The Cosmic Venus Flytrap

Ever since I could remember, I’ve had a terrible sense of direction. I always used a GPS, but still managed to get lost time to time. Annoying, but fixable as long as I had a GPS. Or so I thought. I had no idea where I was and all the GPS offered was a blank screen saying it was unable to load. I didn’t realize how distracted I had been fiddling with the GPS and when I took stock of my surroundings, I felt a stone drop in my stomach. I somehow ended up on a single-lane one way with no intersecting roads in sight. I couldn’t turn around, so I kept driving. Before long. I noticed there were no other cars on the road or in the parking lots and more concerning there were no people.

I slowed down as my logical thinking caught up with me. I turned off my music and rolled down the passenger window. The first thing I noticed was how quiet everything was. There were no sounds of activity anywhere. There were no other sounds of tires on asphalt and rumbling engines from my own. No people walked amongst the businesses or parking lots. Not even wind traveled through to rustle leaves and banners. I pressed my foot down all the way on the brakes and shifted my car into park. For a moment I sat there, waiting, but nothing happened. With one hand still on the shift, I stared into the mirror at the empty road behind me.

It was an odd feeling. Waiting for normalcy to continue when my immediate reality told me I was completely alone. Something felt wrong or scary about getting out of the car, like opening the door would effectively be pushing the ‘start game’ button. Memories of my great aunt going on about the significance of crossing thresholds within the spirit world washed up the shore of my mind and I instinctively shifted the car back into drive, but didn’t let off the brakes. If I was going to get out, it’d be better to pull up to an open business. There had to be at least one store open and active.

As I drove, I realized I couldn’t read any of the words on the banners and signs. Not like it was in a language I didn’t understand, but that I couldn’t focus on the letters enough to understand what they were. It looked like how words look when they’re too far away or just in the periphery of my vision. Familiar and always seconds away from realizing the letter’s shape. After thirty minutes of driving past nearly identical buildings with no change, I decided to turn into the next parking lot. I parked right in front to the store window displaying what I assumed was the name and slogan. I squinted but the letters seemed unable to settle on a shape.

The moment I opened the car door, I was overcome with a sensation similar to motion sickness and I felt my ears pop. The seconds within the threshold took something from me as I passed through, reshaping my reality. My foot pressed into the pavement and the ground was solid and perfectly flat. Each step was met with no variation. I never really noticed how everything had its own texture until I was faced with its absence. A small detail, but big significance. Up close, everything was flat and smooth despite appearing normal. The pavement, sidewalk, and walls all flat, even the signs and papers posted on the windows had no distinction from the surface it was on.

I pushed through the door and heard a single shrill ring sound for one note before being cleanly cut off. I looked up and noted that the bell was simply a flat image in the door’s surface. Inside the store was just as empty as the road. It looked like no one had ever been there before; no signs of wear or usage. The room was one big square with no dividing walls. In the center was an oval counter with images of antique cash registers printed on boxes at either end. The left and right sides were divided evenly from the centered entrance and both had six long, horizontal shelves spaced evenly apart. I could see a variety of tools and hardware perfectly lining the shelves in red, black, and gray. It was almost realistic. The closer I got, the more I realized there were no objects at all. It was all images on flat surfaces. It reminded me of the stickers made to be put on plastic dollhouses. 2D trying to look 3D.

Whatever was happening, I wanted it to happen without me. I put all of my will power into hoping the way out was where I had come in from, and if there were no other cars then it didn’t matter what direction I drove. I made my way out, taking steps twice the size of my usual gait. In my rush, I ended running right onto my car. Not into it; onto it. 3D at a glance but flat like everything else. As I stood on the image of my car, I felt my chest begin to tighten. My breath came in short and hasty, my eyes warmly prickling at the corners. I looked up into the sky and wondered if it was flat too. If everything was a flat surface then maybe I was in some sort of box? If it was a box, then it must have an ends.

I was running before I even realized it. I sucked in as much air as I could hold and as I gradually exhaled, I pushed all my might into my legs, springing forward faster than I’ve ever ran in my life. I had an idea of breaking out of the theoretical box. It was all I could think to do. When my lungs began to burn and the shock from my feet connecting with the ground could be felt in my jaw, I realized how far I had driven. I slowed to a stop and immediately felt my legs turn to jelly. Dropping to the ground, I rolled onto my back and stared at sky, chest heaving.

At first, I thought the colors were just side affects of my overextended sprint and the flashes of colorful squares were a mysterious product of my brain. But the squares kept multiplying. One square at a time, the light blue sky changed to a peachy pink. I bolted upright and looked down the road. I saw a pink sky being taken over by indigo squares and further, an indigo sky being taken over by black squares. It was pixels. The sky was made of huge pixels. Along with the black squares, came a shadowed version of the street and buildings. Whatever it was, was switching to night.

I continued forward into the already darkened street. I half walked half jogged trying to abide my sense of urgency until I noticed the pixels didn’t stop fading. The pixels were going out and disappearing altogether. Beyond I saw complete nothingness and every fiber of my being told me to flee. I was soon under the indigo sky and could see pink ahead. My legs were numb, overshadowed by the stabbing ache in my lungs, but my fear propelled me. It was primal and uncontrollable and I had no problem letting it take over. I wanted this to just be a nightmare. I wanted to wake up, heart thundering but filled with relief. I didn’t wake up and I didn’t sleep. I only ran. The entire night I could never get ahead more than a few minutes. When it finally stopped and I found myself under the blue sky, I collapsed. When I awoke, I was elated to see the sky was still blue after momentary panic. I got up and let myself stretch for a few minutes before I was on the move again. The sky might have been blue but I had no way of knowing how long I slept. I wouldn’t risk having another night running for my life.

Unbelievably, I was getting used to the dollhouse. At some point my mind accepted the fake, flat world without me realizing. I was less anxious, less jumpy, which was probably a good thing. I took the time to really look at my environment. It wasn’t long until I noticed a familiar sign on a store window. But there was no way. I ran for hours beyond that store. I hurried to the parking lot and there it was. My flat car, forever stamped in that parking space. I shook my head and laughed. What did that even mean? Have I been running in circles? Could I run forever only ever looping the same few blocks? Nothing made sense. My brain buzzed with shock and I finally let a heaving breath escape. Frustration erupted crying and screaming, demanding to be relieved. I crouched and screamed at my car like it could absorb my anger. I was officially losing it.

I was mentally insane. I had to be. It was the only thing that made sense. Chances were I was actually in a padded room wearing a straight jacket hopped up on some experimental drug. From my position, it sounded almost nice and I imagined it until my self soothing was interrupted by an echoing scream. Ice sprouted in my bones. It was my scream echoing. Except, it didn’t sound exactly right, like someone or something was mimicking me. I stayed completely still and quiet. Less than five minutes and I heard it again. Slightly varied tones in a repeating pattern gradually loosing the original sound and ending in a one-note tone. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I couldn’t help but feel like a mouse in an open field hearing the screech of an owl.

Was I prey? Whatever it was, it was a threat, a predator of my existence. I was being preyed upon by something beyond my understanding. I didn’t want to be prey. I didn’t want to be a victim in relation to a predator. I only wanted to leave, to touch something soft or rough, I just wanted to feel, so I did the only thing that made a difference. I screamed, then listened. A few minutes and the chorus sounded again. It felt closer that time. I stood, body tensing. I couldn’t begin to guess where the sounds came from. Anxiety made me impatient and I lifted my face to the sky and screamed as loud as I could manage, turning my throat tender.

Nothing could’ve prepared me for what happened next. Suddenly, the sky was engulfed by three faces. They filled not just above but to every side down to the horizon. They were slightly warped, giving my prison a more defined shape. I could finally see where the road curved down on either end like a conveyor belt. I couldn’t even consider the implications of that as I was frozen in terror as I gazed upon the new sky. While they had a humanoid facial structure, their features were distinctly insectoid making me recoil. Then they screamed and tendrils shot from their mouths, visibly vibrating. It was so loud I felt it more than I heard it. My vision swirled and my eyes rolled. I barely registered my back connecting heavily with the ground. Laying face-up, all I could see was the faces. Their mouth holes pulsated as they echoed each other, alternating tones until only one note existed.

I didn’t really registered it as a sound. It was omnipotent, drowning out even my own thoughts. For one drawn out moment, I was singular with the sound. All of the sudden, it ended like it never happened at all. Heat surged through my body and then I was up, cursing at the heads. I yelled and shouted every profanity I could think of, sprinkling in a few guttural screams. I was beyond thinking about my actions. When their humanoid eyebrows contorted, deep wrinkles formed and rippled from their foreheads down to their nose, insulted with my insolence. The eyes and mouth remained fixated making the skin seem independent from the rest of the face.

The half-second of joy from getting a reaction from the heads was stripped away as my balance rocked out of my control. Everything seemed to tilt and warp as one of the faces surged down towards me, blocking out the other two until the concave image snapped together as it broke through atmosphere threshold. The descent was cinematic like a movie about an alien apocalypse. The tendrils were thin to its head like a flower’s stamen, but in the loop they looked as thick as a Golden Gate Bridge cable. My brain struggled to process the enormity of the writhing cables as they closed in on me. Even it seemed to not understand the size differences when the tendrils crashed into the ground. All around me, pixels flashed and glitched and vibrations from the impact shook the loop like an earthquake. I stumbled lurching wildly as the solid ground broke structure and became a floating ribbon. The sky was literally falling. There was no getting out of that. With only one option left, for better or worse, I leapt, throwing myself onto a tendril.

At first glance, the tendrils appeared fuzzy, covered with what I thought was fine white fibers. My impromptu plan was to grab hold of the fibers, but I found there was no need. The fine fibers were actually fine spines similar to cactus’s, and despite their thinness, they were very strong. When I connected as intended, the intercepting spines punctured through my outstretched hands. There was no time to abort and my body became a pin cushion. The spines were only about three inches long, peach fuzz to the head but long enough to go straight through my hands. I was able to avoid puncturing my face and neck, landing on the tendril like it was an alligator I was trying to wrestle down.

I thought I would block out the pain with as much shock as my body had taken, but when the head lifted and the tendril writhed, its spines became my main support. My shifting weight jostled the spines around my wounds, sometimes lifting off and reentering. I gritted my teeth as I groaned at every movement. I was at the point where I didn’t care if I died, because at least then the suffering would end. But when I breached the atmosphere threshold, my ears popping, my perspective distorted like a fish eye lens and I was alone. I felt utterly deconstructed, existing in a way unfamiliar to me, yet still existing.

Somewhere beyond time, I floated, molecules spread out like gas. I gathered myself up and inhaled, consuming myself and turning inside out. Inside my being I was omniscient and found that there also existed a floating ribbon turning slowly in a loop. I wept and there was a great flood. It was so great, that my being could not contain it. I overflowed and burst like a broken dam. The current dragged me right side in and swept me up to the surface. I broke through the river’s surface gasping and greedily gulped in oxygen. I coughed and sputtered as I stumbled out of the water onto the shore. I dropped down and pressed myself to the earth, nearly weeping at the feeling of sand, rocks, dirt, and grass. I didn’t know where I was, but I could feel the earth and that was good enough for me.