The Dimensioners - Chapter 3

SYNOPSIS: When a young man wakes up to find himself a prisoner without any memories of his prior life, he seeks to escape. Not knowing who to trust or what is real, he fights to find the identity and home that he has left behind, but ends up finding out more than he was prepared for.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I started writing this novel some time in 2020 and originally posted a few chapters on Wattpad. Since I hardly ever venture over to Wattpad anymore and I see that Vocal has become a lot more fiction-friendly, I decided to give it a shot at posting some of this work in progress here. THIS IS THE ROUGHEST OF DRAFTS and one day I will finish this novel, but for now, here is 'The Dimensioners' in its infancy. I hope you all enjoy!

READ CHAPTER 2 HERE:

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CHAPTER 3

Axton sat on his bed with his back against the cement wall of his cell. He had been turning Ramirez's words over and over in his mind ever since the guards locked him in his cell that night. He wasn't sure if he had ever seen Ramirez before, but he had thought that no one could remember their life before arriving at the prison. How could he look familiar?

A guard sauntered past Axton's cell and he jumped up from his bed, the springs creaking loudly as he did. He tapped on the glass of his cell just loud enough to get the guard's attention. The guard turned to face him, his grey eyes cold and demeaning.

"What, inmate?" he asked, stepping close enough to the glass that his voice passed through in a muffled growl.

"I wanna see Marcus," Axton said. "Can you take me to him?"

"You're not allowed to see the analysts unless they send for you," the guard said.

"He knows me," Axton reasoned. "If you tell him that Axton wants to see him, he'll send for me."

The guard shook his head. "I'm not bothering him at this time of night. Now step away from the glass and go to sleep before I give you a hand."

Axton backed away from the glass slowly and the guard waited until he had sat back down on the mattress before he walked away, twirling his nightstick.

Axton sat up for awhile longer, foolishly hoping that Marcus would walk past his cell and he could unload his questions onto him. But he saw no one else pass before his eyelids shut and he was whistling a slow unconscious lullaby.

*****

"You ready for lift off, newbie?" Dev asked.

Axton, Dev, Lira, and Selah were all standing in a circle around Lira's desk in her cramped office. Four rows of pixie dust lined the desk in nearly perfect increments.

"I..." Axton said uncertainly, "Maybe someone else should go first."

"I'll go since I supplied it," Selah said, stepping up next to the desk. She leaned her face down so that her nose was touching the dark wood and turned her head so that her cheek was almost flat against the surface. In one swift motion, she slid her face across the desk, inhaling the entire line of pixie dust and came back up with red-orange dust sprinkled around her nostrils.

"Whew, that's good," she said.

"Me next," Dev said. He copied Selah's motion and came up shaking his head wildly. "Ah, it's like heaven."

Axton motioned for Lira to go next and she did it just as swiftly as her two friends.

"Alright, your turn Axton," she said, wiping the excess dust from her nose.

Axton looked down at the last remaining line of pixie dust on the desk and Marcus's warning began echoing in his head repeatedly.

"I don't think I can, guys."

"Ah, come on," Dev said, "it's not gonna kill you."

"I just... I don't think I'm ready for it yet."

Dev started to protest again but Lira stopped him. "You don't have to," she said, then she turned to Selah. "Well, Selah, I guess you get the last line."

Selah snorted the last line without any insistence.

"Here," she said when she was done, "here's a bag of pixie dust in case you wanna try it out on your own." She placed it in the palm of Axton's hand and Dev looked at her indignantly.

"He's new," Selah said in response to his accusatory look.

Axton tucked the bag in his pocket and gave a small thanks before they all filed out of the office back into the dim warehouse.

When Axton approached his conveyor belt, Ramirez was hard at work on the control panels.

"Had fun?" he asked.

"I didn't do it," Axton admitted. "Why didn't you join us?"

"I don't do pixie dust."

Axton suppressed the surprise in his face. As shifty and strange as Ramirez was, he seemed like the exact kind of person that would do pixie dust.

They continued working in silence, but Axton was uncomfortably aware of the fact that Ramirez barely looked at him the entire day. He kept his head down, focused hard on the control panels and only raised his head to stretch his neck. For some reason, not having Ramirez's eyes on him felt even more suspicious to Axton.

This unusual behavior continued during dinner and it wasn't until the guards filed all of the prisoners up to their cells and Axton watched a guard scan to open up Ramirez's, that he finally turned and looked at Axton intently. A jolt shot through Axton's body as the guard shoved Ramirez inside his cell and as Axton filed pass, he could feel the smoldering gaze of Ramirez and his scar.

In his own cell, Axton set the pixie dust on his desk and fell back on his bed without taking a shower first. The red-orange powder seemed to taunt him in the silence, his curiosity growing the more he stared at it. He imagined the feeling of heaven that Dev described and looked around at his environment. He could use some heaven. But Marcus's admonishment played back in his head, growing more and more into a scold.

Snatching the pixie dust off of the desk, he crossed over to the bathroom quickly and flushed it down the toilet. Marcus's scolding voice quieted in his head as the devil dust swirled into the watery abyss.

READ CHAPTER 4 HERE:

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Thanks for reading!

-Chanté