It was a beautiful day for a train ride. There was a light drizzle coming from the gray sky above, the kind of drizzle that creates picturesque droplets all over any window, begging you to imagine yourself in a sad movie or music video, allowing you all the feelings of dramatic gloom with none of the real life stress. After all, it’s all in your head as you watch the mountains and valleys pass by on your way to your destination. It was this kind of day that the not-quite adults of Rosen High School found themselves on the train on the way to New York for their senior trip.
Some of the kids were in the back of the train car playing a card game to pass the time, getting very rowdy on occasion, unable to contain their energy in a car for that long, calling down the disapproving attention of the chaperones much to the displeasure of the assortment of couples who had chosen to sit directly in front of them. The quietest kids sat in the very front of the car, with their earbuds plugged in or reading their books, trying to avoid the rest of the people, their only purpose on this trip being to see the historical landmarks when they got to Italy. In the middle of the car were the overly studious students, researching scholarships, studying for extra exams they were taking, or generally stressfully doing anything other than having fun. For the most part, everyone in the class fell into one of those categories. Except Violet and Jackson. No one ever seemed to be able to place them.
If you were to meet them separately, you probably would come to some very accurately inaccurate ideas of who they were. Violet had on multiple occasions been mistaken for the overly studious stressed type. And she was. Jackson often found people describing him as an energetic type. And he was. Unless you got to know them, which then you would describe both of them as the quiet type who preferred their own company and the company of their books and music to the company of other people. Which they were.
If you met them together, you would immediately know they were not siblings or cousins, as they looked nothing alike. Because they were very close, some people would make the immediate assumption that they were just a couple but always quickly figured out that was not true either.
The truth was, Violet and Jackson were just best friends and part of the few people who really knew who each other was. And if you asked Violet and Jackson which group they fit into, they would tell you that they fit in both nowhere and everywhere at the same time. They were just those kind of people with that kind of friendship. and if this story taught me anything, it’s that those kind of people with that kind of friendship make the best team.
For this trip, they had chosen to sit with the quiet kids, both of them with a separate pair of earbuds and a book, pausing their internal adventures only occasionally to check on the other, pull a snack out of their joint snack bag, or obey the dramatic call of the rainy sky. They were peacefully enjoying this and were not pleased to be interrupted by the sudden jolting of the train followed by everyone in the car blacking out.
Violet came to first, blinking painfully in the bright sunshine she found glaring in her eyes immediately upon waking. Jackson was lying next to her, still passed out. She looked around, very disoriented, sure that just a moment ago the skies had been gray, and she had been traveling through mountains and valleys. Now the sun was shining, and she was in the middle of the desert. Only with this realization did the first sliver of fear enter her brain.
While she was still looking around and staring, trying to figure out what had happened, Jackson woke up. He looked around quickly, realizing all the same things she did, plus one. “Oh no,” he said, with a distinctly worried tone.
Violet looked at him with concern at the tone, and then with more concern when she saw what he was looking at. There, in the distance, they could faintly see the shape of the train they had just been on, crashed with smoke curling up from it.
With only a look and a nod at each other, they both shakily got up and started walking in the direction of the train. It ended up being farther away than it looked, but they got there and stopped right in front of it.
“should we go inside?” asked Jackson skeptically.
“Well, that sounds like an actually terrible idea for us, but there might be people inside.” She looked at him with a face somewhere between resignation and worry; she knew they both cared about people too much deep down to walk away without checking, she just didn’t really want to go inside of a smoking train.
They left the front of the train and started to walk toward the door on the side of the first car. They immediately blacked out again.
This time, when they woke up, they were back in the mountains and valleys with the grey drizzly skies. The train was still crashed but this was back where they had been before. This time they woke up with determined skepticism. They quickly checked the entire train for people but finding no one, they walked back to the front of the train. Fully expecting to black out again, they walked to the front of the train, blacking out and then waking up in the desert again.
Trying to lighten the confusing situation, Jackson laughed. “Hey, it’s not every day one finds a portal between worlds.” As soon as the words came out of his mouth, a look of realization dawned on both their faces. “Hold on,” he told her and walked towards the train door again.
Violet was about to roll her eyes at his decision to black out yet again, when he vanished before her very eyes. Gasping, she had to remind herself not to hold her breath while she waited for him to come back.
When Jackson woke back up in the desert again, he was laughing. “I couldn’t see you!” he proclaimed triumphantly.
Facepalming dramatically, Violet replied. “Yes, and you vanished before my very eyes. I think it’s safe to say your jokes stumbled upon the truth.” She paused for a long while. “This shouldn’t be happening.”
Sobering immediately, they realized how serious this situation could be. The two had read enough books to know that stumbling upon another world was usually no coincidence. In most cases, you were drawn there to either be captured or to save the world or both. Even saving the world usually involved several near-death experiences. Or when there were two people saving the people, one of them usually died. Best case scenario, there was no way they were spending the last bit of their senior year calming sight-seeing in Italy. Worst case scenario, they die.
Violet looked up from her contemplation of all this to ask Jackson what their game plan was for this most lovely situation they had found themselves in, only to be interrupted by him pointing into the distance. There were people.
Not wanting to wait for the people to get to them, Violet and Jackson stood up and started walking in the direction of what they soon made out to be two people. Their pace slowed as they got closer and realized that it was Jake and Mattie, the most annoying couple in class. Violet gave Jackson a look of suppressed irritation and he returned the look with equal disdain.
“Oh my gosh, you guys are here too!” Mattie exclaimed when she was still several feet away. She rushed to give Violet a hug as if they were long lost best friends; Violet tried to return the hug with equal enthusiasm.
In his favor, Jake could be very practical when he wanted to. “So, what happened?” he asked immediately after Mattie had finished hugging Violet and returned to his side. “Why are we all of the sudden in the desert?”
Jackson laughed. “Turns out, the train hit a wall between two worlds, crashed, and sent us all into this other part of the universe. No, I don’t know where exactly. But I tested it. We are in a different world for sure.”
Violet raised her eyebrows sarcastically. “He ‘tested’ it by jumping through the portal and blacking out more times than necessary.”
Jackson brushed off her comment with another laugh. “How I tested it is not this point. The fact is I did. And here we are. And there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Watching the looks of horror creep across the couple’s faces, Violet tried to reassure the two that they were going to be fine. “We did jump through the portal. I’m sure you can too. Its right over there by the door to the—” She stopped talking as she realized the train had very much disappeared. “—the train,” she finished.
Tears began to well up in Mattie’s eyes. “we’re never going to get out of here.”
“Sweetie, we will find our way out of this I promise,” Jake tried reassuring her while himself looking around frantically as if he expected a magical door to just appear out of nowhere that would lead them home. “You said the portal was by the train, right?”
Violet and Jackson nodded.
“I’m sure the portal is still there. We just don’t have a reference for it exactly anymore. Maybe if we just run in the direction of the portal, we’ll run into and find our way out.” On this impulse, he got up and bolted in the direction of where the train had been. Sure enough, he slammed into the wall that separated the two worlds. But he did not disappear, only fell flat on his back.
Jackson leaned over to whisper to Violet. “The portal must have closed while we were talking. Can’t say I’m happy. I would’ve liked them to go back.”
Enraged, Jake spotted them talking. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you?!” He ran at Jackson in his rage, expecting to lay him out on the floor, but he just sidestepped and let Jake keep running. Then Jake tripped from his own momentum and fell on the ground, this time causing a small gash in his forehead that began bleeding.
Everyone gasped when he disappeared the moment the first drop of blood hit the ground.
Mattie immediately started hyperventilating, and they both jumped to calm her down. They convinced her to breathe normally and to walk with them calmly while they tried to come up with a plan for how to get out of here and get Jake back. As much as they didn’t like the couple, they could not justify leaving them to fend for themselves in this world. Not when both Violet and Jackson had enough fantasy reading under their belts to give them at least a slight advantage on how to survive out here.
The trio began walking. And they walked for a long time in the general direction of the plateaus they could see in the distance, opposite of where the wall was. The idea was to find a cave to spend the night in.
They walked happily along for a while, until Mattie spotted a cacti flower that she insisted on getting to give to Jake when they found him. And all the amount of protesting Jackson and Violet did, the more determined she was to get it. Taking a deep breath and trying to keep their calm while she proceeded in her childish way to get the flower, they gave up any hope they had retained that she would be reasonable on this adventure.
They did still feel a little badly when she stabbed herself with a cactus thorn just bad enough for it to bleed, spill on the floor, and make her disappear the same way her boyfriend had.
They took another deep breath and kept walking. They could just barely make out a cave up ahead, and they were determined to make it there before it got dark. And the sun was already setting. Fortunately, without the distracted and slow walking style of their now vanished companion, they made good time, not talking much, both choosing to save their energy for whatever they may find lay ahead.
When they got within proper viewing distance of the mouth of the cave, Jackson stopped short. Violet had been looking at the ground for a time and had not noticed what he had seen. He grabbed her quickly and pulled her behind a large rock that was just to their right.
She almost hit him but stopped when she saw that he was pointing to a pair of armed guards standing in front of the mouth of the cave. They were standing there, each with a spear like a pair of ancient soldiers but were dressed much more like dystopian cyborgs.
Violet rubbed her temples, trying to figure out why on earth they were the ones that had to deal with this. “I am pretty sure the fact that there are guards means that inside of that cave is the problem we ended up here to solve,” she whispered.
Jackson only sighed and shook his head. “We can’t get in there without—” This time it was Violet who cut him off while pointing at something; it was another classmate, one of the more studious ones, but they looked miserable and not at all like themselves.
They watched in horror as she walked up to the guards as if they would let her by. There horror only increased steadily as they watched what happened. The guards, rather than grabbing her and trying to arrest her, simple stood there and waited for her to get close to them. Once she was in spear distance, one of them just gently reached out the tip of his spear and scraped the side of her face, just enough to draw blood. Everyone watched as the drop of blood fell to the floor, and then the girl vanished.
It was at that moment that Violet and Jackson realized that every drop of blood spilled in this place made someone a prisoner of some sort. The only way to save this world from whatever must plague it enough to draw people from another world in was to not spill a single drop of blood. The whole time. And they were pretty sure that was not possible. And they were pretty sure they would not make it home unless they tried.
Jackson nodded his head back in the direction they had come. There was another larger rock farther back he figured would work as an okay spot to hide and talk until they had some sort of plan. Gathering his meaning, Violet started sneaking back in that direction, and he followed close behind her, watching to make sure nothing or no one was following them.
They sat with their backs to the rock for at least an hour, trying to come up with a plan that could actually work. They didn’t really have any way of knowing if the cyborg guards couldn’t move or if they had just not chosen to move in that instance. Finally, they got on their stomachs and watched the guards for a while.
Finally, Jackson spotted something. There was a rabbit. It stopped just outside of spear reach of the guards and watched them for a moment. Then it hopped around the guards in a steady circle continuing to stay out of reach. Apparently, there was a full circle of spear distance around each guard, leaving a very small gap between where they could reach and the entrance to the cave. The rabbit slipped in through that space and went into the cave. Unharmed.
Smiles broke out over Violet and Jackson’s faces as they realized what this meant. If the rabbit could get in, they probably could to. They walked back up to the guards, in full daylight, and walked around them to the entrance of the cave, staying a full spear’s radius away at all times. They got in.
And of course, it was dark.
They crept along quietly, feeling the walls so they didn’t run into anything and holding hands, so they didn’t lose each other. They were moving slowly along for what felt like hours before they finally began to see a faint orange and green light glowing still very far away from them.
They continued to inch their way in that direction, getting ever closer to that rather ominous light. The cave was dark and cold and slimy in places, and as they moved towards the light it got less dark and less cold but so much slimier, as if hundreds of thousands of snails and slugs had decided to make their home in this cave. Not necessarily an enjoyable experience. And if you think cold slime is nasty, let me tell you that increasingly warm slime twisting throughout a cave like spiderwebs is much nastier because it whispers and oozes of something that lives and breathes that you would not want to meet.
The sight that met their eyes when they found the source of the glow and the slime was not one that was pleasant to see. There were hundreds upon hundreds of spiders with green eyes crawling around with these large brain-shaped glass bowls attached to their heads carrying a glowing orange slime. They stood and watched them from the shadows for a while, trying to figure out what was going on. Soon enough they did.
They all appeared to be serving the tall woman in a black gown of the most cliché villain type who was standing on a stone balcony far above the floor where they stood.
They continued to stare in horror at the spiders crawling around, until one stopped to stare directly at them, all of its eyes focused curiously on just the two of them, almost as if the spider knew them.
Violet and Jackson had to stifle gasps when the spider spoke. “Oh my gosh, you guys came. You’re here. Are you going to get us out?” It was Mattie.
“Uhm yeah,” Violet faltered out. “We’re here to save you, and if all these spiders are actually people…” she trailed off and looked over at Jackson.
“Then we’re here to save them too,” he finished.
Mattie began to bubble with excitement. “Okay so you can get me out of this hideous spider body, right?”
“Yes, of course, well no but we’ll figure it out,” Jackson stumbled. “You should probably go back to uhm whatever it was you were doing before you saw us. I would not be surprised if—” he was interrupted by a loud booming voice. “If that happened.”
“YOU! DWADLING along the wall! Would you care to inform me why precisely I am paying you if you are going to wander instead of work?”
Mattie—or rather Spider Mattie—froze in her place and stared up at where the dark woman was standing. The woman raised her hand. Mattie unfroze, whispered to them out of the corner of her mouth that she had to leave, and skittered off back in line with the hundreds of other spiders covered the walls of every place they could see.
Violet scrunched her forehead. “What just happened?”
“Big evil lady in black dress is paying her spider minions?” Jackson offered.
“We don’t have the actual time or food to stay here and observe for a million hours and form a well-crafted plan on how to fix this. Which, don’t get me wrong, I would much rather have a well-crafted plan but I’m getting hungry and would like to go back to riding the train now.”
“Do you have that knife in your pocket that you always have there?”
“Yeah…”
“Hand it to me,” Jackson demanded.
Skeptically, Violet handed over the knife. Next, it was her turn to do the demanding as she watched Jackson launch the knife at the orange substance over one of the spider’s heads without any explanation. He just told her to wait.
Glaring at his refusal to give her an explanation, she watched and had to stifle a gasp for perhaps the hundredth time that day as she watched the spider start writhing and gradually writhe itself into a human form.
The spider now a man looked frightened at not being a spider, as one does. Spotting Violet and Jackson still hiding in the shadows he sprinted toward them, panting and begging them to tell him what had happened.
Violet just shook her head. “I don’t know what’s happening, and he is working off wild guesses. If you could tell us what you remember that would be great.”
The man looked shakily around again. “Don’t worry,” Jackson piped in. “We’ve been sitting here for nearly three hours and no one has spotted us.”
The man looked at the two as if they were aliens. “I wouldn’t underestimate the Missus if I were you.” He began creeping back in the direction they had just come from and didn’t stop until they were several feet away from the entrance to the room where all the spiders were.
“My name is John. I was on a train one day when it crashed, and I ended up in a random desert. I’m clumsy, and within minutes I had tripped and scraped my knee. No big deal, right? Yes, big deal. The second my blood hit the dust on the ground I blacked out and found myself lounging in a chair while the Missus stood by a machine set up the corner. We were in a very nice comfortable room. She looked so friendly. I immediately felt at ease, but I was still confused as to why I was not at home.
“She stood there, twirling the drop of blood in her hand like it was a bead. She asked me if I wanted to go home. I’m not an idiot. I told her I want to go home. She told me that if she put my drop of blood into that machine, it would naturally pull me home. She claimed that since it belonged to my home the machine would help it to bring me home.
“I said yes. What else was I supposed to do. How could I have known that the machine would spin my drop of blood into a mass of glowing orange slime that would trap me in a spider’s body? That isn’t a normal or expected thing. How could I have known that the orange stuff would act like worse than drugs, so she could trick us into thinking she was paying us? She’s been deceiving every last one of us for years and making us her slaves. I don’t even know what we do for her.
“I feel like I’ve been walking in an orange colored haze ever since I got here. I can’t remember much of anything that happened while I was a spider.” He finished and dropped his head. “I wouldn’t underestimate the Missus because she doesn’t play by the expected rules.”
Violet and Jackson’s faces became more and more distressed with every word he added to the story. It was a classic story book plot. Someone had all these people trapped. Jackson whispered, “I bet the only way for us to get home is to take out the evil lady in the black dress.”
John heard him. “Good luck with that. I’m going to find my way out of this hell hole and run far and never look back.” Which is exactly what he did.
They watched. They weren’t going to try to keep someone around who did not want to help them. Chances are he would make it worse, and he’d already helped them more than enough by telling them that story.
Jackson spoke again. “Since we haven’t spilled any of our blood, that means she can’t control us, right? Maybe that’s why she couldn’t see us.”
Violet nodded. “Let’s just follow the spiders. I’m sure they’ll lead us right to her.” She was right.
It was less than an hour before they found themselves standing directly across from the woman John had called the Missus in the room he spoke so highly of, that put him at such ease. They only felt on edge, sensing that something very wrong had been happening here for years.
“The Missus, is it?” Violet asked, channeling a confident subtly demanding voice usually reserved for annoying group project members or children.
Jackson nearly laughed when he heard a fair amount of false confidence in the voice of the lady. “Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?” she asked them.
“No problem, ma’am,” Jackson said. “We are here to free all your spider minions from your tyrannical care and then I don’t know probably kill you so we can go home.” He delivered this all in one breathe, in a tone more like one you’d use to tell someone that you are going to get ice cream after dinner and then follow it up with a movie.
They could see the fear quivering behind her eyes.
“You aren’t used to seeing other people stand up to you, are you?” Violet asked as she looked her up and down. In the process of looking her up and down, she cued Jackson into doing the same until he spotted what she’d seen almost immediately upon entry.
The woman was wearing a vial around her neck that appeared to be filled with blood.
Continuing their casual back and forth discussion over who this woman was and what she was used to, they slowly advanced and backed her into a corner. Violet reached out and grabbed the vial from around her neck with the frustratingly calm words, “What’s this?”
Just with that action and words, the fear in the woman’s eyes skyrocketed and she began shaking. “Oh,” Jackson looked at her. “It’s important.”
“Please don’t,” she cried. “I don’t want to die.”
Violet and Jackson looked at each other and stepped away from her, but Violet retained her grasp on the vial.
“Sit down,” Jackson told her. “Explain yourself.”
“That’s the blood ever spilled here. I can’t live without other’s blood. Others have to give me life or I die.”
They shook their head. “You can’t do that,” Violet said. “If you cannot live off blood of your own, it means you should not be alive.” She smiled sadly. “I can’t let you ruin the lives of hundreds of people.” She took the vial and smashed it against the edge of the table and let the blood spill on the floor.
With that, the woman vaporized the same way they had watched the others disappear earlier that morning. When they looked down at the ground, there was a very small spider there. Jackson walked over and smashed it with his heel.
They both immediately blacked out and found themselves back on the train.
They turned around slowly and looked at the people in the train. They could spot Jake and Mattie in the back looking equally confused but both in proper human very non-spider forms. They locked eyes with Violet and Jackson, their eyes asking a hundred questions at once.
Violet and Jackson turned back around and smiled at each other. Violet reached into her bag and opened a bag of pretzels. She shook her head as Jackson laughed at her. “I told you we had to finish saving the world because I was hungry.”