A Return to Normalcy: Part One

 Part One

Back where he was from, two people who loved each other dearly and sought no other life but the one they would live together often decided to get married. Marriage, of course, being the permanent binding of two souls both legally and spiritually. Well, the permanence is only contextually relevant and the spiritual aspect is entirely open to personal interpretation. Many people also did not see the need for government input in their relationship, so the legal aspect of marriage could also be up to interpretation. That’s hardly the point, though. The point is, as far as he knew, marriage was the normal next step in a relationship such as theirs. 

The Man had not known normalcy since he fell through a crack in the pavement on his way to work and landed in a world completely unlike anything he knew to be real. Above him now rested skies of impossible lavender shades and below him grew grass that somehow bore the taste of pepperoni pizza. This world was home to literal oceans of blood and forests of trees taller than Everest. It was also home to mountains so titanic that using Everest as a frame of reference quickly became largely redundant. He did feel that it wasn’t his place to name such mountains, though, as he had no urge to scale them and the right to name such things felt like one he would have to earn. This fantastic world held wonders like nothing his mind could imagine, but a sense of normality was not something that he could ever find. 

The first few months were spent finding a way to survive. After a few days of panicking he found himself in a forest where the trees were made of what appeared to be bones, which felt safer to him than trees taller than a thousand skyscrapers stacked together. It wasn’t long before he found himself having to kill what he called Wolfrabbits with a spear he had fashioned from a discarded skeletal branch. He was sure the spear moved on its own sometimes, but a possibly autonomous weapon was the least of his worries. 

Upon escaping the Bonewoods, he made his way through several acres of barren fields. The fields, despite being entirely empty, were home to the happiest he’d felt since slipping through the crack. In retrospect, it was the purest glee he had ever experienced in his life. Once he escaped the Barrens, he managed to feel another emotion that had remained foreign to him in this world- relief. A sign stood at the end of the Barrens, a sign that may as well have been his grandmother holding her arms out for a hug. The sign read, ‘Found your way into a mysterious world and are desperate to see a friendly face? Walk in a straight line for three days.’

The sign, whilst perhaps vaguely ominous, turned out to be built with good intentions. At the end of his three day journey, the Man found himself in a village. The village was full of people just like him, people who slipped into a world that was decidedly not their own. Despite that, these people seemed to be at home. The village was home to infrastructure he had never imagined could reside in this bizzare place. A community center, school and library all in the same building. Farms, homes and even a coffee shop. Thankfully, the coffee shop doubled as a bar. He wanted to describe it as heaven on Earth, but they had all agreed a long time ago that wherever this place was- it was not Earth. They called the world Daccipe (Da-Chee-Pay), which one of the more learned amongst the settlers said was a portmanteau for the latin words ‘Take Two’. The village was named Plainsville, on account of the original settler’s love for irony.  

The Man was given a place to sleep and a job to do. The room was somehow nicer than his one bedroom flat back home, with a king size mattress stuffed with the feathers of an animal they called the Sheepgoose and a coffee machine more advanced than he knew existed. Nobody quite understood why, but there was a system of caves about a 2 day journey from the village that was home only to a strange rock. The rock was a dusty grey and in an unorthodox, cuboid shape. When cracked open, the rock held these coffee machines. They had yet to fully map these caves, but as far as they had explored, there was one of these rocks every ten feet or so. The villagers could not emphasise enough to the Man how strange this world was. Nobody understood the origin of the coffee machine pods, how the machines themselves operated without power and how they always produced the best tasting coffee any of them had ever tried. The best answer they could provide was “It’s Magic.” and that was good enough for him. 

The work was also better than his job back home. In the first world he lived in, he was a simple carpet store sales associate. It was dull, uninspiring and frankly dangerously boring. One day, he rolled himself up in a carpet and not one of his coworkers noticed. He laid there for 6 hours, inside a carpet, and did not get called out on it. His new job had a lot more accountability. As it turned out, he was handier with the bone spear he had fashioned than most of the people who found themselves here. He was tasked with serving as a member of the Night Watch. 

At least once a week, the village would be attacked by a horde of brainless monsters. Sometimes, they were simple-minded zombies. Those were easy nights. Poke the brain, the zombie dies. The only real threat there was the carpal tunnel you could get if you didn’t look after your wrists properly. Other nights, they were Walking Wolfbats. They are exactly what the name suggests. That being bats with legs that have wolf heads and tails. What they lacked in brains they made up for in serrated teeth that quickly and easily melted most metallic armours if you let them. As long as you wore your Moonstone armour though, these nights were also simple. Walking Wolfbats are well known for their allergy to Moonstone. 

The scariest nights on the watch were the nights the Saucer Boys would attack. Saucer Boys would come down from the stars every full moon. Full moon’s were difficult to track on Daccipe. Some nights there were three moons, other nights there were no moons. Saucer Boys only came down when there was one moon and it was full. No matter how many losses they suffered on their previous incursion, they would always descend in swarms if the big white circle shone. When he first saw them, he thought it must have been some sort of environmental event. Why wouldn’t this strange new world rain metal discs when the full moon was out? They were not just discs. They would hover three feet above the ground, then the body would form. Their heads were pyramid-like structures, with a single bright-red eye. Green arms and legs in the shape of spaghetti would shoot out of the sides and bottom of the saucer. When they were all out and ready, the saucer boys would begin their charge on the village- each of them materialising what the Man could only describe as ray guns as they ran.

The first night was hell. Despite the village having been there for at least a century, not one person had quite figured out how to deal with the Saucer Boys. They were lucky the full moon wasn’t too common, as without fail the green menaces would come down, wreak havoc and abduct at least one resident. The monsters didn’t kill, but the people wished they did. It was easier to hold a funeral for a dead person and be allowed to mourn, than spend every night sitting outside hoping tonight would be the night they let your loved one come home. Three people were taken that night. As the newbie, the Man was ordered to give the victim’s family the Watch’s letter of condolence.

It was this walk of shame that changed the Man’s life forever. Even more so than when he fell into a world that was not the one he called home. As the door of the abductee’s home swung open, a beauty so divine words couldn’t hope to describe her met the Man’s gaze. After introducing himself, the Woman revealed herself to be the Victim’s sister. She also revealed that the four of them were quadruplets who fell into the world when they were still infants. She suspected they were orphaned before they fell out of Earth, as what sought of loving family takes their eyes off of four new born babies? She also informed the Man that he can take the Watch’s condolences and put them where the sun has not shined in a very, very long time. She wouldn’t take this ‘no hope of their return home’ as an answer and had already decided that she was leaving with the Man to come sign up for the watch herself. If they couldn’t find her brothers themselves, she would do it for them. 

End of the First Part