“You think you’re pretty clever. Don’t you?” Teenage Beth said as we made our way through the golf course and toward the veranda.
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“You didn’t make me believe there was a bomb,” she said. “I wanted there to be a bomb.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I want all this to go away.”
It made sense that Beth’s teenage self was predominant at this point. She was definitely the most self-destructive of the three. Sure, Little Beth burned her house down, but she wasn’t in it when it happened. And, of course, Adult Beth held a funeral for a cocoon, but that was more about transitioning than the act of dying itself. Teenage Beth, on the other hand, seemed hellbent on drinking and smoking herself into oblivion.
Once we were on the veranda, she tried opening the door, but it still wouldn’t budge. She walked over to one of the restaurant tables and picked up a chair. She hurled the chair at the glass door leading inside but it only ricocheted off the pane and barely missed my head as it flew off the veranda. She looked in through the windows, but the lobby area was still empty. She turned to me and shrugged.
“I don’t know what to tell you, dude,” she said. “I guess you’re out of luck.”
“There has to be another way in,” I said.
“Well, I can’t think of anything.” She moved to another table and sat down. “What is it you want in there anyway?”
“Answers.”
“You won’t find them in there.”
“Why not?”
“Because there are none.” She took another drink. “You’re wasting your time.”
I took a seat across from her. “I disagree. I think there’s something in there and you’re not telling me. You’re hiding out here to avoid it. Maybe we can go in and face it together.”
She laughed. “Don’t psychotherapize me, asshole!”
“I’m not. I just think you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. You turned Earl into a giant. Not anyone can do that.”
“You really crack me up, man. You and I both know why I was able to turn that fool into a giant. Same reason you made a dog appear and turned into a fly.”
“Why?”
She motioned all around us. “Because none of this is real! The others are just too scared to admit it!”
“You know about the others?”
“The girl from Little House on the Prairie and the crazy bitch next door?! Of course, I do! I see them in the hallway all the time.”
“You don’t recognize them?”
“Should I?”
I wanted to tell her the truth. That she was in a coma and was split between three versions of herself inside her mind. But I didn’t. Besides, it wasn’t her teenage self that needed to see the light. I had to find her adult self before it was too late. Before I could answer, Charlie appeared and saved me from having to make up a lie. He was completely flat, kind of like in Tom and Jerry after one of them gets leveled by a steam roller only to later pop out into a full-sized body again. He swayed back and forth, more cardboard cutout than human.
“Hey, babe,” he said through thin, one dimensional lips. “I don’t feel so good.”
“I told you it takes a lot to stop Charlie,” said Teenage Beth, not at all surprised to see him. “But, of course, he’s not real either.”
“He means a lot to you,” I said. “Doesn’t he?”
“Yeah,” she said nostalgically. “We were going to run away to New York City together. He’d have his band and I’d work at an art gallery.”
Flat Charlie fell onto the ground with a light thud. “A little help here?” he said in a muffled voice. “I can’t get up on my own.”
“Funny how things work out,” she continued, ignoring him. “You make a plan and the universe dumps all over it.”
“Seriously,” said Flat Charlie. “I can’t feel my…anything.”
“Do you know where he is now?” I probed.
She shook her head. “I don’t even know where I am,” she said.
I could’ve told her that he’d died in an accident, but, honestly, what would that have accomplished? Most likely, either it would’ve upset her, or she wouldn’t believe me given her regressive state of mind. She sighed and got up from her seat. She then sat cross-legged on the floor beside him and placed her hand on his forehead, which was really nothing more than the equivalent of a piece of cardstock.
“Shhh,” she whispered. “Everything’s going to be alright.”
“What happened to me?” he asked.
Teenage Beth motioned to me. “This knucklehead made giant Earl’s head explode and his body landed on you.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Don’t you think he deserves an apology?” she asked me expectantly.
“Of course,” I played along. “Sorry, Charlie.”
“It’s cool, man,” he said. “It definitely gives you a whole new perspective.”
“I love you, Charlie,” she said. “But it’s time for you to go.”
“Okay,” he said. “Will it hurt?”
“Not at all,” she said. “Just close your eyes.”
His eyelids closed as if he were in a children’s pop-up book and a paper lever had been pulled at the bottom of the page. Teenage Beth slowly waved her hand over him, and, one part of him at a time, he transformed into M&M’s. Eventually, there was nothing left of Flat Charlie.
All that remained was his outline, filled in perfectly with hundreds of candy-coated chocolate mini-treats. She picked up a handful and put them in her mouth.
“Man, I miss these,” she said, crunching them with her teeth. She rose to her feet and faced me. “You want some?”
“No, thanks,” I replied. “I’m more of a Three Musketeers guy.”
“Suit yourself. By the way, there may be another way inside. It’s a shot in the dark, but it might be worth it.”
“Where?”
She took one last drink of Jack Daniel’s and wiped the excess from her mouth. “Follow me,” she said, slamming the bottle onto the table.
We got down off the veranda and back onto the golf course. I followed her around the side of the “retirement” hotel, and we came upon a ladder leading up to the roof. Mind you, the ladder was no regular ladder. It was made of human bones. For some reason, I began to think she wanted to trick me and was leading me off track. She certainly seemed a little too eager to help me when, mere moments earlier, she said I was wasting my time. She started to climb the ladder and, about halfway up, turned to face me.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Aren’t you coming?”
“What’s up there again?”
“I already told you. A possible way in. Look, if you don’t want to go up there, that’s fine by me. I got M&M’s and whiskey waiting for me back at the restaurant. I’m only doing this because I got tired of you asking me so many damn questions.”
“Fine,” I said and then put my foot on the first rung, which was a femur. “I’ll go with you.”
“Good,” she said smiling.
I climbed the ladder after her and followed her onto the roof. In the center of the roof, there was a swirling vortex of light and color. The ground beneath our feet pulled us toward it. Not one to willingly fall into a pit of unknown origin, I grabbed onto a weather vane. Teenage Beth continued to gravitate toward the cosmic drain. Right as she was about to go in, she turned to me and pouted.
“Don’t you trust me?” she said and then got sucked into the vortex.
The weather vane began to bend toward the vacuum. I contemplated pulling out of Beth’s mind, perhaps trying again later and discovering that the doors had miraculously opened. But then I remembered that I was in her territory. I was only a visitor and she alone had the power to take me where I needed to go. The weather vane broke off completely and I fell to the ground. I let the flow take me and was enveloped by the vortex.
Once I entered, I slid down a tunnel of the same pattern of light and bright colors. Along the way I noticed mouths in the walls of the cylindrical chute. They all murmured the same thing, but I was going too fast to hear it discernably. When I finally reached the end of the shaft, I was pushed out into a pitch-black area where I was glad to at least hit solid ground. It didn’t hurt upon impact but felt cold and slimy. I stood up and looked around for light but there was none coming in from anywhere.
Teenage Beth suddenly lit a match. “You made it,” she said, her countenance eerily illuminated but encircled by darkness.
She moved the match away from her face and the end of a torch she was holding instantaneously burst into flames, giving a clearer view of our surroundings. We were inside a cave. This was promising, as caves in dream work often meant a passageway into a deeper memory and the feelings associated with it. I just hoped she wasn’t purposely leading me somewhere insubstantial. I noticed crude drawings on the walls. There was one of a stick figure family, two tall characters and a smaller one standing beside them and wearing a triangle dress.
“The little girl drew those,” said Teenage Beth. “Kind of silly if you ask me.”
“She’s been here?” I asked.
“We all have, but not at the same time. Come on. We’re not far from where we’re going.”
“And where is that?”
“Seriously, if you ask me one more freaking question, I’m going to light myself on fire with this torch. Now let’s go.”
She led me further down the rabbit hole. Along the way, I noticed a progression in the caveman-like wall sketches. Initially, the family unit was together, but, as we walked, the smaller character was drawn at increasingly longer distances from the taller characters. Eventually, it was the smaller character standing alone. I assumed the sequence represented the inevitable separation of Beth from her parents.
A short while later, Teenage Beth came to a stop. “Here we are,” she said. “Now we just wait for him.”
Before I could inquire about who “he” was and risk Teenage Beth setting herself ablaze, the older, shabbily dressed man I encountered earlier in Adult Beth’s hotel room bathroom appeared before us holding his own torch. He gave us both a once-over, not seeming to recognize either of us. I remembered him asking for a password when I first met him and having no idea what he was talking about.
“Well?” he said impudently.
“2, 6, 7, 21, 31,” said Teenage Beth.
“Alright, then,” he said. He opened a door behind him that led into Adult Beth’s hotel room, the same exact spot where I had originally met him. “Off you go.”
I started to enter the dimly lit room but realized Teenage Beth wasn’t following me.
“Aren’t you coming?” I asked.
She smiled. “You’re on your own now, chief,” she said. “But if you do happen to get any answers about what the hell all of this means, do me a favor and keep it to yourself.”
“Thanks,” I told her.
“Don’t mention it.”
I stepped into the hotel room and the older, shabbily dressed man shut the door in my face. Out of curiosity, I opened it to see if they were still there. Instead of a dark, mysterious cave, I found an empty, ordinary hotel bathroom, complete with fresh towels and neatly packaged hygiene products. I moved further into the room and stopped when I reached the bed.
Beth was lying provocatively on top of the covers wearing a black blindfold and negligee.
“Where have you been?” she asked.