A Place

Again I found myself in one of those places. I wasn’t sure how I got there, I didn’t know how I fell asleep, and I couldn’t quite remember much before that. All I did remember was that the feeling in the back of my head was certainly not a pleasant one, and that I had felt it before.

The last time this happened, I thought I should be taken to a hospital. I was. Only not the kind of hospital I was expecting to be taken to.
People said I was hallucinating, that I was behaving abnormally, that I needed doctors, the kind who fixed your mind. But I remember that day perfectly, and not a single thing was abnormal about it. Well, maybe a few things.

The feeling of déjà vu disappeared when a plane came crashing down into the ground, right in front of my bed. It hit the ground at an extremely high speed, nose first. Then, once the nose had been smashed in, the wings hit the ground, the left one first, then the right one. Debris flew everywhere, but I was unhurt. I would always be unhurt. That’s the way things worked here. I couldn’t get hurt here. At least not physically. I rose from my bed and walked over to what was left of the small airplane, the back of my head still hurting.

Through the wreckage I could see a squirming mass of blood, flesh, and bone. I looked closer, and I realised that it was a man, trapped within the remains of the plane, probably the pilot. It was not a pretty sight, but then, few things are pretty, really. He seemed to notice me. He tried to say something, but his attempts at speech were incoherent. He spat out some blood and a few teeth.
“H…he…help me,” he managed to say, finally.
“Do you really think I can help you?” I asked him. “Is it really in my hands? Look at yourself. I’m not a doctor, and even a doctor couldn’t help you. Face it. You’re going to die, and there isn’t a hospital anywhere in this world. Hospitals are only built for real people, and I’m the only one over here who’s real. But since I can’t get hurt, there are no hospitals, understand?”
I spoke to him calmly, reasonably, rationally. He had to understand that he was going to die. He had to understand that it didn’t matter, because he wasn’t real. He had to understand that the pain and death were only illusions, like him.

I felt a sharp jolt in my left rib from behind. It felt like an electric current, and I almost passed out from the pain and the shock. I fell down. Okay. So maybe I could get hurt here.

I took about half a minute to get up. I looked behind myself to see where the shock came from.
“You’re real, are you? What makes you think that, Atlantic?” Atlantic. Last time I was here my name was Pacific.

My vision was still hazy, but I could vaguely see a dim, winged figure in front of me. I think it was a she, but I was only guessing from the voice. There was no way to tell by appearance. My vision was clearing up, and I saw that she looked like a cross between a gecko and a butterfly. Her eyes were cold and beady, and I couldn’t tell where she was looking. I get a creepy feeling when I can’t tell where someone is looking.

It took a while before my vision became completely clear, but she still looked as vague as she did before. Now, however, I noticed that she was holding a sort of baton in one of her six hands. She held a tome in another that said Infractus Oris. In the third hand she held something like a long stick with a short blade at one end. On the stick was inscribed Vindico. The rest of her hands were free, while she hovered a little above the ground.

“How are you so sure that you’re real, Atlantic? What makes you think you’re real – more real than any of us?”
The man in the plane had stopped struggling. He was dead.
I didn’t answer her question but stared back at her quietly. “Answer me.” She shoved her baton at my chest, and again an electric shock passed through my body and I felt like a truck had hit me. I passed out this time.

I came to shortly, in the same place that I was before, the gecko-butterfly still hovering in front of me. “Are you going to answer me, or will I have to resort to more severe methods?” she said, fingering the stick that said Vindico. A lump formed in my throat.
“I’m real… because I… I feel real. I mean, I am real. I just am.”
“Oh I see. But if someone can feel pain, if someone can get hurt, they are unreal, am I right? You are real because you can’t get hurt, but we all can’t exist because we can die, we can get injured,”
“No, I can get hurt. You just proved it,”
“I can hurt anyone. I am the punisher over here. My name is Punitor, which means the same thing. No one else can hurt you. Tell me something… what is your name?”
“Uh… Atlantic.”
“Is it?”
“I think so.”
“Then how come it was Pacific the last time you were here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let me tell you something. You can choose to be real or unreal. But whatever you are, we are, understand?”
“How come I can’t get hurt then?”
“Does it matter?”
“I think so.”

She flew a little distance away from me, and turned around. “I must warn you to stay away from the man in the white cloak. He is The Executioner, and you are on his list. He can hurt you far more than I can.”
“But I thought you said…”
She had already flown out of sight. I began to run behind her. I ran as fast as I could, but I could not find her. The ground was wet and bare and hard to run on. A fog had begun to settle on the flatlands.

I saw a figure approach me. It had wings and hovered slightly above the ground. I was about to start running towards it, when I noticed I didn’t have to. The figure was flying fast towards me. In the fog, I did not notice the colour of the cloak the figure was wearing. Not until it was too late. This was not Punitor, it was The Executioner. I couldn’t run. There was no air in my lungs, and besides, it wouldn’t make a difference. I wouldn’t be able to outrun him.
He came to me, and picked me up by my collar. He was a towering figure, at least three times as tall as I was. In the air, he seemed even taller.
He lifted me to his eye level, about a metre above the ground. This man did not have six legs, and he carried no batons, tomes or bladed sticks. He carried an axe, and a huge one at that. He raised it, placed it near my neck. He swung the axe back, and prepared to swing it forward.

*

“Please don’t kill me, I didn’t do anything wrong, please.”
“Shiva, stop. You’re hallucinating. Don’t worry, it’s not real.”
I opened my eyes. I saw a doctor in front of me. Dr. Shekhar. I knew him; we had spoken many times.
“What?” I asked
“Whatever you just saw, it’s not real, Shiva. They’re just hallucinations.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. They aren’t real. Have you been taking your medicines?”
“They aren’t real?”
“No. They aren’t.”
“So what makes you think I’m real?”
Dr. Shekhar didn’t answer. He looked a little puzzled.
“What makes you think you’re real, doctor? What makes you so sure?”