My Way!

Chapter two:

All that glitters is not gold

 

 

 

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Arlie woke up on a pile of pewter coins at the bottom of the well. He lifted his arm and several coins slid off and hit the rest of the pile noisily. Somehow, he was inexplicably unscathed. Nothing seemed to be broken, sprained, or otherwise injured… if you don’t count his psyche.

It must have been a pretty high fall; the opening of the well was a tiny gray circle above him, all around was pitch black darkness. He couldn’t see more than a few feet around him, and it was all just a humongous pile of coins. He could’ve sworn he saw the shadows of thousands of tiny insects crawling around in between, but they must have been illusions, tricks on his eyes from the darkness.

He sat up. The coins chinked as they slid off each other with his movements. The small chinks echoed off the walls loudly. Arlie could tell he was in the middle of a tunnel from the way the sound faded.

Confused, he looked up. He saw a small black dot cover the gray circle above him. The sparse beams of light that shone far enough to reach him were covered up by a dark half-circle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Arlie!” Aquila’s shout had dissipated a lot by the time it reached Arlie. If Arlie’s hearing hadn’t been as good as it was; he would have thought that his friend had shouted “Party!”

“Help me out of here!” Arlie screamed. Small animals scurried out from between the pile of coins and ran off into the darkness.

“I don’t have any sweet frittata!”

“That’s not what I said! Get me out of here!”

“Don’t worry, I do have chocolates!”

Aquila as a black dot went out for a second and came back a bit larger. “What is he doing?” Arlie thought to himself.

Aquila dropped a shower of dots smaller than grains of sand into the opening. They grew bigger and bigger until chocolates rained over Arlie. The height of the fall made them drop so fast that Arlie had to protect his head with his arms. The chocolates hit him harder than rocks.

The pewter coins started moving. Hundreds of tiny animals fled as a metallic clattering came from the end of the tunnel that Arlie was facing, but Arlie couldn’t see anything, which made him anxious.

“Cut it out!” he screeched up into the hole. “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

He hadn’t even recovered from falling into the well and now so many things had started happening at the same time. It was all so confusing and he felt the pain of the chocolates more intensely than anything else before. Gravity started working backwards, which brought Arlie to tears. What else could go wrong?

He screamed and sobbed, but at least the chocolates weren’t pelting him anymore. It took him a second to realize that maybe, since the gravity was reversed, he could get back up to the surface. The only problem was that he was anchored to the tunnel floor by some unknown force, paralyzed. He tried moving but it was as if something was holding him down, smothering his breaths. The world spun uncontrollably, it felt like he was having a heart attack.

 The coins rose, but Arlie’s feet were glued to the packed earth floor. His backpack floated upward but got caught on his shoulders. The paper-wrapped parcel with things for the house flew up. Arlie saw it through his blurry, spinning vision and an even worse pang of grief added to the pile of pain loaded on him. “Adi will never get the things he needed,” he thought. But then everything plummeted. Arlie was still horror-struck and panicking. His knees buckled and he slumped to the ground.

He could barely focus his eyesight. The package with the house supplies dropped within arm’s reach, he bent his elbow sluggishly and held the parcel closely. A shower of coins battered him, but he couldn’t have cared less. He was sure that he might die at any given second, he couldn’t even cry anymore. Or even breathe for that matter. A gleam blinded him and he was unconscious again.

…

My eyes cracked open for a second. They were sticky and crusty. My eyelashes were so tangled up that I couldn’t see anything, only perceive light. My body felt like it was made of lead and filled with wet sand. A pain on my knee seared all the way up my leg, causing me to gasp.

I was lying on some sort of surface. Someone was squeezing my fingernails and mumbling something that sounded like Glass cow... I heard it again, someone had said “Glasgow.”

What’s a Glasgow? Can you eat that?

“Fuh?” I groaned. I couldn’t keep my eyelids apart.

…

The mirror lay by Arlie’s head, a branched crack down the middle. It must have knocked him out.

The world had stopped spinning, and Arlie could breathe again, but he was far from calm. His heart still beat like helicopter blades and his mind was racing. Tears streamed down his face. He grabbed the mirror, feeling a strong urge to look into it for some reason.

The glass was cracked, and the only thing on it was a shattered image of his reflection. “Piece of junk,” he cursed. Then it occurred to him all of a sudden, that Glasgow is a city, but a lot of things are named after it. Why was he even thinking about this?

A loud scraping noise made him snap out of it. He jumped up and scrambled on the floor, more loud scraping sounds came from all around him. When he opened his eyes, he wished he hadn’t. All around him, peering down at his collapsed figure on the ground, were large mechanical beasts.

The small rays of sunshine from above bounced off the beasts’ armors of silver, bronze and copper, filling the tunnel with metallic shine. Their eyes were incandescent jewels, and between the plates that made up their bodies, a sinister red light glowed. With spiral teeth that whirred and spun like huge drill bits bared, and claws as long and sharp as scythes, they didn’t look friendly at all.

Arlie thought that they were going to kill him. That they were going to tear his flesh between their grotesque claws, drill into his skull and suck out his brains. Tear every limb from his body and powder his bones in those horrible grinder maws. What would even happen after death? He thought everything very quickly and superficially, causing him greater panic.

Arlie was frozen, not knowing what to do or how to react. He whimpered and held his things close. The noise from the paper bag made the animals growl. A menacing grinding sound rose from their throats like several small turbines ready to liquefy anything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…

“Uuhhh…” Arlie groaned when he woke in his cell. Everything hurt, especially his head. The upper half of his face felt like steamed cabbage. It might have been steaming for all he knew. He reached up, with an arm that weighed several tons, and touched above his eyebrows. “Aagh!” the sound escaped him, his breathing spiked and his throat closed from the pain. He slowly regained normal breathing and opened his eyes.

Arlie was on a wooden floor, in a sort of dug-out hole underground. The walls were packed dirt with some roots poking out from the sides. One side of the room was open into a stone corridor, closed off from the area by many close-set bars. Arlie’s things were piled up in a corner like they had been thrown. The mirror, his backpack, all the moths, and every last piece of yarn were there. It smelled like engine grease and foundry smoke.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That seemed almost caring from them. Maybe their looks were deceiving. But then again, if he was just a small runty android, what would they do to make him look like them? Would they change his teeth? Replace his fingernails for knives? He didn’t want to stay to find out.

“I gotta get out of here…” he muttered to himself.

 

To be continued.