Nothing Is For Free

One day when I was walking home, I suddenly found myself somewhere else. I still don't know where this place is, even after having been there many times. Another dimension, another planet, another universe, your guess is as good as mine. It's a place somewhat similar to here, but different enough that you'd never confuse the two. There are colors there that don't exist here, and vice versa, and objects are put together in a way that seems to pay very little mind to the laws of nature as we understand them. The ground itself is bizarre, gelatinous and transparent. The equally see-through structures are just as likely to be set with the peaks of their roofs on the ground as the other way around, and seem no less stable for it. And where a walkway here can be relied upon to lead forward, backward, left and right, the paths in this other place might as easily take a sharp turn upwards somehow, while being no more difficult to walk upon.

The first time I arrived there, I found myself confronted by a ring of what passes for people in this place. They were small, spindly, humanoid things the size of cats, with glossy skin in many different primary colors and hands that have three long fingers and two thumbs. They all had beady little white eyes that widened at my appearance, and many of them skittered back from me. One, a bright green thing a little larger than most of them stood its ground, however, and as I looked down at it in astonishment, it brandished some kind of weird spiky rock at me. As I looked at it, I realized it was no ordinary rock. There was something wrong about it, something about its shape that seemed impossible and disturbing...

It was suddenly my turn to stagger back, as I got an instant splitting headache. The creature brought the rock closer to me and the pain was multiplied tenfold. I fell to the ground clutching my head in absolute agony, but I couldn't look away from the unwholesome stone. Abruptly, the creature I will call Green withdrew the rock from my sight into a bag it carried and the pain instantly vanished. As I recovered and slowly hauled myself up to my feet, the others crowded in, some extending hands as though they might touch me before Green motioned at them and they scuttled back again.

Green opened its mouth, and a stream of discordant sounds poured out of him. I winced at the cacophony, and yet somehow I understood. By which I mean that I understood the ideas that the sounds described. They entered my mind sequentially, like a slide show: A blue-white gelatinous substance. Me, holding the blue-white stuff. Me, depositing the stuff on the ground near Green. I stared silently at Green, puzzled, and then noticed its strange appendage drifting towards the bag that held that hatefully wrong stone.

“Wait, wait!” I cried, holding out my hands in supplication. Green moved its hand away from the bag, just a little.

I looked around, desperately. I was inside a large, strangely tilted domed structure, made of the same sort of transparent matter as everything else in this world. Outside, I saw other little creatures moving around here and there, apparently oblivious to the goings-on inside the dome. I looked up and saw nothing but a sky striated with weirdly shaped clouds that made me want to quickly look back down.

When I did look down, I saw it. Beneath me, below the transparent floor of the dome and several feet into the transparent ground beneath, I saw what appeared to be a large clump of the blue-white material, faintly glowing.

“That stuff?” I asked, pointing down. “You want that?” Green looked down, then back up at me, and then cocked his head to one side. I gestured forcefully.

“It's right there!” I exclaimed, frustrated.

Green spoke again, the sounds somehow sounding even harsher than normal, and I saw an image of myself, gesturing at a dark, non-transparent floor in an equally opaque version of the dome we were in. Realization slowly dawned.

“I can see through this stuff, but it's not transparent to your eyes, is that it?” I asked. Green didn't answer, and it occurred to me that I didn't know how much, if any, of my words it understood. Was it getting its own version of the still image slides when I spoke, or was that a one-way street? I decided to try a more elaborate charade.

I crouched down, and pawed at the ground, miming the act of digging. “It's down there, that stuff you want, but I don't know how I'm supposed to --”

Suddenly, my fingers, which I expected to glide over the smooth surface of the floor as I pretended to dig, sunk deep into it instead. The creatures murmured animatedly, though even Green shifted back this time. Bemused, I positioned my fingers carefully, and found that with little effort I was able to sink them into the floor and tear away an enormous piece of the transparent material, like it was made of some kind of very stiff Jell-O instead of glass or crystal as I had imagined. Moreover, it was as light as Styrofoam, and I tossed the huge chunk of it aside with ease as I continued digging.

It took no time at all to dig my way through the floor, then into the ground, and in only a couple of minutes I was bringing up big handfuls of the glowing blue gel and placing it on the floor in front of Green.

As the pile grew with each scoop of my hands, the little creatures became more and more animated in their movements. I watched them pick up the weird substance, look at it closely, and even rub it on their slick skin. I guess they were pleased.

After I finished, I cautiously approached Green, crouched the way you do when you're approaching a skittish animal. It was examining a particularly large lump of the blue-white gel that I'd gouged out of the ground. “How do I get back where I came from?”

The little creature started, and at looked up at me sharply. Its hand dove into the bag at its waist, and once again I held up my hands.

“Hey! Hey! I helped you out, remember? Please, how do I get home?” I said, trying to sound calm and soothing, even though my heart raced in fear when I thought of being presented with that horrific artifact again.

Green blinked once, and then some tension went out of its posture. It pulled something from the bag, but it wasn't the stone. It was a translucent sphere, made of the same stuff as the ground, but etched with a variety of markings. It seemed to study the thing for a moment, turning it over and over to view markings on different sides of the ball-shaped thing, and then it spoke to me.

The two “slides” I got didn't make any sense, initially: Me and the creatures together. Then, just the creatures. Before I could try to work out what that meant, I found myself standing on the sidewalk, halfway back to my house. I ran the rest of the way there.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep too well that night, but nonetheless after about three weeks I had mostly convinced myself that on that day I had just slipped into some kind of weird lucid daydream, and I put it out of my mind. Just in time for it to happen again.

The room I was in was smaller this time, but made of the same basic see-through stuff. In the middle of the room was a platform, on which there lay a teal-colored creature of the same kind I'd seen before, though this one was substantially smaller and thinner than the others I had seen. Its was moving a little here and there, but its eyes were closed. Sleeping, maybe? Just past this, I saw that Green was there too, and just behind him there was a light bluish one I decided to call Cyan.

I laced my fingers into my hair, and gritted my teeth, then tried to force myself to be calm. I did not want Green to decide it needed to use that...thing again.

“What do you want from me?” I said, as evenly as I could, and steeled myself for the uncomfortable noise of the creature's speech.

The slides came quickly, just three: The teal-colored creature laying on the slab. Me standing over the creature. The creature standing, now no longer so small and emaciated-looking, between Green and Cyan. I looked between the three glistening, aberrant creatures, and my heart sank as I realized what Green wanted of me this time.

“It's sick, isn't it? You want me to fix it, make it better? Listen, I'm not a doctor, I—” I began, but I was cut off as my world turned into a white-hot void of pain. I was on the ground, and Green was standing over me, pushing that malignant object he carried right into my face. I felt like every cell in my body was boiling, like I would explode in some kind of flesh-and-blood supernova. And it went on for what seemed like hours. When he finally stopped, I was curled up in the fetal position on the ground, drool and bile leaking from the corners of my mouth.

The little bastard clearly did not intend to discuss this, if discussion was even possible between us. It was back on the other side of the room, Cyan peeking out from behind it. Its hand hovered tensely over that damn bag it carried. Once again, I struggled painfully to my feet.

I looked over the little teal creature, glancing back and forth between it, Cyan, and Green. It was definitely smaller than the others, but just as clearly it was too thin, even for its size. I felt confident in my deduction that it was sick, but hell if I knew what was wrong with it, or how to fix it. I had some Vitamin C chews in my pocket, but I doubted that was going to cut it.

As I looked more closely, I realized that although they had seemed to be the only opaque thing in this world, the creatures themselves were actually also semi-transparent – just less so than the inanimate objects around them. When I squinted I found that I could see shapes inside the creature – odd spirals and whorls, ovoids and tubes that must have been its innards. And I noticed one thing out of place, nestled in what I guess you'd call its abdomen – an almost perfect cube. Was it a foreign object? An infection? Or just the odd organ out? Whatever it was, I noted that the parts of the creature nearest to it looked dull and shriveled as compared to the rest of the organs inside it. It was my best guess as to what might be wrong, but on the other hand I dare not consider what my fate would be if I yanked out the wrong thing.

Finally, as I saw Green beginning to reach into the bag again, frustration and fear made me just go for it. Surprisingly, my fingers dipped into the surface of the teal-colored form like its flesh was merely a slightly viscous fluid, and I grasped the cube. Unlike everything else in this world so far, it felt brittle and cold. I yanked it free, and it came loose without even rippling the skin of the creature. It shifted around in my hand, like it was moving of its own volition. Startled, I gripped it tighter, and felt it break like a cubic eggshell, a dark fluid running out from between my fingers.

I swore and shook my hand vigorously to dislodge the gunk, as Green and Cyan quickly moved towards the little creature – Teal, I guess. The smallest of the three opened its eyes, and weakly disgorged a string of the unpleasant sounds they used to communicate. Cyan let out a shrieking hiss whose emotional and psychological meaning I cannot begin to guess, and threw itself across Teal, clutching the smaller being close to it.

Green was apparently satisfied with my work, because his hand moved away from the bag and he turned to me. As he spoke I saw the images that meant I was dismissed, and just that quickly I was back in my own world. I had fallen asleep on the couch after work before being whisked away to this other place, and if not for my previous experience I would have told myself this latest event was a dream. But as I lifted my hand and saw it still stained with dark fluid, I knew better. I wasted no time washing that horrible gunk off – it briefly foamed up like soap and then seemed to just dissolve when I ran water over it.

It's happened many times since then. The next time it happened a few months later, it wasn't Green I met, but a larger-looking Teal who wanted more white-blue crap from under the ground, which I was again able to deliver pretty quickly. It was over a year before it happened again after that, and this time a different little blue-green thing wanted a huge formation of the transparent Jell-O landscape torn down for some reason. Light and flimsy as it was, it still took me hours to finish, though when I came back only moments had passed according to the clock on the wall.

Time after time, I was pulled away, made to do some task these things wouldn't or couldn't do for themselves, and I was becoming used to the ordeal. I even put together one of those EDC bags and kept it with me at all times, so I always had a pair of gloves and a few simple tools with me when I was called away from reality. After all, the faster I accomplished whatever my tiny taskmasters wanted, the faster I got to go home, and the less likely they were to use one of their little rocks to tie wring my oul out like a wet mop. It wasn't even all that disruptive, I was called by them a few times while I was at work, and no one ever seemed to notice that I had gone missing. I came to think of it as just another day-to-day problem I had to live with, like the rats in my basement no trap or exterminator could ever seem to wipe out completely.

Then Puce came along. He didn't really have puce colored skin, but puce is a disgusting color and Puce the technicolor monkey is a fundamentally evil and disgusting little creature, so it fits. Every other stupid little goblin I've run into was content with getting its tiny rocks off on torturing me with that spiky stone. Puce, apparently, wanted a more tangible tribute to its mastery. Almost as soon as I arrived in its presence, I was struck with a wave of nausea and pain. Looking around, I found myself inside an immense, ovoid depression in the floor of one of their transparent buildings. Along the perimeter of this egg-shaped recess I had been called into were tiny, spiky objects – pebble sized versions of that damn rock.

“That's not necessary.” I hissed through gritted teeth, as I adopted what I had learned they thought was a submissive posture. It wasn't as bad as the larger rock, but even so I was in a lot of pain. “I'll do what you want.”

Puce spoke, and I saw three slides that froze my blood in my veins: Me standing as I was. Me clawing at my left eye. Me with an empty left eye socket, handing my eye to Puce.

I don't want to talk about the battle of wills that ensued, and the suffering I endured both before and after I finally gave into the inevitable, I won't relive that again.

To add insult to injury, this episode occurred while I was at work. I can almost, almost laugh when I picture what my co-workers must have seen. One second I'm seated at my desk like normal, and the next I'm somehow missing an eye, flailing and screaming in agony at the top of my lungs. Long story short, I don't work there – or anywhere – anymore. The company gave me a modest settlement because they couldn't prove it wasn't some kind of freak accident and didn't want the litigation, and between that and disability I have enough money to live on.

Why disability, you ask? After all, there are plenty of jobs a person with one eye can do -- my old job included, to be honest. But while I no longer possess my left eye, I unfortunately do still see through it. I think Puce carries it around with him -- hell if I know why, maybe it's some kind of sick trophy or symbol of power, to him -- and against all logic my vision in that eye remains and crosses from that world to this one. Think that doesn't sound so bad, especially when compared to not having the eye at all? Well, try walking around with one eye open to the world around you as normal, and the other unblinkingly staring at a video feed from a moving camera in another country, and you'll get an idea of what my life is like now. I'm just lucky the doctor who examined me believed my problems with reading, equilibrium, and insomnia after my “accident” were valid and unfeigned disabilities.

Despite the splitting headaches and vertigo I get trying to focus my visual attention, I have worked through the pain and I've been spending my large amount of free time studying and researching, trying to understand what's happening to me. The next time I was called, I also managed to bring back some of the strange matter from the other place, and study that as well.

I can't do any of this quickly or efficiently in my condition, and so this research takes up most of my time. I don't know when the last time I had a real conversation with another human being was. I do have some companionship, though. I got a pair of dogs that was rescued from one of those really horrible unlicensed puppy mills, two energetic little Jack Russell terriers I named Jimbo and Jinx. I feel a certain kinship with them, maybe because they're both almost blind from a severe infection they had as puppies. Though, to be honest, they're a lot better adapted to their limitations than I am -- with how well they use their hearing and smell you'd never guess they were sight-impaired if you didn't know it already. And as an added bonus on top of their fond friendship, that persistent rat problem isn't a problem anymore.

Anyway, after studying everything I could get my hands on that I thought might even come close to helping me, I think I've found a solution. A kind of magic, you might say.

I know that people who say they practice “magic” today usually claim they're into nature, harmony, spiritual growth, and enlightenment – all that nice, trite, non-materialistic stuff. But that's not the kind of magic I found in my research. I'm talking about the stuff you find in the really old books, spells containing lines like “I command thee, o demon, to bring forth a million pieces of the best Spanish gold from the depths of the sea”. I've read over them all, those old spells that are about finding hidden treasure, destroying your enemies, and becoming rich and powerful. And I've read all the stories about the people who used them.

Don't worry, I don't mean I'm going to try some old ritual from a book to make a demon or a fae or something help me with my problem, that would be stupid. (And more than a little ironic, if you think about it.) No, I'm just going to sit here and wait for my next call from that other place. I've got everything I need: I've got good sturdy work clothes on. I've got my EDC kit ready to go. I've got Jimbo and Jinx's leashes in my hand. I've got a backpack full of bottles of the diluted chlorine that I've found causes matter from the other world to foam and violently dissolve. And I've got the simple cloth eye patch the hospital gave me, though for the moment it's covering my right eye instead of the socket where my left one used to be.

See, those stories about summoning demons or fairies to do your bidding almost all have a common thread: at some point, the magician who thinks they have it all figured out slips up, and the thing they summoned to do their bidding breaks free of their control. One day, they become so confident in their little magic tricks that they forget they're dealing with something big, powerful, and utterly alien to the world they know. That's when they learn that the devil you arrogantly think that you control always gets his due in the end, and there's hell to pay when he comes to collect. That's when they learn that nothing is for free.