how he was sure she had this. This being the first week of her time as a grad student didn’t even cross his mind.

After class, one of the students came up to her, the one she was pretty sure had a crush on her, “I like your colored contacts, light grey is kind of weird, but cool.”

Ella had forgotten her glasses, racing out this morning, and hadn’t really noticed. Maybe she had slept with contacts in although she didn’t have colored ones. Ella pulled out a compact to look at her very light grey eyes, “yeah… ummm… just trying them out.” she said shakily, “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

She raced out to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. “What the hell,” poking at her eye trying to catch a contact that just wasn’t there.

“Ok. What is going on… shit, shit, shit, ouch.” She took a good look in the mirror at her now very grey, almost crystal white eyes. A sudden flashback to her dream last night.

An hour later, after calming down, she was at the student eye center. The doctor had her chin up on some brace thing and was shining a light on her eye.

“Damndest thing I have seen,” he said. “And you woke up like this?”

Her vision was 20/5 and maybe even better, from her usual 20/150. The doctor yelled at her not to move her eyes when doing a field test since he couldn’t map her blind spot.

“There is nothing wrong as far as I can tell. It looks like a crystalline deposit, but your pupils have good mobility and ultrasound didn’t show anything out of the ordinary. Vitreous, the fluid in your eye, looks clear, and flow is good. Can we get some blood tests and maybe have you do an MRI? Want to check if it is some sort of auto-immune disease just to be sure.”

Ella focused in on the part where he said he didn’t see anything wrong. Six hours later, she left with a preliminary negative MRI, a doctor very excited to write a paper on her, and a promise to come back to get her lab results back.

A thought struck her, and she ran back to the clinic just before it closed to get a contact lens sizing and an order for some colored contacts to hide her eyes.

“Fever” by Vybz Kartel. FYI these footnotes are entirely optional.