(GE Copy)

Chapter 18: Zack’s Grand Adventure (Brothers Entwined) Part 2

“...When I should press to get an answer, it seems that they never wanted one after all...”

“So... Zack... Mind telling us where we went wrong?” Aaron incited. Felicity kinda just sat in the background for this one. “We walked up the hill, found nothing, climbed further up the hill, just about broke our ankles on loose rock and material...”

“You would have said to go up here too...”

“Found a lake, walked up the mountain because the angle was still so flat that we couldn’t see over the edge of it to find where we came from... Climbed over hill and rock, again, bluffs and small cliffs, somehow lost which way was up despite seeing the mountain peek at all times, and somehow... Somehow, of all bloody things... We’re back at the fekking lake again... When did we go downhill?!”

“Maybe it’s a similar lake... With a similar boulder shaped like a diving board, and an old camp fire spot on the left side facing upwards...” Zack defended, pointing at each landmark and nodded.“I’m starting to see your point.”

“Are we even getting any higher?” Felicity questioned.

“You wanted to go here!”

“Sass...” Felicity sneered. “I could just go up ahead and scout it out for you. It’s not like I can’t see you guys from up there...”

“We said that about the surrounding place as well,” Zack dismayed, “but what can we actually see from up here?”

“Right, have fun sitting at the bottom. Just make sure you can see me, because that means that I can still see you too. I’ll let you know if there’s another lake up ahead.” Running out to the peek. Aaron and Zack couldn’t help but astonish at the speed that Felicity could obtain. A real life, actual, powerhouse anime babe with a sword and a soft spot for dweeby ass kids.

“Man... We really lucked out didn’t we?” Zack marvelled. “What are the... You know what, no. I don’t care about the chances anymore, this is great... But you know what’s not fair though? You getting Sophie and all that, but that’s not enough, so now you also get the flat justice, blue haired anime babe with the giant ass sword too...”

Aaron looked back at Zack with slanted eyes.

“Don’t give me that blind virgin ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir...’ shit! I see it, walking around, side by side, sitting on the same rock, splitting water bottles. The way she looks at you, the heroic demeanour between you two like a knight and his wench.” Aaron opened his mouth to speak but was cut off again. “No, no, no, I’m not having that with you, not when I got dumped by miss teenage angst; having risked my life, my sanity, my beautiful seductive voice and countless other things that can be cut off by the claws of death; just to find myself fishing voices out of a can surrounded by death, like an old woman at the fabric store. I am tired, and sick, and fucking tired, of all this sick fucking tiring ass adventures, with my ass on the line, just for you of all people: The dweeby ass, skin to the bone... Not so much anymore... Looks like he should be wearing glasses ass mother flipping guy, with no girl skills, and no charisma, sounding like a nut case, never even looking at a woman, rather look at her bathing suit than the oil glistened rotisserie chicken roasting in underneath the clothing... I’m busting my ass off here, and you... YOU’RE the one picking up all the damn babes!”

“Dude... You got it all wrong...”

“What do I need to do, go to the gym? Make some gains, get muscles and have all the guys try to hit on me? You know what the showers are like after class! What’s the secret, huh? You secretly the mysterious emo type or something? I thought those guys getting chicks was just a legend pass through sororities. Oh, shit, I figured it out, you used that love stone the old guy told us about haven’t you? That’s a pretty cheap and dishonest trick my guy, greedy too!... Kinda... Kinda wish I thought about it first, actually, now that I think about it...”

Arron makes a hand gesture.

“Peace? What is that? Their facing the wrong direction to be the European thing.”

Scissoring them together, Zack still wasn’t getting the point. Aaron removed a finger.

“Might as well just be the middle finger...”

Aaron returns his other finger. Then removes it again, twitching the remainder.

“Now it just looks like a dick...” Aaron continued. Zack squinted his eyes “Yeah, nah.”

Aaron nodded his head. “I don’t know how to tell you this.” Still too shy to break Zack’s dreams.

“I mean, ‘yeah, nah’, I’m still not getting it...”

Clasping his face, Aaron returned and held the one throbbing index finger, then paired it to the other hand likewise.

“She’s gay?... No... That’s not it... You’re gay... We, are we? I’m at a loss here. What’s with all these damn charades?”

“Will you stop bragging about my junk!” Felicity hollered at them from behind. “You’re just pissed coz you only got one of them!”

“Two of them?... Asses?... Wait, what the heck?” Zack turned in shock. “We just saw you walk up the cliff!”

“Yeah, and I just saw you guys down below, why are you in front of me now?”

“AUGH!” Aaron cursed. “I’ve seen enough weird shit to know how this one works...”

Pondering aloud, Zack turned back to Aaron, “This is gonna be one of those sixties sci-fi episode deals, isn’t it?”

“The only thing I’ve wondered, is what happens when we see what a certain point, when we cross over the loop? You never see anyone use that idea. We could at least map out where the line is.”

“So, we’re confirmed inside an infinite hallway?” But Zack didn’t need to ask it.

Following Aaron’s insisting directions, it was treated as serious. After all, getting stuck isn’t something you wait around to resolve. With every face towards the peek, they held hands making a downward descent off the mountain. It was steep in places but nothing beyond their sturdy foot hold. For a moment it seemed to close in but Aaron focused deeply on watching it’s edges get smaller and further over the rim of his hill. It seemed the same size for a while until finally he could pick out the distance from in was in fact increasing. He isolated two peeks that he could mentally gague and confirm were getting smaller as it went away. Soon they might be out of this trap.

The tension seemed to seep in, waving a paranoia around them unnervingly crawling up their spines. Each step seemed to become more and more eerie. Zack’s feet scuffed on something, and soon his back was pressed against something else, with a hand over top his shoulder. He screamed, breaking formation to find nothing more than a mossy decrepit tree with twiggy little shoots coming from it’s trunk. As they looked back onto the hill and the mountain, Aaron dismayed, making a fine use of his vocabulary, and finally “... It just changed again...”

“You sure?”

“The gap between hills over there is literally twice the size, we just jumped a few hundred feet... And there’s the hollow log again with the mushroom growing out it’s ass... Again...”

Quite certain of their predicament, the party reformed, with Aaron as spot in front of them, guiding the reverse party away from obstacles. He watched over the two who kept their eye on the peek, so that nothing would take their sight off of where they were. Zack, and Felicity held hands, reluctantly, but three guys seldom enjoy merrily hopping through the tulips anyway. Zack was happy... poor, still ignorant Zack. They took turns blinking, just to be certain there were eyes on the peek at all times, and it seemed to be making them some distance.

As they came nearer down the edge, it felt as though Aaron’s sight had become blurry: Like two eyes cast apart from another and the more he tried to fix it, the harsher the lines became, while they never quite lined up. Aaron’s paces felt heavy, missing information in between his footsteps and wasn’t so sure he was awake anymore. His head started to feel faint, like gravity had switched in his stomach and his throat felt like it was filling with liquid. The pressure became a pin sharp pain in his head, and his eyes began to actually spit into separate directions. Aaron swore that he could see the outside of his own vision as a repeating image like a Windows 98 graphics error. He collapsed onto his hands and knees, holding the contents of his stomach in while the panic made his skin feel like a numb fire. The sweat poured off his face, dripping onto the ground like rainfall, until everyone abandoned their course and aided him. Once again, stuck within the band of the loop next to the damned hollow log. “I felt like my body was being torn apart, like the bone in my skull was turning to paper, and everything inside was wobbling...” While very much shaking, “We’re... We’re really fucked...” Aaron astounded.

Sitting him down, everyone took off their shoes, and settled in by the cold campfire. “Why you?” Zack questioned, “It’s always you.”

“I don’t know...” Aaron confessed “I was looking at the edge of the... Whatever it is. I guess I was the most affected.”

“But we were closer... How are we getting out of this?”

“You actually asking me, or just yourself, coz I still don’t have an answer for you... The only thing I know is it’s matter of what we see and not where we are...”

“Felicity, you lived out in the wilds for a bazillion years apparently, and are still very much beautiful... You’ve seen this before, right?” But Felicity shrugged.

“Guess we just see where this non-euclidean story ends... You’ll love it;” Aaron chuckled. “...existential terror, feeling worse than dying, it’s great. I should be giving off time shares to the short guys down at the local contractors office...”

“Well, while you’re making no damned sense again...” Lifting himself steadily from the log, Zack returned his sore feet back to his shoes. “I’m gonna find us some food, because Felicity’s not the only one dying for a bite over here... Don’t eat me by the way.”

“I’d rather eat the boar...” He replied.