Outside, Inside
By Branden Hart

Volume 1: Sucked Dry

Issue 2: Out Cold

The city rises up before me, miles of skyscraper, some lights blinking off, some on, turning the expanse into a mass of rigid stone organisms, all winking at each other. I stand on the edge of a dock, the lake at the edge of the city stretched out behind me. Its surface is a funhouse mirror, distorting the reflection of the city, a dark, deformed twin of the straight lines and polished surfaces that stretch into the sky.

“Ready?” asks Fence.

I nod.

“Take off your coat,” he says. “You'll get less resistance that way.”

“Why don't you take your coat off!” I demand, pointing at the cloak draping his hulkish frame.

He just stares at me.

“But it's freezing!” I say, already slipping my arms out of the soft warm leather.

“Then I hope you like the cold. You'll get used to it. Gotta keep in mind—it can't hurt you anymore.”

No matter how many times he tells me what can and can't hurt me, its always a relief to hear the reminder.

“Where do I land?”

Fence trains his dark eyes and scans the skyline. “The Culebra Building. Top floor.”

“I don't know if I can make it.”

Fence turns and takes my shoulders, his hands holding on too tight, bunching up the thin white cotton of my undershirt before he releases his grip enough so I'm comfortable again. “Dana, remember that what you can do is only limited by what you really want to do. By what you'd love to do. What would you love to do right now?”

“I want to feel the wind whipping through my hair as I watch the ground fall below me. I don't want to be held down by the Earth.”

Fence shrugs. “So do it.”

I stare up into the space above me, measuring the distance between me and the top of the tallest building in the city. I take a long, slow breath. The smell of a coming storm comforts me and spurs me on to complete tonight's lesson before it starts to rain down on us.

I bend my legs, close my eyes, and jump.

For several seconds, I keep my eyes closed against the instant rush of air, colder than I imagined on the ground. My hair is pulled back by my trajectory, and in a moment, I realize I have no bearing on where I am. Carefully, I open my eyes, and the cold bursts against my eyeballs. After the inevitable tears begin streaming down my face, I can open them for longer, and I look down. Below me, the ground is dropping at a fantastic rate, as if I'm stationary and it's the Earth that's moving, distancing itself from me. I can see the streets crisscrossing, creating a living grid, cars and people moving like ants.

Then I look in front of me just in time to see the large stone gargoyle flying toward me. With a shriek, I shift clumsily in the air, brace myself, and then concentrate on exactly what I want to do next. I channel all my energy into my feet, the way Fence taught me to land, and let the stone absorb the impact. A hellish noise fills the air as the gargoyle shatters.

“Oh shit,” I think as I begin the plunge down to the street, shards of stones—horns, teeth, a bulbous nose—accompanying my descent. Now the air is on my back, screaming in my ears. It feels like the fall takes forever, my skin becoming colder by the second, and the only thought running through my head is, “It can't kill you anymore. It can't kill you anymore. It can't kill you anymore.”

At once, the fall stops. There is no impact, no noise. And I think, “Maybe it did kill me.”

“Dana, you awake?”

It's Fence. I feel his thick, warm arms holding me. I open my eyes. His squints back at me, and he's smiling, his teeth bright white except for lines of red trailing down his chin. He's excited.

“Where are we?” I say. “What with all the wind?”

“Look down.”

Below us, Earth is leaving so fast I can't track where everything is going. The wind was the cold air rushing against my face. It shocks me back into reality and I start to register the feeling in my gut that tells me we are moving at a speed not meant for human consumption.

“Hold on a little tighter,” says Fence. “I'm about to stop.”

Almost before I can grab onto his collar, I feel us begin to slow rapidly and then I barely feel a thing. The wind whips around us, but we aren't moving anymore. Fence's arms are so warm, and the view is so beautiful.

Every star in the sky shows, as if the smog of the city had been sucked out of the sky to reveal the blanket of lights. I see every constellation I'd learned in school—Orion, the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia.

“Fence, how the hell...”

He's looking up as well, smiling as big as I've ever seen him.

“Um, Fence, how high up are we?”

“High enough,” he says after a chuckle. “Now, you really need to hold on. I obviously still need to teach you some about landing.”

He gives me more time to grab onto him this time. Which is a good thing. Because by the time we land, I think I'm going to get frostbite, my hands hurt so fucking bad.

But I'm not thinking about that much. I'm enjoying the ride. After all, frostbite can't hurt me anymore.

You have to hear me.

It's Fence's voice inside my head. I do.

You have to concentrate on your goal or you'll never be able to do anything you want.

The wind rushes faster; the sky pulls at my hair.

I was...

No, you were thinking about how amazing it is. You have to concentrate on exactly what you want, and that happens in the future. You were thinking about now.

But I...

And the wind stops, and I look down, and there are small red pebbles, and then Fence's size fifteen motorcycle boots. I look up at him as he kneels down and puts me tenderly on the ground, allowing me to get up on my own.

I almost faint when I do.

The darkness stretches out in a plane before me, unbroken by any other surface I can see. We're on top of the Culebra Building.

Fence is standing there smiling at me when I turn around. “Come out to the ledge with me,” he says, turning and waving for me to follow him. My feet crunch on the pebbles. We're so high up, I can't hear a sound from the city. I try to remember the last time I hadn't heard the honking of horns, the sounds of machines. But this silence—it isn't peaceful. It's haunting. Enough to make my stomach lurch.

By the time I come up behind Fence, I can see the tops of buildings far below, peeking over the knee-high ledge he's standing in front of, and he's staring out into the seemingly endless void.

“You should come all the way over here. Take a look at it—it's amazing.”

“Hah—no thanks. I don't care what can hurt me or what can't or whether I can live forever or what's going on—you are not getting me to look over that ledge. It must be at least a quarter of a mile down!”

Fence just continues to look into the night. He sighs briefly, then, without turning, says, “If you don't come over here, I'll throw you over the edge.”

His dark outline didn't budge after saying that, so I started walking. Fence wasn't joking. If he had been, he would have laughed.

“Good,” he says, hearing the crunch of the gravel as I stepped carefully toward the ledge, all the time, radio towers from the inferior buildings far below us creeping slowly into view, blinking their red and white lights at me. Fence sticks his hand out to me and curls his fingers several times, encouraging me to take it. Reluctantly, I grab hold and step further up to the edge.

“Look down.”

I gulp and stick my head out. A vast expanse of space greets me, a nothingness that seems to go on forever until I can see tiny, tiny lights blinking out of the long tunnel made from the side of the building and the night all around it.

“You can stop looking.”

I step back, see the pebbles again, and reel backwards, shocked by the proximity of the surface I'm standing on. He chuckles heartily, shaking like the bear he is, and catches me before I hit the ground.

“So what did you see?”

“A whole lot of nothing for a shitload of time. Jesus man, why the hell was that necessary?”

He plops down on his ass next to me and sighs. “Well, what you didn't see was this building falling, or chunks of it careening into the streets below, which is what would have been happening had I used the same carelessness you had when you crushed that poor gargoyle.”

“Oh no!” I scream. “I hadn't thought—what happened...”

He shook his head, shushing me. “It's fine, it's fine. I took care of it. Didn't hurt a living soul. Gonna be pretty hard for the street crews to move tomorrow morning.”

“Jesus,” I mumble, my head in my hands.

“That's the thing Dana—me saying you don't have to worry about being hurt doesn't mean you shouldn't worry about hurting other people. Hell, you could have killed a lot of people. But instead of thinking about that, you were thinking about how great you felt. With us, all of Outside, we've got both the good and the bad. The folks who don't care about anyone but themselves, the folks that care too much about others, and everything in between. No different from where you came from. Maybe even a little more like the way those guys live than you've caught on to yet.”

“That's fine and well, but how can you just introduce me to these kinds of things and not expect me to revel in the joy of them? I mean, how many people get to do what I'm doing now?”

“None, Dana. No human has ever done what you're doing. No human ever will.”

I sigh—the old “quit talking about them like you're still one of them” speech. “Semantics aside, you know what I mean.”

“Fine. Tell you what. You want to go somewhere tomorrow night where I can let you do stuff—no consequences whatsoever?”

Fence always knows when he's up against a will he can't break. “It's a deal.”

Walter Ponchus was regarding a wall on the far side of the warehouse with curiosity. It stunk. Like death. This one particular spot. Had it been any other smell, he would have jumped in like a maniac when he was standing in the cafeteria across the prison grounds and first caught the whiff. But the smell of death never meant anything good, and there was no use rushing when you were the only one who could handle things. He looked at his watch—3 AM. Fence wouldn't be along for hours. That was too much time to leave whatever had gotten in there alone.

Walter breathed in deep and rolled up the sleeves on his white Oxford. With that, he walked toward the shiny wall of corrugated steel, considered it for two more seconds, and then walked right through it.

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