The Shortcut

"What'd she leave?" Buck asked, craning his neck to look over the counter where he's put his feet up. "Anything good?"

"Just a bunch of my junk. Sweaters. She always loved wearing my sweaters." Until, I recalled, she realized that the pleasant herbal smell of them was not incense, as I'd been assuring her. I felt like every memory was a glimpse into something I'd done wrong.

I kicked the box closer to my reading chair and sat down to examine the contents. It was much heavier than I'd expected. How much of my life had been in her home? I absently began removing things, setting them on a table.

"Sweater. Sweater. Sweater. She folded them."

"That was nice of her," Buck mumbled thoughtfully.

"Sure was." Dick. "Aerosmith T Shirt, Mighty Mighty Bosstones T Shirt, Led Zeppelin T Shirt..." I laid my trendy wardrobe out, a little embarrassed that Buck was learning my hidden musical tastes. "Couple of textbooks. Bio 101, American Lit... what the hell is this?"

Sandwiched between my familiar, barely-ever opened schoolbooks was a leather volume I'd never seen before. It was about the size of a paperback, and thin, perhaps a hundred pages. Imprinted into the smooth, supple black leather were odd markings, vaguely familiar. There was no obvious title, and a quick glance showed the irregular, hand-cut pages to be covered with more of the peculiar symbols. 

I looked through the strange book, flipping quickly through the pages a few times. "This is weird. It's not mine."

Buck shrugged. "What's it about?"

"Nothing. Or, nothing in English. Look, it's all just weird symbols and nonsense." I held the book open and flipped the pages so he could see all the weird, curvy symbols. Near the back of the book, though, something odd jumped out at me.

It didn't look any different from anything else in the entire volume... but a little patch of glyphs just sort of lit up as they flipped by. There was no actual light, of course, and no different color, not even an underline... but those bizarre shapes stuck out in my mind, whispering softly, a sound at the edge of my awareness. Yayin. Yayin Aayatana.

What? Buck reached to take the book, but I snatched it back. How high was I? I'd been feeling pretty level headed, but hearing sounds in my head... that was worrying. I had to see those symbols again.

"What're you doing, Trick?"

"I think I saw something. Just a second."

"Something like what?"

"I feel like I could read one of the phrases, I know that sounds weird, don't look at me like that." I tried to ignore Buck's raised eyebrows as I flipped through the pages, muttering to myself. Yayin Aayatana... where are you? Am I going crazy?

And then, there it was, plain as day. It was the same scribbly nonsense as the rest of the page, a meaningless scrawl, but my brain somehow knew what it meant. It was like that moment when I finally realized there was an arrow in the FedEx logo, or that the crazy symbol on all the Disney properties was just a ludicrously overstyled "D". I'd been looking at this without seeing it, and now I couldn't un-see it.

 "Found it, huh? You look like you're losing your mind."

"I think I might be."

Buck gave me yet another patronizing look. "I can bring some milder stuff tomorrow. So, mr. Wizard, what does it say?"

"Um... Yaya ayata, I think." No, that wasn't right. I felt like I was forgetting the phrase already, as obsessed as I'd been with finding it. Drugs are bad, kids. Buck just shook his head. I looked down at the page, searching, and as my eyes passed over the scribbles, I remembered. "Yayin Aayatana-"

* * * 

My world exploded. How do I explain this? Everything around me, Buck included, sort of stretched away, if you can picture such a thing, like the stars in space movies when the ship goes to warp speed. I'd seen some odd things on a mushroom trip before, but this... was more than I was equipped to deal with.

I felt my body become insubstantial, spread out like vapor, expanding and shifting and twisting painlessly, and if I'd had a stomach, I'm sure I would have emptied it. Colors that I'd never seen before blasted past my eyes, only I didn't have eyes, so I simply experienced them from every direction at once, only for an instant, before darkness and familiar, natural color stretched in the same way Buck and the shop had stretched out, and I landed hard on my bony, very solid knees on a creaky wood floor.

I fell forward, disoriented, and probably would have gotten a concussion if I'd landed on anything other than a rough but soft heap of cloth. Denim. Denim that smelled a little bit like weed and old books.

My laundry heap? How?

I shakily stood up, feeling around, recognizing the scent of the air, the autumn chill. That specific floorboard that sticks up just enough that I basically goose-step every night to avoid it in the dark. 

My hand automatically reached up and found the dangling chain with the rabbit's foot at the bottom, and pulled. 

My room. 

A quick glance at the clock told me all I needed to know. I'd been at the bookstore only seconds ago.

What the hell had just happened to me?

Reviews

[B MacGregor]

I couldn't wait until tomorrow to read the next installment. I think this section needs more elaboration. Especially the time shift or plane shift thingy bob. I love the description at the beginning. If I had a stomach... well, it works.

And before that... hidden musical tastes? I think Buck would have been all over those bands.

Laundry heap is outrageously described. It carries me forward.

Good stuff--feed me.