CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It didn’t take long before the orange and I landed at the bottom of the drain. Making contact with the elbow joint there, at the bottom, wasn’t, by any means, pleasant but it didn’t really hurt either. For the moment, at least, the threat of being washed further down the pipe had subsided.

The light from above provided only the most meager of illuminations inside the pipe. Everything was black and, in every direction other than up, I could just barely make out only a few inches of space in front of me. Looking up, on the other hand, was so bright that it blinded me so I kept my eyes looking forward, into the black, eerie emptiness that engulfed me.

Bracing myself against the side of the pipe, I was able to rise into an awkward but stable position—one where my enlarged and elongated left leg held me erect, while my smaller, nubby right leg dangled in the air. Coaxing my new body into this position caused me to rethink my somewhat hasty hypothesis about not having a spine but, even so, my newly-discovered mobility brought me little encouragement. Leaning against the back of the pipe, there in the dark, I felt isolated and abandoned.

After a moment of silence, I heard a loud, exasperated gurgle from above, followed by a brief but concerning lull. A few seconds later, chunk-heavy liquid fell onto my head and shoulders, as it plopped down, from the pipe above me. Despite the ferocity of the bodily noises that produced the substance, however, I was relieved to learn it was only a minuscule amount—especially when compared to the volume I had just experienced. After it passed over my slouched body, it began to flow forward again, breaking around the contours of my monstrous ankle and meandering harmlessly around me, on its journey further down the pipe.

I supposed I must have been heavy enough to avoid its pull and remain somewhat stuck in the tar-like sludge that surrounded me; however, had the combination of the muck and my one-legged foothold not been enough to keep me from being swept away once more, that expelled piece of orange probably would have. To at least some degree, it seemed to be blocking the path in front of me, although it was hard to tell for sure, due to the absence of light in that place.

From what I could gather, though, it sounded more than confident in its ability to fight against the liquid that was flowing past it; I heard it making loud, karate-like grunts, in front of me, as if it believed those battle cries—and not its size and placement—were what was keeping us from prolonging our belly-up ride, down the dark, slimy slide.

I knew for sure that the danger of falling further into the darkness had ceased, at least momentarily so, when no more liquid trailed down the pipe and pushed past my bulbous ankle. At that point, I wanted to speak but the orange beat me to it.

“You’re welcome,” his masculine voice smugly exclaimed, from somewhere out of blackness, in front of me. I could just barely make out the outline of a shape that I assumed was him but it was too dark to be able to know for sure.

“Um, thanks,” I told him and then quickly added, “I think.”

“Not a problem at all.” He seemed like he both expected and needed the validation of my praise; I heard it in his voice. If I could have seen his face—if he even had a face, for that matter—I was sure it would have been smiling arrogantly, as if he had just overcome some monumental feat.

“Were you just… were you just doing karate?” I asked, somewhat accusatorily.

“Psshh. Karate!” he belted out. “Try mixed martial arts! Why just stick with karate when I’ve mastered so many other disciplines as well?”

I was struggling to understand how that was even possible. “Okay but, I mean, you’re a part of an orange, right? How are you even… I mean, do you even have arms and legs and whatnot?”

“I am not just an orange!” he seethed.

“I didn’t mean any offense,” I told him earnestly. I’m just trying to understand how yo—”

“You’ll never understand anything if you simply rely on your eyes to tell you everything,” he quickly retorted, before I could finish my statement. “Master Yoda looked like a decrepit old hobgoblin but he turned out to be a Jedi master, now didn’t he?”

Using a bit of snark to combat his aggressive nature, I responded by asking, “Was that the original trilogy or one of the new ones where he was making karate noises in the dark? I can’t remember.”

“‘Mixed martial arts,’” he angrily corrected, “and even though it’s imperceptible to your eyes, you should probably be grateful because I used it to save you from being washed down the drain.

“Right. Well, I did thank you and also, we’re in the drain soo…”

I don’t think he liked the way I left the last part of my statement hanging but I didn’t care. I wanted him to know how asinine he sounded. Already, this piece of regurgitated, citrusy slop was starting to annoy me with his brazen arrogance. “We’re in the elbow, dummy,” he corrected. “If I hadn’t helped you up there, you would have fallen even further in.”

I supposed he was right. He had helped postpone my fall and, although I couldn’t see for sure, he did also appear to be partially blocking the path further into the drain, up ahead of me. “Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Thank you,” I told him with much more sincerity.

“No need to thank me; I’m just doing my job,” he proudly asserted.

“But I thought you said you wanted me to than—”

“Is this really what you want to be talking about right now?!?” I could hear the annoyance in his voice. I wanted to tell him it was mutual but decided against it.

“Uh, no. No, I suppose not.”

“So? What then?” he questioned.

“Okay, well, for starters, how do we get out of here?”

Indignantly, he then asked, “Don’t you want to know my name?”

I did. In that moment, I felt bad for not having asked for it yet. The comfort I was experiencing, in what should have been a much more alarming situation, should have concerned me more but it didn’t. The fact that this was now the third phenomenon I had experienced in two days made it easier to jump right into a conversation, yes, but it didn’t give me the right to be rude and so I told him, “Yes. I’m sorry. Yes. Who are you?”

“You can call me…” And then he paused for a moment—presumably, to be sure I was listening intently—and, in a noticeably lower voice, he proceeded in giving me the name, “‘Night Blade.’”

As he spoke the name, a very small flame ignited near the pipe wall just behind him, illuminating the upper part of his body, where I assume his face would have been. It reminded me of children with flashlights, telling scary stories around a campfire. Luckily, the flash provided enough light that I could see back toward the end of the pipe, before it began to slope down again, behind him. I couldn’t observe the scenery for very long, though, because, after only a second, the minuscule flame he generated had already begun to recede back into nothing.

“Woah!”

“Pretty cool name, right?” he asked.

“No!” I cried out, irked by his obliviousness. “It’s a terrible name. Night Blade?!? C’mon, man! The fire! The fire is why I ‘woahed.’ That was actually helpful. How did you do that?”

“A magician never reveals his tricks,” he retorted, snubbing me, as the flame disappeared completely, leaving us in darkness once more. “Also, Night Blade is an awesome name.”

“Can you make another one?” I enthusiastically begged. “I can barely see.”

“Maybe I don’t feel like making any more right now.” His voice was more definitive than it was teasing. Somehow, that was even more infuriating. I wondered if he modeled himself that way or if he was just that naturally annoying.

“Because I don’t think your name is cool?” I mocked.

“No! And it is cool, regardless of what you think!”

“Because you can’t then,” I scoffed, hoping he would try and prove me wrong.

“I can, if I ca—” He then stopped himself from whatever he was about to say and took a moment to gather his thoughts instead. “Fine,” he eventually told me, when he was ready to begin again. “I’ll tell you. It’s not like you could ever do it yourself anyway.”

He made sure I heard the condescending and blatantly forced chuckle from under his breath before he continued. “There are these little miniature methane clouds down here. If you know how—and no: you can’t learn how. If you learn how, you can light them, as they pass by. They only burn for a few seconds but they can apparently help wussies, like you, who are afraid of the dark. If you want, I can light more, as they pass by.”

Methane? Could it really be methane? That didn’t sound right to me and so I told him: “This isn’t really sewage though. How do you explain the methane and aren’t you worried you’ll blow us all to H—”

“Oh! Look who knows everything all of a sudden!” he sneered. “What else can you tell me about the situation, O Wise One?”

“Right. Okay. Sorry.” I knew he was right but his attitude that was making it difficult for me to listen to him.

No sooner had I finished apologizing than another flame—this one closer to the sludge-laden floor, somewhere in between Night Blade and myself—ignited and quickly burned itself out. I wasn’t sure if Night Blade was actually inflaming the gas himself or if he was simply present as it was happening. Ultimately, it didn’t really matter; I was just grateful for some light.

For the duration of our conversation, this would continue to happen sporadically: a bit of gas somewhere in our makeshift room would ignite, provide visibility for a couple seconds, and then disappear again. Although there wasn’t much to see, I was, as I said, grateful to be able to see anything—even if it was through the fleeting nature of a fickle flame I had not the wherewithal to harness.

“Apology accepted,” he told me, in a tone devoid of any discernible emotion. “Just remember who the boss is here.”

But my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I had to ask: “Did you… Did you wait until there was a cloud of methane close to your face so you could light it just before revealing your ridiculous name—you know: for dramatic effect?”

“My name is not ridiculous!” he screamed back at me, from across the darkness.

“Night Blade, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t think that’s ridiculous?”

“I think it’s awesome!” he yelled out, like someone who could no longer control his frustrations would. “I think lighting methane on fire is awesome! I think I am awesome and that you are jealous! What do you think about that?” If he had arms, or a chest for that matter, I imagined he would have been beating them together, like an ape, trying to establish his dominance.

“I don’t think,” but then I stopped midsentence and asked, “Is Night Blade even your real name?”

“Irrelevant.”

“Because it sort of seems like you just christened yourself with it right now,” I persisted.

“James Singer. Yes; I know who you are,” he mocked. “Only someone as pretentious as you, James Singer, would be haggling over my name, at a time like this. You’re literal puke and your old body is up above you—above a smelly, slimy drain pipe you can’t even climb. But yeah. Let’s argue over my name.”

“Okay, okay. Yeah. You’re right. It’s just… crazy things like this have been happening kind of… a lot recently and I just… It’s insane, yes, but I don’t even… I mean, how do you even… I don’t want to say I’m ‘used’ to it because I’m certainly not. I just—”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” he interrupted. “You want to ask if you’re dead or not. You want to ask if you’re going to get back into your body or not. You want to know what you’re doing, stuck down here, at the bottom of a drain, talking to NIGHT BLADE.” I could tell that, in his mind, over-emphasizing his name would somehow legitimize it.

“Uhh, yeah!” I vigorously exclaimed. “Yes. Yes to all of that. Can you help me with that?”

“Unfortunately, no,” he blandly responded. “I’m not sure myself. This is a bit weird for me too.”

Frustrated, I plainly asked, “Well, what can you tell me?”

“I can tell you that the diet soda you drink is pointless. It still has caffeine in it so what’s the point?”

“What?!?

“You drink a lot of it and I don’t really know why. Also,” he seamlessly continued, “I can tell you that, despite what you may have heard, honey badgers are not even one of the world’s top ten most menacing life forces. There is a fungus, in remote parts of the world, that attaches itself to an ant’s brain and causes it to crawl to the top of a tree branch and wait there, for a bird to come down and eat it, thereby infecting the bird with the virus, as well. After that, the bir—”

“I don’t care about birds and infected ant brains!” I interjected loudly, no longer able to contain my exasperation.

“Well, excuse me for trying to prepare you for th—”

“What I care about are those other questions you raised.”

“Yes, well, as I said, I’m not able to answer those at this moment.” In this line of questioning, at least, he appeared to be almost grateful for his lack of insight—as if the frustration it caused in me was a secret source of joy for him. He was trying to mask it but I could tell nonetheless.

“If you can’t answer those questions, then why bring them up?!?” I barked.

“Why do you think I brought them up?” he fired back.

“I don’t… I don’t know!” And I didn’t. I didn’t care either. I just wanted answers.

“Typical,” he said, chastising me, as he did so.

“All right, ‘Night Blade’—by the way, I’m not calling you ‘Night Blade,’” I added. “What’s your real name?”

“If you want me to answer you… you will call me ‘Night Blade,’” he said, scolding me, as he continued his harangue.

***

Like it or not, I was stuck there and, from what I could tell, this strange being was more or less my only guide. After recomposing myself, I started to tell him, in a more defeated tone, “I don’t know what I’m doing down here.” Then, in order to better verbalize my surrender: “I don’t know what I’m doing down here, ‘Night Blade,’ in this muddy, sludge-filled hole, while I’m literally covered in puke.” Before he could respond, however, I found myself chuckling at what I had just said.

“What’s so funny, Singer?” he asked, in the antagonizing manner to which I was growing accustomed.

“Nothing; it’s just… All of this. It kind of reminds me of something at my wedding. That’s all.”

“A slimy drain pipe reminds you of your wedding?” he snidely interrupted. “That’s nice.”

“Not that. No,” I said to him, in a reassuring tone. “There was this girl there—Penelope was her name, I think…” After pausing for a moment and attempting, in vain, to confirm her name with myself, I eventually gave up and said, “Anyway, she’d eaten a bunch of oranges earlier in the day. Then she got super drunk at the wedding and let’s just say she ‘deposited’ them into a bush during the father-daughter dance.” Smiling to myself, I then told Night Blade that, when she went home, she left her expensive designer shoes there in the mud, next to the bush. “I always wondered,” I finally said, “if she ever went back and tried to retrieve them.”

“I don’t really understand the concept of weddings,” Night Blade jeered. “Where I come from, the male is bound to the female in a quite literal sense so there really isn’t any need for any legal documentation or ostentatious ceremonies. It’s apparent, as soon as you see their combined form.”

Night Blade then fell silent and I looked down, into the darkness, where I couldn’t quite see the sludge that had surrounded my own misshapen leg. “Can you just tell me what’s going on?” I asked as earnestly as I could. “Please. Is any of this even real?”

At that point, the pipe began to shake violently, which was not uncommon during Ohio winters. As was typically the case, I was relieved when it stopped, after only a few seconds—though it was for different reasons this time. Up until now, a burst pipe would have meant a repair bill and a minor inconvenience. Down here, however, I got the sense that it could lead to far worse.

Once the pipe settled back into place and the loud groaning that accompanied its sudden spasms had faded away, Night Blade began to speak again, as though he had been completely unfazed by the incident. “Always assume that whatever situation you’re in is real—because it is. Otherwise you’ll be tentative and unable to react. You’ll be unable to truly commit to anything and, in battle, that could mean death.”

I thought for another second or two and then asked, “Well, what about if I’m having paranoid delusions that, if acted upon, could also result in injury or even death?”

“If you have the wherewithal to recognize and diagnose yourself as ‘delusional’—or even if you’re starting to think you might be delusional—then the reality of the situation is that you already know, or at least suspect, that something is wrong. If that’s the case, you need to accept your reality and take action to change your situation.”

I liked the philosophical side that had just emerged in the stranger across from me. In an effort to try and keep him more amenable, I then admitted, “I guess you’re right. In some capacity, this is reality. I am here. Without the insight of the future, there’s no use in questioning the authenticity of my existence, right?”

“I think your pea-sized brain is finally starting to get it,” he taunted. “Humans—especially slow-witted ones like you—don’t have the clarity of the future when they’re in the present so why worry about it? Focus on the moment and do your best—even if it means accepting that you’re stuck somewhere you don’t want to be. It doesn’t matter what you’ll think of this situation later—whether you perceived it all correctly or not. Right now, it’s the only reality you know so try and treat it as such.”

“That’s… kind of heavy,” I admitted. “Maybe I should have had you give the speech at my wedding. I’m sure everyone would have loved you!”

There was no flaming gas, when I spoke my words. Those intermittent flashes of clarity—while at first I welcomed them, they eventually began to haunt me; after all, they were illuminating my situation (both figuratively and literally). The darkness, while cold and mysterious, provided me with endless possibilities; on the other hand, the light from those momentary fires only served to remind me that I was stuck down here, with this strange creature from whom I could not escape.

Before he could respond, however, my dog’s deafening bark crashed down, like thunder, from up above, as it reverberated through the pipe, back down to Night Blade and me. I tried to look back up, toward the source of the animal’s cry, but the light was still too bright and I had to shield my face, with one short, drippy left arm. After I had done so, I turned away, back toward the darkness in the pipe.

I wondered, at that moment, if the dog’s barking was his panicked reaction to discovering my previously-inhabited body draped over the side of the tub. Deflated, I stared out into the bleak nothingness around me, waiting for another fiery flash. After a few seconds, though, I grew tired of waiting and addressed Night Blade once more: “The reality of this situation is that I am just completely stuck down here, aren’t I?”

“It would appear so,” he calmly answered.

“I don’t want to be down here, man.” I didn’t actually know if he was a man but I thought that calling him an orange might set him off on another tangent and I certainly didn’t want to call him Night Blade again. “I don’t want to be stuck down here, in this forsaken cesspool of world I’ve found.” As a new light flashed and quickly burned itself out, I paused. “But I don’t want to be in that one up there either.”

***

The strange being across from me didn’t strike me as the best confidant so I was, at least to some extent, consciously censoring the information I presented him. If, on the other hand, I had felt any inclination to be more forthcoming—and subsequently more vulnerable—I probably would have told him that a large portion of my unease hinged on the fact that I really had nowhere that I actually wanted to be. Ever.

It didn’t matter where I was or what I was doing; I always wanted to be somewhere else—until I got there and realized I didn’t belong there either. It was a perpetual and cyclical dilemma; it made me feel like no matter what I was doing or where I was located, it was the wrong activity and the wrong place.

As I contemplated this inescapable and never-ending cycle of displacement and detachment, I began to better accept my current situation. Of course, arriving at that realization didn’t change the hopelessness of my situation but it did at least allow me to view it with some measure of familiarity and that, thankfully, strengthened my demeanor.

“So are you going to just sit there and sulk?” the half-eaten orange calling himself Night Blade called out, from within the darkness.

“No,” I told him. “No I’m not.” I knew I just needed to push through all of this, as I had done with Cinnamon and Purple already, and so I asked, “So, what do we do?”

“For someone as daft as you obviously are, I’ve already shared far too much,” he defiantly retorted.

“If I ever get out of here,” I began, to say, from against the pipe which was still supporting me, “I think you should consider allowing me to manage you, as a motivational speaker.”

“Not interested.”

“You haven’t heard the pitch yet: ‘Hawk-Talks’: self-defense, philosophy and… uh… Oh! Scorn!”

“It’s never going to happen,” he calmly asserted, as yet another cloud of gas caught fire and then promptly burned itself out.

“My, well, Beth—she had a background in P.R. I’m betting she could have helped too.”

“Beth?”

“Yeah. My… She was my wife,” I explained calmly.

“You’ve mentioned your marriage multiple times now. Why did you split up? Did you pester her the same way you’re pestering me?”

At this I laughed and said, “If she would have acted like you, I suppose I probably would have but no. That’s not why we… I mean, it doesn’t really matter at this point, does it?”

“No but I’ve got nothing else to talk about down here—unless you want me to tell you about the three-mouthed mating ritual of the nor—”

“Stop! Pass. Pass on that.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, with a creepy sort of sincerity.

“The truth of the matter is that, for whatever reason, Beth just sort of fell out of love with me. Well, ‘romantic’ love anyway. We were friends for more than a decade before we ever even went on our first date and I think she just wanted to go back to that reality. Maybe she just liked who she thought I was. Maybe it took getting to know me, on a much more intimate level, over the course of several years, before she finally decided that I wasn’t the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.”

“And now what? You want vengeance?”

“Of course not. I mean, she’s not actually… I… I just I feel bad. If I had been a better person, maybe she wouldn’t have left that night. Maybe she’d at least…” I then paused for an uncomfortable amount of time before admitting, “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have built my life around my marriage. I shouldn’t have put that much pressure on her. I should have… I just should have been better.”

“That’s pathetic. Go on.”

“I don’t know if it’s ‘pathetic.’ It’s just… ‘misguided.’”

“No,” he corrected. “It’s pathetic.”

“Well, regardless, it wasn’t fair to her. I just keep thinking: how horrible of a person am I that she just wanted to get away from me? My actions—they indirectly caused… They…” I then took a deep breath and said, “I just wish I could have held onto her for just one more night.

“Instead, the world watched as I was forced to grieve a woman I didn’t actually know at all. The woman in the casket looked like Beth but the Beth I knew had died before she ever got into that car. And that’s always been a reality I’ve had to hide from almost everyone.”

“You know, if you really thi—” but my partially-absorbed compatriot was cut short. Above us, we heard my previously-inhabited body garble forth that excruciating sound we both recognized as a signal that more of my old stomach’s contents were forthcoming.

“Can you hold off another wave?” I fearfully asked, although I felt I already knew the answer.

No sooner than I had finished my brief question, did we hear the steamy hot liquid crash into the tub floor, above us. It sounded like a freight train slamming into a porcelain wall. After a second or two, a new liquidy nightmare began cascading down the pipe, on its way toward us, with unrelenting force.

My knee began to buckle, as it made contact and pushed past me, on its way toward the orange at the end of the pipe. This wasn’t the thick, viscous sludge from before. This was hot, free-flowing liquid and, unlike the last batch, this river was able to gush forward, without restraint, at a much greater speed.

Night Blade started to shout, over the roar of the rushing tide, “I’m not afraid of a litt—” but then I heard him grunt and I knew he was gone. From much further down the pipe, which he was previously blocking, I heard him yelling something I couldn’t quite decipher, before the liquidy grave consumed him, washing away any trace that he had ever existed at all.

***

The quick-moving, regurgitated bile that carried Night Blade away would have done the same to me, had I not found the strength to withstand it—strength I was sure I didn’t have but somehow found nonetheless. Still, I was thankful I didn’t have to fight its influence for long. In a matter of seconds, that explosion of burning hot repugnance moved past me and disappeared into the pipe, further down below. Though it wasn’t able to carry me with it, it might as well have, for it had left me with nothing and no one.

I was now surrounded by total darkness as well. Something must have been blocking the opening above, for no more light was descending down through it. Gone too were the methane bursts that illuminated my conversation with Night Blade. Feeling utterly alone and full of despair I called out into the blackness but heard no response, other than my own slight echo, as it bounced off the pipes below me.

I was completely lost and, for the first time, the reality that I might actually be stuck here indefinitely began to creep into my mind. Even my own body was starting to melt away. It had begun to slide down the pipe I was using to prop myself up. I knew it was serious when my right leg suddenly made contact with the ground on which I stood. It confirmed the feeling that I was shrinking—in my left leg, at least.

It was not just my left leg, however. It took less than a minute before my entire body was nothing more than stagnating slush. No longer could I control any appendages. I couldn’t even tell if I still had appendages or even which way was up. I tried to scream but found I had no voice.

Just as I felt myself on the verge of succumbing to another panic attack, a beam of light shone down from above and stuck me with encouragement. Whatever was blocking my path had been removed and I now saw clearly that the only way out of this misery was up through the shaft above me. Somehow, I suddenly knew that I needed to climb—and that doing so was going to be a momentous and arduous task—but even in the knowledge that tremendous difficulties awaited me, I was relieved to at least know where I needed to go.

As I contemplated this, my determination grew exponentially and, through what I could only assume was some sort of divine intervention, I began to will myself back into a human shape, once more. First, I used a newly formed pair of arms to push my torso upward and, soon after that, I grew a pair of legs that helped me to stand. I never looked down at them, though, because, while all of this was happening, I kept my eyes fixed on the light above me.

I remember reaching my arm upward, toward the light, and placing my slimy yellow fingers on the pipe, in front of me. I was ecstatic to learn I had hands and fingers now! As they searched the contours of the pipe, they came to land on a bit of old food that had hardened to the pipe, forming a handhold, of sorts.

It was then that I began to notice a multitude of similar handholds, scattered throughout the slimy cylinder. All along, these were here! Had I but noticed them, I wouldn’t have had to sit down here, with that annoying orange!

Determined to reach the next one, I began to lift myself up off the ground, as everything slowly faded to white.