(Page 1 of 3) Holes by Christopher Alen F.
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SUMMARY: For the May 2009 Flash Fiction Contest. Theme: "The Hole."1.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?"
"Yes!" Garlin was leaning into the hole -- legs dangling from his perspective, sticking straight up from mine -- dropping and lifting our packs into the newly created space. Our three pursuers' faces were just visible in the dark beyond the thin veil between this otherspace and the real world.
"How will we get out?"
"Shut up and pull!" he shouted. I grabbed tight onto his legs and pulled him into the expanse of blackness. It was disconcerting having to pull him down when everything else in my senses was telling me I should be pulling up. It was like standing on a mirror and pulling your reflection through. He struggled to keep hold of the edge of space around the hole as I pulled, the red-gold ring on his finger flaring with discomforting light.
"Pull! Pull!" he yelled, the fear strangling his voice into a scream.
I pulled as hard as I could and he tumbled into the hole. Garlin regained his feet quickly, and he squatted by the edge of the opening, peering out at an inverted world. He had placed the hole on a flat rock on the ground; looking out the hole, he appeared to be standing on the underside of the rock. His checkered black and white coat furled around him, but I could see as his ringed hand worked quickly, sliding over the rim of the hole like a fingertip on a crystal goblet. The opening quickly wound down to a small dot, the real world beyond disappearing to a speck.
"That'll slow 'em down, but it won't stop 'em," he said. Muffled footsteps resounded as if all around us, then a bejeweled finger poked through the small opening. I took a swing at it and felt the bone crunch satisfyingly as the finger bent in a direction it wasn't meant go. Cries of pain trickled down.
"If he wasn't already pissed off, he sure is now!" Garlin laughed.
He was already fumbling in his coat of infinite pockets, producing another of the flimsy pancake-like holes and plastering it to the invisible rear wall of our unreal cell. The hole shimmered for a brief second, then opened. Another room was visible just beyond it, but in stark, infinite white. He then produced another hole.
"Gods, man! How many of those do you have?"
Garlin responded with only a wry grin, his left hand fishing in his coat again while his right slapped the second hole onto the invisible wall opposite the first. He then slapped a third hole onto the floor, and a fourth onto the ceiling. Beyond all four, vertiginous expanses of unending whiteness disappeared into incomprehensible distance. Above us, the tip of a sword was plying the hole slowly open.
"Go! Now!" he urged me.
"Which one?" I tried to ask, but he shoved me through the one on the floor and I was suddenly falling.
2.
Garlin staggered and my mind leapt to thoughts of meat.
"Water," he panted exhaustedly.
With some effort, I passed him our last skin. The weight of the one I had hidden rested reassuringly against the small of my back. I had to struggle against smiling as I watched the last drops of water descend into his mouth.
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