And there was something else. He could sense a greater, louder presence somewhere above him. Chattering, unfocused, thoughts buzzed and screeched without any sense or meaning.

‘That must be the creature,’ he thought,’ the one we’re stuck in.’

Lim thought, ‘It’s like there’s an invisible chute that connects the door to these monsters’ heads. You step in, and the door shoots you down the chute, right into the controlling part of the brain. But this time, there was too much of us to make it all the way to the top. We got lodged in the pipe.’

As a kid, he had always laughed at Augustus Gloop.

‘So that’s what irony means,’ Lim thought with bitterness.

He felt a pang from what he thought must be Derek’s thoughts.

It was odd, feeling words instead of hearing them. He wondered if this was how dolphins and whales communicated, with sound waves fired across ocean tides.

The message from Derek was, ‘We’ll be OK! We just need to wait for them to put us through again.’

Lim focused intently on thinking, ‘I don’t think so. They should have done that already.’

The response came back: ‘What are we going to do?’

Panic was creeping into the edge of Derek’s normally confident tone.

‘And now I know what despair really means,’ Lim thought.

Can’t move. Can’t speak. Nowhere to go.

Wait.

Now that he thought about it, there was somewhere to go.

Up.

‘Derek,’ he thought-spoke, ‘We need to get in control of this thing.’

‘And how do you suggest we do that?’

‘Derek,’ he thought, struggling for patience, ‘listen to that thing.’

Both boys did so. The creature’s thoughts were spastic. It changed course every few seconds, with every notion and idea generating from one of two basic drives. It was either, “Taste good?” or “SHINY THING SHINY THING ME WANT SHINY THING!” and back and forth and back and forth.

‘It’s like somebody gave Chowdah a bowl of sugar,’ Derek thought to him.

‘And I think we can wrestle it down,’ Lim sent back.

‘How?’

This was an interesting question.

Lim looked around him. There was no up and no down, no left or right.

He began to imagine that there was. And, as he focused more and more on the imaginary existence of space, it did seem to him that the space was becoming more real. Suddenly, he was not in an endless chasm of black, but simply stood in a dark room. And there was a ladder in front of him because of course there was.

He imagined himself climbing the ladder. And indeed, there was a sense of motion, of rising. The bustling brain-waves of the creature were grew louder.

Lim quickly signaled to Derek what he had to do.

‘I can’t do it!’ the other boy called. ‘It’s not working!’

Lim faltered. He re-focused.

‘Of course this will work,’ he told himself. ‘Of course this is working.’

“Don’t worry!” he shouted, calling down to someone far below him, knowing that his voice was echoing around the great empty chamber that he forced himself to believe was really there. “When I get up there, I’m going to throw him down here and you can tackle him and hold him down while I get us to the door.”

Lim resumed his ascent. Further and further he climbed. The cacophony of thought grew louder all the time.

Lim believed he was climbing and so he climbed.

There was a distortion in the darkness right in front of him. He reached out a hand and felt the wall. It was churning, multi-color mass of spongy material that would not stay in one shape. He watched as it pulsed and quaked and shifted. Where he touched, the surface began to pucker and twist.

The idiot thoughts of the monster were deafening.

Lim took a deep breath and plunged in, hands first. The spongy mass wrapped around him, a million suckers kissing his arms and legs and face. He moved just like he had been taught at swimming class, kicking his legs in sequence and propelling himself with his arms.

The mass clung to his arms and legs, pressing in tighter the further in he tunneled.

He began to tire. Desperation fueled him to kick and push, but each seemed weaker than the last and each sucker seemed to be that much stickier and hold him for that much longer.

He was not going to make it.

And for a moment, that thought almost made him stop. The possibility of failure, of death, became so tangible that Lim nearly froze with the weight of it.

But he did not. The best version of him, the Lim he most wanted to be, would never stop. That Lim kept pushing forward, always. That Lim never said die. That Lim didn’t even know what fear felt like.

So, with his own fear making itself very, very noticeable, Lim went on, pretending he was stronger, pretending he was braver.

The end came quite suddenly. One moment he was flailing around in the muck, feeling the exhaustion nipping at his limbs, and then in the next there was a tremendous ripping sound and he burst out into a blinding white light.

He had only a moment of relief and then a harsh shrieking split the peace and some thing landed on top of him.

Lim was smacked and battered by the screeching, wild thing.

“SHINY THING!” the creature howled. “SHINY THING MINE! SHINY THING MINE! EAT! EAT!”

He could not see the creature clearly for it pummeled and slashed him and would not stop moving.

“EAT!” the creature screamed through maggot-coated teeth. “EAT! SHINY THING MINE! EAT!”

Lim punched it in the head.

The creature stopped fighting.

It began to cry.

“OWWWWW!” it wailed. ‘SHINY THINNNNNNG! OWWWWWWWWW!”

Lim grabbed the creature and, using a move he had perfected from hours and hours of controlling Batman on Playstation, hurled it behind him and back down the sticky mass.

“NOOOOOOO! SHINY THINNNNNnnnng!” the mad beast cried as it fell into the darkness.

There was a tremendous crashing, and a roaring of light and motion descended upon him and swept him up.

He blinked. He had the ability to blink now. And real eyes to do it. And real eye sockets to hold those eyes and a real head to hold those sockets and a real neck to support that head. He scratched a real itch with the real fingers on his real hand.

He looked himself over. He was small now, smaller than a kindergartener. Dull green scales coated his body, but he was built more like a small primate than a lizard. He twitched odd muscles in his back and was surprised as four diamond-shaped gossamer wings sprang to life and lifted him into the air.

‘Huh,’ he thought.

‘Lim?’ he heard from somewhere in the back of his mind.

‘Derek, is that you?’

‘Yeah. You OK up there?’

‘Yeah. How you doing down there?’

‘Well…’ Lim sensed a struggle and grunted as a small flicker of pain panged in his brain. ‘Sorry. This guy you tossed down here is pretty gross. And he won’t stop yelling about eating. I’ve got him pinned pretty good though.’

‘Alright. Let’s get back to the door.’

Using the strange, inexplicable sense of direction they always had when they were travelling, Lim headed home.

He found the remainder of the group in chaos. His and Derek’s body were propped up against tree trunks and the active boys and girls were frantically trying to work up some kind of plan.

“That’s a good idea Grub, but we don’t actually have any sled dogs, or a sled, so it doesn’t seem like something that’ll work.”

“Maybe we could train some dogs-”

Lim half-flew, mostly-fell into the clearing. It gave the group a start.

“Hideous Monkey Freak!” Chowdah cheered. “You came back for me!”

Lim darted between her legs and scampered through the door.

He came to with a jolt, accidentally banging his head on the tree trunk.

“Ow,” he said, rubbing the hurt spot.

Meanwhile, the Hideous Monkey Freak had climbed back to its feet and took another run at the door.

Derek snapped awake. He banged his head on the tree trunk.

“Ow,” he said.

The group came hurrying over.

“Are you guys alright?”

“We put you through but-”

“Didn’t work we thought you were dead or-”

“Did Monkey Freak miss me?”

The boys answered the questions as best they could. Everyone relaxed and went back to playing with the door. Grub and Clark began battling in a variety of monsters, while the others placed bets.

It was as they watched Clark smash an oak stump over Grub’s horned head that Derek leaned over and said, “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Lim.

And he never had to. From then on, the two were friends, without another word having to be said.

Probably Sort-of Safe

Written by Brendan Foley