31. Puff
Puff
Dylan
Sacha opened his backpack, spreading the contents over the table. His supply run had brought back several rolls of multicoloured tape and, bizarrely, a lobster phone. Not a phone with a lobster painted on it. A lobster turned into a phone…
Talia raised her eyebrows. “Fan of Salvador Dalí?”
“This is our secret weapon!”
“What does it do?” Dylan asked.
“With luck, we’ll be able to wake Isaak with it. Let me worry about that part. You just need to find him in the Tapeworld.”
With luck. This didn’t sound like a great plan.
“Where did you get it?” she asked.
“Did Isaak tell you about Elodie?”
“A little.”
“When we stopped using the tape, she handed me that. Said it might be useful sometime. Come on, let’s get it set up.”
Under Sacha’s direction, they wired the lobster phone to the device stuck over Isaak’s eyes. The arrangement looked like the kind of hacking she’d seen in movies from decades even before the Dark Year.
Talia’s silver rings clinked as she fidgeted with a roll of tape. “Are you sure this is gonna work?” she asked.
“I’m not,” Sacha said. “But it’s worth a shot.”
Talia was beginning to look nervous. Dylan didn’t think she’d ever seen her like this before.
She was usually so fearless. Always knew where the exits were, the least drunk of the group, but she could fake it well.
But not the girl you’d want on your side during a spontaneous beach brawl – that’d be Dylan herself.
No boys messed with Talia unless they wanted their shins kicked by Dylan.
Her friend was now examining the lobster phone. “Holy shit, is this one of the actual Dalí lobster telephones? He only made eleven…”
Sacha answered Talia’s incredulous face with a nod. “I know. I couldn’t believe it either. Elodie just had it lying around. A pre-Dark Year relic.”
“The Tate Modern museum is still fucked because of that,” Dylan said. “All the art people looted. That’s where your Elodie got that phone from.” She wanted him to know she hated the thought of art being sold on the black market like that.
“Hey, I’d give it back, but…”
She shook her head. “No, I know, we need it.”
“Shall we then?” Sacha motioned to the sleeping bags on the floor. “You two can lie down and get taped up. Make sure the tape is connected to the lobster.”
Dylan frowned and looked at Talia. “You’re coming too?”
Talia smiled. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world. I’ve heard a lot about this Tapeworld, and this boy of yours. I want to see them for myself. And I don’t want you in there on your own. Especially if it’s dangerous.”
It felt like a really bad idea. Dylan herself had only been in the Tapeworld for a week.
“It is dangerous. We’ve been chased by fucked-up mechanical wolves, and by black spheres that sucked up everything in their path.”
Talia raised her eyebrows. “Exactly. I’m not letting you go alone. I know how much you’ve been craving excitement, girl. I don’t want you to lose your head in there.”
Dylan smiled, her heart warming. “You’re a good friend.”
“I’m your only friend,” Talia said, letting out a laugh.
“Let’s do this then…” They went to their individual sleeping bags, and Dylan lay down and tipped her head backward, chin pointed to the ceiling. That way, she could still see him in the same position she’d placed him in – sat back in his chair, his head tilted forward. “We’ll find you, Isaak.”
Dylan looked over at Talia, a slice of tape held ready beside her head. A quiet nervousness had settled on her face, now that she was done playing the brave one for Dylan’s sake. She really had no idea what awaited her on the other side.
Dylan played with her own roll of tape. Just touching it was enough to calm the storm raging inside her. Almost enough.
“Three… Two… One… Go!”
They both stuck the tape at the same time.
“Holy shiiii—” Talia screamed.
Dylan never heard the scream end. A barrage of colours danced in front of her eyes. She lifted her hands and could see through them, her skin translucent, bones chalky white. Rubbing her hands together reassured her they were still there, but it looked trippy. Cool.
Sacha’s smile, still visible through the rainbow, blended into the table he sat at, into the walls, the delimitation of his shape intermixing with the colours of the room.
Every shape oscillated with luminance. Colours flew past her eyes, her mind travelling through concentric tubes of light and shape, her skin ethereal like fire, her body flooded with lightness, the sensation of taking a puff of a cigarette after years without smoking.
A rush of air stole her breath. She lunged forward, and when she opened her eyes, she was there. The familiar volcanic landscape. Isaak’s home in the Tapeworld.
She grabbed her phone, still inside her pocket, and called Sacha. “We are in his tape-space. No sign of him though.”
“You know what to do next,” Sacha replied. “Keep the call open.”
“So this is the place?” Talia asked.
“Yeah,” Dylan said. “Looks a bit too much like a supervillain’s lair, doesn’t it? Mine’s much cuter than this.”
“Typical emo kid. Fire and brimstone.” The volcano was spewing hot lava. “Look at all these colours! It’s like, the colours of a giant movie screen but in real life. Everything is so brightly lit.”
Dylan smiled as Talia just stared around her, mesmerised.
“I can see why you’d want to spend the rest of your life in here,” Talia said.
“The landscape? That’s nothing. Check this out.”
Dylan summoned a plant at her fingertips, then threw it. It landed on the rocky ground of Isaak’s space, and embedded itself in the rock. A few seconds later, the stalk of the plant thickened, cracking the rock open.
Talia gaped at it. “What the fuck? You’re like a virtual witch.”
Dylan curtsied. “Thank you—”
“Or are you virtually a witch…?”
Dylan shrugged.
Talia grinned.
“Shall we?” Dylan asked her.
Talia swung one of her arms, like a stretch after exercise. “Yeah. Let’s go find your man.”
Dylan widened her eyes at Talia in warning. She didn’t want Sacha to know all about her feelings for Isaak.
“Oh, please, girl… You think Sacha doesn’t know?”
“He probably does now…”
“I already knew,” Sacha said through the phone. “It was obvious as soon as you two showed up at my door. The way he was looking at you… I was surprised when you called each other ‘friends’.”
She was that transparent, huh? And the way he looked at her? Had she not noticed, or had she not wanted to notice?
She tried to shake off the awkwardness and get to business.
“I’ll think of Isaak and say his name. That should summon him to us.”
“It’s that easy?” Talia asked.
“It should be. To be honest, Isaak doesn’t really know how it works either. It just works.”
Talia nodded. “Okay. We got this far.”
“How does that sound, Sacha?” Dylan asked over the phone.
“Sure, sure. Go ahead. I’m still looking at the lobster phone, trying to figure out how it works. Call me back when you need me.”
“Uh… great?” Dylan said dryly.
It suddenly seemed almost impossible to visualise Isaak’s face. What did he look like? Black hair. Brown eyes. That nose. His mouth. Pink-brown lips. Oh, yeah. Those lips. “Isaak?”
Nothing. He didn’t appear.
She tried again.
Her eyes closed, clearing her mind. The thought only of him, in all his totality, prompting a smile. “Isaak!”
Lava shot out of the volcano with a thundering roar.
But nothing else happened.
“This isn’t working. Fuck.” She thought for a moment. “Okay. I’ll think of him, of where he is, wherever that might be, and try to open a tape-tube to him.”
“Tape-tube?” Talia gave her a quizzical look.
“It’s how we move around in the Tapeworld.”
She concentrated once more, but this time added a movement with her hand and arm. She didn’t know where he was, but if she thought about him hard enough, surely it had to work.
Blue and yellow sparks flew from the air directly in front of them, like glowing insects. Each gathering of sparks pulsed in synchronicity.
Talia walked back a few steps.
The sparks were accompanied by a low hum that quickly rose in volume until the vibration shook the floor.
All the sparks connected at once, becoming one ellipse of light, white on the edges and blue-yellow in the centre.
“That must be it! Come on!” Dylan held Talia’s hand and they walked into the portal.
The tunnel stretched to an unseen horizon. Horizontal vertigo dawned on Dylan. She held Talia’s hand more firmly. Reflected on her friend’s green eyes was a dot of light, the tunnel. Walls made of black brick. The cement glowed faintly.
“Where are we?” Talia asked.
It took a moment for her question to register.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like this in here,” Dylan said.
She looked behind, back through the portal to where Isaak’s tape-space should have been. It was just darkness now.
No going back, I guess…
She started walking deeper into the tunnel, and Talia followed.