FICTION PIECE
When Al first caught their reflection in the darkened glass of their front door, they didn’t quite recognize who was looking back at them. Their eyes momentarily flashed gold instead of beaming their customary brandy-brown hue. Their unruly bob blipped copper and gold and bold as a lion’s mane before fading to its normal shade of rocksalt-and-pepper. For an instant, four huge wings unfurled from their back jolted like a million volts: the top pair were ravens’ wings, and the bottom pair could have come from an albino bat–a monstrously huge one. The cherry on the sundae of strange was the corona of heavy blue and gold flame that enveloped them. As soon as it appeared, the vision was gone. Al was so shaken that they stared for a full minute at their now normal reflection, daring it to try that nonsense one more time and wondering about their mental health. The image could have come from one of her students’ homebrew manga projects. It was certainly recognizable as such. Maybe, Al thought, they were just feeling tired and imagining things. It hadn’t exactly been an unpleasant sight that momentarily met her gaze. Rather, it was a vehemently unwelcome one.
Al vigorously shook their head and the vestiges of the image flicked out of their mind and back into the aether where they belonged. The edges of this late September Friday evening bit and snapped at Al’s ungloved fingers as they fumbled with their door keys. With a heavy grunting sigh, Al unbolted and shoved open the heavy oak door before walking into their postwar maroon saltbox of a house. This place was the tiniest thing in the neighborhood to be sure. It had a fantastic yard and a helluva basement, which is what sold them on it. The house itself was kind of a dump and needed a LOT of work. They’d only been in the place a month. It felt great to be home and to know they didn’t have to be anywhere else for the next 30 hours.
It was with great relief and excitement that Al had taken the job of middle school English teacher for Syracuse Public Schools. They hadn’t wanted to leave their parents in the care of a home health aide, but when their Oklahoma college prep academy told them there had been a student “complaint” over something they had said in class, they knew it was time to resign and move. They’d handled student complaints before, but this one was special: it was an Anti-CRT complaint. An evangelical freshman primed by their deeply bigoted parents had eavesdropped on Al’s lunchtime study group until she’d caught asexual, nonbinary Al advising a gay student on how to find resources for coming out diplomatically to their family. The next day, the complaint was made. As the author of Oklahoma’s Anti-CRT policy lived in the same district in which Al taught, and had several friends on the school board, Al knew they had zero chance of not being fired, of not losing their license, and of not being forced to pay an enormous fine, though they might have avoided the yearlong jail sentence. It was just time to pack up and go, so they did. They lucked into finding this place right after they got the job offer. It had all fallen together so well that Al only had a week between moving into her new place and starting her new teaching job. A tough go, for sure, but Al did it, and felt pretty good about themself for pulling it off.
Al dropped their laptop case and two Aldi bags of first-draft personal narrative essays onto the floor beside the futon sofa, then shrugged out of their coat and threw it into the papasan chair situated across the Fjallbo coffee table from the futon. No sooner had Al done so than their white and orange dwarf cat Chesh, hopped onto it and burrowed down for a nap. Slipping out of their dirty gray Ebay Uggs, Al collapsed heavy and hard onto the futon and shooshed Chesh off of their coat. Chesh then hopped onto the sofa next to Al and settled in for a nap. Al gently stroked the sensitive spot between Chesh’s ears and debated on whether to get back up and grab a beer. They really needed a beer, but then, they felt too tired to get back up and go get it just yet. Exhaustion won. The beer would wait.
En route, Al heard the unmistakable sound of panicked yelping. It suddenly occurred to them that their terrier Oz, hadn’t immediately attacked them upon walking in the door. Al listened intently for a minute before realizing that the sound came from the basement door, on the other side of the kitchen. Al hurried to the basement and opened the door. They were immediately bowled over by an energetic ruff of wiry gray hair and big personality. “I missed you, too.” Al said, as they scratched the dog’s neck and shoulders. Oz licked Al’s face with such glee that they almost forgot about the dire situation at hand. Oz was magick that way–they can lick your cares and worries away. But then again, for not the first time since arriving home, Al had an uneasy feeling.
The basement door had a mind of its own. Sometimes it was open, sometimes it was closed, sometimes it would open by itself,and sometimes it would collapse closed all on its own. It wasn’t too hard to believe that the door had fallen open, Oz had wandered down to the basement to hunt for lizards, and the door had gotten shut. Al knew they had shut the basement door before leaving for work. As Al got up from the floor, they realized that they had not heard the alarm countdown warning when they opened the front door. Al was certain they had armed the alarm before leaving for school, but if Oz had gotten downstairs, then clearly, they hadn’t. Still, the juggernaut of Oz was a welcome distraction from that odd vision. Al checked and found the auto-feeder was still full, so they closed the basement door and locked it. Then, they went to the fridge, grabbed that beer, and headed back to the den to do some essay grading while watching Tail of the Nine-Tailed, 1938. It had taken a while to finally sit down and binge that kdrama, but the wait had been worth it. Episode four was up next and honestly, Hong Joo was absolutely everything Al loved in a woman.
Al idly glanced into the Aldi bag closest to her feet and saw the slim pile of junk mail they’d grabbed from the mailbox and shoved into the bag as they headed up the driveway to their house. The edge of a piece in the middle caught their eye. Uneasily, Al reached in and slowly withdrew it. “What the…?” they muttered.
Al stared long and hard at the postcard The front of the card featured a movie still from The Wizard of Oz. The subject matter of the image immediately put Al on guard. They sat up, shoved their glasses onto their face, and took a closer look. The Wizard of Oz held great and heavy meaning for Al; it had been a secret obsession they’d only shared with one other person. Rather, that person had shared it with them, and Al had definitely taken notes. Their spine tingled, their forehead throbbed, and their hands shook as the examined the unexpected mail.
Emblazoned on the postcard was a photo they’d seen dozens of times: Dorthy and the gang armed to fight the “spooks,” but something felt incredibly off. After a few minutes, Al saw the problem, and blurted aloud: “Who in the fuck gave Scarecrow a gun?” In the scene Al remembered, The Tin Man had an axe, the Cowardly Lion had bug spray and a butterfly net, and Dorothy wielded that basketful of Toto like it contained a hell-hound. Scarecrow was empty-handed because he utterly lacked foresight–which was perfectly in character. This gun addition was insanely out of character not only for Scarecrow, but for the entire film. Nowhere in the original Baum books had scarecrow been a pistol-packer, either. Al had read them all, many times. Something was very out of order here. Al swigged that Hoegaarden bottle for dear life and the drew a ragged breath.
Al turned the postcard over as carefully as they would have pulled wires to disarm a bomb. What they saw made their heart skip a beat: Curved across the upper third of the field was a rainbow that seemed to have been drawn by a child. At one end of the rainbow was a stick-figure with red hair, yellow eyes, and four wings–a white pair and a black pair–holding a sword emitting blue and gold flames. A tiny orange and white cat sat attentively at the being’s feet. At the other end was a stick figure with purple skin and platinum hair who wore a voluminous cloak and held a blue lightsaber. Behind her, a gray terrier sat at attention. Underneath the rainbow was a yellow path with cross-hatching reminiscent of bricks. A sigil floated in the air between the path and the rainbow.
Al recognized the sigil; it was a combination of hobo symbols that basically meant “go this way!” They’d learned the symbols from their fabulously wayward, train hopping-aunt and only ever taught them to one other person. The same person who’d been as obsessed with the Wizard of Oz as they’d been with Alice in Wonderland. The same person who had sent this postcard. But it was impossible. Absolutely impossible. First of all, the person who’d sent this postcard had died twenty years ago. Second, this postcard had been sent forty years ago. Third, and most impossible of all, this exact postcard had been sent from a place that is absolutely inaccessible to the United States Postal Service because it doesn’t exist–as such. Last time Al checked–which was surprisingly often–the post office hadn’t yet begun training postal carriers in the dark arts of astral projection and occult psyops.
Yet, the truly troubling thing was the image on the front of the postcard, not the image on the back. Warily, Al picked up their phone and did an image search. Sure as shit, the entire world knew about Scarecrow’s out-of-place gun. There were several people who were as confused by it as Al was, but the vast majority of Google demonstrated that the world was familiar with this version of the scene. This wouldn’t have hit so hard if they hadn’t watched the film with their a week before; fewer than seven days prior, the scene was decidedly as Al remembered it.
“Classic Mandela Effect,” Al muttered.
A Mandela Effect is when a large part of the population remembers an object, event, or media detail differently than the rest of the world. This group always has exactly the same pseudomemory, though. It is as it they all mis-remembered it en masse as a group. The Mandela Effect is so-named because a sizeable chunk of the population remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison, and were incredibly shocked when a very much alive Nelson Mandela became the president of the African National Congress after being released from prison. Nothing about this mass memory failure makes sense.
While most of the world chalked Mandela Effect instances up to faulty memory and slight insanity, Al knew for a fact what caused Mandela Effects: timeline redistributions. From time to time, the world experiences existential threats due to human stupidity, naivety, or avarice. For example a threat could be caused by an assassination or the detonation of a nuclear bomb, or a human-caused environmental catastrophe. When the threat threshold is reached, there are forces on the planet that create a duplicate timeline as a sort of backup. Then, the existential threat comes to pass and both versions play out. Thing is, these aren’t exact duplicates. Sometimes details change. Sometimes people didn’t die. Sometimes the Fruit of the Loom logo has a cornucopia. Sometimes children read the Berenstein Bears books. And sometimes Scarecrow didn’t have a gun in that scene from the Wizard of Oz. Whichever version has the best outcome for the planet is the one that the planetary energies shift into, and then the petty details get redistributed. Folks who “mis-remember” things aren’t mis-remembering anything; their energetic consciousness is just high enough that they retain the memory of the timeline as it was and do not relinquish that to accept the timeline as it now is. The really confusing thing, as far as Al was concerned, was that it's hard to tell exactly which events trigger the timeline shift. The average person realizes no advantage in having one memory or the other–it literally makes no difference whatsoever in their lives. For people like Al, though…it’s hideously portentous. It means that some major energetic shift has happened, and even though the planet is usually spared in the process, other things go absolutely sideways. In that brief interstitial moment during the shift from one timeline to another, portals get opened and things make their way from the astral plane and into the real world. Sometimes it’s postcards. Sometimes it’s elves. Sometimes, it's eldritch horrors. Sometimes, it’s honest-to-god aliens. None of it is ever any good.
Al stretched their neck both left and right until a ripple of crackling on each side indicated that their upper spine was now aligned. They rose from the futon and headed to their room, postcard in hand. Looking down, Al finally noticed the spookiest thing of all about the postcard. There was no address anywhere on it. This magical artifact knew where to go, forty years after being sent from a candy-striped mailbox on the astral plane. “When you get it, come find me, because it’ll be a matter of life or death” Dorothy had said, as she slid the postcard into the mail slot, “And don’t be late for this very important date.”
“Well, Dorothy,” Al said softly, “you’re already dead, so I guess it’s me we’re talking about.” Then, they closed the front door, armed the alarm system, and headed into the bedroom.
* * *
Al’s bedroom was bare except for a bed, a nightstand, several boxes, a suitcase, and a gigantic 6-foot-by-3-foot mirror leaning against one wall. The mirror had been left by the previous owner. It weirded Al out to have it in the bedroom. Mirrors are dangerous objects at the best of times, but big ones are the absolute worst. The idea of having gods-only-know what watching back at you from whatever was on the other side of that mirror was a very unsettling thought, and at their age, Al just couldn’t be bothered to mess with any of it. This is why Al bought a batik bedspread from the thrift store down the block and threw it over the mirror. They hadn’t made enough friends yet to help them move the mirror to the guest bedroom. There are times when you need a giant, full-length mirror, so Al wasn’t against keeping it. But Al was not thrilled at having this particular mirror in their bedroom.
As Al puttered around and pecked through boxes, it occurred to them that maybe the previous owner’s leaving this mirror here wasn’t a coincidence or an inconvenience. Maybe it was one of those happenstances that linger just beyond the edge of coincidence but are far too pointed and pat to be glib synchronicity. Another way to put it might be, “this is a setup.” What if whatever forces brought Al to this place, this house, and this moment were the same forces that conspired to bring that ME-ridden memento mori to their door? If so, would it really be a good idea to go chasing through gods-know-where looking for a long-dead friend? A friend who had been murdered, no less. By the conclusion of this chain of events, Al had gathered every item they were going to need. Oz was settled into place under the bed, watching . Chesh was settled onto the bed, directly above Oz. Though it had been decades since they’d attempted any such thing as they were about to do, Al knew from experience that their retired familiars had assumed guard duty. Both animals stared intently into the mirror, just beyond Al’s reflection.
Al spread a beach towel out in front of the mirror and sat down cross-legged in front of it, leaving a foot and a half of space between them and the mirror surface. To their left, they placed the incense and very full ash bowl. To their right, they placed the oil bowl. In front of them, they placed the postcard. Muscle memory had already begun to kick in when the procedure came flooding back into Al’s mind. Al grounded and centered themself, pulled Qi through all of their chakras, and slowed their breathing and heartbeat to a meditative rate. When they were ready, they dipped their right ring finger into the oil bowl and drew the sigil of opening over their third eye. Then, after dipping their left ring finger into the ash, they drew the sigil of unlocking on their right palm. When the sigil was complete, Al lifted their right hand, palm up in front of their face and spoke, “Open. So be it.” On the “it,” Al snapped the fingers of their right hand, sending ash through the air to land on their third eye and on the mirror.
The mirror surface rippled slightly. The air gained a crackly, electric quality. Something moved in the reflection: Oz trotted out from under the bed to sit on Al’s right side. Chesh hopped off the bed and slinked over to sit on al’s left. Al was perfectly aware that both her pets had fallen asleep in their guard positions, because she could hear them purring and snoring. Al’s reflection in the mirror pet both animals behind their ears, while Al themself remained perfectly still. The reflection nodded.
Al dipped their ring fingers in the bowls of ash and oil. In oil, Al drew a sigil sentence on the mirror’s surface. First, they drew Dorothy’s old hobo code sigil: a dog-faced girl. Then, Al drew the symbol for “this is the place” enclosing Dorothy, and the symbols for “go this way” and “good road.” Finally, in ash, Al drew the final sigil, “hit the road,”while intoning “take me to Dorothy.”
The world went solid chrome. Al felt the mirror reach out and wrap around her, drawing her into itself. In only a moment, Al was deposited on the reflection side of the mirror. Oz panted happily and Chesh rubbed his face against Al’s arm. Al looked up to see that their body had fallen back, unconscious, arms up and legs akimbo. In truth, Al’s body was sprawled out in such a way that it reminded them of the Hanged Man tarot card. It felt as appropriate as it did uncanny. Al rose from the floor and decided to switch eidelons. An eidelon is the cosplay you wear while walking the ways. You can go as yourself, but if you can be an angel of death, why not be angel of death? The fact that Al had lives long enough to have a menopausal pot belly, gray hair, and hips that were finally almost as wide as their linebacker shoulders make Al feel proud of themself. They had no reason on earth to expect they’d last this long. Even so, The scarier you looked, the fewer were the things that tried to bother you. With a snap of their fingers, Al morphed. Before them stood the very four-winged angel of death who’s greeted them earlier that evening. Al turned to face the opposite wall and stopped cold. It was too late for fear, uneasiness, and anxiety, although Al certainly felt all three. It was time for a new tactic: incredibly nosiness.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Al said, “Curioser and curioser.”
Instead of the opposite wall of their bedroom, Al saw another vast expanse of mirror. They’d forgotten the vestibular phase of waywalking. The mirror reflection of the space where one enters the Ways is the most common way to enter and exit the path. Unfortunately, it’s notoriously difficult to lock this space down. Psychics, remote viewers, astral projectionists, spooks, goblins and honest-to-gods aliens can enter the mirror side of your space–the vestibule– very easily. Once there, they can move things around, harm you, or steal from you–usually while you are sleeping. When people wake up with stuff moved around the nightstand, or strange scratches and scars, or stuff actually missing from their room but nobody else present in the house–this is usually why. The easiest way to combat this situation, as far as Al was concerned, was to buy a cheap bedspread and throw it over the mirror. Things that go bump in the night can’t find you if you don’t have a vestibule for them to invade. This method had worked well for twenty years, and Al swore by it.
But to see this vestibule so visibly connected to the Ways was disconcerting. Usually you had to exit a doorway or sometimes a window, sometimes even a wardrobe, Narnia-style, to exit the vestibule and encounter the vast, iridescent expanse of the Ways. It was incredibly rare to encounter another mirror. This always meant that the place you wanted to go was being gatekept. By who or what, Al was at a loss to determine, but if the deceased Dorothy did happen to dwell somewhere in the Ways, they certainly had reason for it: Dorothy was easily the most powerful wizard the Ways had ever seen and her power had been as great as her reach. It wasn’t hard for Al to imagine someone somewhere in here wouldn’t dare to risk a being that powerful coming back to haunt the whole entire place. They would certainly lock her up. The surprising thing is that there would be anything left to lock up, here or anywhere.
Al regarded the mirrored gateway with silence and a raised eyebrow. Then, they decided to try the universal command that forced gates to reveal all locks.
“Open says me.”
Immediately, the mirrored surface parted like a sea of liquid chrome and two arched doorways poured forward until they solidified about three feet from the wall.. They were identical except for the sigil series inscribed on the surface of each mirror-sealed portal.
Al shook their head. They knew what this was. This was the lady-or-the-tiger protocol. One door would take you where you wanted to go, and one door would take you to your doom, or if you were lucky, it’s just spit you out into your body and bar you from ever entering the ways again. Al bent closer to get a better look at the sigils. Only one sigil in each sentence made any sense, because each had clearly derived from the hobo code symbols they’d taught Dorothy. Which was interesting. If those were there, it clearly meant that Dorothy was the one who built this gate and installed the lady/tiger protocol.
“Curiouser and curioser.” Al said once more, with more than a trace of irony.
“Are yer batshit CHICKEN JALFREZI,” Chesh intoned in a grating Cockney dialect, “or is only TING yer can think of say?”
Al was taken aback and cocked their head toward Chesh. “I haven’t heard you talk in 20 years and you’ve decided to start speaking in Cockney rhyming slang.”
“At least one of us can understand it,” Oz interjected.
“It doesn’t help that that one of us is Chesh,” Al replied.
“Oy! Your DOLL Dorothy rigged this game so only yer could play it win,” Chesh huffed, so do us a favor get it on in.” At this he lifted his hind leg and cleaned his hindquarters.
Still, though, Chesh had a point. Dorothy is the only person who would have encoded that. Al took a closer look at the sigils they knew.
On the left door was a combination of sigils that indicated a courthouse and being watched by police.
On the right door was a sigil combination that indicated a locked safehouse. Either could apply to this situation.
Was Al seeking justice of some sort for Dorothy? Fuck if they knew, but given the circumstances it was definitely a likely candidate. But then again, was it also likely that whatever they were looking for would be held in a safe and locked location? Yes. Absolutely. Al studied both in silence. The other sigils were two different runescripts, only one of which was passingly familiar, and neither made any sense given the context.
After a long while of staring at the portals, Oz scratched his ear with his hindleg and said, “Al?”
“Yeah?” Al answered.
“Do you remember the last thing that my mistress told you?” Oz asked, sadly and quietly.
Al drew in a long breath and breathed it out slowly as they thought. Yup. They remembered. “Yes.”
“What did she say” asked Oz, “before she vanished into thin air?”
A silent, heavy tear rolled down Al’s cheek. The impassioned, loving, and tortured look on Dorothy’s face as she stole one last look at them was sealed into Al’s memory. Al had toled her there had to be a way, and that they could go back and make different choices to avoid whatever was happening. “She said,” Al replied, “Choice is an illusion.”
Oz cocked his head to the side and said, “I think that’s your answer.”
Al stretched their neck, cracked their knuckles, and took a long look at both portals. “If you believe choice is an illusion,” Al said, “then there is not right or wrong choice because any choice you make leads to the prepatterned outcome.” The very thought of this fewl in the face of everything that Al believed.
Yet here they all were, being gatekept by a deadwoman whose use of a binary choice protocol was nothing short of absurd givner her personal philosophy. The three of them were going to end up wherever Dorothy wanted them to be and that was the only logical conclusion Al could draw. Al stepped up to the space between the portals. They put both hands out in a Jesus Christ pose and fell forward, landing at an algae to the gates, with each palm touching a sigil sentence.
The tunnels immediately began pouring into each other and all three watched as the center began to hollow out. The tunnel turned iridescent. A golden grid of bricks lined the floor of the passageway. The passageway was surprisingly long. Taking point, Chesh entered first, followed by Al. Oz brought up the rear. The portal slowly sealed itself shut behind them. Just as Oz stepped onto the path, a loud voice and an even louder digital ringing.
“Basement door open! Basement Door Open!”
Al knew they locked the basement. They turned around and started to run back, but the tunnel stretched just out of reach. They could still see into their bedroom. The sight of a black-blocked intruder entering their room made their blood run cold.
“Oh, yeah,” Oz said, “The reason I was in the basement today was to keep the interloper from coming in the rear window. He tried to bribe me with treats, but I just growled at him.”
“NONONONONO!” Al screamed as the portal sealed shut. It was too late.
“Luv,” Chesh purred, “The only way forward is through.”
“And choice is an illusion,” Al said, falling to their knees. They were absolutely trapped in the Ways in a manner they’d only ever experienced once before and nothing good had come of it. In fact, Dorothy had died.
