Iggy

Forward

It’s been a long time, I think to myself as I sit at an empty table and begin to write. I hope I can still do it, I continue to ponder as I look up at the cloudy grey sky looking back at me with it’s vast emptiness and overclearing.

Twelve Years.

A whole lifetime is in twelve years. I begin to sigh as I look back down at the empty book in front of me. “If you think about it.” The voice in my head rings. “It had been, no wait.” It stops. “That maths not right. Nevermind.”

Except it had been, I smile. In a really weird way. It had been twelve years since my last big book. I started writing Twelve years into my life and truly never stopped. Doing one book a school year until college.

College.

“Yeah” I hear the voice ring again. “College.” It does sound a little quieter now as we begin to co-exist as I write and think and write some more.

Twelve years.

Once Upon A Time ….

All good stories begin like that right? Once Upon A Time, twelve years ago I knew how to start a storybook and write like it was the end of the world. I guess now that I know it’s not, that really changes things. I look down at what I just wrote in the seventh notebook I had bought to lose myself in and sigh.

“This better not be like the last six notebooks.” I conclude.

Those were an accident.

One

Iggy looked down at her straight black shoes and began to tear up as her eyes absorbed the outfit she was wearing that day. It had just occurred to her that she no longer enjoyed the irony of the McDonald’s name sewn on her black and gold narrow visor. She only wanted to call home and share with her now ex-best friend, we guess, about the job and the displacing heavy feeling she knew she had also experienced at some point working for the franchise. Nothing about this was making it easier to walk out of the well-furbrished apartment she had recently found herself nestled in six hundred or so miles away from home, living across the way from her friend Nyx who had also moved here from her hometown of Long Beach at the start of the decay she had felt nothing for when Iggy was in her late teens early twenties.

“No

No

No

No

Snap out of it, Iggy.” She whispered to herself as she pulled on her powder blue pollo t-shirt, tucked in her tight black skinny jeans she had since high school. Iggy wiped the forming tears from her eyes as they began to fall along the sides of her faceand sniffled at the day ahead. Iggy reached across the back of her turquoise couch and pulled at her tan canvas shounder bag up from the seat and flung it over her shoulder.

“Alright… Let’s quit.” She half joked as she stepped through the living room and to the front door, crossing the kitchen on the way. She looked in the mirror and sighed, grabbing her house key as she veered. It had been sitting comfortably next to her mailbox key. “Thomas! I’ll be back later!” Iggy called out to her small gray tabby house cat, she had named after the gray cat with the same name from that cartoon she used to watch way back when none of this was her reality. He had wondered out of her room and into the hall to see what Iggy was up to a few moments before, responding to just his name and his name alone. The rest fell into nonsense. And of course, Iggy knew that.

“Merrow!” Thomas yelled in acknowledgement.

Iggy felt herself pull on her own regret as she opened the door and drug her straight black tennies out onto the deck, closing the door behind her quickly before Thomas had a chance to make a break for it and run the risk of making Iggy late for work.

***

The air outside was nippy and cold. It smelled a bit like it was about to rain, Iggy thought as she lifted her canvas bag’s loose cloth flap and pulled out her light gray Hamilton sweater from its confides. A smell that would linger into a moderately heavy flow for the majority of her walk to work. But she wasn’t thinking about that.

Or, more so, she was trying not to.

Iggy’s bag fell heavily on her shoulder as she dragged her feet through the Shorter Way, a small shortcut through the woods that brought her to the cross streets of Pearl Avenue at Crimson Way. A crossroads that was several houses down the street from McDonald’s where the woods ended and the small secluded town continued. The trail, however was kind of long. Who knew why Iggy called it The Shorter Way, maybe it was a reference to one of her favorite books but nobody here would know that.

Iggy kind of liked that about her situation anyway.

Back at work, forty-five minutes later, the rain was well off and pouring outside as Iggy braced the two heavy plain glass doors that led into the warm Front room of the McDonald’s Restraunt. Timmothy Edwards emerged from the kitchen to greet her. The fake plastered smile on his tired face quickly changed to a relieved and stressed frown as he eyed down Iggy’s drenched uniform and sighed. Putting a smile back on his face to greet her.

In the back, Iggy was able to put her bag up at Window One and clock in at Window Two. She enjoyed working Drive-Thru, it was where most of the action and some of the drama played out.

~***~

Those three hours before Iggy’s first real break flew by kind of unintentionally. She spent most of the first hour cold and damp underneath the broken air dock vent. The second hour, she spent out front on the floor, underneath the other broken air dock vent. Iggy remembered it prior to that day because it was blowing hot air on her damp sweater and soggy jeans as she stood in the somewhat dead afternoon floor room of the McDonald’s Establishment.

The free sandwich she received after the third hour felt like a punch in the gut. But Iggy knew her depression and stomached each bite like a champ. Trying really hard not to think about the life she left behind and let go of for a cold cheeseburger sandwich on that day. On this day, Iggy gulped down her Dr. Pepper and got back to work three minutes left on her thirty minute lunch. She spent the rest of her shift behind the glitchy cash register underneath the weak air dock vent out front of the McDonald’s. Only asking her to bring a meal out from the kitchen to the car personally twice during the latter half of her shift. It wasn’t until the end of the day when Iggy started to feel remotely better about the rain.

Ironic.

Two

The way back to the apartment felt a little shorter than the way to work. Iggy felt a little weird being that relieved work was over for the day, trying not to think about the same grind scheduled for her tomorrow as much as possible.

“No.” Iggy found herself saying outloud. “The way back to the apartment is definitely shorter.” She felt herself smile as she pulled out her phone and acknowledged the new discovery to her biological clock as it synced with every agonizing step forward and away from civilization back into the deep thicket of the neighboring woods. Iggy may have also been listening to music on the way home so time and her will to walk had flown by and straight on through. Her headphones buzzed with the sound of far off music, letting her know that they weren’t for the rain anymore. Another irony she chose to ignore as the pit in her stomach dulled in boredom, wanting everything to do with just being home already. Distracted by her phone Iggy didn’t notice the crack in the concrete as she was placing her phone back in her bag carefully. That had been a crack, hadn’t it? Iggy found herself thinking as she picked herself up off the ground after tripping.

Something was different when Iggy stood up after that. She couldn’t tell what, but as Iggy looked around again to locate more hazards to where she stepped an air of indifference started to elapse around her. Iggy didn’t think much of her walk after that, only that she now really wanted to be home. Iggy felt that twinge of regret trickle over her as she inched closer to the direction of the apartment, humming to her music to break the steadily flow of agony exhuming from her achy ankles and scraped up knee. Nothing about this was enjoyable she concluded, giving herself just that one before going back to humming to her music once more.

Iggy had walked maybe a mile before noticing the buzzing wasn’t from her headphones but the air itself. She took a minute before taking one bud out to test it, she wouldn’t have even noticed it at all if it hadn’t been so uncomfortably loud at certain areas of the heavy thicket that surrounded her.

“Out of the Way!” Iggy heard from behind her. She turned suddenly to see a man running up to her. He looked disheveled in each step toward her. Iggy jumped sideways into the bush next to a big old Oak as the man flew past her.

“Thank you!” He yelled as a low roar erupted from the ground beneath her feet. Pushing her back into the tree behind her.

“What?!” Iggy yelled in pain, pulling herself back on her feet. She grunted and felt her feet sink into the soft mud underneath her.

“Watch Out!” She heard again.

Iggy watched in horror as a giant worm like creature with dull sharp and yellowing to brown blood stained teeth emerged from the cemented path sending debris flying every which way, causing Iggy to block her face, just for a moment with her arm. “What?!” Iggy yelled again, taking a good look at the eyeless worm.

Three

Iggy felt her head throb as her vision came to. She wasn’t in her twenty-nine years on this planet ever more concerned that everything around her was buzzing than she was right now as she focused her vision to the static like Pastel that has painted itself to life as Iggy’s head throbbed into the pit of her stomach as it turned every which way.

RWAARRR!!! Screeched the Eyeless Thick and Slimy Ten foot worm as it wiggled its way around collapsing trees and crashing building structures around the corner from where the woods became civilization again. Iggy ran her fingers through her hair as she inspected how painful her head would throb as the buzzing continued. Something she really wouldn’t have noted if not for how geomentricly in sync everything felt for a minute after deciding that this planet would be everything Iggy needed for a minute. RWAARRR!!! Screeched the eyeless deathwom as it took its time to locate everyone and moveable thing within a ten foot radius.

“Here!” Iggy heard the familiar annoying sound piercing through the buzzing like an arrow through the dark. Iggy turned to face the direction of the sound and found herself aching as a pair of sheathed scissors fell from her shoulder to the ground as it bounced off her cheek bone. “Oh, watch out!” Following shortly after. Something about this would stick with Iggy as she whispered softly at how lucky that all felt having not scratched her face from it. “Sorry” Iggy hears as her surroundings vibrate to the crashing sound as it breaks the silence soft hummed by hard buzzing coming from the air it would feel like as Iggy unscheethed the scissors and swung them at the worm as it lazily slapped itself over a small patch of grown over moss covered fallen trees, sending wood and debris up in the air sharp and precision like against the buzzing stillness that otherwise surrounded them.

The worm screeched in pain as the scissors pierced through its’ side and in through the side of its’ mouth, sticking up through the serrated teeth that surround Iggy’s hand now as the worm squirmed itself into a less painful position as it punctured and bruised parts of Iggy’s hand as it twisted its grip on the handles of the scissors as they slid out through the holes they made. Iggy felt her stomach tighten as green goop splashed along the baby blue hidden under her light gray sweater. A gag, she would soon regret as she faced herself weakly because of it’s growing stench around her.

‘Oh, I'm going to be sick’ Iggy thought.

Four

Several Weeks Later:

Iggy's hands still shook every time she heard the buzzing.

It didn't matter that she'd learned to recognize the difference between the harmless hum of her broken headphones and the electric charge that filled the air before *they* emerged. It didn't matter that she'd gotten better with the scissors—faster, more precise, less likely to end up covered in that awful green slime that took three washes to get out of her clothes. Her body remembered that first encounter in ways her mind was still trying to process.

She sat on her turquoise couch, Thomas purring in her lap, and stared at the collection of weapons that now lived where her coffee table books used to be. Scissors of every size and shape, all of them somehow perfectly balanced for throwing, all of them appearing mysteriously after each encounter. Sometimes tucked behind her apartment door. Sometimes in her McDonald's locker. Once, memorably, in her freezer next to the ice cream she'd been craving after a particularly brutal shift.

The mysterious runner—she'd taken to calling him Runner in her head—never stayed long enough for a proper conversation. Just long enough to shout warnings, throw weapons, and disappear into the woods like he belonged there. Dark hair that caught the light wrong, clothes that seemed to shift between modern and something indefinably older, and eyes that held knowledge she wasn't sure she wanted.

"You know what the worst part is, Thomas?" Iggy scratched behind his ears, earning a louder purr. "I'm actually getting good at this."

That was the part that scared her most. Not the worms—she'd learned they were called Grounders, somehow, the knowledge just appearing in her head like everything else about this new reality. Not the way reality seemed to flicker at the edges sometimes, turning her familiar shortcut into something that belonged in a fever dream. Not even the way her neighbors seemed oblivious to the destruction that happened just outside their awareness.

The scary part was how alive she felt.

For the first time since leaving Sacramento—leaving *her*—Iggy felt like she had a purpose beyond just surviving each day. The depression that had been her constant companion for months lifted during fights, replaced by an adrenaline clarity that made everything sharp and possible. She was faster now, stronger, more aware of her surroundings. The girl who used to trip over cracks in sidewalks was learning to dance around creatures that could swallow cars whole.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Nyx: Still avoiding me? Been three weeks since we hung out.

Iggy stared at the message, guilt twisting in her stomach. How could she explain that she'd been avoiding everyone because she was afraid of putting them in danger? That the safe, boring life she'd built here was crumbling around the edges, revealing something far stranger underneath?

She thought about Sacramento. About Maya's laugh, the way it used to fill their tiny apartment near UC Davis. About the fight—God, such a stupid fight—over Iggy's "lack of ambition," her contentment with dead-end jobs and unfinished stories. Maya wanted someone who dreamed bigger, reached higher, made something of themselves.

"You're twenty-nine, Iggy. When are you going to stop hiding from your own life?"

The irony wasn't lost on her. Here she was, stabbing interdimensional worms with enchanted scissors, and Maya would probably still find something to criticize about her life choices.

"Merow?" Thomas looked up at her, sensing her mood shift.

"I know, buddy. I miss her too." Iggy had adopted Thomas from the shelter two days after arriving here, desperate for something warm and alive that needed her. Maya had been allergic to cats. Another small resentment that had built up over three years of compromise.

The buzzing started low, barely noticeable under the apartment's heating system. Thomas's ears perked up immediately—he'd developed an uncanny ability to sense the Grounders before they fully manifested. Iggy was already moving, muscle memory taking over as she reached for her favorite pair of scissors—medium-sized, perfectly weighted, with worn handles that fit her grip like they'd been made for her hands specifically.

"Stay inside, Thomas." She was already pulling on her boots, grabbing her canvas bag. The routine had become second nature.

But as she stepped outside, she realized something was different. The buzzing was coming from two directions.

And Runner was standing in her courtyard, no longer running.

He looked younger than she'd expected, maybe her age or a little older, with that same dark hair that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt that looked suspiciously normal, though the way he held himself suggested he was anything but.

"Iggy Martinez," he said, and his voice was different when he wasn't shouting warnings. Calmer. Tired. "We need to talk."

"How do you know my—" she started, but the buzzing intensified, now clearly coming from the woods and from the direction of town.

"Because," he said, checking what looked like an ordinary watch that definitely wasn't telling ordinary time, "you're not just accidentally stumbling into this anymore. You're being hunted. And the Grounders are the least of your problems."

The first worm erupted from the woods behind him, smaller than usual but moving faster. The second came from the direction of her McDonald's, and Iggy could see smoke rising from what used to be the strip mall.

Runner—she still didn't know his real name—was already moving, producing a blade that seemed to be made of the same impossible material as her scissors. "Lesson one," he called over his shoulder as they ran toward the larger threat, "everything you thought you knew about your life was a lie designed to keep you safe."

"Safe from what?" Iggy shouted back, but she already knew the answer was going to change everything.

"From remembering who you really are."

The second Grounder turned toward them, and Iggy saw something that made her blood freeze. Carved into its side, in letters that seemed to pulse with their own light, was a single word:

MAYA

***

*That evening, after the smoke had cleared and the impossible had become routine, Iggy sat in her apartment with scissors in one hand and her phone in the other. Thomas watched from his perch on the windowsill as she finally typed back to Nyx.*

Can you come over? I think I need to tell you something impossible.

And then, because the old Iggy was already disappearing into someone she was maybe supposed to be all along, she opened a new message and typed a name she'd been avoiding for months.

Maya.

The cursor blinked for a long time before she finally wrote: I think I understand now why you left. And I think you might be in danger.