Quantum's Toll

The superstitious people of Jitter Hills blame the unexplained disappearances on a local myth known as Quantum’s Toll.

Of the sixty thousand people to have ever lived here, over a thousand have gone missing. Every year in school, at least one student cannot be accounted for and it’s the buzz of the semester. Freshman year, it was Juno Smith, our class vice president. Sophomore year, it was Diana Brown from the Archery Team. Junior year, it was Vesta Schwarz who shared a home with three foster kids. I've wondered who the unlucky duck would be our upcoming senior year, but I wouldn't dare bring it up.

Stephen was the only person I knew who liked to debunk these missing person cases. Most people at school were put off by it, but they also didn't question his logic and investigative skills. Given that he was already taking part in university research and completed high school when he was sixteen, nobody wanted to doubt the Jitter Hills Genius.

I honestly didn't know how he could stand hanging around such a small town of anxious people.

"Hey!"

Minerva laughed as Stephen fell promptly on his behind, getting his jeans covered in dirt. He pushed himself up, dusted off his pants, and straightened his collar.

"Clean enough, pretty boy?" She taunted. "Maybe you should've thought twice about wearing a polo in the woods."

"Nobody informed me that we would even be in the woods."

We continued down the old, beaten path, the two of them bickering back and forth until a particular seclusion greeted us. It brought a sudden halt to their squabble, and I could see a shift in Minerva’s train of thought.

"You know," She chirped, a mischievous smirk on her face. "We're almost to Quantum's Toll."

Stephen rolled his eyes. "Don't even start."

"Do you really think there's nothing to it?" I asked, glancing over at Minerva.

"I think it's a sub-par myth that is supposed to ease gullible people. I mean, do you really believe that Diana would've come anywhere near this place?"

"Anything is possible."

"Milly, Diana was an obnoxious germophobe. I'm sure the thought of her even stepping foot outside her backyard made her hyperventilate."

Minerva snorted, nearly tripping over a tree root.

"The only reason that myth even started was because grandmothers didn't want their grandkids to mess with that bridge and the poisonous plants around it."

"Oh my god," Minerva widened her eyes comically. "I'm so scared of poison ivy."

Along the edge of the path, large bushes with white, trumpet-shaped blossoms hanging from green branches began to surround us. I was tempted to grab a handful of the seeds to bring home to my mother. During the summer she was always busy with her garden, meticulously crafting bouquets to sell on the side or decorate the house with. She would find these lovely.

"It's too dry here to even grow anything poisonous." Minerva added.

"I'd beg to-"

"Hey, Milly," She nudged me in the arm, pointing to the flowers around us. "I dare you to eat one of those."

"Minerva, that's really not-"

I grabbed one of the soft blossoms and popped it into my mouth without a second thought. I had no time to taste it before I felt it drag down the back of my throat.

"Do you even know what plant that was?" Stephen asked, eyeing the bushes around us.

"Pfft, no. That's your job." Minerva retorted.

    "My specialty is physics, not botany."

    "Well," I piped, looking at the two of them. "Since I haven't thrown up, swollen up, or died yet, I'd say that we're probably in the clear.”

    "You've given it two minutes. For all we know it could take an hour before you feel anything."

    "I think," Minerva cackled, peeking around a tree. "Your little theory is false. If Milly doesn't get poisoned, then everything about Quantum's Toll is true."

    "Then that means, theoretically, Milly could go missing."

    "She has to walk under the bridge first."

    We continued down the path, more of the hanging blossoms surrounding us. Eventually, it widened into a clearing where a little river passed through, and hanging over it was a rotting wooden bridge. From the side, you could see the shoreline extend from the base of the bridge to the creek.

"You good?" Stephen placed a cold hand against my forehead. "You're all flushed.

"I feel fine."

"Hey, you guys!"

Minerva called us over to the middle of the bridge. Walking onto the soft wood, I could've sworn I felt the slightest sway in the structure. I didn’t dare ask Stephen how old this thing was.

"We should get off," Stephen tried to grab Minerva by the wrist. "This thing is ready to collapse underneath us."

She rolled her eyes. "Let me have a minute."

He sighed, and reluctantly let her go so she could satisfy her own curiosity. We stared at the calm water running beneath the bridge, and within moments even Stephen joined us.

A minute later, I piped, "I wanna look at the water up close."

    "Don't walk under the bridge."

    "It's a myth, nothing is going to happen."

    "How do you know?"

    "It's called logic and probability. You should try it sometime, dumbass."

Before they could continue to bicker, I was already off the left side of the bridge and climbing down the earthy slope to the shore of the creek, gazing into the water. I could see little schools of minnows swimming down the stream and water bugs skittering back and forth. Then, just beneath the surface, I spotted the biggest frog I had ever seen.

"Holy shit." I mumbled, without realizing it. The frog darted away to my right.

Nearly stumbling over stones and wet dirt, I kept reaching over to grab it before it could jump another sharp angle. My skin felt so hot, and I could still hear Minerva and Stephen loudly-

I blinked, and the frog was nowhere to be found. I looked around the still creek. It seemed that I had lost it.

"Minerva, Stephen! I almost caught-"

    I looked over to the top of the bridge behind me, but there was nobody there. In fact, the entire forest had gone eerily silent.

    "Minerva?" I turned around. Nothing met me but the still black spruce and utter silence. "Stephen?"

How did I not hear them run off?

    "Okay you guys," My skin was getting sweaty and burned under the garish sunlight. My head was spinning, fear running through me in a painful rush. "This isn't funny anymore."

    I climbed up so I was level with the bridge, but it was completely empty. I looked over the other side, and they weren't there.

    "Minerva!" I screamed. My vision was swimming, sockets burning. "Stephen! Come out!"

    My voice carried through the wood, echoed, and died.

I ran through the woods frantically, senses alert for any sound or movement that wasn't mine.

Did someone take them?

I feared that was the case, but it didn't make sense. There were two of them, I would've heard a struggle.

The back of my neck prickled with fear, my brain trying to make me believe that someone or something was following with malicious intent. A greater fear lurked, however - that there wasn't anyone or anything at all in the first place.

Jitter Hills was normally a quiet town, but it was utterly sterile. Everything was left in a state as if they were waiting for their owners to return. The juniors' pickup trucks were left parked horrendously, but their engines were off, and nobody was drinking stolen beer on the tailgates. Bicycles were abandoned, chained and resting on dented metal racks. Stores that should've been bustling with locals were only full of stocked products and the establishments' harsh indoor lighting.

I wanted to keep beating down doors and shouting for help, but nothing dared to move a single molecule from place. Everything was void of the flow and movement of life. It was like disturbing a perfectly constructed model that was never meant to be touched.

I then forced myself to give up searching.

    The neighborhood that I was used to seeing lively with elementary kids running around was now empty. The rows of identical houses seemingly stretched on forever into the horizon. I dared to walk down my street to find the city borders so I could find my way to the highway and walk to the next town.

What I found was much worse.

    Where my street should've ended - I would know, my babysitter used to live on the last house, her address number being 7325 - was only continued with more and more houses eerily identical to the last. However, anything beyond 7325 had address numbers like 0000, 0001, 0002, and so on. It was like I reached the end of the code, and the system referred to a last resort spawning pattern for the uncharted space.

I kicked down the door of house 0000 and found nothing inside. The house was a shell with only the proper curves of hallways and walls. I remember my house looking like this when we first moved in when I was five, but it didn't feel nearly this empty. At least when we moved in, it felt habitable. This house felt wrong and barren and as inhabitable as a faraway planet. No - it was far worse. A level of inhabitability that my human mind wouldn't wrap itself around.

The sun doesn't move.

        Am I going crazy?

        I've been up for several hours at the very least. It takes an hour to walk from Quantum's Toll to my house, and I had spent a long time searching in the downtown area. Clocks claimed that time was passing, but it seemed meaningless when the space around didn't agree.

I wrote down the times that I saw on the clock to keep myself in check. The time was moving in the direction it was supposed to, but no moon or stars appeared when the time hit past midnight. And the weather didn't change either.

It remained scorching hot outside, the sun beating down on Jitter Hills mercilessly from it's peak in the blue sky. Nothing indicated change, or any rest from this glaring summer heat. Not even a cloud passed by, or a gust of wind trying to knock me off my feet.

I'm not going crazy. I'm not going crazy.

    But this couldn't be happening, but it was, and I had no way to get out.

    This wasn't reality. It couldn't be.

    I was somewhere that I should not have ever known about in the first place. It was worse than the Bad Place.

    It was a place for the leftovers. For paradoxes, misplacements, and breaks in reality to run off on their existential codes as they pleased until they hit the end of their irrational behaviors.

It was a place tucked away for the human mind to never see because we are not supposed to.

    It was a gap in the wall, the unused room in the house, the attic space. Something that is meant to remain ignored, undisturbed, and forgotten.

I had walked down my street again to see how far I could go, and I saw the Edge.

    I cannot describe it, but I knew it was there. In my subconscious, it forced me to stop moving forward. The street continued forever, but I grew gravely sick at the idea of continuing down the road. I turned around and went back to my address.

I'm not going crazy.

The world is alive around me.

    Colors, texture, shapes, all morphing and breathing like I'm trapped within the stomach of God. My head lulled from side to side, trying to make sense of my surroundings.

    Walls don't breathe.

    Words felt like cotton in my mouth. My mind drifted back and forth from proper consciousness, but deep down I knew that I needed to get myself straight.

    Floors don't breathe.

    I tried to grip the edges of my lounge chair and pull myself up, but my muscles had been reduced to jelly. Any movement felt impossible.

Colors don’t breathe.

And then the phone rang.

A break in the silence. It was so sudden it felt like the atmosphere had shattered upon itself.

The telephone was on the table, lighting up and vibrating across the smooth wood surface. 

    I picked it up. I pushed the answer button.

    "Hello?"

    The most subtle pass of air through my mouth and into the room halted with a gasp not too far from me.

    A woman stood three feet from me, holding a phone in one hand and a bouquet of white, trumpet-shaped flowers in the other.

    The phone was then on the floor.

And the air grew still once more.

I checked the date displayed on the phone’s lock screen.

Funny.

I don’t remember who went missing my senior year.