The Turn

The Turn

Relentless rain poured down the eighth storey window, obliterating the cityscape beyond into a fragmented melt of darkness and dazzle. The world had grown quiet and insular during the preceding month of constant downpour, badgering winds and bitter chills. No one ventured out.

Nothing moved except for the fierce elements. Patio furniture and pot plants had long been brought inside or smashed to pieces in the first few days of the Turn.

That’s what the news called it; the Turn. One day there was sunshine and weather patterns and the next…it just turned. The Turn brought sheet upon sheet of monstrous raindrops as big as marbles, hurtling at extreme speed to make landfall. People reported paintball-esque bruising after getting caught in a five-minute downpour. With the landscape in a constant state of mild flooding and visibility always at zero, driving was impossible. Walking outdoors was always dangerous and to be avoided until absolutely necessary.

The Turn had been global and sudden, impacting the southern summer as equally and as comprehensively as the northern hemispheres winter. It descended without regard for climate or altitude, or biome. Tropics plunged dozens of degrees in a space of hours, desserts flooded with more rain than they’d seen in a millennia combined. Tundras, woodlands and cities were all equally ravaged by winds exceeding 12 on the Beaufort scale. Scientists and weather forecasters were baffled. There was no prelude or foreshadowing of the sudden change in weather, and even more disturbing, with what little weather observations had been possible since, there was no end to the Turn in sight.

Supply chains ceased to function. Air and sea transports between countries were too treacherous to attempt. Every poor, unfortunate transport that was in passage when the Turn commenced plummeted to earth or to the bottom of the sea. A quarter of a million souls lost in that first fateful hour, they estimated.

People were dying. Running out of food in their homes, falling into floodwaters or being impaled by debris. They were freezing from lack of warmth where power lines failed and broken windows permitted the subzero streams to blast through their homes day and night. Essential services became a security blanket of a long-forgotten time before the Turn. No longer could you call to have emergency services apply tarps and sandbags; these folks were homebound, unable and unwilling to venture out for the good of another. The task was too big, insurmountable, and they had their own homes and families to protect. We were each of us, on our own.

----

I’d been fortunate - in relative terms - during the Turn. My windows remained intact and for now, and in my part of the city the electricity came on often enough to keep food cold and humans warm. I still had supplies where many others had already run dry. My personal space bubble preference was a city block wide even before the Turn, so it was no great hardship for me to remain housebound with only my reflection for company. Right now, I was fine.

The blurred outline of the central business district across the park blinked off into total darkness, then flickered back to life. A battle raged for a few moments in a light-dark-light --- dark-light - -- Morse code of despair. Ultimately the Turn sent a final and clear message: Dark.

A few moments later my building followed suit with flickering lights and whining appliances.

Another brief battle ensued and once again the Turn emerged victorious. A power failure could last hours or days at a time, and each time sparked that familiar anxiety; Would it ever return? Many rural areas and some suburbs had been without power for three weeks. There was no talk of restoration.

Mindlessly, I lit a candle. It was habit now to have a lighter in a pocket and a candle in every room.

Erratic wind pulverised the rain on my window forcing it into a thousand shards of water, each defying gravity as they were forced up, down and sideways against the double-glazing. Like a prize fighter, the gusts dealt a flurry of continual blows from all directions. Droplets scrambled back and forth in response, I stared hypnotically into their ever-changing patterns across my three-pane window.

I blinked, trying to refocus my dry eyes and break my trace. A white glow protruded from the darkness beyond the right-hand pane which I stood directly before. It took my brain a slow-replay style second to process that the white spot was hurling toward the window, and it wasn’t - in fact - just a visual allusion of my hypnotic state. My sluggish thoughts prohibited me from moving clear, so when the impact came, I was still front and centre before the third window. A bloom of glass daggers spiralled towards me cutting at my exposed arms and neck and a knotted mass pelted into my chest, knocking the air from my lungs, and my feet from the ground.

The Shard

A large shard had found purchase in my right shoulder and I winced as I worked it free. A stream of bright blood snaked down my arm, followed by a trickle of gold-green liquid that also seemed to seep from my wound. Confused, I searched around for the object that hit me and destroyed the window. It occurred to me mid-search that the task was made easier by a stream of light pouring through a hole in the pane.

Light? Daylight! Of the likes, I hadn’t seen in a month!

I abandoned the search for the projectile and instead rushed to the window. It was bright blue daylight! And warm, crisp dry air. Reviewing the three panes, all else through the intact glass window was still blackness and rain and wind, as it had been before. All except a caldera of summertime that presented through the football-sized hole the right-hand pane. Shimmery liquid – the same substance I had seen in my cut - also dripped from the sharp nibs of the window cavity.

There was much to process in this bizarre scene, but for a full minute I warmed myself by the light streaming through into my room, rubbing my hands together as if basking in the glow of a roaring fireplace. The small sliver of calm was unspeakably glorious. The stress, monotony and relentless oppression of the last month forgotten, for a time.

A moan from behind me broke my warm mood. It was more of a whistle really, but carried the distinct tones of a painful moan. Against the wall, a writhing lump of unfathomable body and animal parts moaned again. There was something wing-like, albeit crumpled, in autumn tones and slightly translucent. For a moment the only description my mind could settle on was a pumpkin-sized moth, but then the moaning lump twitched, rolled slightly, and revealed amber thatches of hair and a yellow foot – an almost humanoid foot! - from beneath either end of the wing. The whole creature had a slight shimmer to its appearance, like it had been dusted in a fine metallic power before being viciously hurled through my window.

As the creature lay motionless now, I crept forward. My heart thundered with alarm all the way up to my throat, but I had to see the whole of this creature, its face. Fear and confusion tugged at my arms, but curiosity drove my feet forward. Kneeling now, less than a metre away, I could make out more details: Tiny hands and fingers. Like the feet, the hands were almost human but ever so slightly webbed and more tapered. Smoother joints in the extremities – no pronounced knuckles like human digits. No finger or toe nails. A bulbous head which, with its vibrant three-inch tufts upright and dishevelled, reminded me of a Troll doll. I reached out and lifted a wing to reveal the front of this mini-beast and saw its face for the first time. Two frontal eyes, although wider spread than my own, a nose and mouth, chin and ears all where you’d expect to see them.

I recoiled. It occurred to me that I should call someone, notify some organisation or other. I was woefully unequipped to deal with… whatever this was. But who would I call, in the world that it currently was? Police were barely operating and those that could, were focused on holding a modicum of order at grocery warehouses and the few operational shopping centres. The mini-beast on my floor was no match for breaking up food riots. No. Calling the police would be futile, even if I could get through. A university? Offices and laboratories were empty and no-one had bandwidth for anything other than survival and the climate challenge before us. Pest control? A priest?

I sat down, legs crossed and held my reeling head in my hands. I felt more alone with this likely dead moth-person laying before me, than I had in the prior month of complete isolation. And it was likely dead; glass shards had pierced it too in the preceding moments. I counted a few dozen cuts on its tiny body, including a deep neck gash that - had the wound happened to a human - would certainly prove fatal. Gold-green trickled out of the creature at each site that its flesh was pierced. Once again I recognised this substance and idly wondered if I should book in for some sort of vaccination.

A splatter of bright red from ankle to ear-lobe gave the creature a comical Tarrantino finishing touch. I recognise this top-coat as blood, probably mine.

It had to be dead. Surely?

Overwhelmed and unsure of what to make of the tiny creature, I turned my attention back to the shattered window and the portal to an unTurned day.

The Parallel

I still expected it to be some trick of my mind, or a play of light so I approached the crater in the window with as much caution as I did with the moth-man-thing. The blue sky persisted; no trick of light as far as I could assess. Peering through the gap and out into the ‘day’ I was surprised to find it was my world, my same old world. The park was my park with its soaring pines and oaks, the city was my city with bleached white buildings and gleaming glass. It was normal. Except it wasn’t. This portal was like the old normal. 'Normal' now was the onslaught behind pane one and two. The visage through pane three was the bright, warm and radiant old normal, and it was beautiful. I wanted this world so desperately that without thinking, I started pulling at the loose glass around the breakage, opening my room to the sunlight and gentle warm breeze. When the gap was about man-hole size, I leant my head and upper body through the gap and felt the rays of sun directly on my skin, let the terpenes from the pine permeate my nostrils and watched the bright cockatoos soar in a cloudless sky. I thought this world was lost to me. But here it was, back.

I grabbed my candle and popped it in a hurricane lantern and made for the fire stairs. Nearly tripping in my haste, I navigated the pitch-black cement spiral as fast as I could without coming to serious grief. I emerged on the ground level, ready to meet the new day from the old world. Emerging from the stairs and rounding on the glass double doors, my heart broke when I saw the night outside was very nearly as black as the stairwell. Wind blustered at the doors rocking them back and forth, and heavy sleet drove in under the door. It was the new normal out there. Again. Still.

Steeling myself, and willing the park to yield a clear patch at least, I set my candle aside and pushed out in the Turn and into the park. There were no blooms to see. No fragrance carried on the gale except the smell of sodden earth and neglected city. I ran hunched over against the elements from one side of the park to another, searching out the spots I had seen to be green and clear from my window. They were nowhere I could find. Nowhere at all. I howled at the dark world until my throat burned but the wind carried my protests away, unheard.

---

Drenched and battered by my expedition, I trudged back to the building and commenced the climb.

My candle had burned down and extinguished itself in my absence, so it seemed I was to ascend in the utter and complete darkness and several kilo’s heavier thanks to the water I’d taken on board while out in the Turn. I began the 144 steps of pure hell back to my apartment and thought about the daylight portal again.

I let my mind imagine ways to access that beautiful day while I climbed, partly to distract myself from the miserable job at hand. The stairwell was so consumingly black I had no visual perception of depth at all. The aging metal handrail at the centre of the stairwell creaked and crumbled under my grasp. Plummeting several storeys down the oesophagus of the stairwell was something I’d rather not risk, so I instead pressed my hands to the smooth cement outer wall for guidance and started upwards.

At some point in that stairwell – and given the complete darkness, I can’t place where – I felt my legs get lighter and the climb upwards become easier. The daydreaming about my window-world was distracting me, I told myself, too pessimistic to trust the lack of struggle. I kept my hand sliding up the wall, and my mind focused on the possibilities through the upstairs window as I glided up the next flight with almost no effort at all. When I reached the next landing and listened for my footfall on the flat echoey platform, none came. No sound at all. I stepped forward again. There was no noise, no resistance, nothing beneath my feet! Panicked, I scrambled for purchase, cycled my feet in the air. I dipped my toes down desperately wanting to feel the ground push back up against my shoes. And I fell.

----

The fall whilst not high (maybe a metre) was at a rapid pace and inelegant. My ankle rolled violently throwing my body off the landing and down half a flight of stairs. Hot pain sheered up my ankle and shin and it was several moments until I could manoeuvre myself into a safe sitting position. From there, I tested weight on my ankle, to find it was interested in bearing precisely none at all. The exercise also revealed that the hip on my alternate side caught a nasty jar in my tumble downstairs, and that side of my body was going to be of little help in lugging all my weight up however many stairs remained. I sat in the pitch-black, cold stairwell and wondered about the flying tiny human, the portal to a sunny day and my latest predicament. Perhaps the Turn has got to me, like it had to many others. Severe depression, suicide, psychosis, delusion and denial were all impacts I’d heard about on the radio. Maybe today was my day to snap?

Minutes passed and the cold concrete stairs started biting into my flesh to the point of pain; I had to move. With great effort I dragged myself in a crawl position and up several stairs once again to the landing. I estimated I was half-way, maybe less. The commute from ground floor to level eight was a hard slog even when able-bodied. I wasn’t sure I could do this. Wasn’t sure I had an option though.

Lifting myself to start the next flight, I prayed to an assortment of fictional deities to just let me get back upstairs to my apartment to see the sun again. Hell, not even see the sun - I’d settle for a blanket and a cup of tea assuming the gas was still on. As I focused again on getting home and getting out of the stairwell, I felt my body become lighter once again. And lighter. Ridiculously so. I wasn’t one for the positive thinking mumbo jumbo, and even if I was, this sensation would surely be beyond the impact of good vibes. I tentatively tilted my foot forward to feel the next step. It was there, but a good few inches below where it should have been according to my muscle memory of these stairs. My toes just brushed the concrete. Willing myself not to panic and just take the ‘good vibes’ or whatever was happening to get out of the damn fire stairs, I took another step forward and up. No resistance under my sole, no push off effort firing through my calf, no thigh-burn to heave my weight. I closed my eyes in a pointless gesture of focus again my pitch black surrounds. Up and up I travelled, until there were no more upward flights and I knew I had arrived at my floor.

I felt for the door handle and another wave or panic flooded through me. There was no door frame, no door handle. I was trapped in this concrete tube. I moved closer to the wall searching hand-over-hand until I found an exit. Amid the futile searching of both my hands, the angular metal handle collided with my knee cap. At the precise moment my brain reconciled this sensation with the reality I was half a metre above the floor, I began to fall. Again. This time I braced against the wall and shifted my weight for impact.

I took stock of my situation. I was back inside; excellent. I had been flying or floating … or hallucinating; not excellent. And the portal to daylight was still present, beckoning but unreachable; quality nonsense of the highest order. The portal remained, but the tiny winged person however, was gone.

The Garden

Back in my room, I’d dragged an armchair to face the curious portal. I sat enraptured with the peaceful view beyond. Birds blossomed from tree branches, before taking roost again in a neighbouring host. Trees leaves swayed ever so slightly; a subtle foot tap in response to the breezes gentle tune. No people, I noticed. Nice. No car noise or other city aural flotsam either.

There was of course, the unpleasant business of the floating-flying-hallucinating episode to address.

I was stalwart in my procrastination and avoidance of this issue, devotedly watching my birds eye documentary of the old world through the cavity in the window, but the memory of the stairwell persisted as much as I willed it gone. My greatest fear in reviewing the events of the day, was that I had in fact suffered a snap psychotic break and would become the latest member of the unattended minions, left to wither surrounded by the slavish delusions of our own mental failings. This being the likely case, again… who would I call?

For an age, I searched the unlit night and pelting rain surrounding my daylight hatch, and in the absence of any sensible theories, I decided to fly.

---

Rather, I decided to test the depths of my chimeric notion that I had floated up several staircases. Embracing the lunacy didn’t seem at all appealing, but I’d drawn a blank on any other action. Should I nap? Board-up the opening in the glass? Finally get that cup of tea? Pressing on with mundane actions in light of recent events struck me as far more farcical. I crossed my legs in the armchair, closed my eyes and thought ‘upward thoughts’. Nothing. I still felt the velvet chair against my skin, and no change in my relationship with gravity. I sighed audibly and dramatically for no-ones benefit other than my own, relieved that the hallucinations seemed to be over. I opened my eyes. The daylight still poured into the room. Not all the delusions were over, apparently. It was a frustration of epic magnitude that I couldn’t just slip out of the window, and be there in the lush, serene gardens below. In the absence of the front door working, and my flying psychosis seemingly resolved, I ponded the logistics of installing a rope ladder, or of building a monumental slide. I could climb up to the window opening and…

I flew across the room! Not figuratively… literally flew. In the direction of the daylight portal. Like young Charlie Bucket on the roof of the soda room, I found myself in aerial trouble and I braced my body taut across the opening. I clung to whatever I could to stop from escaping through the window.

I imagined the multi-storey plummet... Regretted the thought instantly as felt my body dive. A desperate desire to stay up here in my apartment flashed across my mind and I felt my body again lunge, this time higher still than the window.

There I was, perched in the upper corner of my room, limbs pressed flat huntsman-like across my ceiling. I had no clue how to safely get down. I’d fallen twice in the stairwell when I realised I had levitated. I tried hard to ‘realise’ my floatation state, mindful of the eight-foot fall awaiting me, and the glass crater I had to navigate. But no fall came. I remained spider-sticky to the ceiling.

It occurred to me as I looked directly down at the perfectly ordinary carpet, how wonderful the floor felt beneath ones’ feet, a simple pleasure that surely is only truly appreciated by basket-cases glued to their own ceilings. And with that, I fell for a third time. This fall was mercifully interrupted by an aching desire not to smash into that bland carpet at a hundred kilometres an hour. Falling evolved to floating, and I hit the deck at just a few respectable kilometres instead.

There ensued a few hours of experimentation, fine-tuning the space between desire, visualisation and intent, where this mystifying mid-air transit seemed to take place. I’d hesitate to call it control, but as the sun was rising out in the Turn, and the pitch black window turned to gunmetal grey murk of dawn, I had developed some notion of how to navigate my carcass through the airspace of my apartment. Euphoric, I knew this was my chance to reach the inaccessible gardens below.

---

There is a certain mania that overcomes a person in order for them to consider leaping out of an eighth storey window. With infrastructure failing, crops and transport in ruins and no hope of replacing them, the experts warned we had mere months as a species. That was window-jumping news even without the daylight tunnel and levitating powers to hand. There seemed little meaningful consequences of jumping out of any old windowpane right now. Pane three at least offered some hope at best or at worse, a pleasant environ for my last 15 seconds on earth.

I jumped. And glided - almost with grace - to the grassy park below.

Touch down was rocky but stable enough to exclude a faceplant into a garden bed. Lavish botanicals burst all around from bark chip garden beds, flowers and foliage tumbled forward to meet well- trimmed lawns and pristine walkways. The garden smelt damp, but not the like the filthy, rotting mess I’d experienced during my earlier trip outdoors. This damp was fresh and crisp, full of life and vitality. The city lay clean and silent before me, vivid and static - like a photoshopped postcard of itself. And it was warm. Good God, was it blessedly warm! An angel-light, wisp of a breeze puffed warm air onto my skin. Clusters of birds commuted between the trees in a game of tag with no beginning or end. Glancing up at my broken window, I had no sense of if the Turn was still in play back through that broken glass.

I tore myself away from the garden, eager to see my old world and apartment and confirm – hopefully – that the Turn had been broken. Inside the building foyer lights greeted me followed by the alien ding of a departing elevator, a sound that had not rung since the Turn began.

Grinning wildly, I called for the next lift. The cart doors slid open.

I stared down at it, and it stared up at me. Another moth-creature, this one with a blue-silver tinge to its skin stood only a foot high, her eyes wide and her impudent mouth agape to reveal two rows of narrow tapered teeth. A rollercoaster of whistling escaped the creatures mouth through bared teeth, and the musical tones reached my ears with explicit meaning: “What the hell? I have to tell Council!! Chabuk will have to deal with this!” I wondered if I had inferred the words from the tone, but the communication was too specific. I must have heard it. Understood it.

Mere buds protruded from its back where the creature upstairs had had body-sized wings. But even with these meagre appendages the beast rose into the air, darted back and forth seeking passage either side of me, and zipped passed my head in a fae-like manner before snaking, still airborne, into the surrounding parkland. Fae-like? Fae? Fairies? The realisation dawned on me with a great laboured resistance and no small parcel of doubt. There were fairies in the garden. And in my apartment building.

The Vanquishing

The blue-silver wisp was almost out of view, and I made a split-second decision to follow. Cursing myself for my curiosity, I too rose into the air and darted after her. Much faster than me and clearly better versed in the art of flying, I caught only a glimpse of the fae as she rounded the corner toward the convention centre next door. Seconds later, when I too reached the corner, I heard her screeching at the door as she burst inside.

“Chabuk! Chambuk! Kinabeerah is not held! There is a human on our side! And I’ve heard Cato has also returned from human-side.”

Her whistling pronunciation of the city name was laboured and unnatural, like a toddler trying out a new word – “Kin-ah-beer-ah has outflow.”

As the - presumed - aforementioned human at the centre of this hostile declaration, I ducked away from the swinging door and took up a viewing position outside an open upper storey window. The foyer of the convention centre was bustling with flying creatures. Some gold, like the one in my room, some blue, green, silver, or rose coloured. Many had small wings or stubs like the blue fae. Only a few had full wings draping all the way to their ankles. Chief amongst the full-winged ones, was a silvery- white fae, feminine in appearance and with a commanding presence. She held court over the community, standing on a large display plinth. The recently arrived blue girl, more junior in every way to her paler leader, flew to the plinth and awaited permission to alight. She was beckoned forward by the elder and repeated her frantic warning. At the sound of Catos’ name the previously subdued fae crowd around hissed wildly and stomped bare tapered feet up and down. Elongated teeth were bared all the way back to trembling gums around the room. Wings bristled across the gathering in sharp antagonised jerks, before the silver one called for quiet.

Silver elder fae spoke, her tone less of a whistle and more a low and melodic woodwind tune.

“Cato The Traitor has been expelled to human-side. How can he have survived contact with the poisonous other side? How can he have returned? Was the hatch-tunnel not sealed? ”

The word I heard as ‘hatch-tunnel’ escaped my full comprehension, but it called to mind the notion of wormholes, and more tangibly, the hole in my window.

A diminutive green fae stepped forward, apologetic and uncomfortable in his stance “There must have been interference at the point of expulsion. It’s the only way. If the human was injured and absorbed Cato’s blood? That would mean the human now has passage… among other linkages with our kind. We will not be able to seal it while the human can transverse both sides of the hatch- tunnel”.

“And Cato did not die inside the eradication-elements as we intended? How is this so?” Silver prodded Green further. The eradication-elements word also missed a direct translation, but I knew it well: the Turn.

“The interference. I can only assume it was both ways. While we can not live inside the void of the the eradication-elements, humans can… for a time. But if Cato and the human were both injured and blood co-mingled… that would…” the little green fae turned his palms skyward and shrugged, letting his unfinished speculation hang in the air.

The leader of the fae stomped and raged, bristling her wings up and down in short sharp angry shrugs. Her voice deepened to a near-growl, the sound of nightmares.

“The human needs to die. Cato too. We will not co-mingle with soiled, unintelligent mammals,” she spat the word mammals with red hot unshielded disgust “NOT EVEN ONE! This planet is ours. Kill the hatch-tunnel transverser man-filth that sullies our side. Our blood, our way of life, our language, our side… none of this shall course inside an animal like a human! Hunt Cato and his posse of human-loving traitors and kill them also. I want that hatch-tunnel closed and everything human- side or human-blooded DEAD. Kinabeerah must be sealed and held. We will NOT be the point of failure in this occupation. The eradication-elements have mere weeks to complete the take-over and I will not have any blemishes on our side…".

I didn’t stay to hear the rest of this motivational war speech. My kill order had been issued and with the hatch-tunnel forced open while I lived, there was no place to hide from these pint-size vanquishers.

The End

Once again I found myself with three vistas before me. Three panes on which to gaze and engage.

Pane one: I could go back to the Turn and hide out from my fae pursuers somewhere in the chaos of "human-side". And should I manage to evade our global oppressors I could await my death from exposure or starvation at the hands of the elements or as I now knew it – the eradication-tool, or I could attempt to stage a defence against our oppressors.

This was a hostile take-over, and no-one even suspected. Typical for humankind to sit down and sulk in the face of natural disasters. If they had the slightest inkling that a tangible enemy had brought them the Turn, several nations would no doubt rustle up some sort of response rather than laying down to die. But in the Turn, there was no organised response no community leadership. Each protected their own and merely aimed for survival, no matter how bleak and pointless. We were alive, but not living.

This was our Turn; our turn to be colonised and pushed aside. If I returned through the portal to the darkened world of the Turn and tried to invigorate some hope, some sort of action, would I even be fighting on a worth side of this war? Moreover, I’d be dismissed in the colossal state of emergency that is the Turn. There would be no bandwidth or tolerance for crackpot evil fairy tales. No, a response from human-side was impossible. So returning to the Turn offered me naught but a pointless death, served rapidly from swarms of fairy assassins or slightly-less-rapidly from the effective machine of the Turn.

Pane two: Remain in the Unturned. Bask in the sun, tan my toes, stroll the earth free of mortgage repayments and taxes and live out my short life in comfort, but alone in the knowledge that my now- neighbours came into possession of the planet via the mass homicide of eight billion souls. Despite the wonderful climate and the expansive floor plan of earth v2, even I couldn’t get past that price tag. And it was clear I could never make nice with these knee-high nazis. My time in the sun would be short. Remaining here, will not without its appeal, was also a death sentence.

And beyond those two options, I was presented a third once again. There was a glimmer of hope, something alternative and as yet, unconsidered. Pane three: the auburn fae. Cato The Traitor who had been expelled to the Turn, right through my window. Cato, whose blood, tongue and agility I now shared.

Perhaps my best shot was with the autumn colour fae with the heavy wings, his defeated plan for co-existence and his posse of outcast renegades. If my human blood saved Cato, maybe Cato would be inclined to save me.

For the second time today, I found myself taking an unexpected leap: I had to find Cato.