Christofer passed the door on his right-hand side leading to his little brother's old room as the floorboards beneath him creaked familiarly. He stopped pondering the small details and took another step. Passing the stairs leading to the floor below, the ripples stopped.

  Instead, the footsteps now sunk into the wooden floor as if he had stepped on warm plastic, leaving clear indentations in the wooden floor. He felt like he was still missing a couple of puzzle pieces. As he still couldn’t explain it, he tried to disregard that too now that the place opened up.

  At the far end of the room, split halfway by a wall was the kitchen area, framed by a kitchen counter that ran around left-hand side, along the walls, wrapping around into a kitchen island with an induction hub and a blocky metallic cooker hood above it, attached to the ceiling.

  In front of the kitchen island stood a large wooden table. Enough to comfortably seat five people. He walked up to it and pulled out a chair. As he sat down, he looked outside through the kitchen windows on his left.

  Now his neighbor stood outside, on fire. He didn’t particularly like that neighbor, but he also never remembered him standing while burning outside his kitchen window. As for taking care of the flame. Christofer couldn’t remember where he put the bucket, so he figured he’d scrap that idea and merely stared at the man flailing his arms with a bemused expression. There had been more than a few occasions when said neighbor had started blasting loud music at three in the morning on a monday.

  ‘Good riddance’ he thought and looked down on the table.

  On it he noticed that there was a gecko that was shooting its tongue into a glass of apple juice. This was far more interesting. The gecko had large bulbous eyes, so large enough that it couldn’t blink. However, strangely enough, it didn’t seem to have any feet. Rather, it had weird suction cups in their place. The skin was an exotic fiery red hue instead of the traditional green that he would expect. The oddity caused his absent minded capacity to instantly delete the neighbor.

  ‘Fascinating,’

  Motivated by the strange creature, he headed to the fridge and pulled out a carton of apple juice that radiated a holy glow. Returning back toward the kitchen table, he realized he was sinking into the floor. His movements slowed. The floor came up to his knees, then his chest, before he decided to open the carton. The carton was empty.

  * * *

  Back on the carriage, Christofer jolted awake from his dream, sweat covering his face,

  ‘No apple juice, even my dreams are cruel,’

  He pulled out his mug from his pocket and looked into it. While Christofer was staring into the empty mug and ignoring the others, he slowly came to a realization that he had woken up. Therefore, logic dictates that this could not be a dream. Despite him wishing it was a dream, him waking up proved in his mind that this was actual reality.

  “Fuck!” he loudly exclaimed.

  “Language!” a fat man furrowed his brows as he spoke while he was lying down nudged against two other men within the cramped space and propped up to the edge of the carriage instead.

  Christofer sank down again. For two days and two nights, the carriage stormed along the trail with shadows dancing in the forest as they flew by. It creaked with stress as it turned in steep curves while following the twisting path in front of them.

  Leaves were spinning in the wake of the fast moving carriage. They had to periodically slow down the pace to a march to minimize the friction of the wheels, because if they did not, the friction of the wheels would tire out the horses and force them to stop. Christofer had been lying down on the carriage, staring up into the sky through the branches, and watching falling orange leaves spin in the air.

  The wildlife around them was keenly aware of their presence and they let them know by making their respective sounds.

  Wolves could occasionally be heard howling during the nights, but they kept a clear distance when they heard the march of the horses and the powerful trundle of the old wooden wheels. The carriage shook and the speed increased once more. Christofer looked at the trees as they zoomed past them, annoyed, thinking.

  ‘Why are there so many trees, when will they end? Will they end? Am I in a world populated by trees and dumb people?’

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  From the corner of his eyes there was a speck of a shadow moving rapidly. In the blink of an eye, the outline of the speck became visible. The familiar gecko-like creature with the suction cups for feet was sitting on his shoulder. The gecko stared at him, opened its mouth and quacked like a duck. Christofer stared back at it with a bemused expression,

  'That's it, I've gone insane.'

  The carriage shook and woke Christofer up from his waking dream. The gecko was gone.

  The sound under the carriage had changed. They were passing over a wooden bridge and a wide river flowed beneath it. A couple of ducks were resting on a few rocks in the middle of the stream. The headache from earlier came and went in waves. He scratched his temples. There had been a lot of stops on the way, either to grease the wheel axles or to change horses. The Captain made disgruntled mutterings by the mismanagement of funds, having realized that they had rented such a cheap rickety carriage for an overpriced sum.

  “I smell smoke!” shouted the Captain.

  His head dropped slightly, his attempts at being optimistic being visibly deflated.

  “Men! We need to slow down the pace. In a couple minutes, we'll be off this bridge and arrive at a clearing. There you, you and you, the fat one” the captain pointed at three men.

  “You will be greasing the wheels of this carriage again. Properly, this time.”

  The fat prisoner shifted nervously in his seat as he prepared to step down from the carriage. Soon after, the whinny from the horses could be heard and the rest of the men came off their horses and started to set up camp. Throughout the ride on the carriage, Christofer had asked the man with the spear riding closest to the carriage what his name was on a few occasions. However, he was ignored. So because he always carried a spike-like spear, he named him Ike, for short, which was a good name. Ike walked towards the Captain.

  “That’s it, sir. The carriage is unloaded and five men have been placed to guard while the three men you chose got to work,” Ike told the captain.

  “Good, I've sent off two scouts on horseback,” the captain replied, “double the men guarding the perimeter, this forest has been far too quiet.”

  “You, big guy, trespasser.”

  The confused Christofer gestured, pointing at himself.

  “Yes you, follow that man.”

  The captain readjusted his posture on the horse, grabbed the reins and turned the horse around. Christofer grabbed the metal ball attached by the chain to his ankle like a bowling ball and jumped off the carriage. Shaking the ground. The captain rode away on his horse as Ike led Christofer to a small clearing,

  “Fire Duty. You will be the one to light the campfire” Ike said.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not unless you want to wander through the forest looking for firewood with your ball and chain still around your ankle.”

  Christofer’s mind instantly flashed the huge spider.

  “Yep. Gotcha. Alright, I’m good. Fire it is.” Christofer said.

  Ike returned to the Captain's recently raised tent along with three other men that were holding scrolls and maps in their hands. Christofer vaguely remembered how one started a fire. He’d seen videos of it online. It always looked simple enough. They always had some kind of flat plane. He grabbed a log and slammed into a pointy rock by the road. Roughly splitting it in two. It wasn’t a perfect flat plane, but he figured he could compensate by digging a small hole to even out the difference. Then using a small stone he found, he struggled to twist it in place for a makeshift notch. Then the straightest branch he could find. He wasn’t quite sure if he missed a step somewhere, but this was all he could remember. He placed the straight looking branch in the makeshift notch and spun it rapidly.

  Two hours later, at least according to the mobile phone, the scouts sent out by the captain returned. Worries, annoyance and anger echoed in the camp. Christofer still struggled to get the block to ignite, but he heard snippets of their conversations. Something about a sabotaged bridge and splinters and ash. He paid it no mind as he still stubbornly spun the twig. A small puff revealed itself a sign that something finally started happening, the warm stick gradually started to darken from the friction.

  “Come on you stubborn little bastard, burn,” he said,

  Feeling somewhat frustrated as the stick gradually became warmer. The smaller puff turned into a stream of smoke, he hurriedly added some dry grass to the ember and started to blow on it. The ember flashed with life and soon the dried grass started crackling with the beginnings of a fire. However, strangely, despite the crackling frames, he didn't feel warmer, in fact, it started to feel a little bit cold. Which confused him, as he hadn’t been cold in a long time, not even while wearing a t-shirt during the winter. The captain was sitting next to him. Christofer didn't remember when that guy sat down, but he didn't think much of it.

  “Hey, could you hand me some of the firewood?” Christofer said while focused on keeping the ember and the small fire from going out by feeding it dry grass and blowing on it.

  Christofer realized that the man wasn't responding to him, in fact, he was being eerily quiet. He could feel an unexplainable chill creeping up his spine. He heard walking and turned his head. the Captain and Ike walking towards him in the distance, with torches held high,

  'Wait, if he's over there, then who is that sitting beside me?'

  Christofer thought and focused on the figure in front of him.