Divided, Lost, and Ventured Gain
a flash fiction by Rachel L. Tilley
Is this our first meta piece? From Underside veteran Rachel L. Tilley (“The Warren”) comes this story about putting the pieces back together again.
And while no one will mistake us for Deadpool talking into the camera about Ryan Reynolds, or Stephen King putting himself into The Dark Tower books, this flash fiction looks the Underside squarely in the eyes and says boo.
Go ahead. Look back.
Divided, Lost, and Ventured Gain
by Rachel L. Tilley
When the Earth was broken and divided, the pieces of Lianne were scattered.
Gathering them up, she brought them back together; but they were changed. Each one experienced its own desires and needs. Not wholly sentient, but almost.
“Take a smile and hold it close. Take a limb seen from afar.” She hummed, wondering what it meant, and assuming she’d understand in time. Many things only became clear at the end.
Lianne supposed she wasn’t quite at the end yet, then.
She turned her right hand to face the palm upwards in a sweeping gesture. Her perspective moved with it, the very floor of the ground twisting, as though her fingers were twigs, and their branches controlled the upright standing of the trunks themselves.
Motion sickness swept over her, and it was a relief when everything once again stilled, although for a few seconds she swayed slightly. Her vision ebbed out of focus, before returning more sharply than ever.
Something scratched at the inside of her neck, and she blinked.
The only sound was her own breathing, coming slow and ragged.
Until presently, with a crash, the foliage landed; having plummeted towards the roots and collided with the edge of the world, where instead the ground should have been.
To whichever place her legs ventured, there were gorges, both jagged and deep. She’d looked into one, a long time ago, and seen the faces of people she knew—yet how quickly they’d once again vanished, replaced by bodies half-buried by muddy earth within the walls of the chasm.
A stone fell from her mouth, but Lianne couldn’t find it again. Having rejected its purpose, it didn’t want to be found. Her teeth had always been absent from this world, but during her reassembly she’d improvised.
“What’s the story? Where is the joke?” She scratched what was left of her nose—being just the memory of it—and her fingers met air.
She knew she wasn’t dead because in the underworld there were clocks on the trees. Hadn’t there been a famous painting showing them melting?
She lurched forwards, back bent and gait crooked. It was a never-ending journey to find food. She might know she was alive, but nothing else here moved or drew breath.
Lianne had seen her limbs from afar but she couldn’t find her smile, nor anyone else’s.
She remembered a time when she’d grown and nurtured a Ficus. The gritty mess of roots and soil, the crispy fallen leaves, the clear-cut edges… was she wandering around the surface of a plant pot? It was the only thing which made sense. It also didn’t—because the planet wasn’t flat.
Except, whatever shift had pulled apart the Earth had annulled the laws of physics, so she didn’t entirely rule it out.
Soon she’d jump off the rim. Or, when her legs didn’t comply, she’d tumble.
All the others had gone back to the ground. If she couldn’t die, at least her consciousness would be free from its current inhibitors.
Once upon a time, Lianne had clung onto hope. She didn’t think she could fix things anymore.
Even despair had deserted her now.
Meet the author:
Rachel L. Tilley writes short stories in the fantasy and horror genres. In ‘Divided, Lost, and Ventured Gain’ her character has fallen into the concept of the Underside.
www.instagram.com/rachel_l_tilley
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