POST HOLLOW SYNDROME
Chapter 3- Abyss
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"Mira! Hey Mira!"
Mira turned around. A short, dark-haired freshman approached her, huffing and puffing. He waved a notebook around above his head. Another cub reporter hoping for a scoop about the Hollow, Mira knew, turning back to her locker. "I've said everything and plus some on the local news this past week," she told the younger teen. "You're not going to get anything new out of me."
"Not even a comment about your unrequited, burning passion for..."
"No," Mira emphasized.
"Oh, come on," whined the freshman. "Everyone knows about it."
"I don't care if Santa's elves know about it. It was a silly schoolgirl crush. Nothing more."
The kid steamed away, muttering under his breath. Mira shook her head. She knew she could humor him, but she was so tired of having countless interviewers ask her countless variants of the exact same questions that she had grown bored of the subject of the Hollow. Everything she could say about it had been said a thousand times over. She'd formed scripts in her mind regarding every Hollow-related topic imaginable. Even the kiss, which she'd long since gotten over.
She closed her locker and began to head down the hallway to her next class. Even a week after the Hollow, and a week into the school year, she could still see people looking at her. She could hear them talking about her as she passed. And it made her uncomfortable. She knew why they were talking, and she didn't want to talk to any of them about it.
She spotted a head of russet hair in the crowd, and heard the squeaky voice attached to it blabbering on, a small group of other teens all ears around him. "So the tree vanished from under my feet and I found myself falling down into this huge canyon. I was scared at first, but then I remembered... oh yeah. Fire powers, duh!"
Well. At least it seemed like Kai hadn't gotten tired of bragging about his exploits.
Mira entered the classroom. Adam was already there, fishing his textbooks out of his bookbag. He didn't seem to notice Mira until she sat down in the desk next to his. Mira smiled and folded her hands. "Hey."
Adam smiled back. "Hey," he echoed. "Ready for the first quiz of the year?"
"As I'll ever be," sighed Mira. She'd spent her evening cramming for the quiz that she'd known about since the beginning of the week. Last night was the first time she'd had free from interviewers all week, and she'd snatched up the opportunity. "I don't feel ready."
"You'll do your best, I'm sure," said Adam. "I'm sure Miss Glade will understand if you don't do as well. If you've been anywhere near as busy as I've been, which I'm sure you were." He yawned. "I studied 'till one last night so all that work'd better pay off."
A quizzical smile crossed Mira's lips. "Adam? Don't tell me a straight-A student is nervous about a little quiz."
"That's... why I'm nervous," Adam confessed. He rested his face between his palms.
Mira touched his desk reassuringly. "Relax; you'll do fine! Besides, it's Friday. Once this day is out of the way, we can all sleep in."
"Provided no-one calls in for an interview at 6:00 AM," Adam muttered. "Not that I don't like talking about the Hollow or anything, but..."
"Oh, I'm sick of it," Mira sighed.
Adam seemed surprised, that eyebrow of his shooting upward. "Whoah. Really?"
"Yeah. All these interviews. They've kind of... stolen my enthusiasm."
"Oh. Fair enough." He scratched the back of his head. "Personally, I can't get it off my mind. And it's not as if I can talk about it with my family. My mom was a hardcore skeptic of the Hollow when it was first announced and she nearly lost it when she found out I'd applied to play." He chuckled dryly. "She'd gotten better when it didn't affect me, but after the whole corruption thing... yeah."
"You'll have to let it go eventually," said Mira. "But until then I'm sure you can have all the conversations you want about it with Kai."
Both teens looked out the classroom door, where the sophomore was scrambling to get his stuff together for his own next class before the late bell rang. He had crammed an assortment of thick books and looseleaf papers into his arms, most which he didn't need for his class, and a power bar hung sideways from his mouth. He very nearly tripped on his own shoelaces as he ran off to class.
Adam laughed softly. "I dunno. Looks like even Kai's getting back into his normal routines."
The bell rang for class to begin. Mira turned around in her seat to face the front, but sent her friend an encouraging smile. "Like I said, it's Friday. You'll be able to sleep it off tonight."
Adam turned his attention to Miss Glade as she stood up to make her announcements. "I hope so," he murmured.
Adam pulled his backpack further over his shoulders. He was on his way to a study hall he shared with both Mira and Kai. Oddly, he hadn't seen either of them since lunch. He figured they'd each show up eventually, but something inside him kept nagging at him. Telling him that they never would. That something had happened to his team and he needed to search for them.
Adam opened the door for his usual study hall--- room number 3. But instead of the door leading to the usual dull classroom, a broad, dark tunnel stretched out before him. He felt disoriented and pinched his temple. If his friends were in there, he needed to find them.
Wait... he recognized this tunnel! Dave the fake blind old man lived here. Was he... could Kai have been right after all? Were they still in the game? Then maybe Mira and Kai were with Dave for some reason. They had to be there if they really were still in the game. Besides... maybe the old man knew something about this.
Adam stepped inside, taking care to leave the door cracked open. He didn't want to risk being stuck in here--- and besides, he needed a light source.
"Dave? Dave, are you here?" Adam received nothing in return, save his voice echoing down the corridor. He continued through, calling out to his friends and to Dave, to no avail.
What if those witches got them? he thought. Alarm rose up within him. Whatever the case was, he had to move fast. He picked up his pace and moved deeper into the dark tunnels, continuing to call the names of those for whom he searched.
After walking far beyond the parted door, the teen took a detour into a passageway darker than any of the others he'd passed through thus far. He took a cautious step deeper inside, then another and another, as if compelled to do so by some force. He walked further down the dingy passage. It was haunting how still and quiet it was, aside from his footsteps, his breath, and a gentle dripping.
Adam found he had a flashlight in his bookbag--- funny, he didn't remember putting it there--- and flicked the switch. He shone the beam all around, in search of the source of the steady drip, drip, drip in the otherwise dry tunnel system.
Sure enough, he found the puddle--- a small pool of greenish liquid. Adam bent down onto one knee to get a closer look. He touched it and recoiled in disgust, scrambling to wipe the slimy substance off his finger onto his shirt. Whatever this was, it was NOT water.
A larger object that clattered onto the floor from above sent Adam flying backwards onto his bottom with a yelp. He shined the flashlight back onto the puddle. To his shock, it was a pair of glasses--- Dave's sunglasses.
Adam gulped, fearing the worst. He slowly turned the beam up toward the ceiling. Two shiny, bulging eyes peered down from above. Scaly green skin covered the face and green goo dripped from its jaws. The alien creature screeched at Adam.
The boy scrambled to his feet with a shout and took off running. He darted back out of that tunnel and sped down the first passageway he saw. The creature was in pursuit--- He could hear it behind him, its claws scraping the concrete floor. It was a terrible sound reminiscent of the way Adam's fifth grade teacher used to scrape her overgrown fingernails across the classroom wall when she got angry. Maybe this creature was related to her somehow. She was every bit as terrifying, that was for sure!
Adam sped around a corner and ducked into yet another tunnel. The alien was falling behind, perhaps slowed by its recent meal--- but that was no reason to slow down. Adam's athleticism had returned to him. He felt the strength running through his entire body, providing his legs with the power to thrust his strides forward like never before. He was grateful to have not tired yet, or he may have become the monster's next meal by now.
He breathed a sigh of intense relief after he rounded a corner and saw the big wooden doors waiting at the end. Finally, a way out! Adam skidded to a stop, yanked the door open, and threw himself outside. He was quick to slam the door in the creature's face before it could escape. He could hear it screeching and scratching the door. Adam bolted into the jungle, not wanting to know what would happen to him if it managed to claw its way out of there. He didn't even want to know how it had gotten into that area of the game to begin with--- unless the game had degraded to that point since he had been here last.
He had to find his friends fast, before they met a similar fate to Dave's. Or something worse.
Adam slowed his pace to a walk once he'd made significant progress into the jungle. He had found the foliage had become bizarrely dense and overcrowded, as if extra plants had spawned everywhere and remained. As he stepped over a large tree trunk, a branch appeared and knocked him down to the ground--- only instead of landing there, he just kept falling. And falling. And falling.
Had he glitched through the floor? When would this end?
Right on cue with that thought, Adam landed with a grunt onto a hard, flat surface that had no discernible texture. The air had no smell and it was perfectly silent. When Adam sat up, he saw... nothing. The floor and the sky were bottomless pits of the blackest shade of black Adam had ever seen. Yet he was illuminated with a sterile light, as if the source of the light was his own body. His light, however, did not reflect against the surface of the ground.
As if he was the only thing that truly existed here.
"Hello?" he shouted. Nonesomuch as even an echo came back to him. Still, he could hear his voice--- so he had to be... somewhere. As strange as it felt to think this again, Adam had to wonder... was he really dead now? Was this abyss some sort of hologame purgatory?
"Help!" cried a female voice from the distance. He couldn't pinpoint where it had come from, but Adam's heart leaped for joy when he heard it.
"Mira?" he called.
"Adam, help!" It was Kai this time.
Adam began to run. "Mira! Kai! Where are you guys?"
"Help us!"
Adam stopped, chest heaving in fear. "I can't help if I can't even find you guys!" Wait... help!
"Help please!" Adam called. He waited. He watched. The weird guy did not appear. The cries from his friends continued, their pitiful cries deepening his feeling of helplessness. "I'll try to find you!" he shouted. "Just give me a direction! A sign! Anything!"
"Help us, Adam!"
"HEEEEEEEEEELLLP!"
Adam growled and fell to his knees, clutching his head with both hands. "I'M TRYING!" he roared. "Help! Please!"
A figure glitched and eventually flickered to life before him. Adam looked up. "Thank goodness it's you..." he heaved.
The weird guy smiled. "Who were you expecting? The teacher from the black lagoon?" He cackled as if he wasn't standing in an abyssal plane of nothingness.
"Mr. Gage... Weirdy... I need to find my friends and get out of here. Why are we still in the game?"
Weirdy clicked his tongue. "So many demands! But, that aside..." The weird guy's teeth glinted. "You really shouldn't be here, Adam. This part's off-limits."
"I got here by accident. The game glitched and I fell through the floor. Please. I really need to know how to get us all out."
"There is no way out."
Adam blinked. "What?"
"You heard me. You've fallen out of bounds. There is no way back from here."
Adam heard Mira and Kai calling out to him from the Abyss. His heart began to beat faster as his frustration level rose even higher. "Well then give us one of your portals!" he begged.
"All three of you? No can do. You all have to be together for that to work."
Adam growled. "Then... send me to where they are! Then we can find a way out together."
The guy shook his head. "Like it or not, kid, there's only one way out for you."
"What? What is it? Show me!"
Adam was desperate--- desperate for anything that could help. He'd hoped that calling the weird guy would be his deliverance. But the eccentric gamester's swaggering grin held something darker, reminding Adam of a line from Shakespeare's Macbeth. There were indeed daggers in this man's smile, and he was not about to give the teen a chance to take his request back.
The man lifted both hands as if he were raising something up from the ground. The floor began to tremble. Adam looked down. A crack now expanded between his feet, revealing an undulating green mass beneath the floor.
Adam stumbled backward, hearing the weird guy laugh like the maniac he was. He glared up at Weirdy, eyes hard as flint. "Is that what you call help?" he shouted. The man flickered and vanished without an answer.
As more cracks appeared in both the ground and the sky, Adam fell to his knees. He could do nothing. He'd failed his only friends. He'd failed himself. And worst of all... he was going to die alone.
There was nothing he could do now but wait for the corruption to swallow him whole.
Mira turned around. A short, dark-haired freshman approached her, huffing and puffing. He waved a notebook around above his head. Another cub reporter hoping for a scoop about the Hollow, Mira knew, turning back to her locker. "I've said everything and plus some on the local news this past week," she told the younger teen. "You're not going to get anything new out of me."
"Not even a comment about your unrequited, burning passion for..."
"No," Mira emphasized.
"Oh, come on," whined the freshman. "Everyone knows about it."
"I don't care if Santa's elves know about it. It was a silly schoolgirl crush. Nothing more."
The kid steamed away, muttering under his breath. Mira shook her head. She knew she could humor him, but she was so tired of having countless interviewers ask her countless variants of the exact same questions that she had grown bored of the subject of the Hollow. Everything she could say about it had been said a thousand times over. She'd formed scripts in her mind regarding every Hollow-related topic imaginable. Even the kiss, which she'd long since gotten over.
She closed her locker and began to head down the hallway to her next class. Even a week after the Hollow, and a week into the school year, she could still see people looking at her. She could hear them talking about her as she passed. And it made her uncomfortable. She knew why they were talking, and she didn't want to talk to any of them about it.
She spotted a head of russet hair in the crowd, and heard the squeaky voice attached to it blabbering on, a small group of other teens all ears around him. "So the tree vanished from under my feet and I found myself falling down into this huge canyon. I was scared at first, but then I remembered... oh yeah. Fire powers, duh!"
Well. At least it seemed like Kai hadn't gotten tired of bragging about his exploits.
Mira entered the classroom. Adam was already there, fishing his textbooks out of his bookbag. He didn't seem to notice Mira until she sat down in the desk next to his. Mira smiled and folded her hands. "Hey."
Adam smiled back. "Hey," he echoed. "Ready for the first quiz of the year?"
"As I'll ever be," sighed Mira. She'd spent her evening cramming for the quiz that she'd known about since the beginning of the week. Last night was the first time she'd had free from interviewers all week, and she'd snatched up the opportunity. "I don't feel ready."
"You'll do your best, I'm sure," said Adam. "I'm sure Miss Glade will understand if you don't do as well. If you've been anywhere near as busy as I've been, which I'm sure you were." He yawned. "I studied 'till one last night so all that work'd better pay off."
A quizzical smile crossed Mira's lips. "Adam? Don't tell me a straight-A student is nervous about a little quiz."
"That's... why I'm nervous," Adam confessed. He rested his face between his palms.
Mira touched his desk reassuringly. "Relax; you'll do fine! Besides, it's Friday. Once this day is out of the way, we can all sleep in."
"Provided no-one calls in for an interview at 6:00 AM," Adam muttered. "Not that I don't like talking about the Hollow or anything, but..."
"Oh, I'm sick of it," Mira sighed.
Adam seemed surprised, that eyebrow of his shooting upward. "Whoah. Really?"
"Yeah. All these interviews. They've kind of... stolen my enthusiasm."
"Oh. Fair enough." He scratched the back of his head. "Personally, I can't get it off my mind. And it's not as if I can talk about it with my family. My mom was a hardcore skeptic of the Hollow when it was first announced and she nearly lost it when she found out I'd applied to play." He chuckled dryly. "She'd gotten better when it didn't affect me, but after the whole corruption thing... yeah."
"You'll have to let it go eventually," said Mira. "But until then I'm sure you can have all the conversations you want about it with Kai."
Both teens looked out the classroom door, where the sophomore was scrambling to get his stuff together for his own next class before the late bell rang. He had crammed an assortment of thick books and looseleaf papers into his arms, most which he didn't need for his class, and a power bar hung sideways from his mouth. He very nearly tripped on his own shoelaces as he ran off to class.
Adam laughed softly. "I dunno. Looks like even Kai's getting back into his normal routines."
The bell rang for class to begin. Mira turned around in her seat to face the front, but sent her friend an encouraging smile. "Like I said, it's Friday. You'll be able to sleep it off tonight."
Adam turned his attention to Miss Glade as she stood up to make her announcements. "I hope so," he murmured.
Adam pulled his backpack further over his shoulders. He was on his way to a study hall he shared with both Mira and Kai. Oddly, he hadn't seen either of them since lunch. He figured they'd each show up eventually, but something inside him kept nagging at him. Telling him that they never would. That something had happened to his team and he needed to search for them.
Adam opened the door for his usual study hall--- room number 3. But instead of the door leading to the usual dull classroom, a broad, dark tunnel stretched out before him. He felt disoriented and pinched his temple. If his friends were in there, he needed to find them.
Wait... he recognized this tunnel! Dave the fake blind old man lived here. Was he... could Kai have been right after all? Were they still in the game? Then maybe Mira and Kai were with Dave for some reason. They had to be there if they really were still in the game. Besides... maybe the old man knew something about this.
Adam stepped inside, taking care to leave the door cracked open. He didn't want to risk being stuck in here--- and besides, he needed a light source.
"Dave? Dave, are you here?" Adam received nothing in return, save his voice echoing down the corridor. He continued through, calling out to his friends and to Dave, to no avail.
What if those witches got them? he thought. Alarm rose up within him. Whatever the case was, he had to move fast. He picked up his pace and moved deeper into the dark tunnels, continuing to call the names of those for whom he searched.
After walking far beyond the parted door, the teen took a detour into a passageway darker than any of the others he'd passed through thus far. He took a cautious step deeper inside, then another and another, as if compelled to do so by some force. He walked further down the dingy passage. It was haunting how still and quiet it was, aside from his footsteps, his breath, and a gentle dripping.
Adam found he had a flashlight in his bookbag--- funny, he didn't remember putting it there--- and flicked the switch. He shone the beam all around, in search of the source of the steady drip, drip, drip in the otherwise dry tunnel system.
Sure enough, he found the puddle--- a small pool of greenish liquid. Adam bent down onto one knee to get a closer look. He touched it and recoiled in disgust, scrambling to wipe the slimy substance off his finger onto his shirt. Whatever this was, it was NOT water.
A larger object that clattered onto the floor from above sent Adam flying backwards onto his bottom with a yelp. He shined the flashlight back onto the puddle. To his shock, it was a pair of glasses--- Dave's sunglasses.
Adam gulped, fearing the worst. He slowly turned the beam up toward the ceiling. Two shiny, bulging eyes peered down from above. Scaly green skin covered the face and green goo dripped from its jaws. The alien creature screeched at Adam.
The boy scrambled to his feet with a shout and took off running. He darted back out of that tunnel and sped down the first passageway he saw. The creature was in pursuit--- He could hear it behind him, its claws scraping the concrete floor. It was a terrible sound reminiscent of the way Adam's fifth grade teacher used to scrape her overgrown fingernails across the classroom wall when she got angry. Maybe this creature was related to her somehow. She was every bit as terrifying, that was for sure!
Adam sped around a corner and ducked into yet another tunnel. The alien was falling behind, perhaps slowed by its recent meal--- but that was no reason to slow down. Adam's athleticism had returned to him. He felt the strength running through his entire body, providing his legs with the power to thrust his strides forward like never before. He was grateful to have not tired yet, or he may have become the monster's next meal by now.
He breathed a sigh of intense relief after he rounded a corner and saw the big wooden doors waiting at the end. Finally, a way out! Adam skidded to a stop, yanked the door open, and threw himself outside. He was quick to slam the door in the creature's face before it could escape. He could hear it screeching and scratching the door. Adam bolted into the jungle, not wanting to know what would happen to him if it managed to claw its way out of there. He didn't even want to know how it had gotten into that area of the game to begin with--- unless the game had degraded to that point since he had been here last.
He had to find his friends fast, before they met a similar fate to Dave's. Or something worse.
Adam slowed his pace to a walk once he'd made significant progress into the jungle. He had found the foliage had become bizarrely dense and overcrowded, as if extra plants had spawned everywhere and remained. As he stepped over a large tree trunk, a branch appeared and knocked him down to the ground--- only instead of landing there, he just kept falling. And falling. And falling.
Had he glitched through the floor? When would this end?
Right on cue with that thought, Adam landed with a grunt onto a hard, flat surface that had no discernible texture. The air had no smell and it was perfectly silent. When Adam sat up, he saw... nothing. The floor and the sky were bottomless pits of the blackest shade of black Adam had ever seen. Yet he was illuminated with a sterile light, as if the source of the light was his own body. His light, however, did not reflect against the surface of the ground.
As if he was the only thing that truly existed here.
"Hello?" he shouted. Nonesomuch as even an echo came back to him. Still, he could hear his voice--- so he had to be... somewhere. As strange as it felt to think this again, Adam had to wonder... was he really dead now? Was this abyss some sort of hologame purgatory?
"Help!" cried a female voice from the distance. He couldn't pinpoint where it had come from, but Adam's heart leaped for joy when he heard it.
"Mira?" he called.
"Adam, help!" It was Kai this time.
Adam began to run. "Mira! Kai! Where are you guys?"
"Help us!"
Adam stopped, chest heaving in fear. "I can't help if I can't even find you guys!" Wait... help!
"Help please!" Adam called. He waited. He watched. The weird guy did not appear. The cries from his friends continued, their pitiful cries deepening his feeling of helplessness. "I'll try to find you!" he shouted. "Just give me a direction! A sign! Anything!"
"Help us, Adam!"
"HEEEEEEEEEELLLP!"
Adam growled and fell to his knees, clutching his head with both hands. "I'M TRYING!" he roared. "Help! Please!"
A figure glitched and eventually flickered to life before him. Adam looked up. "Thank goodness it's you..." he heaved.
The weird guy smiled. "Who were you expecting? The teacher from the black lagoon?" He cackled as if he wasn't standing in an abyssal plane of nothingness.
"Mr. Gage... Weirdy... I need to find my friends and get out of here. Why are we still in the game?"
Weirdy clicked his tongue. "So many demands! But, that aside..." The weird guy's teeth glinted. "You really shouldn't be here, Adam. This part's off-limits."
"I got here by accident. The game glitched and I fell through the floor. Please. I really need to know how to get us all out."
"There is no way out."
Adam blinked. "What?"
"You heard me. You've fallen out of bounds. There is no way back from here."
Adam heard Mira and Kai calling out to him from the Abyss. His heart began to beat faster as his frustration level rose even higher. "Well then give us one of your portals!" he begged.
"All three of you? No can do. You all have to be together for that to work."
Adam growled. "Then... send me to where they are! Then we can find a way out together."
The guy shook his head. "Like it or not, kid, there's only one way out for you."
"What? What is it? Show me!"
Adam was desperate--- desperate for anything that could help. He'd hoped that calling the weird guy would be his deliverance. But the eccentric gamester's swaggering grin held something darker, reminding Adam of a line from Shakespeare's Macbeth. There were indeed daggers in this man's smile, and he was not about to give the teen a chance to take his request back.
The man lifted both hands as if he were raising something up from the ground. The floor began to tremble. Adam looked down. A crack now expanded between his feet, revealing an undulating green mass beneath the floor.
Adam stumbled backward, hearing the weird guy laugh like the maniac he was. He glared up at Weirdy, eyes hard as flint. "Is that what you call help?" he shouted. The man flickered and vanished without an answer.
As more cracks appeared in both the ground and the sky, Adam fell to his knees. He could do nothing. He'd failed his only friends. He'd failed himself. And worst of all... he was going to die alone.
There was nothing he could do now but wait for the corruption to swallow him whole.