The Decision

“There weren’t always dragons in the valley.”

They stood at the summit of the mountain, and stared out into the foggy expanse far below them. It felt so good, so right to stand next to him again. She was safe, even comfortable–despite the precipice below her.

Dozens of dragons careened through the air. Their lithe bodies, more snake than lizard, beautifully arched and curled and twisted–their scaly hides shimmering in the bright sunlight above the fog. The jets of flame playfully blasted at one another were full of vibrant colors, not just yellow-orange heat. One flew close, landed on the cliff face at their feet and gripped the edge with its claws. Her father put out his hand toward its massive head, and the dragon gently nuzzled it, no more ferocious than a faithful dog.

“There weren’t always dragons in the valley,” he said. “But you brought them back.”

The dragon leapt off the mountain–the furious wind from its wings whipped around them. Her father looked at her, smiling his crooked smile, filling her with quiet happiness.

“You did what you were always meant to do. I’m so proud of you, little chicken.’

Crash!

Evie jolted awake, her father’s smile still lingering in the corners of her mind. No valley, no dragons…no dad. Just a bedroom in a dilapidated trailer.

“Mom?” she called.

No answer.

Evie sighed and yanked herself from beneath the covers. She was already dressed–she had begun the habit of sleeping fully clothed not long after she had to move in with her mother. Safer that way.

She made her way to the kitchen. Her mother was on the floor convulsing.

Evie ran to her and rolled her onto her side. Vomit spilled from the corner of her mouth.

“Carl!” Evie yelled, but as she scanned the room he was passed out in his disgusting armchair.

Worthless.

A needle on the floor beside him.

Evie grabbed the cell phone from her mother’s back pocket and dialed 911. “My mom OD’ed.” She was calm--no emotion in her voice. After a certain point you can only summon but so much feeling. “Yeah...She’s seizing and she vomited….I’ve done that…”

Even though Evie told her that it wasn’t necessary, the operator stayed on the phone, guiding her through what for many people must have been a horrifying experience. But Evie had been here before–twice in fact. She knelt beside her mother feeling nothing as she watched her seize.

Why should she care if her mother did not?

Saving her life seemed more like habit than actual kindness.

It took the ambulance twenty minutes to arrive, but Evie and her mother were living in the middle of nowhere down a two mile dirt road on land her grandfather had left them.

The EMTs set to work evaluating her mother. They asked Evie a few questions as they gave her a shot. In a few moments, one of them said she would be all right, to which Evie nodded coldly.

“What about him?” they asked, looking over at Carl’s slumped wreck of a body in his slumped wreck of a filthy armchair.

“Her dealer boyfriend. I didn’t bother to check on him. You can let him die for all I care.”

The EMT looked at her understandingly as another went to check on him. “They’re going to load your mom up now--coming in the ambulance?”

“No, I’ll drive.” Evie had had enough--she’d done enough. Her mother was who she was. She might as well spare herself a nauseating ambulance ride.

“You sure?”

“Yup.”

Evie stood. The stench of vomit wafted up from the floor. She noticed the knees of her jeans were covered in puke. Disgusting.

Speaking of disgusting, “You’re taking that piece of shit with you, right?”

“Looks like it. What did you say his name was?”

“Carl. I didn’t bother learning his last.”

The EMT nodded. “They’ll probably want to talk to you up at the hospital. Don’t make me look bad by letting you stay.”

“Yes, sir. I know the drill.”

“All right. Be safe.”

A few minutes later the ambulance bounced away up the long driveway. Evie stood alone outside of their rotting trailer. The dark of the woods enveloped her as the ambulance lights dimmed, and the night sounds grew loud as the siren faded away. She stood a moment quiet and empty, then turned inside.

Evie stared at her mother’s vomit as it slowly seeped into the cracked, peeling linoleum. She noticed in disgust that the puke and linoleum were almost the same shade of putrid green.

Three times.

This made three times.

She was seventeen, and now that grandpa was dead she was going to be dumped in foster care. Mom had promised it wouldn’t happen again when he died, and that was a lie. But she had promised the same thing after dad died and Evie came to live with her. Evie had little faith then–now she had none.

“Whatever,” she muttered to no one. She wasn’t going to the hospital. She wasn’t going to clean.

She was going to bed.

Walking through the trailer, Evie ignored the foul surroundings. The floor was filthy plywood outside of the kitchen linoleum, the walls were filled with holes from the more violent of her mother’s boyfriends, and the ceiling was slumped and dumped rotting insulation into the corners. Occasionally a cockroach would scurry across her path. At a certain point she had stopped killing them. There were too many of them and only one of her. Her mother and her set of revolving creeps never seemed to care about them.

The one spot in the house that looked like anyone gave a damn was Evie’s room. There were roach traps and rat traps in the corners. The floor, though still just plywood, was swept and covered with an old but relatively clean rug. The walls were revolting wooden paneling, but she had covered them with posters of 60s and 70s rock bands. The ceiling was beyond her ability to fix, but she had stuck cardboard into the holes to keep the insulation from sagging out.

Evie threw her puke-covered jeans down beside the door, and checked her flannel shirt for specks. Well, her dad’s flannel shirt. But it was clean. She sat on her creaking twin bed.

After a while of just sitting and staring at nothing in particular, she shuddered, and pressed her palms against her eyes.

Check. Just check–no harm in that.

She fumbled for her phone, which lay charging on the floor.

She found his name–Dad. She hit Call, only to hear, “We are sorry–the number you have dialed is no longer…” The phone tumbled back to the floor, and Evie buried her head in her hands.

It was real. The rotting feeling in her guts was life. She sobbed once without realizing it was coming–it surprised and angered her.

No–if this was her life, then get on with it. No looking back. No regretting. Memories hurt so best to forget.

But…she was forgetting his face. All that she had left of him was the smile that she had just seen in her dream of the dragons. She had that dream or one eerily similar to it several times since he had died. At first she had seen his face so vividly, now just the smile–the rest was gone. As though someone had stuck their thumb in the paint of his face and smeared it together.

His crooked, good-natured smile. It stabbed violently into her mind’s eye. And she would never see it again.

A sob fought its way up once more.

No.

She would not break down.

She would not allow it.

Evie bounded from the bed and stalked to her door. She pulled her wet jeans back on. Then her shoes. She stood in the kitchen, staring at the floor and at nothing all at once.

The plan had been to clean. Do something to keep her mind off things. But now, standing here, surrounded by filth and dilapidation, the sheer futility smacked her in the face.

The floor and the vomit were the same color.

The same damn color.

No more.

She was done.

She couldn’t be in there any more. Evie crashed through the screeching screen door. A rush of cold, clean air hit her in the face. She ran past the decaying Mitsubishi coupe that served as the family car when it decided to run, and circled around in back of the trailer to the old logging road. It wound between neighboring fields enclosed by rusty barbed wire and 500 acres of pine timber. She ran for almost a mile along it until she finally slowed to a walk.

It was a dark night: the moon was out, but it only sliced a thin grin into the velvety black winter sky. She usually enjoyed the walks she took alone down this road in the calm and quiet after the chaos at the trailer. Ever since she had come to live with her mother two years ago, this had been the one spot she felt safe. It was away from everything at the house–the vermin, the squalor, the drugs, the eyes–sometimes hands– of her mother’s boyfriends. Even from her mother.

Her mother. “Oh I love you so much baby!”

Her mother. “Don’t worry baby, I’ll take care of us.”

Her mother. “You are my world, baby!”

Her mother seizing on the floor drowning in her own vomit.

Evie stopped. Anger–anger and hate welled up from the deep gash of grief inside her. She knew what real love was–her father had shown her that–what her mother gave were words, empty nothings engulfed in her own selfishness.

It was cruel.

Evie stared at the beautiful sky with loathing. It was a stupid world–an uncaring world. It would give you a taste of safety and happiness and then rip it away.

“Meant to do.” Her father’s words from her dream taunted her. No one was meant to do anything but survive. What did school, a job, anything matter? It didn’t.

Suddenly a powerful gust of cold air knocked Evie back and forced her to her knees. Dust whirled around her, choking her. The grass on her left undulated like waves in a violent sea, and the huge pines to her right bent and cracked and squealed. She looked up at the cloudless sky, and the stars grew brighter and bigger.

The wind raged, the stars grew, and Evie gasped in wonder as a pulsating orb slowly manifested in front of her. It had no color of its own, but instead bent the forms and colors behind it and swirled them together. She tried to get to her feet, but the gale strengthened, and she had to stay on her knees. The orb grew and grew–until a flash of white light made her shield her eyes. When it vanished the orb had become a ring of white flame–and inside was another world.

A world of battle and blood.

Of fires and screams.

The noise was deafening--the metallic ringing of swords clashing--the thud of axes on shields, and the cracking as they splintered--the roar of a fire that moved with seeming intelligence to cook warriors alive in their armor--and the screams of the wounded and dying. Hundreds of warriors fought on a rocky plain of charred grass, their weapons glittering red in the firelight. Lightning cracked through a stormy black sky, occasionally illuminating the scene in stark whiteness. Evie could smell the smoke and burning flesh through the window into this strange world.

From out of this cacophony, one of the fighters was thrown so close, Evie thought he would come through the ring. Though he landed on his back, he quickly rolled to his knees, shield and sword at the ready. Wait…after a careful look Evie realized it was a woman. Her long braids whipped behind her, flowing in the heat from the fires. Her blue tunic was in tatters, burnt and ripped, kept on by her leather armor. She carried a small round shield, just enough to cover her chest, and a short one-handed sword.

The warrior turned her head towards the ring, apparently noticing it for the first time, but Evie couldn’t make out the details of her face. The woman paused, her weapons drooped in her arms. Though she could not see them, Evie felt the woman’s eyes on her. The woman dropped her shield, and reached out her gauntleted hand. The wind whirled around Evie, pulling her in towards the portal and the outstretched hand.

Evie tried to ground her feet–get away from it. Bursts of fire and clangs of swords and screams of pain swirled behind the warrior. Evie fought like a snared bird, but the wind kept pulling her closer. She looked pleadingly up at the warrior, and out of the chaos and terror saw a strange thing–the only thing Evie could see in the woman’s face–a crooked smile.

Her father’s smile.

Before she really had a thought, Evie thrust her arm through the veil and grasped the woman’s hand. She could’ve sworn that above all the racket of the battle, she heard the woman giggle.

Then she was yanked through entirely, and thrown into another world.