Escape The Deep Read online

  “Taking him will do nothing,” the first man said. He looked back at Dad. “If he doesn’t confess, we’ll kill him right here.”

  The words alone were enough to flip my world upside down. An instant later, confusion tangled with the fear when he raised a sword above his head.

  Now, I didn’t know much about law enforcement, but I had seen enough TV to assume swords weren’t standard practice. Especially swords that looked like they were carved from ice.

  “Any last words?” the large man with the blade asked.

  At that moment, all my fear and confusion disappeared. I had to act.

  “It was me,” I blurted as I burst into the room.

  I had no idea what I was confessing to, but it didn’t matter. I would say anything to stop them from hurting my father any more than they already had. Worst-case scenario, I’d spend the night in jail before this all got sorted out.

  Maybe I’d get a good mugshot out of it. This could give me my fifteen minutes of fame at school.

  “Sara, what are you doing?” Dad asked.

  He tried to get up from the chair, but one of the men shoved him back down. The other stepped toward me.

  “It can’t be you. You’re only a child,” the man spat.

  That wasn’t an encouraging reaction.

  “I look young for my age. And I definitely did it. I’m the one you want, not him,” I insisted.

  “There it is,” a third said. “She confessed. We did our job. Let the Guild figure the rest out.”

  That brought some of my confusion back. The only Guild I knew of was the awkward Sewing Guild at school that Martha Hubert ran. Somehow, I didn’t think they were into roughing people up and dragging them in for unknown crimes.

  He moved toward me, and before I could react, something bound my wrists together so tight it felt like it was cutting into my skin. His sunglasses slipped down on his face, and it looked like his eyes were glowing red.

  “Sara Slickerman, for your heinous crimes against The Far, you’ve been sentenced to ten lifetimes in The Deep.”

  I didn’t have time to try to process the jumble of nonsense before the man wielding the sword stepped closer. He pulled an ornate, glowing key out of the pocket of his long coat.

  He shoved the key forward into nothingness and a section of the room swung toward me as if it were two-dimensional, opening like a door into a dark swirl. I took one final look at my father’s tear-filled eyes before the men grabbed me and shoved me through the gap in reality, into the darkness beyond.

  Fuck fame. I wanted to know where the hell I was going.

  Chapter Two

  They pressed the back of my head down, forcing me to look at the floor as the red-eyed man led me roughly down a narrow corridor. My mind raced, trying to make sense of the senseless. When we entered a dank, cold hall, I could finally see more of my surroundings.

  One of the men wrenched open a door, and the screeching, grinding sound of rusted metal against rusted metal sent a shiver through my spine. He tossed me onto a damp stone floor and reality sank in.

  I was so not getting my paper done on time.

  My hip hit the floor hard, but I tried to scramble through the pain toward the door before it closed. The men slammed it shut in my face, and I collapsed, the sound of their laughter radiating around me. Sitting and pulling my knees up to my chest, I noticed a sliver of light slashing across the floor. I followed it to a small window high on the stone wall. There was something wrong with the sky outside.

  I crawled forward, staring through the bars as I tried to figure out what was off. It took several seconds for me to realize there were no stars. It wasn’t like when it was cloudy, and the sky was nothing but blank black and gray. They simply weren’t there at all. In their place were several small moons scattered across the dark expanse.

  A sudden voice at the door startled me into heart palpitations. Whipping around with exactly zero semblance of having my shit together, I glared through the dim light of the cell.

  “What did you say?” I tried not to let my voice tremble.

  “I said, welcome to The Deep.”

  I did not get the warm and fuzzies from that welcome.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Beccaria the Eighty-Second, Warden of this prison.”

  “Oh, thank goodness. Someone in charge.” I stood and rushed up to him. “Listen. This is all a big mistake.”

  “What is?”

  I gestured around myself frantically.

  “This. All this. Me being here. It’s kind of a funny story. Well, maybe not funny. Anyway, I shouldn’t be here. Wherever the hell here is. I didn’t do anything wrong. I was at home, being a responsible student, doing my homework. Then my best friend and her terrible-driving-self came to bring me some tacos. I went back inside and…”

  “Stop.”

  His voice was harsh and intense, immediately cutting off my words.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to hear it. The very sound of your voice makes me sick,” he said bitterly.

  “I don’t understand.”

  My stomach had sunk so far that if it went any lower, it was going to have to split in half so it could start sliding its way down my legs.

  “We’ve never had a Nearsider here before,” Beccaria muttered.

  “A what?”

  I didn’t understand what he’d called me. I didn’t wear glasses. That vision chart had no secrets from me.

  “I’ve heard about your crimes against my people, and they disgust me. If I weren’t so honorable, I would kill you right here, right now. But the Pax Philosophia would not allow it. I’m not too concerned, though. As it is, I highly doubt you will last the hour. You’ll get what you deserve. One way or another, justice is always served in The Deep,” he warned.

  Without another word, he turned and walked away.

  “What do you mean?” I shouted after him, smashing myself against the door and grabbing the bars. “Am I getting bailed out? Do I get a lawyer? What the hell is a Nearsider?”

  There was no response. I had been abandoned in a dungeon in a world with at least a dozen tiny moons. And I was wearing my damn pajamas. I had never felt so alone.

  Something stirred in an unseen corner of the room. My heart jumped. Maybe I’d rather be alone. A few seconds later, another rustling sound made my body shake.

  “Hello?” I tried to make my voice sound as confident as possible, but knew it was squeaking.

  “What is it?” a voice said.

  “Beccaria said she’s a Nearsider,” another murmured.

  “Do all Nearfolk look that strange? It’s been so long since I saw one,” another added.

  “Who’s there?” I asked. “Where are you?”

  “Oh, she can’t see us,” the first voice taunted. “I wonder what she’s thinking.”

  I hoped those voices were human. There it was—a sentence I would never have imagined thinking, but the only one that came to mind.

  “Maybe if we break her head open and suck out what’s inside, we’ll know what she’s thinking,” one of the voices hissed.

  Well, shit. Human or not, I didn’t like that idea.

  “You can have what’s in her head, but I get the rest.”

  “What do you think she tastes like?” the first asked.

  “She’s kind of spindly. I don’t think she’s going to be very satisfying.”

  “Maybe we don’t have to eat her. We could keep her as a pet,” another suggested.

  It was a new voice, and it wasn’t any more encouraging than the others. A dark shadow stretched into the faint patch of light glowing from the window on the floor in front of me. It grew larger as a heavy footstep shook me to my bones.

  A massive woman stepped into view, easily nine feet tall. I recoiled from her monstrous size and grey-tinged skin. She moved one leg to the side and a slimy-looking creature skittered between her feet and onto his hands and knees in front of me. I couldn’t help but think he lo
oked like an overripe Yoda.

  Holy living booger. Had she been here the whole time? How did I miss either of them?

  The smaller creature sniffed in my direction, then crawled back toward the giantess and latched onto her leg.

  “The Nearling looks scared,” the third voice said.

  No shit. The Nearling was scared.

  The giantess’s eyes glanced upward briefly as she made a confirming sound. That couldn’t be good. Nothing that was waiting above the head of a giant woman in a dungeon could possibly make a situation better.

  A fuzzy white leg appeared beside her head. It stretched out, its pointed tip finding a spot a couple of feet ahead of her, then a second leg appeared. Then a third.

  Nope. Not good.

  My stomach turned and glowing red dots flashed in front of my eyes. If the inside of a s’more and a spider had a baby, and that baby had a shriveled old lady head, this was what it would look like.

  The hell-marshmallow crept forward, then dropped from the ceiling right in front of me. I screamed, unashamed of the sound. These nightmarish creatures were coming at me like I was a vending machine at a Phish concert.

  I was way past the need for composure. One fuzzy white leg reached toward me and something snapped inside my brain. A red-hot temper flared up inside me, and somewhere in my mind I decided I’d rather not go out like a punk.

  If they wanted my apparently tasty brains and the three paragraphs of a term paper still in there, they were going to have to fight for them. A distinctly inelegant flail was all I could do to fight back. It showed absolutely no skill, but it was enough to stop the creature’s approach. It started toward me again with the giantess and a goblin in tow.

  I lashed out again, determined not to make this easy for them. A kick landed on the goblin’s leg and he scurried back to safety. A momentary victory emboldened me, and I began swinging wildly at them.

  No matter how hard I fought, they kept coming. I was literally against the wall now, the three of them closing in on me, laughing as they approached. This was it. I was only some girl who got plopped down into a world of monsters and promptly got eaten.

  The end.

  What a shitty fairy tale.

  The crawling cream filling made a growling sound and launched toward me. The huge dog flashed back into my mind. For the second time that night, I tried to imagine what it was going to feel like to be eaten and braced myself for it. Before I could get torn to pieces, a bright light flashed in front of me. Maybe it had killed me with some sort of instant shock, and Heaven had already taken me.

  It was a pleasant theory for the split second before I realized I still could hear the creatures hissing and snarling. When my eyes adjusted to the shock, a new figure had appeared in the cell. He took a sharp step forward, and the creatures scattered back into the darkness. His hand, lifted high above his head, held a switchblade.

  Not exactly a sword carved from ice, but it seemed to do the trick.

  Pale-blue eyes shone out of the old man’s bearded face that turned to me. They held concern for a split second before it shifted to surprise. He snapped the switchblade closed and it made a sound that told me he hadn’t purchased that particular weapon at a camping store.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He took a step toward me and his eyes widened even further. They glowed a gentle blue.

  “Are you human?”

  There it was again. People going around questioning my humanness. I was not appreciating that. There had been a few times when the automatic sinks in public bathrooms hadn’t turned on no matter how much I waved my hands around in front of the sensor, and I briefly and privately entertained the thought that I might not actually be real. But others sharing that possibility and vocalizing it all over the place was downright offensive.

  “Yes?”

  The answer seemed to have much more impact than I expected it to, and the old man’s eyes darted around the dark cell almost frantically.

  His hand reached out and wrapped around my arm, pulling me in closer to him.

  “Come with me. I’ll keep you safe.”

  Chapter Three

  Ten years later…

  “No matter what happens, this is my last night in this filthy cell,” I muttered.

  Sometimes when I sat on the cold floor with my back against the wall, I pretended I was back home sitting in my father's recliner. It gave me a little comfort in the grimy, brutal prison where I’d been held captive for a decade.

  When I arrived in The Deep, I was a child.

  My understanding of the world around me was so stunted. Not just because I’d only been in it for fifteen years, but because my awareness was so narrow. I was like a duck floating around in a peaceful pond thinking that was all that existed. That poor duck didn’t know shit about the scaly monster slithering around beneath it.

  Now, at twenty-five, I knew about the chaos that existed below the surface. Monsters, magic, mythical realms.

  The night Solon saved me, my first night in prison, he started teaching me. I learned there used to be two dimensions, The Near and The Far. I learned about Pan’Rhea, the ancient cataclysm that smashed our realms together, unleashing all manner of bizarre creatures upon the human world. Creatures that lived in secret, right alongside humans.

  He taught me a lot.

  It wasn’t so much nurturing mentorship as shoving as much information and as many skills into my head as he could as fast as possible so I’d live from moment to moment. Keeping me alive in The Deep was about understanding the ways of The Far and using them. But that didn’t keep me from thinking about home and the life I had left behind.

  That night I was preoccupied with thoughts of Solon. The old man's switchblade rolled back and forth between my fingers like it was waiting for me to open it. I hoped he taught me how to use it well enough before he died.

  I put the blade back in one of the hidden folds of my tattered uniform and pulled out a locket. A rune. One of the first gifts Solon had given me. I opened it, and in lieu of a picture, a faint blue light glowed in the darkness.

  "Did you know it took him three days to explain to me why they kept calling me a Nearling? I was a little thick, but he never gave up on me.” I launched into the story like it was penance for the less-than-respectful thought about Solon.

  “He promised to be my protector. Started training me. It's like he knew he was running out of time. I guess being older than dirt will give you that kind of awareness. It was a damn good thing he still had ten years in him."

  Splinter gave me the kind of withering look children give their parents when the old folks started waxing poetic with the same when I was young story they’d told a million times before. At least, that's what the look felt like.

  It was hard to tell with a rat.

  Well, not technically a rat. But it was the closest comparison I could come up with.

  Splinter was my only companion now that Solon was gone, and he had heard every story I had to tell, multiple times each.

  If he started talking at any point, he’d be able to host a master class on my life before being dragged out of The Near and tossed into the bloody confines of The Deep. One whole module could be devoted to theories on the egregious crimes for which I had confessed. And didn’t commit, if you needed the reminder.

  Talking to Splinter kept my mind occupied and stopped me from losing my ever-freaking-loving sanity. There were definitely times when that was a little touch and go. It was hard not to start slipping away when I thought about everything I was missing in adult life on the outside. My family. Friends. College. Boyfriends. A career. Tacos. I’d missed out on so many tacos.

  Splinter made it easier. He sat in his favorite spot on my thigh, nibbling on some crumb he had managed to find somewhere. Sometimes I wondered what type of furniture he pretended I was when he was sitting there. Maybe I was his recliner. Perhaps a nice chaise lounge. I could even pull off an ottoman. He deserved a really nice whatever I was.

&
nbsp; It had taken a few weeks for us to come to terms with each other in the beginning. The little dungeon hole I'd been thrown into turned out to be a holding cell. The guards moved me to a new room that managed to be colder, slimier, and darker than the first. There was one silver lining.

  After Solon saved me from them, I never had to see the giantess, goblin, and rice-creepy treat again.

  But then I was mostly alone. Solitary.

  Solon came and went, as wizards are wont to do, leaving me with long, hollow stretches between lessons. I quickly learned that was part of the torture of The Deep. Even the occasional meal that showed up in my cell wasn't brought by a living creature. It would materialize at irregular intervals, then disappear. Eventually they caught on to me counting the stones of my cell for entertainment and an enchantment wiped them away, replacing them with a smooth, empty surface.

  Bastards.

  In those days, the only other living beings I saw were the guards. Suffice it to say we didn’t become best friends. Torture embellished with the occasional detail about my crimes isn’t exactly a charming backdrop for bonding.

  Then Splinter showed up. He scuttled through the bars of the door like his tail was on fire and curled up in the corner. We were not immediate fans of each other. We gradually got used to sharing the space, then I started talking to him. He didn’t provide me any extra details about The Deep, but he was a damn good listener.

  Eventually, I received The Deep’s version of an increase in privileges. My reward for survival of my initial isolation was that sometimes I got to leave my cell and go to the dingy lunchroom to eat with the other prisoners. Splinter would curl up in the pocket of my uniform and come with me. He decided we were friends before I did, but I didn’t have the heart to argue with the little critter.

  The other prisoners heard the rumors about me and ranked me about four steps lower in the hierarchy than the molded, leftover food splatter on the floor, so I appreciated Splinter’s companionship.