Encased in roots, I plummeted from a great height. How far, I couldn’t say, but on the way down I had time to contemplate my entire life, how pointless it had been so far and how pointless it would remain for the foreseeable future.
My capsule slammed to a sudden halt like a bridge jumper using steel for bungees. It swung and twisted wildly, until its movements dampened to a gentle sway kept alive by a breeze.
I was like the egg mom made me drop from our roof as part of a physics experiment. But unlike the poor egg I had ineffectively swaddled in cotton balls and bubble wrap, the roots flexed and stretched and actually cushioned my fall.
I was a human pendulum, and as I swung, the strands of the hammock-like pod shifted and adapted to my contours. I peered through a lattice of roots into a tunnel much larger and darker than the one I had experienced before. Some of the roots lining it gave off a soft orange glow like the last dying embers of a campfire. The fibers comprising the tunnel walls writhed and pulsed in a communal rhythm.
Occasional blobs of light shuttled along the length of a lonely root here and there, but I saw nothing like the Times Square at New Years light show I remembered from the last tunnel.
Not that I minded. I was cozy in my capsule, happy to be back and enjoying that mind-blurring buzz that kept the real world insulated from the front burner of my thoughts, kind of like a couple shots of vodka mixed with a squirt of endorphins. I just laid back and watched the tunnel walls spasm in peristaltic waves, as the individual strands lining its interior shifted slowly like a stop-action video of kudzu vines spreading.
I just hung there in that cage of roots, naked as a newborn and happy as Goldilocks in the wee bear’s bed—not too hot, not too cold, just right. I felt like I had returned home after a long trip, in the bedroom of my Ohio childhood.
What happened in that other world didn’t matter anymore, not even mom’s death. A residual pang of loss remained unshakable, but that was there and this was here. Root seemed a completely separate plane of existence.
An earthy, mushroom scent pervaded everything, but I didn’t mind it. I liked mushrooms, especially on pizza. The only things that bothered me were the dimness and those sounds. I could hear things happening beyond the tunnel—distant belching, feet scrabbling against tunnel walls. Not that I wanted to know what made those noises. I just wanted them to go away.
I don’t know if I was getting bored or annoyed or what, but that buzz was wearing off. Thoughts intruded no matter how hard I tried to shut them out. I couldn’t believe mom was gone. It seemed impossible, and so I kept forgetting and then remembering over and over in an endless loop of grief.
I stared at a root and tried to make it glow like before, but no matter how hard I tried, it stayed dark. As I recalled, the trick involved slipping my mind around a mental corner but this time my head was not cooperating. I seemed to have lost the knack.
I didn’t let my failure disappoint me. I settled in and let the roots embrace me. The strands adjusted around my pressure points like memory foam, softening around my hips and elbows, firming around my back and bottom. Those roots under my head fluffed out to form a pillow. For whatever reason, they wanted me calm and comfortable.
But the deep rumbling kept me from getting too relaxed. Something large seemed to be dragging itself along the outside of the tunnel wall, perhaps in a parallel tunnel. The wall bulged inward as the thing squeezed past. At one point a bulbous appendage stabbed through and probed the air.
It was a pale and worm-like thing. I freaked at the sight of it and when it veered in my direction, I tried to squirm away. But the more I struggled, the more the roots clamped down on me.
After the longest while, it slipped back through the wall and the thing it belonged to lumbered off. But I could still hear it grunting somewhere below.
A light flickered like slow, blue lightning, illuminated an entire row of pods like mine along the roof of the tunnel, all of them weighted down by occupants. I was not alone. The realization bothered me. Maybe this wasn’t my own private hallucination.
I was no longer cool with the idea of hanging out in this pod. This was no fucking hammock. This was one of those cocoons a spider wraps its prey in to save it for later. I had vision of myself as Frodo Baggins in Shelob’s lair, only there would be no Samwise Gamgee coming to rescue me.
I contorted my shoulders and twisted around. The roots squeezed me tight. Clearly, they did not approve of my newfound anxiety. They tried to nudge me into a fetal position, but this time I fought back.
They were strong, these roots. Direct, physical actions got me nowhere, prompting only an equal and opposite reaction. I struggled again to recreate the mental trick that had let me manipulate them. I wrangled and twisted my mental energy to no avail. It was so frustrating. This had come so easily before.
I had an itch on my nose and tried scratching it, but the fibers circling my wrist prevented me and it made me mad. I gave one ornery patch the evil eye and when I did, it kicked off a flurry of tightening and raveling in that one spot, as if to spite me. That only made me madder.
I felt something flip in my mind. The fibers went limp as if the power to them had been cut. I was beginning to recover my little knack.
I looked at another strand, and tried to make it glow, but when I did, the patch I had made sag took advantage of my flagging attention to recover their tone and slap a loop along my wrist. That infuriated me. The little buggers wouldn’t mind their own business.
I bent my mind around again and made the offending fibers flinch and shrivel, curling away from my flesh in surrender. One of them burst forth with light, and right after a whole tangle of them became illuminated. My heart swelled in triumph.
I kept reaching around that corner of my brain until I had most of the pod glowing, and some of that glow began to creep up the stalk of thick, ropy strands that attached me to the roof of the tunnel. I scowled at the stalk until it untwisted and unwound a bit, spinning the pod around, lowering it from the roof of the tunnel until I dangled halfway to the floor.
The thumping and rumbling grew louder. A belch erupted and a warm breeze kicked up and buffeted the pod, twisting it one way and the other like a kid goofing around in a swing. A stink like a mixture of rotten meat and old man’s breath overwhelmed me and made me gag. Something big was coming my way.
I laid my hands on the strands encasing me and willed them to part. They resisted fiercely. Gaps opened only to be mended shut by other strands looping down from the roof of the tunnel. I slammed my fist through a spot where the weave had thinned and the strands clamped down on my arm. I peeled away back with my other hand, assisted by every bit of mental warp I could muster.
I flexed my mind. Something clicked. Mental energy that had been buried somewhere deep burst free, stunning the strands that were resisting me, paralyzing them, rendering them passive and inert. I slid my other arm through the hole, giving me leverage in the gap.
I pried apart the writhing cords that had come down to seal the rent and butted my head into the parting. Scratchy fibers latched onto my hair and scraped against my ears. I kept pushing, tearing out clumps of hair, getting angrier and more determined until my head popped through.
By that point, all my uncertainty had vanished and I was determined to leave that pod. I pressed my right shoulder into the breach and set all the force of my will against the strands that still refused to submit.
The pod swung wildly as I struggled. Strands fired out like harpoons from the tunnel walls to support their struggling comrades. I knew deep inside they were no match for me. They were strong, but so was I. If I kept at it, my will would prevail. That was clear.
Groaning. Thumping. A slap of leather on wood. Something or someone was coming up the tunnel.
