subrosa: the adventures of bill chase chapter_03

Chapter 3


"Brian. Wake up." I shook him gently. "We have to go now."

"What! I just laid down."

"Well just get up. We are going now; we have to go now."

"Why this particular minute?"

"If we do not leave now we will still be here tomorrow, and tomorrow we have to be out of here. I know we must go now. The path begs us to fork off."

"Are you crazy?"

"I will be soon. Come on, we have to go now."

"Why am I a part of your insanity?"

"You are caught in the maelstrom."

"Do you expect to get away with this?"

"Wake up. You have nothing to lose. If we do not get out, we will still be here, and nothing will have changed. Nobody will be awake to see us skulking around. We will just say we are taking a walk if someone else happens to be up taking a walk at such a ridiculously late hour. We are just exploring. Tell them we are looking for something, we do not know where to look."

"Or what it is."

"We are on a mission! Come on. Let us go."

"Stop yelling at me."

"I am not yelling," I screamed. "Here, put you clothes on and we will go for a walk to discuss it."

"What are you going to take?"

"Take?" I inquired.

"What is this new world of yours like; is everything given to you like it is here? What if it is a barren world? What are your chances of survival?"

I had not given much thought to the possibilities of what we would be exposing ourselves to on the outside. I was so obsessed with getting out, that I had not thought about how being out would affect our chances of survival. I had always taken survival for granted.

Obviously, Brian was concerned about it, which meant he must have been thinking about the possibility that the outside theory was not an entirely mad delusion.

"We will take some blankets - and this knife I took from the kitchen to cut our way out."

"Any food?" he asked as he methodically dressed.

"We will have to hope there is some out there."

That was not the surest assumption, but I was certain that if I stayed imprisoned in this world another day trying to decide what to take on the journey, I would surely lose control of me senses. I would rather try to adapt to a new world.

"Come on, let us go! We can not be letting little details deter us from the adventure of our lives."

We gathered a few things and quietly lumbered off to the point in the wall where I quickly began hacking away at the material preventing the continuance of our journey. It was hard to cut the material because it was well above my head. I had managed to cut most of it away from the opening when I heard a sound that made my heart jump so hard that my ribs nearly broke out of my skin.

"Brian, Stephen, any reason for cutting a hole in the shell of our world?" asked Father Onus.

"No. No reason. Steve was just sleep walking. Must have been a bad dream. Would you help me guide him back to his room?"

Father Onus said nothing. I turned around to see him gently smiling at us. I almost sensed mockery, but I told myself that I had to be wrong. He was not the least surprised or perturbed. I wanted him to react somehow so that I could realize what I was witnessing. He dropped his two bags on the floor and reached into his robe and pulled out a small box. Out of the box, he pulled out a cigarette. He put the cigarette into his mouth, placed the box back in his robe and pulled out a package of matches. He lit the cigarette and took a long haul, then dropped the match on the floor after exhaling smoke on the flame to extinguish the flame. It was all done with ritualistic perfection. It shocked me. The ritual was not shocking, most everything in our world was a meaningless ritual.

What was shocking was that he was taking smoke into his lungs. Cigarettes were something we learned about in our history lessons, but because of their health deterrence, they were not part of our social structure.

"What?" I demanded without defining what about.

Father Onus smiled and exhaled smoke from his mouth.

"What you have learned in this world is what we felt would be the most beneficial to you. But rules and creeds and ideals are generalizations. Generalizations, sometimes, are incognizant."

"You are a caustic liar. Your rules and creeds are used to keep us retarded so that we grovel in fear. I am not answering to your banalities anymore. I will not play the part of a banal proletariat in
your petty authoritarian world."

I felt like I had recited a rebuttal to a point that had always been there. It seemed like what was going to be said would be said and what was going to happen would happen, and I just happened to be the consciousness behind one of the objects in the flow of the events.

These things would probably go on even if I was not conscious. Consciousness seemed like a farcical frivolity.

"I know," Father Onus said with a sad expression as he turned and silently walked away.

"He knows what?" I demanded from Brian.

"I do not think we need to wait to find out."

Brian took the knife from my hand and finished cutting out the hole while I watched Father Onus disappeared down the hall.

I was stunned. I was disappointed in myself for displaying such hostility toward such a powerful and gentleman. I was not aware of such hatred and mistrust for his authority.

Father Onus had cut a chasm in my mind and it was starting to rip apart into a large gaping wound. I felt I could almost understand everything all at once but could barely focus on the picture.

"He forgot his bags," Brian said.

"What?"

"He forgot his bags."

"Maybe not."

Brian looked at me with a puzzled expression and handed me the knife.

"Your brain is about to explode, judging from the looks of your face."

"No. We will take the bags," I blurted.

After helping Brian up into the hole, I passed him the bags. I looked down the empty corridor for a minute almost wishing I could see Father Onus just one more time. But it was time to go. The events were in control. Brian helped me up into the hole and we started crawling, not having a clue what was ahead of us.


by Joanne B. Washington

read on. chapter_04



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