Chapter 4

  Figment and Mark ran as fast as they could, but Figment kept lagging behind because, he said, his legs were short. In truth, all of Figment was short, and he looked kind of silly to Mark running through the forest. He reminded Mark of a giant stick bouncing around with awkward swaying branches, or maybe large a stick bug.

But soon that didn’t matter because Mark could go no further. He curled over, his stomach wrenched in agony. 

After they slowed down, Mark looked around. He tried to look into the distance, but all he could see were hazy tree trunks, strange trees, and the thick green soupy mass of the sky surrounding them. Mark’s stomach pulled and he felt cold. But strangely enough, he felt slightly less in pain. His gut still hurt, but he felt like he found something there, something for which he may have been inadvertently looking. The forest closed in on him, and Mark found himself looking around quickly, trying to find a way out. “Figment? I can’t. I just-it’s all just too much. There’s just so much forest, and so many choices.”

“What do you mean?” Figment said.

“It’s also my stomach.” He reached for his stomach, and  tore at it with his fingers. “And it’s this world. I mean, why am I here? What do I do next, and what is the point of the whole thing? What m I doing here?”  He continued walking, hunched over, just to keep from balling up into a fetal position. “Who were those people, and why were they trying to hook us? Where am I, who am I?” 

“We must continue. She could be here at any minute.”

“It’s my stomach. I can’t. I just can’t Figment. It’s all too much. It not only hurts, but I don’t know why, and I don’t know what I am supposed to be doing. You go on. I can’t.”

Figment grabbed Mark’s arm, and they both stopped moving. “Yes, you can! You’ve done this before. Everyone gets to this point, where they wonder where they are, and what they are doing. But we are all here together. Maybe you don’t have a reason right now, but as a whole, there is a purpose… You just can’t see it. None of us can. You are just at a point that is so dark, that you can’t see a way out. But it is there right in front of you. You just have to look for it. In reality, you are just a small part of something. You aren’t here for a singular purpose, you are here as a greater connection.” He faced Mark. “If you were to separate yourself from the herd, the entire herd may have to start over.” Figment lifted his hands. “Breathe.” Mark did.  “I’m thinking you will probably want to know a bit more about yourself right about now.” Figment patted Mark on the back, and looked very impressed with himself. ”I would have told you about this before, but the circumstances didn’t allow it.” It was obvious to Mark that Figment wasn’t being totally honest with him. There was something Figment knew that he wasn’t sharing from the beginning. Mark was sure Figment was just a passing fad in a long line of things he would need to do to survive, but now he was unsure. Figment was a lot smarter than Mark gave Figment credit. That said, Mark still didn’t know where he was. He thought he was inside his own mind, but there were things Figment knew that Mark didn’t. If Figment came from Mark’s mind, Mark would have known everything Figment did. But Figment understood something that Mark always had a hard time understanding. He understood that people were meant to be together, and that they learned only certain things that way, and that not only should you do that, but it was needed for humanity to grow. It was now, at this moment, that even though his gut still hurt, it hurt much less than before. 

Mark sat on the ground and curled into a ball. His pain was less, but it was still there, and it was gnawing at him. His gangly legs made him appear insignificant compared to the world around him. There was so much to see and do, Mark didn’t know where to start.  Yet, his legs were sufficiently larger and beefier than Figment’s legs. They were still barely holding him up anyway. He still had the Doctor’s bag in his hand. 

“We don’t have much time, so I will be brief.” Said Figment. Figment sat next to him. “What I am about to tell you is very important.” Figment held his hand in front of the bag, and then opened it. “ Whatever you do, or whatever you are told to do, you must follow the following rules even if it means breaking another seemingly important rule. Got it?” Figment took the doctor’s bag from Mark and removed the cube. “This is medicine. It is quite powerful, yes, quite. So you only need a small piece to make it work.” Mark tried to grab it, but Figment snatched it away.  “Listen, child. Focus, focus!”

Normally, Mark thought, he would never want to take a strange medicine. And then he wondered why he would think that, considering he couldn’t remember his past well enough anyway. But right now, he would do anything to remove the pain. 

“Listen to me very carefully.” Figment held out a bony finger, “You can only use one cube. One. Only one! After that you can take no more. More than one, and extremely bad things-bad, awful things-will happen.” Figment relaxed as he sat. 

“Bad?”

“Awful!” 

“Awful?”

“Really bad!”

“What do you mean?” Said Mark, trying to keep up with Figment’s chitchat.

“The pain will stay away in your gut, but you will not be able to coherently separate the true world from what exists in your mind, and you will be stuck here forever trying to figure it all out. This world is here for a reason, and if you can not separate reality from what is not real, you may never get out of here.

“What you saw before you came here may have been seen this reality as others saw it, too, but what was going on in your mind was just something you created for yourself to stay in that reality as a human. You created it so you could cope in that reality. Real is only real as it is perceived then. In truth, there are many realities, but you must guide yourself through all of them to find your path to home. Furthermore, you have never been on this path, which makes it even more confusing. Where other’s may find comfort in a series of paths, you will find awkwardness and confusion.” Figment took a breath. “Still you must find it. Everyone must find it in their own way.

“Now you are in your mind as you know it, and it no longer works for you. What you see here around you right now is not only a representation of your reality and how you see it, it is that false true reality. You must push your way to that will help you the most. If you have any intention to go back to that reality you should be at, you must repair this false reality you created so things make sense here. So you see, if your reality is confused with the reality here, then you will go into a downward spiral.  Your reality will become as it is here, and what it is as here will become as what is in your mind. Everything will become farther and farther from what you are looking for, and soon you will be lost.” Figment lit his pipe with his finger, looking more confident than ever, and acting nothing like his cowardly self during the bout with the Doctors. 

“I am already lost.” Mark sulked.

“Buck up. Everything could be rainbows and waterfalls here, but you have put yourself in this mire, where you belong, and now you need to dig yourself out to a better place before it becomes too late. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” Figment frowned, and then shook it off. “ I shouldn’t tell you this, but there are alternate drugs, but there are often side effects with those drugs.”

“Side effects?” Said Mark.

“For every effect, there are equal, and sometimes opposite side effects.” Figment looked complacent, and raised his nonexistent eyebrows, but his wood-like forehead, instead.  

An echo joggled around in Mark’s head. He remembered someone saying, ‘For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.’ He wondered if there was a similarity, there. Mark may have been a fool, but in as long as he was around, he picked up on things.

“For example, there is a drug called ‘Cuffu’. 

“What does it do?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“It mimics the cube. But in reality, it is a drug that affects, mainly, the logical part of the brain, and it only makes you think you are brighter, more artistic, and more functional. It actually does absolutely nothing. And it is addictive. Once you start in on it, you need to take more and more to make it work until it no longer works. At that point, you are addicted to it. You want and crave it all the time, and without it, you will get all sorts of side effects. /you think your gut hurts now? That’s what happens to your brain. Then you can’t think either. It gives you the illusion that you are wide awake when in reality, even in your dreams you never actually get a full night’s sleep to regenerate. Eventually you will die early, tired and soulless.”

“Why would anyone take this?”

“I don’t know. Usually people keep asking that to themselves. But then they ask themselves, ‘why wouldn’t I take this?’. Idiots. And this drug is one of the better drugs. There is a limit to your addiction and how it can hurt you. They go downhill from here.” Figment handed the cube to Mark. “Stick with this. Rainbows and waterfalls.” Mark snapped a corner off and placed it on his tongue. 

“And unicorns?”

“Unicorns?” Snapped Figment, “Don’t be an idiot!”

Mark ate it. Immediately, the greens and the browns of the trees shifted through the spectrum of light, and landed on various soft and hard colors. Purples and yellows bloomed through the woods on the tips of many of the smaller trees. In the distance, Mark could see actual rainbows and waterfalls. And soon he could see a horse with a single horn on its head. “Figment?”

“Yeah?”

“Isn’t that a unicorn?”

“Don’t be silly. Where?”

“There.” He pointed into the distance.

“Well. I’ll be damned.”

 Mark felt his Abdomen churn, and spit out the constant pain, through his bellybutton, like a gumboil machine spits out a piece of gum. Mark rubbed his gut, and relaxed. The green haze shifted in the spectrum and then disappeared into yellows and the brightening skies in the distance. Many of the molding trees began to flutter, and then turn into various flags with different insignia on them. These flags hung from walls along the sides of the pathway. The moldy wretched stench of the bog mellowed and then intensified into an incense of honeysuckle. “You weren’t kidding! Rainbows and waterfalls. Figment, You have always seen this?”

“Before you came here I saw everything at once. Now I see what you see. This is one reason why you must stay away from addictive plants. I can’t help you if you are not balanced.”

“Right now, the cube is helping you. But you have a limited time to figure this out. Those rainbows, waterfalls-”

“And unicorns.”

“And apparently unicorns are eventually going to need to come from you, and not the cube. Understand?”

“I understand how it works, but I don’t understand the method to get there. But most of all, I don’t understand what is causing this. Why must I do this? Why do I deserve this so called adventure?”

“You’ve been living in a darkness for so long, I think you forgot what it means to be happy. But we’ll get there.” Figment pointed his pipe at Mark. “We’ll get there.” 

“Get where?”

“There is a place. It is an idea in your life, but it is a place here. It is warm and safe. Everything makes sense, and everything is comforting. It is shared by everyone, though most people don’t know it. Most people can feel it even though they don’t understand the point. You are sop far off the path, you can’t even see it anymore. I question if you even know what makes you human anymore. What you see is what you get. So we need to get to the place where you see correctly.”

“It sounds like where I would want to be.”

“The problem is, your reality is tied up in knots. Getting to this safe place means unknotting your mind in your real world so you can see it for what it should be. Furthermore, there are places that are so knotted, that we will have to find ways to unknot them.  You have had several millennium of years to knot things up with so much confusion, the knots are now nearly irreversible. It’s like you put a bunch of wire in a box for several millennium and never bothered to organize them. They just got more and more confusing until they no longer made sense as wires. It’s just a big tangled mess.”

Mark took a deep breath. The world around him smelled clean and fresh. He decided that this world was a better one. He wanted to stay here. He liked where he was. That said, if he ended up falling into a volcano, he probably would have preferred that. He stood up and was happy to find that his pains had disappeared. He stretched his abdomen and twisted from side to side. “So you’re saying that this is it?” Mark looked at the cube. It wasn’t very large. “This is all I get?”

“That’s it, m’boy. So use it in the good health. Oh, and Mark, there are other edible things in this world that will reverse or change the effects of this cube, so don’t go eating everything. Ask first.”  Figment patted Mark too hard on the back, and Mark flinched.

“What do you mean ‘Other edible things’?”

“Would you go randomly eating everything you find right in front of you? Oh right… You would… Well, don’t.”

“But Figment, This is barely a crack of the cube. Do you think I’ll find my way out of here in time?”

“Probably not.” Figment said with a hippity hoppity step to his comment, “But we’ll just have to try.” And he shook his fist in defiance in a way that made Mark very unhappy.

Mark paused and stared at the ground. “Ri-i-ight.” And under his breath he said, “I would have been better off with a dog for a companion.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

For a moment Figment didn’t say anything. But then Mark thought he heard a winey female voice in the distance. Then Figment immediately turned around and said, “Maybe we should get moving. We’re wasting time. OK.” Something was making Figment terribly nervous. Figment began mumbling to himself as he continued onward, but Mark couldn’t figure out what he was saying.

Mark heard it, too. “You mean she can follow us to different worlds, too?”

“Yup. She’s not tied to what you see like I do.”

Although there were trees along the dirt and a brick path, various areas along the pathway were lined with stucco walls. These walls didn’t appear to have much use other than for looks since they existed in short bursts, and usually they existed alone, and not to form buildings or houses. Mark wondered what these walls were for. The surface below him was soft peat, and he liked the feeling beneath his feet. He had lost his bits of his shoes long ago, and he was glad the ground was soft. Mark's stomach rumbled. He couldn't remember the last time he ate.  He wondered if Figment ever ate. “My god. Figment? Have you seen this world in this manner all along?”

Figment got up and began to walk. “Yes. Well, partly.”

“What do you mean by, ‘Partly’?” said Mark, awkwardly.

“Well, as I was saying before, before you got here, I could see all perceptions of this world with the help of medicines, plants and keys. But now, since you showed up, I only see what you see.” Mark wasn’t sure what all of this meant. Mark was tired and hungry. He was tired of trying to figure everything out all the time. He just wanted to lay down and rest. A good rest would be nice about now.

“Why? What do you mean, perceptions? Figment? What just happened to me, and who is that tall woman?”

Figment looked at Mark, irritated. He really wanted to continue moving. “Do you remember when you were just a little child, and nothing made sense?”

Mark groaned. He was tired of having to deal with all of this. He thought he was a child. I am gangly and young like a child. What an odd thing to say. But then again, I can’t seem to remember much of anything right now. “No. I can’t remember anything well. Nothing seems to make sense. If I could remember, maybe it could help me. Oh, I was meaning to ask you about that.”

“Oh, right. I forgot. Sorry. Well, let’s continue.” Figment continued walking along the path, taking a couple of double steps here and there. “And about that woman… Let’s just say you are a bit pent up…”

“I’m fourteen.”

“We-e-e-e-l-l, not exactly.”

“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’.”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“What? Why?” Mark was getting frustrated and even more annoyed, if that were possible.

“Because your mind couldn’t take it.”

“What? I’m fine! You’re fine, we’re all fine!”

“Really? Because the last time I checked, we’ve been attacked by little people on Dr’s shoulders, a massive woman, poisonous berries, and a horrible world. I would say we are in the position of the opposite of fine.”

Mark didn’t say anything for a minute. Figment may be right, there. They weren’t fine. Things felt OK, but that was just an illusion. Or maybe the other place was an illusion. Or maybe there was no illusion. Maybe it’s a.ll real, but right now, I must deal with this reality. They were in a state of confusion. Mark thought about the box of wires, and the state they were in. Things were not fine. Things were anything but fine. Things were lost and confusing. His life was lost and confusing. Mark just wanted to go home. But the more he thought about it, this felt just as lost as he felt at home. He knew of home. At least he remembered of some of it. What was he doing there? He had nobody there. He had to fend for himself. Here at least, he had Figment, and he even questioned Figment’s humanity. No. Things were not fine, but they were not worse than at home. They just weren’t better.

Mark sulked again, “Wait! You haven’t answered any of my questions. Where are you going? Who is that big woman?” Mark sighed, got up, and took a couple of large steps to catch up with Figment. Figment stopped walking. Peat fluttered along the ground in haste.

“No more time, no more time...” Figment muttered under his breath, “I am bound to give this to you right now.” Figment flicked his fingers. Mark expected a flame to appear, but instead of a flame blazing upward, a small square device appeared in his palm. It was larger than his palm, about the size and look of a small book. He gave it to Mark, and Mark turned it over. 

On the top, ‘Sensory Apparatus’ was inscribed on a soft, leather cover. Mark noticed that he could open it, and it looked and felt like a book. When he opened it, it looked more like a large electronic planner. It contained a large screen and a tiny keypad. On the side, it contained three tiny holes for what Mark guessed were keys. The leather exterior was bound at the edge. Mark smelled it. It smelled like leather, too. He wondered where Figment obtained the leather to bound the cover. There were no cows anywhere. And Figment wasn’t much for playing with leather anyway. The device looked old, burnt, and dirty, like it had been used many times, lost in a fire, and found later, wet from being sprayed with water, dried, and then used many times again.“Figment, where did this come from? Oh never mind… I’ve given up on trying to understand this place.”

Figment’s voice became confident and static, almost as if he wasn’t doing the speaking,  “My child, you must use this.” 

“I don’t understand. Why can’t you just be normal, Figment?”

“Do you know how long I have been waiting? For you?!” Said Figment.

“No.”

“Well, neither do I! So give me a break, Ok? There’s nothing wrong with a little strangeness to break the boredom in my life.” 

That said, Mark was beginning to wonder if Figment had complete control over his faculties all the time, or at all.

Mark took the book, and opened the cover. The screen to the book bubbled and boiled with every possible color.  The images did not stay on the screen. They popped in and out of the screen. The bubbles were of various degrees of temperature, and Mark found himself having to deal with them because they kept boiling over onto his hands. Every time a bubble touched his palm or his arm, it popped and Mark felt some emotion, and each one was different. Often he was familiar with the emotion, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.  Sometimes, it would be calm or happiness. Sometimes it would be terror or fear. Sometimes he would taste fruit or sauce. Sometimes he would smell a past scent and it would remind him of an experience. 

Sometimes the images and bubbles would fall deep into the screen, and sometimes, they would pop off of the screen and onto the ground below. The closer he came to the screen, the more smells and feelings he could sense. Mark felt his fingertips becoming colder and colder until he felt his legs and body becoming cold and numb, too. The aroma engulfed his mind, and soon he was back at his past experiences. He found himself remembering the origins of those scents, deep, deep within his past. Moments later, Mark's fingers were so cold that he could barely hold the book. His hands began to shake. Icicles formed on his nails and fingertips. The screen turned purple and brown and the colors spun as if it were an inside out whirlwind. Mark's nose and face began to freeze, and he was sure that if something didn't happen soon, he would freeze to death. The colors spun outward, out of the book, and reached to his nose, and Mark closed his eyes as an uncontrolled reflex. 

He opened them. He was no longer with Figment, and he wasn't just remembering the past. He was in the past. He was in a house. He felt comfortable, safe, and cozy there. His fingers were no longer freezing. This must be my house, He wondered. But he was sure it wasn’t. That said, he remembered this place from somewhere. It was a simpler Time. He felt like he was OK. He felt like things were the way they should have been. Mark remembered the feelings of his home. He was shredding cinnamon and mixing it with orange peal and cinnamon oil. Mark felt warm and safe in his kitchen. It was quiet, and he could hear the crickets outside. He shredded the cinnamon faster. He needed to get the dessert done before the dinner was ready… before they were home.

Someone opened the door. He could barely see him. He felt something. It was a feeling he hadn’t felt in a long time. He loved that feeling, and he wanted to keep it. 

But then the universe started spinning and it got very cold. “Wait!” Then he was no longer there. He held out his arms in an effort to grasp whatever it was that was there, whatever he felt, but it was not meant to be. You can’t grasp a feeling. You can’t hold onto it and save it. You have one chance to get it right, and he lost it. It was not his to keep, whether or not he wanted it. It was in the past and he had already lost it.

Ouch! Mark put his finger in his mouth. Blood. Shredded skin. Mark tried to open his eyes, but he couldn’t get away from the feeling he was getting from the Sensory Apparatus. His finger was hurting, and so was his loss, and the new experience of that moment was burnt into his mind. His eyelids were jammed shut. His finger burned and soon Mark was trying to open his eyes with his fingers, but the apparatus wouldn't let him go until it knew the right time was passed. 

And now was that time. The book became idle, and Mark felt his body become colder and colder. He found himself thrown out of the book. His knee caps and joints were locked in a deep freeze.  Mark opened his eyes. He was no longer cold, and he could move his entire body. What of his experience? Would he loose it if he closed his eyes again? Mark closed and opened his eyes. He was back with Figment. He rubbed his finger. He was sure it had been shredded again. But there was no blood. He took a look at the screen. There was an empty space with lines for him to write words there with a check mark next to it. He found a strange pen at the bottom of the device that was just sitting in a crevice. It had no ink, but instead, it had a miniature hand shaped like it was pointing. Above it was inscribed, Yad. He picked it up, and scribbled above the lines on the screen: 

“Pain, Physical-frustration, disappointment, impatience” 

Those weren’t what Mark had really felt, but they were the outcome, and he wasn’t emotionally intelligent enough to understand what he really felt. Mark closed the book and placed it in the doctor’s bag. His finger still pulsated. It wasn’t really hurting. But Mark was OK with the feeling. It was a reminder to him of what he lost. In a way, by having the pain, he had found it again, and he hoped the pain would stay with him for a long time.

  “Guard that book with your life, because you only have one. It is part of you, and it will show you the way.”  

“The way to what? One what?” Said Mark. “So, if this is what it looks like here, now, then what did it look like back at the hill before I met you?”

Figment put his finger on his temple, “You’re asking the wrong questions, again.”

“But Figment, what am I looking for?”

Figment rubbed his bony cheek and then crossed his hands. “Well, I cannot tell you that.” He snapped his fingers.

Mark looked at his own hands. They looked slightly different, more mature, like he changed, slightly.

Why does Figment always have to be so indirect? “Figment? Why won’t you tell me?” 

“No, it’s not that I won’t. I can’t. But If I could, maybe I wouldn’t. I’m sure of that, in fact, that maybe I wouldn’t, at least. But I can’t.  Can’t!  I just can’t remember, or maybe I don't know. I'm not sure. You don’t know, so why should I? Get it?”

Mark wondered if Figment was being honest. And he was having a tough time figuring out what those honest parts were. And furthermore, he wondered if Figment knew what he was speaking of anyway. But he hadn’t lied as of yet. He just seemed to make sense in his own way, and in time in a way that seemed to work. I would need to be cautious, Mark decided. 

Figment began walking faster.  “I need to get you to your home, before it’s too late. She’s still out there, you know. You’ll be safe there.” Figment was beginning to look more and more uncomfortable.

Mark tried to imagine being home. Furthermore, he wondered what Figment meant by ‘safe’. He felt a warm feeling come over him, but he couldn’t remember where home was. He tried to remember the last time he actually felt safe. He couldn’t. He wanted to take a hot shower, and get a good night's sleep. Mark's stomach rumbled. He smelled the cinnamon and the lasagna. He knew it wasn't really there, in front of his senses, but it made him comfortable thinking about it. He rubbed his finger. “You’re taking me home?”

“Well, your home here.”

“What do you mean?” 

The path in front of them narrowed, and the ground became rocky. Trees towered over them, and it became darker. “…nearly there now.”

Mark was beginning to realize that Figment may be the wrong person to ask questions. He felt that it was unfortunate considering how much Figment appeared to know. He just hoped, mainly because Mark was exhausted, that he would get to his accommodations soon so he could get some sleep and hopefully, if not magically, wake up in his real home. Tree roots protruded from the ground, and Mark could smell sap. Small insects spun around his face. Mark waved his hand over his face, trying to shoe the bugs. Fortunately, they didn't seem to be sticking around. They flew right bye and kept on going. Mark thought it was strange to see so many insects flying in the same direction. 

By now, Mark was getting tired of watching Figment dance. He wondered if Figment would ever tire from his rampant prancing. Mark was feeling dizzy, and thought about asking him to stop when Figment abruptly spun around him, just beyond the edge of one of the walls, and fell into a ditch where a rather large stream appeared happy to great him, intimately. Mark laughed, loudly. Figment spat out some water. 

Figment removed himself from the stream and sat on the ground, looking at it, drenched. “Sh.”

“What’s wrong?” 

“Can you feel that?” Water dripped from Figment's limbs.

The ground trembled, slightly, and Mark steadied himself. “Yeah. What is that?”

“I hope it’s not-” Figment caught himself.

“Not what?” Mark whispered, loudly. 

"No." Figment whispered. "Who." He said, “It’s her!”

“This must be one big woman, Figment.”

“Forty feet. At least.” A large shadow cast itself over them.