L’altra Dimensione 

Noah Ma

You sit on a lone swing by the lake and watch as the moon’s reflection changes over the rippling waves. The beach before you is steep, with sharp rocks yet to be ground down into sand. Dead reeds dance to the wind as water-tumbled stones shine at their feet. There’s a wireless earbud in your left ear, muffling the creaking of the swing’s rusty hinges. Its battery died hours ago, but you refuse to take it out, knowing that your latest anthem would continue to blast in your brain cavity, guitar riffs bright and crisp. You’re about twenty minutes late for your evening class, but the swing’s gravitational pull seems to be stronger than the ticking of your plastic wristwatch. Rewind time by a few years, and you would’ve sprinted toward your next assignment, gasping for breath even before the first step. An acorn falls from a nearby tree; it lands without a sound. You’re late to everything now, as your life is late for you, so you lean back against the swing’s bench, its scent coppery, as it rocks like a cradle. 

Thunder rolls somewhere north, on the other side of the lake perhaps, where rich families build their summer homes. Lightning doesn’t follow, trapped in thick blankets of clouds. Clusters of houses, rooftops sapphire blue like the ones in Greece, nestle on the northern beach. The buildings are invisible behind the night’s veil, but the colors are forever imprinted on your retina. A few small yachts bob in the water, covered with stretchy fabrics the color of law firm logos. Their windows are dark, of course, the houses’ and the boats’, their owners somewhere across the Atlantic, sipping espresso from delicate small cups in Southern Italy.

You let your soul flow in sync to the lake’s currents, hoping to smell rose gardens and a steaming cup of coffee. After all, you reason, water cycles around the globe, the lake must’ve rested on a fresh rose petal at some point. 

Europe has always been a dream destination for you. Damp cobblestone roads, street-side cafés and a clock that turns at a leisurely pace are verses of a love song that you’ll never taste. You yearn for it, just a tiny tinge of romance, but all you see is a splash of color, blocked from your fingers by a white, thin layer of plastic film. Your life consists of two things and two things only: gasping for air and hurrying after everyone else (they seem to be anaerobic organisms that run solely on ambition). Their pounding footsteps clashing with your off-beat ones give you migraines. 

You sit still, curled up on the swing’s metal bench, for another few hours. The lake seems to rise; icy droplets seep into the rubber toes of your sneakers. The temperature is edging toward zero. You pull your knees up to your chest; frost hovers in the night air, despite the calendar’s protest that it’s only late October. You would rather not have your feet wet. 

Water, semi-crystalized, falls onto your hair and stabs at your scalp. You smell your conditioner and hair dye, a chemical mix of lavender and vegan butter, as they melt at moisture’s whispers. You reach for the hood of your sweatshirt, only to realize that it shrunk throughout the years, too small to cover your head. A stray twig smacks you in the head. You shiver. Visualizing body heat, you play a memory of a Californian beach, warm from days under the sun; the dusty comfort when you press your palm against the back of an old school mainframe, humming after hours of use; the radiator your mother puts in her dining room every New Year reminds you of home. Your heart still shivers,

ribs still rattle with tiny ice bells, but the sprinkling sleet seems to warm by a fraction of a degree. The swing rumbles, a bassy groan, a vintage train speeding through a tunnel, right into the belly of a carnivorous mountain. 

· · · 

You must have dozed off for a few moments, for the rain has stopped beating down on your skull, and your train has halted when the ticking of your watch resumes. The world is blurry, stuffy in your throat, greasy in your eyes. The air seems denser than usual, purple with fog. Steam rises far upwards, as though from a factory chimney. The odor of stagnant water coats your tongue. Although not much brighter than night, the colors seem more vibrant than before. The place might’ve been psychedelic, you think, sprawling across a cold surface, your view at an obscure angle. 

You’re in a shower stall with walls once of turquoise tiles, now patterned with yellow and violet stains, dripping down like a half-finished mural. Mushrooms, ones with grainy red caps, smooth beige ones, and white puffballs the size of chicken eggs stick out of crimson crevices that web across cracked tiles. Colonies of green and brown growth peek out from beneath ceramic debris. A moldy gray curtain forms the fourth wall of the stall, flickering like a phantom out in the rain. 

“Don’t just sit there.” A puffball, splattered in liquid mercury, quivers as it speaks. “Get out, look around.”

“Sorry.” Your mind swivels. You’re yet to process the thoughts jammed in your spinal cord. Water, green with moss, drips down the shower’s brass faucet, landing with metallic plops. “Where am I?” 

“I’m a mushroom, how would I know?” the puffball says. “Go find out yourself.” It stills for a second. “Just leave, you reek.” 

You scramble to your feet, apologizing, your knees cracking and moaning. The curtain disintegrates at your touch. A rush of dewy air slams into your face before the nylon ashes settle. The world outside is floored with wide, unpolished marble, each slab the size of a ping-pong table. The material is soft, slightly spongy underneath your Converse soles. Ancient runes once adorned them, now illegible. 

The sky is an intermediate hue between purple and navy, pressing closer as seconds slip by. Depressed-looking palm trees spread their roots across the stone, mossy, neon green. Ferns sprout around hairy trunks, heavy and plump. The plants bear no fruits. A snake slithers across your feet, scales tiny, auric, body smooth, glistening with an unknown light source. Its eyes are of real rubies, sockets plated with gold, gleaming dimly to the roots’ faint glow. It disappears without sparing you a glance. 

A few steps forward, a cavern surfaces from the foliage. Gems are bare on jagged rocks; veins of gold, copper and silver run along each wall, pulsing to a foreign heartbeat. You venture further. 

A lake reflecting a dull full moon is nestled between rocks on the cave’s ceiling, defying gravity. Next to the moon shimmers a lakeside swing, swaying in a downpour. A black panther lounges on the swing, its teeth a warm white. It stretches into a flawless curve as it yawns. You reach up and run a finger across the lake. Surface tension engulfs your skin, awakening an ancient ache. 

“Hello?” Your question bounces off walls, vibrates in the stone chamber, each echo an answer to the one before. It travels far into darkness at the back of the cave, a gallery of crystals, leading somewhere. 

“Hello.” You’re not entirely sure whether the voice is your own or a response, but walk in its direction anyway. The ground slopes into a tunnel, deeper down. 

· · · 

You hear drumbeats beneath a wooden trapdoor. You unlatch it. The sudden light blinds you. Wooly figures spin below, a choreography in candlelight and torches, their silhouettes faint by motion. You blink for a clearer image. 

Six cats, pelts thick and grizzled, dance in a triangle, each carrying a small, silver drum. Gleaming chrome crescents dangle from their pink ears, pearls embedded in the metal. They sing a melancholy song, each note tugging at your neurons to come closer. Your feet inch toward the opening and rocks give away to air. You fall.

· · · 

And land with a barely audible thud. The music screeches to a stop, the last beat chopped short. Your vision flashes black from the impact, but clear enough to see as the cats scatter out of formation. A human-shaped dent forms beneath your body, dust billow. The sounds of feline claws scratching at rock walls fill your ears for a moment, then fade into your breaths. Hundreds of tiny feet pad around you - feet of rodents, pink and hairless - and stream into dark gaps in the ground. You spring up, searching for music and the dancing cats, now nowhere to be seen. 

Senses disordered, you decide the chamber is too strange for further investigation. You pull yourself out of the trapdoor and continue your journey down the tunnel. Curiosity and intuition are the only driving forces, unbridled, with nothing to counter their powers. 

· · · 

Footsteps are not the most accurate way to track time. After around five thousand of them, the tunnel abruptly ends into a circular hall, a watery meadow inside the cave’s mountainous jungle. A jingle that smells like cheap strawberry lollipops plays behind the walls of the room, its sound slightly fuzzy. Hot springs ooze from the ground, framed by coral pink tiles, light against the gloom. The water laps. Something moves beneath its surface. A form appears. 

“Who are you?” A child, no more than five, pops out of a pool. She wears a purple Halloween themed swimsuit, dark hair smoothed back, wet.

“Me? I- no.” Steam clouds your vision. “I’m, I’m not- I’m so sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” the child says. “Why are you here?” 

“I don’t know,” you hear yourself say. “I guess I’m kind of lost here.” 

“You’re lost?” asks the child. “Then you better get found.” 

“I’m sorry, what?” 

“Get found. That’s what most people I meet want, especially when they are lost.” “Um, but how do I get found?” You frown, wondering why you’re talking to a child. 

“Go back to the place right before you got lost. It’s not that complicated.” 

“I don’t really remember how I got here.” 

“Just go back the way you came, turn left where you turned right and you’ll get there.” 

“It’s not that easy.” 

“I can lead you back if you want.” The child hops out of her pool. “It’s quite easy, actually.”

You accept the child’s offer, more confused than curious. 

You follow the child through a labyrinth of tunnels and passageways, wade through a handful of streams, some murky, others twinkle with crystals and luminous fungi. Rats with flaming red fur scuttle between your ankles; obsidian beetles flash in and out of view. The child walks quietly: she seems to know the way, despite not once asking you for your destination. Her shadow lengthens with the shift of an invisible sun, while her height gives away, shrinking smaller by every step. 

You don’t know when you exit the cavern, but find yourself climbing up a ladder into a small yacht. The moon kisses your skin and the breeze smells like snow, but not yet wintry. Caramel wafts into your nostrils, a vaguely familiar scent. 

Pine forests loom in the distance: a place you know. Time fits around your body like a contact lens, ridding your throat of the world’s silt and smoke. You turn to thank the child, but she has already melted back into the night. 

A floating dock bumps into the hull of the boat, in the same tempo as your heartbeat, its linked walkway leading ashore. You step on it, steady now that the water is calm. Pine needles the color of straw carpet the forest floor as you land. A paved road, one that you know by heart, snakes beyond the woods. It is right under your feet. You once again let your intuition take control and jog up the path. City lights smother out one by one in the distance. All the rose bushes are withered, flowers gazing downward as if in mourning. A black panther licks its paw behind a pile of discarded furniture.

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