Books Can Take You Places

The page below was blank. The one after it was blank too, and the one after that. Atheer leafed through book, accelerating until she was jumping sixty pages at a time. Not a single page she saw had any mark on it; no text, no images, no page numbers.

"So the trial is that I have to write a book?" Atheer asked before looking up.

She was in a different room than the one with the vault. Morra was nowhere to be seen. Atheer whipped her head around looking every which way. She was in an old-fashioned study, with other books packed onto shelves and a desk set against one wall. On that desk was a typewriter and some dishevelled papers. Above it was a narrow, translucent window that let in weak, grey light. The light was faint in comparison to the gaslight on the ceiling and the candle on the desk. There was a single door leading out of the room, and it did not look like it had been built in the last century.

Atheer wondered how the changes to her surroundings had escaped her notice. Her eyes had been focused on the book and its pages, but surely she would have noticed the walls being replaced in her peripherals. To convince herself that it wasn't a projection or a some other visual trick, she took the time to move over to each side of the room and touch its features. No, no trick. The desk was real, the bookshelves were real and the window was real. Then again, this room was bigger than the space where the vault had been, so maybe the backroom's walls had been the fakes and this set had been hidden behind it. Except, the floor was different too, and she had certainly not so much as lifted her feet. Gone was the linoleum, in its place were wooden planks that creaked and everything.

Curious as to how far this illusion went, Atheer went to the door and pulled it open. On the other side was a wider room. Based on the number of windows and placement of its own door, she was stepping into the entry room of this building. It was dark outside, but Atheer thought she could make out an urban street. It was jarring, considering that she had stopped with her friends at a shop along the middle of an open highway in broad daylight.

As for the entry room, it was dressed like a nonspecific office with desks and tables supporting generic books, implements, and papers. All of it was old though, no ballpoint pens nor computers to be found. This room too was illuminated by gaslights and candles. Atheer was alone in there apart from one other figure. A white-haired girl was hunched over a desk with her eyes shut, but facing the goth. Ci-Ci was snoring away just as she had been when Atheer encountered her at the clerk's counter.

Not wanting to wake her, Atheer crept toward the door that looked like the exit. Checking again to make sure that the clerk hadn't risen, she took hold of the handle and pulled on the door to open it. It just rattled in its frame, held in place by an iron lock built into the door. Even from the inside, the only way to undo it was with the key. Atheer spent the following minutes scouring the place for such a key, only to come to the conclusion that she had somewhat dreaded; if she wanted out, she'd have to talk to Ci-Ci.

Nothing about the sleepy girl particularly perturbed Atheer, but she doubted that the employee of the woman behind this elaborate gag would be quick to help her cut through the illusion. Summoning her patience in anticipation of whatever bull this girl was going to throw at her, Atheer stepped over and rang the bell on her desk. She noticed that the nameplate on the desk read Cilral.

A heartbeat passed before Ci-Ci's eyes opened. They registered Atheer and the girl straightened her posture a tad, supporting herself on two elbows.

"Yeah."

"Hi, me again," Atheer greeted. "I'm not interested in the whole secret-haunted-house thing, so I'm sorry if it takes a lot of work to get it reset, but I'm ready to just leave."

Ci-Ci didn't respond at first. Her eyes slowly moved from Atheer's face, to the book in her hand, to their shared surroundings. "Huh, you got the book trial."

"Yeah, but I was just curious to see what happened. You guys do a great job with the set pieces and the transition, but I wasn't interested in the immersion tour."

"No, this isn't a tour. You're in the book," Ci-Ci said before yawning.

"Is there supposed to be a safe word or something?" Atheer persisted. "I was never told one. Just let me out the way you would if I was having a heart attack or something. Minus the ambulance, of course."

"Look, I know it's a lot to swallow, but if you at least pretend to believe me, things will go much smoother."

"Are you threatening me?"

"No, no," Ci-Ci said like the notion was too tiring to attempt. "It's just that this is probably already going to take you a while, so the sooner you get on track, the sooner you get on with your life."

"Fine then, if you're going to be so stubborn about it and waste my time, then I'm going to waste yours. I'm not going anywhere." Atheer dropped herself heavily into a nearby chair. "I'll wait here until your shift ends if I have to. And if another group comes through, then I'll make a point of ruining it for them."

"The chamber pot is the last door on the end there, by the way," Ci-Ci said lifelessly as she pointed to the third door. The first was the one that Atheer had come through, the second had not yet opened, and the fourth was the exit opposite the other three. "Also, no one is coming," the clerk said matter-of-factly. "Time won't progress until you leave this building, and you can't leave the book until you overcome the trial."

"Is that so? Then I suppose we're both trapped in 'book limbo'," Atheer spat.

"Nope, it's just you," Ci-Ci said. "I'm not really here. This is just a fragment of my essence left behind to orient you before you begin. I have nothing to get back to, and I stop existing the moment that door shuts behind you." She pointed to the one at the front.

"I guess we'll just see then," Atheer challenged, still unwilling to give in.

Two hours went by with nothing happening. At some point, Atheer got bored and began looking around the place for things to occupy her attention. She played with the implements she found around the room and checked the books that were left out. The ones in the entry room were bland and referential. The ones in the room she had come from were less dry, but either written in illegible cursive, or incomprehensible oldspeak. She took the time to look out the front window and investigate her surroundings. From what she could see - which very well could have been a very convincing backdrop - the building was on a city street that was lit with gaslight lamps. It looked like the road was made of cobblestone, so maybe she was in some old quarter of a town.

All throughout this, Ci-Ci was sleeping; having nodded off after speaking with Atheer and making two scratches with her fountain pen. She was awoken when Atheer tried to smash one of the windows by heaving a chair at it. It had been a heavy chair and a solid throw, but there had just been a clink of the glass being struck and then the chair clattering on the floor.

"What does it take to get out of here?" Atheer shrieked, her eroding sanity bleeding into her voice. "Do I have to burn this place down?"

"Please don't try," Ci-Ci said lethargically, her words slurred by the palm against her chin. "The fire won't spread. Also, if you somehow manage to kill yourself, you'll just wake up in there again." She pointed to the study.

"Then HOW do I get out of here?" Atheer said, pleading more than asking.

"By going through orientation." Ci-Ci rose from her desk and walked over to the second door; the one that still held mystery. She drew a key and undid the lock. She pulled back the door to reveal a deep closet. "Take your pick."

Atheer stepped inside. Contained within the closet was a modest collection of period clothing. Nothing in there had been in-style for the past hundred years. They were arranged by outfit, as though someone had constructed entire ensembles to be worn. It looked like old European wear, which was to say frilly, cumbersome dresses, and heavy, mute-coloured coats. It looked rather binary.

"Is this a joke? Who's going to pick a corset over an extra layer?"

Atheer swapped outfits while Ci-Ci gave her privacy. She settled on what was likely intended to be a masculine outfit, wearing charcoal-grey trousers, an off-white long sleeve, a black vest, a grey inverness coat that matched the trousers, a black top hat, black leather shoes, and a vibrant purple bowtie. She examined her final state in a full-body mirror and Ci-Ci joined her.

"Happy with your look?"

"I look like Sherlock Holmes' hot emo cousin."

"Glad you like it - and don't bother, I'll take those." The clerk was referring to the belongings Atheer was transferring to her new pockets. When the young woman clutched her things protectively, Ci-Ci elaborated. "You're not allowed to leave until you hand them over."

Most of the items were mundane enough that Atheer didn't truly care all that much about parting with them, but she was understandably wary about giving her phone away. Expense aside, the means to contact the outside world were precious indeed. However, she had tried calling since arriving in this prison, only for the device to act as though its battery was dead. Seeing as it was of no immediate value to her anyway, Atheer handed it over along with everything else; still at least a little uncertain.

Ci-Ci placed them all in a wicker basket and set it on a dresser beside the clothes Atheer had changed out of. The two of them stepped out of the closet and the clerk locked it behind them. "Now for the wordy bit. First and most important: keep that book close and safe." She pointed to the one that Atheer still held in one hand; the featureless one that they were allegedly 'inside of'.

"That book is how you get out of here once your trial is completed."

"And if something happens to it?" Atheer posited.

Ci-Ci shrugged nonchalantly. "I don't know. Like I said, I'm just a fragment put in here to give you your bearings. I wouldn't know what would happen nor if that has ever occurred before.

"Secondly, time that passes here is not reflective of the time going on outside. No matter what, you'll come out at pretty much the same moment you came in. Thirdly, while you're here, you'll keep all of your memories, wisdom, and knowledge from the outside world, but you've also had three additional skills slipped into your head."

"Come again?" Atheer squinted in confusion.

"You'll know how to do stuff that you never learned," Ci-Ci rephrased. "And I think that about covers it."

"That's it? That wasn't all that wordy."

"It was for me," Ci-Ci sighed.

"But what about the trial itself? What am I doing here? What do I have to do to get out?"

"I don't know. That's not part of the orientation." Ci-Ci was content with limiting her answer to that until she saw the look Atheer gave her. "Look, you're in a book, right? Figuring out what the problem is is part of resolving it. Just keep your eyes open for anything resembling a plot-central conflict, okay?" With that, the clerk moved over to the door and readied her key. "Any final questions?"

"So if- When I overcome the trial, how do I let you guys know I'm done so you'll let me out of this fun house?"

"Upon succeeding, take down your account of the trial in that book. That will return you to your world."

"I have to solve your puzzle and record it? Guh, way to make a compulsory game even worse by adding homework." Atheer opened the book to see that its pages were still untouched-white, ready to receive her telling.

"One last piece of advice," Ci-Ci said as she unlocked the front door and held it open for the other woman, "the sooner you accept your reality, the sooner you'll be in the right mindset to deal with it."

Eager to be free of that room, Atheer crossed the threshold, and into the world beyond.