Under the Rock

Under the rock. 

By Fernanda Prieto

I walk down a little sand mountain, well, not walk, just letting myself fall, so it feels like surfing. Once I am down, I go directly to my favorite spot, a big rock in the middle of all this nothing. When I have finally sat down, and placed my umbrella in the little hole I have cut in the stone with several days of work in the past, and taken out all my snacks and books out of my back pack, I breathe better. I’ll take my diary out of my pocket in a few minutes. I really need it, especially today, I need to have my mind clear, know what my next move is going to be. But at least finally alone…without all that yelling and… What? The rock. It moved. Briefly. No…It didn’t. Did it? Was it an earthquake? 

“I can't move it, It’s stuck!” A voice murmured, being slightly silenced by… a wall? But there aren’t any walls here, and yet, that's how it sounded. Like a thick iron wall, possibly this sand it’s the densest wall of all, killing anything underneath.

Did I forget to leave my phone at home? That stupid thing shouldn’t be here! Shit, I have to turn it off now! Break it even. Maybe I forgot to pull it out of my pocket. How could I have forgotten something like that?! They are gonna find me! Perhaps when I felt the rock move, it was actually  my phone buzzing nearby me, maybe it was pressed against something and a random video it’s just rolling.

“What do you mean you can’t move it?!” An angry and worried voice yelled. 

“I can’t! It’s so much heavier than the last time!” The first voice replied. Both girl’s voices.

I search under the pile of snacks and books. No phone around, anywhere. I jumped off the rock, maybe it fell. Please don’t get lost in the sand. 

“Let me” The other woman demanded, probably much older  than the other. She sounded determined but still scared somehow “See! You are just too lazy! Like this you are not going to survive too long.” The voice was easier to hear every time, more vivid, and less killed by what sounded like a barrier, like if my phone had pulled itself out of the sand.

“I’m not lazy! It really was stocked, I loosened it for you, that’s all”

The sand moved slightly behind my feet. Weird, but bingo! It must be there! A metallic sound accompanied it, like if an old door screaming for help had just opened. 

“Yes, you are…” The voice fainted away, as if it had suddenly forgotten how to use it, as I turned around I felt like I also forgot how to use mine. At first I just saw how the rock had fallen back, like if it were even possible , like a trapdoor. Opened like a door on the floor. Like a basement door, and then… then… Four shiny dark eyes, but not identical, and if it could be even weirder, the two women seemed to have their bodies attached to each other. Attached by the neck. They reminded me of the weird cases of unified twins, except these two weren’t physically similar at all… Actually They had thread, and reddish skin in the middle of… For God's sake! The middle of what probably once were their shoulders. You couldn't see where the white skin of one ended for the dark skin of the other to begin.  They were attached on purpose! Not born together! It was recently, maybe two or three months ago. I could see the wound spread under  their old and unwearable t-shirt.  

“Daisy, Marie!” a man’s playful and devilish voice sang  from the inside.

The white girl woke up from the dream that the three of us seemed to have, and loudly whispered “Inside!” right before taking my hand and pulling me inside the hole with them. She is unrealistically strong, but what’s realistic about all of this?  

Once I hit against the floor, deeper than what I had imagined, I groan, even scream because when they both move me and hide me behind a wall I feel as if one of my hand bones had just broken. But one of them instantly shuts me up with one hand pressed against my mouth. When I finally have the chance to look around and see where I am, I already feel like I don’t want to spend another second down here. It’s too dark but I can see how rotten the walls are. The air seems to be nonexistent, but it's there, rotten too. You could even smell the blood and the sweat in the air, breaking into your skin, like a burn. I feel two warm breaths on my neck, and that’s the last thing I need to panic, and start feeling frightened tears form inside my eyes. I scream this time on purpose, I’m not even sure of what I said, I only want to be heard. But her hand tightens against my mouth. 

“Trust me, you don’t want to do that” One of them said, the one that pulled me in I believe.  

I tried to breathe properly, to think properly, but failed again. No time to think anyway. The only light comes from the hallway to my left, the light is weak, but it is enough to create shadow figures, formed on the floor in front of me. I see the shadow of a man, the tallest I have ever seen in my entire life. Some areas of his body were extremely thin, and others on the contrary, strong, such as his arms and legs, but his torso and fingers were definitely the thinnest and longest.  I could see his nails, so slim that they looked like needles, and probably they were. 

“Oh” I could almost imagine his grin “What is this?! This shouldn’t be here!” He sounded pleased for some reason.  He walked past us, right in front of the door in the sealing  where  I was pulled in just a few seconds ago. He knelt  in front of… my protein bar! “I haven’t seen one of these in decades!” he exclaimed with excitement, like a child, and made everything even scarier. How is it possible for a man of nine feet to have a child’s voice? And to make his appearance even worse, when I detailed him, I discovered that his slim body parts were white, and the strong and thick ones black. You might think he has vitiligo, but yet again there was thread in what split every part. Even a couple of his fingers were black. The middle ones.

He turned around as if he felt perfectly comfortable in his own skin, like the kind of person that is proud of who he is “Oh, and THAT is definitely not suppose to be THERE  at all” his teeth were yellow, and his tone sinic“But it’s good that you are here” he tells them, talks to the them like if i weren’t here, as if I were a simple object “You will look very well among my collection” he hum “Oh I mean, the community”his smile grows and and my fear does too, now, I can’t even move. I am only capable of watching him come in my direction. He moves slowly, but with his skinny and long legs it only takes him to steps to be so close to me, that I can now feel three different breaths on my skin. His is so cold that burns. 

“We are sorry, but this is the only way he doesn’t kill us, or worse, punish us” the other girl talked, almost crying. 

“Exactly, my dear and beloved daughter” It whispered, making me shiver. 

He lifts his  hand towards my face, I can see the threads shining close to my neck, but I am still frozen. I feel how he buries one of his threads in the middle of my neck. I don’t make a sound despite the fear, because I can,t take my eyes off his. He is happy, and what scares me the most is that I can see somehow through the shine of excitement in his eyes what he is going to do to me. 

Then, I fall asleep, just to wake up tied up in a chair, behind a crystal, monsters or maybe humans walking in front of me, in what seems to be an old, blue and gray  underground city. I was in the middle of two bodies, bodies that once were proper bodies like mine… And to think about  a couple of hours ago I just wanted to escape from all my problems, and look at what I found. 

When I woke up I almost had a heart attack. The two girls from before were watching me from less than a feet of distance. 

“I’m Marie, and she is Daisy” the girl of color said “I feel just like you do… All I want all the time is to go away, escape the horrors of our daily lives… Well, you even saw us try. We were so close to make it… that when I find myself back again in the same place, because of you, i was so furious i thought you deserve it, that the least you could get to pay what you did to us was to lose your pretty face and be as disgusting as us, but now i know we  are just about the same somehow… I don’t know, I guess your diary touched my already forgotten heart. I thought all emotions other than hate were dead in me, but no… you remind me of who i was… and, well, at the and we both want the same, we just want to fly away… 

I cried while I heard her talk. 

“Do you think we can start over somewhere else?” she cried too, I could see that whatever I say, could either build her up, or destroy her… And like the dreamer I genuinely am,  I believed they both could.

“If you manage to survive this long, I'm sure you could do anything” I replied with the best smile I could muster. 

They nodded, twinkel, sobbed in tears of relief, and ran to untie me all at the same time. The moment I was free, I jumped off the chair wanting to run as fast as I could, but when I looked at my feet I couldn't even breathe, my heart stopped and my pressure went down. I sat down again. Not a single thought crossed my mind, my body reacted by itself, and started breathing, but faster and shorter than I’ve ever done, but I still felt like I couldn’t . 

I didn't have feet, I had hands instead. Not my hand, I still had those. These were someone else’s. Wait! The guy next to me has feet instead of hands. “My feed! That gay has my feet! And I have his hand!” I forgot about whispering.

“Hey, silence” Daisy said. 

“He has my feet!” I whispered this time in between my efforts to breathe. 

“Yeah, and he was just starting darling, you’ll have to walk like this,” Daisy replied. 

“We have to take him with us,” I begged.  

“He doesn’t want to…” Marie said with shame “I tried to convince him to come with us, but in the end he was too scared to leave, he couldn’t see beyond what our father told us our whole lives. Trust me, he won’t come”

“I want my feet back!” I demanded. 

“Well, I have to chop it off, and put it inside a bag filled with ice.” They turned around and walked to the back.  I turned my head and tried to see but it’s so dark  I couldn't.  A few seconds later they come back with a saw. My eyes open wide. 

“Don’t worry, it’s not for you. Yet” Daisy said with a tiny drop of fun. 

Marie holds his pale arm while the other Daisy moves her hand firmly, she doesn’t shake or hesitates a second, but I still don’t believe I will ever have them back. Five minutes later the bag it’s filled with blood, iced and my barely visible feet. They both help me to stand up. I try to walk, but it’s impossible, the hands don’t respond but ironically hurt like hell. I fell and slipped on the blood from the man beside me. 

“I can’t walk, They don’t respond!” I hid them. 

“The hell you can’t” A voice in the back said, I couldn't see him, but I didn’t need to, I could perfectly see his image in my mind. I don’t think I’m ever going to forget him. “That’s why I’m designing you like this, just so you never leave” I can hear how he steps closer “But don’t worry, I’m not going to touch your face, I could never dare to do such a thing, you are the prettiest one in my collection. You are my new muse, I can’t explain why, I haven’t had a muse like you since my daughter was born. She gave me so many Ideas, but I didn't touch her a single hair until I was sure” the desire in his voice made me want to puke “Oh, she looked so happy playing with her best friend. Daisy, do you remember those days? I just didn’t want her to ever be alone, and Oh!” he moaned “Now look at them! They can’t live without each other! Their souls are united, they are one, just like always, but now they are both pure art, they are gorgeous! And I will do the same to you…” Another step. I could see his feet, he had shiny black booths. I also could see his face, dark, but his yellow smile looked like one of those lights you can’t look at. “You are meant to be pure art…” he whispered. 

“Don’t you want to be art too!?” Daisy asked, clenching the fist. 

He wrinkled his brow “ what do you mean if i want to be art too? I am art, don’t you see? Don’t you see your father in me?!” he yelled and gave a stride in their direction. 

She was already hipped but when he said that I saw something shift in her. She wanted blood. His blood “You copied us! you wanted to be as beautiful as us, but you failed, it’s not original! YOU ARE A FREUD! YOU HEAR ME!? A FREUD!

I don’t understand why, but I saw how that made him sorrowful. She saw it too, and she used it in her favor. “But don’t worry, I know how to fix that, I learned from the best” they winked and took a step closer, both looking at him with fake love, hiding the saw behind their back.

“How?” he asked with illusion. 

“It’s a very tiny detail, but it’s going to make a huge difference, close your eyes daddy, trust in us” They whispered, now close to his face. 

He closed his eyes, and in about three seconds, the nightmare was over. They cut his throat. He died with a smile.

 They carried me up, and all kinds of creatures escaped from down  there. We all went together away, started over again.Became each other's family. It was hard, especially for them, but we did it. I got new feet, robotic feet. I found myself liking more being with them, with what the society felt were monsters. They are wrong. We are better. I found myself in them.

 I felt disgusted when I realized that he was right when he said I belonged with them, and even more when I discovered that the way they look has to do everything with their souls, and I couldn't help but to wonder, what would I have looked like.? What did he see in me? 

I felt scared to know that probably, he would have been right.