Welcome to a Nightmare

Chapter 13: Lost

Henry clings to Violet's hips as her motorcycle weaves through traffic. The honking of angry motorists surrounds them as she treats the vehicles as obstacles on a course, things to avoid in order to get ahead. His heart is pounding against his chest as he watches the depressing landscape surrounding him. If he had been walking the lights and sounds of Stygian would overwhelm his eyes and ears, making him feel even more lost and confused. However, on the back of his supposed girlfriend's bike, all he can hear is the revving of the engine, all other sounds become background noise, like a muted hum as they speed along through the streets. The colours and lights of nearby clubs, casinos, and bars blur together to make an endless sea of hues, tints, and shades of coloured light. It could almost be described as the world's largest light painting, with no meaning and no sense of humanity's eyes or mind. They hardly need to stop at any stop lights as Violet runs all the yellow ones she can, which is fine by Henry, the less he has to think about things, the happier he is.

This plain of existence on the city roads is almost relaxing to his current anxiety and realization that his family is virtually doomed in every sense of the word. His one mother is in a psychiatric hospital, broken and void of belief and his other mother is a lonely, bitter alcoholic, also believing in very little. What's worse is Regina doesn't recognize her own son, his existence has been wiped clean from her memories, which hurt his heart badly. He'd put down the visor on the helmet to allow himself to cry privately without Violet seeing this.

Eventually, the edgy teenager turns onto a back street, where it's much quieter and with fewer cars.

She pulls over next to a chain-link fence and stops. She removes her helmet and then looks at Henry. At first, he's confused, until he realizes that he's grasping her waist very tightly, almost to the point of cutting off her circulation. He lets go and gets off the bike. He removes his helmet and stealthily wipes away any leftover tears he might still have. He notices that they are at a place where there are hundreds of cars crammed into one tiny lot surrounded by a fence with razor wire on top.

"What is this place?" Henry asks as he sees a No Trespassing sign hanging on the fence.

"The city impound lot," Violet answers. "More than half the city's vehicles get towed here or are stolen on a regular basis. The lucky cars that are recovered are brought here, but most people don't bother claiming them."

"How come?"

"Doesn't matter," she says, as she walks down towards the edge of the lo, next to a large building.

Henry wonders how they're going to get in until he sees that there is a section of fence next to the building that doesn't have razor wire.

"Hold this," Violet instructs. She tosses her bag into his arms. "Watch carefully so you don't cut yourself."

The young author just nods and watches how Violet uses the thicker parts of the edges of the fence as a ladder, narrowly avoid the sharp wire by pressing her back against the wall and then jumping down on the other side.

"Toss it over," she says.

Henry throws the bag over the wire and Violet catches it on the other side.

"Your turn," she says.

He swallows hard... he'd heard that his mother and Hook once climbed a beanstalk, twice as high as this and almost as treacherous. If he was honest, he'd rather climb the beanstalk than this hazardous fence. He grips the edges of the fence tightly and takes his sweet time getting up to the top. Violet waits impatiently, but he can tell that she is concerned about his well-being too.

Once he's pressed against the wall, he slowly tries to inch past the sharp parts of the wire, almost picturing how painful it would be to be cut by said metal. He can feel his hands pressing flat against the wall in fear as he looks for a way to jump.