Charlie wakes from her nap in a stupor and covered in a film of sweat. She rolls over and peels her eyelids apart, noticing the thick heat drifting through the screen and the slant of the light coming in the window. She perks up, realizing it’s just the right kind of day at just the right time to unlock a rift in the continuum.
Launching out of bed, her feet go pat-pat-pat as she runs down the hall and throws the back door open. Staring out at the concrete, at the swirling furnace that forms when the sun’s rays puncture the heat blooming up from the cement, she searches.
The air is more humid than normal for this time of year. A gossamer haze hangs overhead and blunts the golden spears of light as they fall from the sky. Rather than slicing down and injecting searing heat into the cement as they might on a perfectly clear day, today’s sunlight wafts delicately in its descent. Sliding on a barely-there breeze and blending gently into simmering ribbons of heat rising from the ground. Today is rich golden honey dripping gently into warm coffee, but even if it were sugar arrows fired at warp speed into molten chocolate, a rift could still appear. By now, Charlie’s learned all you really need to go rift-jumping is a hot day, solitude, and a spark.
A spark is a curious thing. Like an energy source forged in the heart, refined in the mind and stored in the soul. Charlie’s spark comes from her boundless wonder, from her thirst for exploration, from the feeling of inner freedom that bubbles up when she allows herself to feel like a little kid again. She doesn’t have her spark every day. Some days, try as she might, there’s no spark to be found. But today she can feel it coursing through her every heartbeat.
Scampering over the searing pavement, Charlie scans the heat ribbons for signs of a rift. She double-takes—there! To the untrained eye it might look like nothing more than a sunbeam caught in a puff of dust, a throwaway mirage or a trick of the light, but Charlie can sense the magic and believes in it, too, which is more than half the job.
The rift billows and puckers like soft lips chewing on a secret. Lapping up against itself like ocean waves. Churning and buckling. She sees it.
Catching a glimpse through to the other side, excitement balloons inside her. Running over the grass, reaching into her soul, Charlie grabs hold of her spark and slides it into the rift. Slowly turning the latch, the rift opens and Charlie jumps through.
What lay beyond a rift is different every time, and Charlie revels in the anticipation. The very first time she went rift-jumping, though, she instantly panicked and tried to turn around, worried she’d become stuck or unable to get back through. But when she turned back, grasping desperately for home, she saw that her spark kept the rift tethered in place. As soon as she jumped back across, she wished she hadn’t and regretted the adventure she’d backed out of.
It’s been ages since then, and rift-jumping is now her favorite summer sport. Sometimes she steps calmly through a wide hula-hoop opening and finds her feet on solid ground. Occasionally, she misses her chance. The rift zips closed in the blink of an eye and she faceplants into a tree where it just was. Sometimes she has to force her way through a gooey membrane, or brace for free fall through a tube of light. The universe of possible universes she might find on the other side is so vast, so infinite and ever-expanding, that to guess what might lie on the other side is a losing game she left behind long ago. The way Charlie sees it, there’s truly no way to ever be prepared for something that could be anything. Therefore, being blissfully unprepared is the best preparation, and hesitation is the only wrong move.
She’s come to love hanging out where things are their opposites, where paradox is common sense. On this plane everyone tries only to be the same. Beyond the rifts is where nothing is ever the same as anything else, and where she could be anything and everything.
This time, stepping through the furling mouth of the rift, Charlie feels an instant rush. An electric current of vigor ignites in her bones and vibrates in her muscles. She realizes it feels like she’s swimming, suddenly engulfed in iridescent fluid. At least it feels like fluid, a little slimy on her skin. But when she inhales a deep breath, the substance fills her lungs like the sweetest air. She notes that whatever it is she’s breathing has a taste somewhere between strawberries and jasmine. She licks her lips. She waves her hand in front of her face, a shimmering cluster of glitter ripples in its wake and disappears in a blink. She smiles, giddy.
The flame of adventure crackles in the pit of her stomach. Floating in the endless mass of fluid, which she now realizes is like a soft, pink cloud, she looks below her. Some kind of jungle comes into view. She swims down toward it.
Multicolor plants of all shapes and sizes climb up toward her. She descends between two towering, flowering things that look like trumpets made of cotton candy. Inside the trumpets are a dozen multi-colored spheres. They look like marbles, she thinks. She reaches in and plucks one. Struck suddenly by the aroma rising from it, Charlie raises the marble to her face and sniffs it, licks it. Nearly drooling at its sweetness, she pops it in her mouth, and it dissolves like warm butter.
Charlie plucks a few more marbles and continues her descent. The floor of this strange jungle is covered in spiral vines and thousands of flowers, which she is careful to avoid as her feet touch down. The cotton trumpets vault high above a variety of other flora Charlie observes as she spins around in a circle. Hair-thin grass shimmers like silk. Fungi climbs the trunks of massive trees and releases fluffy spores into the canopy. Spirals of firework florals open and close their petals as though respirating.
The whimsy of this universe! Charlie thinks to herself. Everything seems to buzz with some kind of jovial energy, firing like neurons across synapses exchanged between every organism. She pops another marble in her mouth and feels the vibrations of something behind her. Charlie cranes her neck and, slinking slowly out from the thick growth is a slender creature with three feline legs, and three glittery eyes. Its body and head look smushed into one another, and it wears a fine coat of glistening fur. Its eyes are unlike anything Charlie has ever seen. Each is like one hundred of the tiniest, most lustrous gems clustered together, sparkling in every color all at once. It’s not until the creature steps farther into the clearing when Charlie spots a tail trailing its backside, coiling and uncoiling rhythmically, its tip brushing the ground.
There was a time when the sight of a creature like this would strike fear in Charlie like white-hot lightning, and she would flare with adrenaline to fight or fly. But after a few dozen trips into a few dozen rifts, Charlie stays perfectly still and watches. It’s incredible what will be revealed with a little stillness and silence, she’s learned.
The creature saunters forward with a strange elegance. It makes a sound that’s something like a grunt mixed with a squeak. Cocking its head to one side, shimmering its eyes at Charlie. She crouches down and rolls a marble across the floor toward it. The creature swings its tail around and sucks the marble in. It grunt-squeaks again, apparently pleased.
Charlie eats another marble, pausing at the overwhelmingly sweet flavor. She rolls another to the creature. It marches its feet in place and makes its soft noise as it sucks the marble into its tail. Charlie eats another marble and realizes it was the last one.
The creature uncoils its tail and points it up at the vaulting trumpet flowers, requesting more. Charlie realizes her mouth is beginning to go dry. In mere seconds she’s overcome with a strong craving for more of the sweet marbles.
She jumps upward and flaps her arms to swim up to the trumpets, but she finds herself pulled back to the jungle floor. Charlie gulps dryly. The creature stares at her with its triad of glimmering eyes.
She tells herself that maybe if she can just get above the canopy, she’ll be able to swim through the air again. After many summers spent inventing games and ways to keep herself entertained, Charlie is an expert tree-climber.
Her feet and hands move swiftly, and she reaches the canopy fast. She spots a trumpet that’s ten times the size of all the others. Ten times the size must mean ten times the marbles. She scales the treetops and jumps into the mouth of the trumpet.
Sliding down into the fluffy opening, Charlie counts at least twenty marbles swaying at the tips of their stalks. The powerful aroma fills her nose. A pang strikes in her stomach, and her mouth is so dry it’s nearly painful. She grabs a handful of the sweet marbles and eats them one by one, sighing, groaning with relief as the moisture returns to her mouth and her hunger is quickly satiated.
On the ground below, the creature projects its grunt-squeak up at her, now with a hint of urgency. Charlie gathers as many marbles as she can carry and climbs back up to the mouth of the trumpet, eating them as she goes. Reaching the trumpet’s edge, she stares out over the jungle and realizes as she chews that her skin has begun sprouting tiny jewels, not unlike the creature’s eyes.
Charlie continues eating the marbles as the creature steps into view below her. It watches her, cocking its head again. In this moment, Charlie feels outside of herself as she keeps eating the sweet marbles. She groans at their gooey sweetness, unable to stop herself. She again comes down to one marble left in her hands.
She trembles. With each second that passes, the urge to keep eating the marbles grows exponentially stronger. Charlie considers herself a strong person with agency, but she’s never felt anything like this. Not in any universe through any rift. Staring down at the marble in her palm, it seems to glow, beckoning. She can’t help herself. She pops it in her mouth and sighs as its goodness melts over her tongue.
A horrible, shrill noise instantly erupts from the creature below, blazing in Charlie’s eardrums like fire. She slips and slides down into the trumpet. Cowering, covering her ears form the blood-curdling shriek, Charlie glances at the many marbles swaying around her head. Her mouth begins to go dry again, her stomach twists. She succumbs to the fierce urges burning inside her and, in a fury, she plucks from their stalks every last marble and eats them ravenously.
Satisfied for now, Charlie sits in the trumpet and tries to think. She hears more of the creatures coming to the call of the first, gathering below her. She feels the hunger returning as the seconds tick by.
She looks above her, squinting, searching for the rift. Again, she tries to jump and swim, but she falls back down into the trumpet.
In this moment, Charlie knows two things for certain that stand in opposition to one another: continuing to eat these mysterious, sweet little marbles will keep at bay the terrible sensations that have begun blooming over her body but doing so will also keep her tethered to this universe.
The sweet aroma of nearby marbles crawls into her nostrils painfully. She climbs to the edge of the trumpet. She spots a pair of smaller trumpets poking through a tree close by and jumps over the gap toward them. Harvesting a handful of marbles, she settles on a wide tree branch. Beginning to cry, Charlie eats another marble. Then another.
The tree shakes. A sickening CRACK echoes through the jungle. Charlie feels gravity shift under her.
Below her, the creatures have joined forces to fell the tree. Tucking her handful of marbles in her pockets, Charlie braces. As the tree swings to the ground, she jumps from the branch and rolls onto the jungle floor.
Marbles spill from above and scatter on the ground. The creatures cease their horrid screaming and devour them with their slender tails.
Charlie ducks behind a large, flowering bush. Hating herself for it, she eats another marble. Slowly, she savors it, elongating the relief she feels enveloping her. She tiptoes silently deeper into the jungle. The remaining marbles seem to pull her hand into her pocket as if connected by a string.
She presses onward, distracting herself with the strangeness of the flora around her. The towering spirals and fluttering petals give way to a clearing. In its center, Charlie finds what looks like a perfectly circular, twenty-foot wide mirror. She approaches it and stares down at her reflection. Staring back at her is a version of Charlie who has darkened eyes, stringy hair and skin covered in glimmering jewels. More tears fall down her cheeks. She watches her reflection reach into her pocket and eat another marble.
Rolling down off her nose, a tear falls onto the mirror. Upon impact, the mirror reveals itself to be a pond full of shiny liquid like mercury. Her tear sends ripples across its surface that undulate slowly like molasses. Her eyes follow the ripple to the opposite side of the mirror pond. Standing perfectly still, head cocked, a creature stares back at her.
A few excruciating moments of stillness and silence follow. Charlie calculates every possibility in her head. That familiar fight or flight feeling boils in her chest.
The creature launches forward. Charlie spins on her heels and sprints away.
Its tail curls over its head like a scorpion’s. Charlie’s throat burns hot and dry as she runs at top speed. Vines and flowers whip her arms and cheeks. She flings a marble up into the air behind her, trying to throw the creature off. But it extends its stretchy tail and snatches the marble out of the air without breaking stride.
Emerging through the thick foliage, Charlie comes upon plateau that leads to a steep cliff. She glimpses the mist that obscures what lay over its edge. She turns around and holds a marble up in the air. The creature halts, staring at it.
She holds the creature in its trance. Tantalizing herself, too, as she holds the marble mere inches from her mouth. Aching pain tremors through her bones. With all her will, she forces herself not to eat the marble. The creature reaches its tail reaches forward.
Charlie holds up a finger with her free hand. The creature freezes.
“This is the only one I have left. If I let you have it, you have to leave me alone.”
Sweat rolls down her face, her hand trembles. The creature grunt-squeaks, marching its little feet in place.
Charlie crouches down and rolls the marble across the ground. She grimaces as the creature swings its tail down and sucks the marble in. So alien are its movements, she hears herself think. So menacing are its glittery eyes. A deep, gut-wrenching feeling of longing for home almost outweighs the hunger raging through her insides.
The creature’s tail uncoils and reaches over its head again toward Charlie. The tip of it blooms like a lily whose petals are lined with a thousand spiny teeth. It opens and closes. Stroking the fluid air around Charlie. Smelling her.
The creature takes a step forward. The tip of its tail gravitates toward Charlie’s pocket.
It lunges at her. Charlie jumps over the cliff.
Hurtling down through the dense, pink fog, Charlie flails her limbs, but finds no traction to swim.
She continues falling. Desperate, she begins peeling the jewels off her skin. Flailing her arms and legs. Crying, thrashing. Charlie begins to think about all the times she’s gone rift-jumping before, and all the times she’s gotten herself unstuck from pickles in other universes. This one, she thinks, is up there with the worst of them.
Charlie falls down for so long that she reaches a state of freefall. Her hair whips around her head, her shorts flutter. Everything else is in stasis.
Surrounded by nothing but an opaque, pink shroud, she thinks to herself that maybe this isn’t such a bad way to go. Plunging a million miles down to a fast and hopefully painless death at the bottom of this chasm in another universe. She might just be the human with the most interesting death ever, though no one will ever know it. Her family will come home from their jobs and errands and Charlie will have simply vanished. She wonders how far time has moved back home, or if it has at all. She wonders where she might be now if she had jumped through the rift a minute before or after the moment she did. She wonders if she will ever hit the ground or if she is damned to remain suspended in freefall forever.
Charlie slides her hand into her pocket. Her stomach turns as her fingers find one last marble. Twisting her face, she pulls it out of her pocket. She can almost see the tendrils of its sweet scent reaching toward her. She can almost feel them licking her nostrils and pouring fuel onto the wildfire at the back of her throat. She imagines crushing it in her fist. She imagines throwing it as far into the vast expanse as she possibly can. She imagines eating it in tiny little pieces. She imagines eating it all at once. She wonders if it would make any difference either way.
A light flashes on her face. An inch away from her cheek. Charlie looks all around for it, but it’s gone. She touches her cheek, still warm from the light. She recognizes that warmth. She knows that light. A feeling comes over her, which, it occurs to her, is something like the sensation of hearing your name called out in a large crowd of people.
A few moments pass. Whoosh! There it is again. A flash on her cheek, gone faster than it appeared. Clinging to the feeling of that vibrant light on her face, Charlie grits her teeth and pockets the marble.
She holds both hands up in front of her and closes her eyes. Waiting for the feeling. Ready to grab that light next time it appears. She hangs there in the never-ending pink cloud. Poised like a toy monkey without its cymbals.
A tingle on her face. Charlie claps her hands together—SMACK!
Charlie feels her fall breaking. The light fizzles between her clasped fingers. She looks up at it. Her spark. Latched firmly in the rift.
The impact of her fall pulls the rift down. Below her, the jungle canopy comes into view. Charlie exclaims something like a crazed laugh mixed with a breathy scream. Relief slowly rolls from the top of her head down to her toes. Through the rift, a golden beam of sunlight flickers on her brow.
Pulling herself up with all her strength, Charlie climbs on top of her spark and jumps back through the rift.
There’s something about time that goes a little out of whack when jumping back through a rift. Disrupting the continuum in such a way is like a boulder falling into a rushing river. The flow isn’t affected so much as to change it in any profound or irreversible way, but in the fabric where the rift has been kept open irregularities can spawn. Mysterious little glitches that are most often entirely harmless.
Coming back through the rift, Charlie usually finds herself set back some amount of time from the moment when she first jumped through it. Thankfully, she’s never lost any time because of it. This time, she is set back only a few hours into the morning.
Charlie finds herself standing in the middle of the kitchen. In her hands is a bowl with a puddle of milk and a couple of cereal flakes left in it. The faucet is running. Out the window in front of her she sees her mother’s car back out of the driveway and putter down the street.
The heat is already getting thick, the mid-morning sun already beaming down strong and bright. Charlie rinses the bowl and looks over her skin—no more jewels. She shuts off the faucet and sets the bowl in the dishwasher.
She glances around at all the mundane things in sight: cooking utensils, magazines, a little fan in the corner spinning with all its might. A cookie jar, a wire hanging off the internet router, a twenty-dollar bill left for her by her mother. Her eyes pool, and it dawns on her that all the many things she saw and did beyond the rift this time are already fading from her memory like a dream. The feelings she felt, she thinks, will leave their imprint longer.
A tingle flares on her tongue. The ghost of the string connected to the center of her palm tugs. She slides her hands over her shorts.
Charlie reaches into her pocket and pulls out a marble.
Void Screaming 