The Vacuum

Part 4

The girl that reflected back at her in the one-way window didn't look like she remembered. Her hair was matted even after being washed, sin bruised and pale. The white of the hospital robe only made her look more sickly. It made the breaks, marks, burns and cuts on her body more pronounced, angrier. The wet ointment on the burns looked like it had glitter in it with the bright lights shining down from the overhanging lights. Even the bulbs seemed to burn.

"It's alright if you can't remember. The others can't either." The doctor in front of her said clipboard balanced on his knee. His tone said comforting but it was a practiced sort of comfort: Professional instead of sympathetic.

She turned her eyes away from the mirror to look at him. "How many made it?" Her crack lips asked.

The doctor looked down at the clipboard though both of them knew that he didn't need it. "There were seven in your group including your guide. Three of you made it out." He told her solemnly. "The other two don't remember what happened. Selective memory."

She stared at him for a long moment, time stretching out in a void as the deafening screams of the other three journalists and photographers rang out behind her ears. "I remember." She said through the noise in her head.

The doctor leaned forward, trying to hide his interest and failing. "What do you remember?" He asked her quietly.

She looked back at the dark mirror, mind flashing to the surges of electricity passing though her nerve endings, harsh deep laughs, a burning object working its way into her skin. She remembered her back arching at a less than human angle to try and fight away from the pain.

She looked back at the doctor numbly.

"All of it."

Alex bit into the apple that she had packed as she sat on top of one of the mushroom-like rock formations that sat high in the canyon. She could see the world from up here. The high red and green walls that separated the town and canyon from the modern highways and toll roads, the patches of green that had managed to spring to life around wells and minuscule water sources.

When she had started out she had done a piece in a place like this, a beautiful little desert in New Mexico. Her hiking guide, an old Native American man had told her a story about how his people would come out to speak to the spiritual inhabitants of the rocks and cliff sides. He had said that the desert would swallow up their consciousness and make them one with the shrubs and vultures.

Reaching the core of the apple she nibbled around it to get the rest of the refreshingly moist flesh off.

Later, in another part of the world, another guide had told her a similar story about a vacuum in the desert; a Bermuda Triangle of sorts that would suck everything into it, creating a weaving of the past, the present, and the future; Male, female, and middle sex.  All things natural existed there and ceased to exist all at the same time. She'd smiled at the story, thinking of it as a superstition; an interesting one but still...

Throwing the core of her lunch as hard as she could into one of the crevasses, she watched it swivel in the air before disappearing. Now she had to wonder if the story was told in multiple, unconnected parts of the world could it be true. She pushed herself to the edge of the mushroom's top and slid down the side, landing with a thump on the ground.

She frowned to herself as she heard a noise, wondering how it was possible that anyone could sneak up on her from the vantage point she had positioned herself in for her lunch. Looking to her left over the tops of her aviator sunglasses, she spotted a figure dart behind one of the mushroom formations. She followed after it quickly, trying to not disturb the ground.