STEEZE
[FRAGMENTS]
(Inspired by dreams. It's about a girl who skateboards. Slip into the world I built for you, thanks!)
01: CHAT
“Ok Beattie, are you listening?” a voice crackled through the speakers of a small CRT television while the display shot out a glow that cut through the darkness of the room.
Sat opposite of the screen was Beattie. She had just been in a big accident - a skateboard crash - and now her television was talking to her.
The face on the screen, a young late-night host in a green knitted sweater, tapped on the glass separating himself from Beattie in an attempt to regain her focus. Holding the pen and paper that she had been instructed to grab, Beattie nodded.
“You see those words flashing on the bottom of the screen?”
“Yes bro.”
“I’d like you to write them down for me, ok?”
“Yes bro.”
In addition to the text Beattie was meant to copy, the word “OUTSTANDING!” Began to flash on the screen in a cheap looking font.
While Beattie wrote the address down, the host spent an odd pause adjusting his smile and throwing out a few poses in silence before resuming.
“Spectacular work missy! Why don’t you hold that up for the folks at home to see?”
“Ok.”
BEATTIE INTERNAL MONOLOGUE EXCERPT #01: What the fuck is happening bro.
Beattie held up the paper she wrote on as the curtains began to slowly draw closed on the set of the show.
“Wow! Written with her own two hands! Folks, why don’t we put ours together for this spectacular guest!”
The sound of studio audience applause began to rise through the speakers, soon reaching a volume where Beattie felt that the audience was with her in her room, and soon reaching a volume where she felt the audience was inside her head. The clapping and cheering became overbearing, all-encompassing, and then nothing. The TV was off, the sun was beaming through the windows, and the clock had skipped to morning. If not for the piece of paper with an address written on it, the whole thing could have been written off as a dream.
02: DREAM JOURNAL
Sometimes while drifting to sleep Beattie would pass through the cracks of her own mind, and found herself among what she thought were the directors of her life.
She always wound up in an office building, just a little out of date. There would be a din of corporate chatter, and the beeps and whirs of fax machines and printers. A light trampling of suits would flow from boardroom to boardroom, a crowd that Beattie could blend in to, but not for long. Looks would be shot, whispers would fly, and soon enough the alarms would rattle off.
Sometimes she would instinctively run for an exit, but occasionally she remembered that she could escape in a moment's notice just by waking up.
In these cases she knew to make her way to a stairwell as fast as possible.
Running down floor by floor felt no different than peeling back layer by layer a mystery in which she was wrapped. Somewhere deep within the building must have contained files, documents, anything that detailed what exactly was going on in her life.
Unfortunately the protocol for intrusion was airtight, and Beattie would always be caught and forced to wake up before receiving a satisfying answer.
03: EVERYTHING INDUSTRIES
You have to go to work. You just have to. It doesn’t matter how many nightmares or skateboard crashes or whatever the fuck you have in one day. With this sentiment ringing in her mind, Beattie slowly raised herself from her recliner to start her day. It took extra strength to shake off the previous night, but she was soon back in business. Before anything else, she crumpled up the paper from the night before into her back pocket for later. After what happened she knew she had to visit the address she was given, but first she had a job to do. Skateboarding doesn’t pay the bills. After a short commute, Beattie was ready to clock in at Everything Industries. The huge monochrome building blocked out the sky, leaving an endless shadow in its wake. The company logo was embossed on the front wall, taking priority over having windows. Staring up at the building caused Beattie to shudder. A black and white smiley face with a jester hat pasted onto a big concrete block does not inspire productivity. After a long pause Beattie sighed and pushed through the front glass doors, leading to a lobby void of decoration. Front door, right, left, up the stairs, hit the elevator button, floor 53, three rights, and a left. That’s the route Beattie took every morning to get to her cubicle, and was greeted in kind by her desk.
BEATIE INTERNAL MONOLOGUE EXCERPT #02: Wait. That’s not my desk. Where the fuck am I?
It seemed that her crash had caused some of Beattie’s memories to get jostled around. The order of her morning route got scrambled and now she was lost in her own office building.
After a short scan of her surroundings she realized that she was in the exact same office as the one she had dreamt before, but this time it was empty. Populated or not, Beattie was not interested in sticking around long enough to hear any alarm bells sound once again. She took the obvious approach, attempting to retrace her steps and take the same turns that she took before in reverse order, but it seemed that once she realized she was in the wrong place, the order of her morning route had rearranged itself again. Front door, right, left, left, floor 53, up the stairs, two rights and a left. This didn’t seem quite right, and trying to put it in the reverse order only mixed Beattie up further. She decided to set off and guess as best as she could which way to take back, but it seemed that every direction she took was the wrong way. The more she felt lost, the more the halls of Everything Industries seemed to twist and contort to keep Beattie from getting to her desk, or anywhere remotely familiar. She was still definitely in an office, one patterned after the one from her dreams, but it felt colder and hollow, like time had come to a standstill. The walls had turned darker and the windows that peppered some of the office doors had transitioned from translucent to opaque. Beattie was exhausted, sore, confused, and overall frustrated with her situation. Her plan wasn’t working at all. At this rate she would never get back to work, never clock out, and never get to the address she really needed to get to. With no other plan she began trying every doorknob in the hallway. It just seemed like the right thing to do. Twist left, twist right. Locked. Pull up, pull down. Locked. Jiggle the knob and lockpick it secret-method-style like she always used to sneak into places? Locked. After an extended effort of trying to open all of the locked doors in the seemingly endless hall, Beattie had a terrifying thought that even if every door had become wide open to her she would still never be able to piece together a way out. With this in mind, Beattie laid down on the matted carpet floor. She accepted that her luck had run out and was ready to call it quits. She had always run a bit wild with her luck, using it to get out of sticky situations, avoid injuries after a bad slam while skateboarding, that sort of thing. Beattie thought back to the night before, and her bad crash. She must have used up the very last bit of her luck to not get turned into red paint on the pavement. She checked her luck just to be sure that it was zero, so she could properly sulk about having no chance of escaping the halls. But no, Beattie was greeted with
LUCK: 100%
Integer overflow error. When Beattie’s luck reached zero, whether it was from the crash or getting stuck in the endless hallway, another event triggered at the same time that caused her luck to dip into the negatives, overflowing and resetting to one hundred percent. This meant that whatever was on the other side of the doors she was trying to open, she was lucky they wouldn’t budge for her. With this in mind Beattie decided to casually stroll through the hallway, whistling an awful melody. Her luck was maxed out, she had nothing to worry about. After a casual jaunt through the halls - her success guaranteed - the hallway began to revert to its previous state. The slowly twisting and greying halls straightened out and revitalized their color. With this detour out of the way Beattie was back in the first room of the office from her dreams. With confidence that she could now explore freely and without alerting any suits, Beattie strolled down the nearest stairwell, a sense of excitement growing within her. “Answers”, She giggled to herself as she made it to the lowest floor. A large door with the Everything Industries logo stood over her, the white eyes of the smiley face piercing into her useless soul, the pearly grin laughing at her pointless existence. “Whatever, I’m too awesome for this shit right now.” Beattie smirked as she contorted her fingers into a four leaf clover shape to symbolize her luck. It really hurt but she thought it looked cool.
On the other side of the door she came face-to-face with what seemed to be a viewing room. Like most rooms in Everything Industries it was void of any furniture or decoration. There was a large window but looking through it felt like looking through a pair of binoculars backwards, everything seemed small and far away. Beattie put her face up to the glass and was barely able to make out a room on the other side. It looked quite out of place compared to the rest of the building, with bright colors plastering the walls and strange colorful objects scattered around. There were two silhouettes Beattie could make out among the torrent of colors. One was quite hard to determine, but after careful observation Beattie found it was a young girl around her age slumped on the floor, wearing nothing but a grey hospital gown. The other silhouette was very easy to determine. I suppose you can’t deny the power of Everything Industries’ branding. Standing over the young girl was a tall, bulky figure in a baggy grey suit, and on its head was a mascot head of the Everything Industries logo. Or at least Beattie thought it was a mascot head. The figure turned to make eye contact with Beattie and as it did it blinked and chattered its teeth. A shiver was sent down Beattie’s spine and she flinched, shutting her eyes momentarily. When she opened them again she was back at her cubicle in her usual office. Looking down at her desk, she saw a letter of termination addressed to her. Without a chance to read over the fine print, the office secretary tapped Beattie on the shoulder.
“If you could follow me, please. I am meant to escort you from the premises and I would rather not cause a scene.”
“What, dude. How can you fire me? I have, like, infinite luck. Look.”
LUCK: 0%
It seemed that navigating her way out of the endless hallway and encountering the real Everything Industries used up the last of her luck, leaving it at zero once again. Beattie sighed and figured that with everything that had happened it was probably a good idea to not come back to the office anyway. Without packing up her desk she got up and left the building. With the secretary leading her, she did not have to worry about remembering the way out. After swinging through the front doors Beattie took a moment to collect herself and then withdrew the piece of paper she had saved from the night before. Now was as good a time as any to make a little visit.
04: WATER WORKS
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
A chorus of skateboard wheels shifting across concrete echoed through the rafters of Water Works. By day it was a popular indoor water park, packed with pools and slides and any other drowning hazards you could imagine. But twilight was shining through the skylights, and the skate trio consisting of Beattie, Jane, and Hayden had other plans for the park.
“Waow, this spot is dope as fuck…” Beattie Mused.
“Jane, how did you know they emptied the pools at night?” Hayden asked.
Jane stared off at nothing for a few seconds before snapping back to reality.
“Uhh… literally every pool does that? You think they use the same water every single day? That’s disgusting.” Jane mused before fucking up a tre flip so bad like it was so embarrassing actually.
“Chlorine bitch, but whatever.” Hayden scoffed before skating off to one of the nearby pools to hit the craziest drop-in line in skateboarding history.
Beattie said nothing, and didn’t do a single trick on her skateboard. Instead she walked around the park, taking in the scenery. It was quiet and serene, the moonlight offering a glow that the water-dropped attractions reflected back. The noise typically booming through the water park was replaced with silence, apart from the slamming of skateboards by Jane and Hayden in the emptied out pools. It was a neat little respite, but its quiet calm was soon replaced with a bubbling sense of unease in Beattie’s stomach.
She walked back to where Jane and Hayden had been skating, hoping to ease her mind with some light banter between the two. Instead she was met with a puzzled look on Hayden’s face with Jane nowhere to be found.
“Dude, dude. She’s with you right? I swear she was just here, she was just about to drop in the bowl again.”
“Nah, I was just scouting the place out. The vibe was off so I ran back to check with y’all.”
Hayden pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed.
“Man, she’s been acting weird all night. Ever since she suggested this place, really. You noticed too, right? Staring into space, being all vague and shit…”
Beattie nodded.
“We better find her before she pulls another Candles Park on us. Remember that? The screaming? I still get chills thinking about it.”
Beattie and Hayden decided that letting their friend disappear in a building they broke into was probably a bad idea, so they began to look for her.
They quickly spotted a set of tracks left behind by wet skateboard wheels which turned into wet footsteps by the time they reached a door to the maintenance halls of the park. The hallway was dark and damp, with rusted pipes jutting out of the ceiling and a line of doors on each side to the very end of the hall.
At the end of the hallway they spotted Jane going from door to door, jostling door knobs and peeking through windows.
“Bro! What the fuck!” Hayden called out to Jane.
Beattie and Hayden rushed over to Jane and were met with what seemed like a totally different person from just a few minutes prior. Any pretense of typical emotion had been wiped from her face and replaced with a blank look of determination. Hayden shook her a few times with no real response.
After a few moments of silence, Jane lifted her head and spoke up.
“Do you guys remember April?”
“Yeah, that chick you ditched us to hang out with all summer that one year, whatever. Can you stop being weird and come skate with us?” Hayden grabbed Jane’s arm but she shook her off before firmly replying.
“Yeah, I hung out with her all summer. And I’m glad I did. We started high school and never saw her again. You didn’t think that was weird?”
“Not really, dude. People move away. Her dad was probably military or something.” Hayden’s patience was thin.
The sense of unease in Beattie’s stomach had grown into a sense of dread creeping through every inch of her body. She stood there frozen, watching.
BEATTIE INTERNAL MONOLOGUE EXCERPT #03: Something very, very bad is going to happen.
As Jane continued, the color in her face drained away and her voice started to tremble.
“At the end of the summer, the last time we hung out, it was here at Water Works. She was here with me and then she was gone. I tried to find her, I tried to tell her parents. I went to their house but they were gone too, like they never lived there.” Jane was starting to tear up, her voice breaking.
Hayden put a shoulder around Jane, trying to calm her. Beattie continued staring, still frozen.
“We don’t go missing like this. It doesn’t happen, it just doesn’t happen. I just want to see my friend again.” Jane whispered to herself.
The dreadful feeling in Beattie ebbed momentarily and she was able to hobble towards Jane and Hayden as they huddled together for a sort of group hug.
“Jane, that’s really fucked. I’m so sorry.” Hayden paused for a moment before continuing.
“I just wish you told us earlier. Especially after the whole Candles Park thing. But nah, you brought us here to make a show and freak us out, like what the fuck?”
“Man, relax! she just poured her heart out and you’re hating and shit!” Beattie piped in, feeling more energetic as her fear subsided.
Jane, still looking drained and morose, continued.
“No, I get it. It’s okay. It’s just one thing. It’s just that I know now. I know who took her”
Beattie’s sense of dread returned, this time stronger than ever.
“You know who took her?” Hayden asked, confused.
Just as the words left her mouth, a door at the very end of the maintenance hallway slammed open. A rush of putrid air shot out and each door in the hallway after it began slamming open as well, some with so much force that the glass windows within them shattered on impact.
With Beattie’s dread returning in full force she froze again, but Hayden grabbed her hand and soon they ran out of the maintenance hall and back into the main park area. All of the attractions burst to life, the speakers blared music, and the lights flickered incessantly. All of the gushing from the water slides and lazy rivers made the ground extremely slippery and Beattie struggled to keep herself from slipping into one of the pools, which had somehow been completely refilled with water.
BEATTIE INTERNAL MONOLOGUE EXCERPT #04: If I fall into this pool, I’m never getting out.
After maneuvering past all the slipping hazards, Beattie and Hayden crashed through the main doors and exited the park.
Beattie turned around for the first time since she started running, and realized that Jane wasn’t following behind them.
Hayden seemed to catch Beattie’s realization before she could say anything and responded.
“I know. I saw her run to the other end of the hall, to that doorway. Or, I don’t know. It looked like she was running, but in reverse? That’s why I grabbed you.”
Hayden kept moving without sparing any more explanation, not wanting to stay near whatever they had just experienced.
Beattie was in too much shock to think about leaving Jane behind, and quickly followed behind Hayden. The two hopped on their skateboards and cruised down the street. Just before Water Works was out of sight Beattie ran over a rock with her skateboard, causing her to fly out into the road. A passing monochrome minivan with a large 53 painted on its side flew by at the same time, just barely colliding with Beattie’s side, knocking her to the ground. She heard the screech of tires, some rustling, and then silence. She was laid out on the pavement in a total daze, watching the clouds in the night sky slowly drifting over her as she waited for the pain from the impact to subside enough to keep moving. When she found the strength to get up, she realized that Hayden was gone. A few steps later she also realized that she had twisted her ankle. In total exhaustion Beattie dragged herself and her skateboard home. When she reached her house, she dropped herself on her recliner and turned on the TV to a local late night show, hoping to drown out any thoughts of what had just happened.
05: 53RD
Sometimes during dreams Beattie had come across a doorway or a path, some sort of transitionary gate. She could always sense in the back of her mind what would happen if she went through one of these gates. Typically it just meant that the dream would shift to something else and the plotline she was on would dissolve, usually with any lucidity being lost in the process. But in some cases, very rare cases, a voice in the back of her head would tell her that if she stepped through that gate the dream would end, and a nightmare would start.
Staring at the entrance to FK Inc. Water Treatment Plant, 53rd Street, it was as if that same voice was calling out to her in her waking life. But this was it, the address from the TV. Whether it was a nightmare or not she felt the need to push onward. Jane or Hayden could have been in there, the answer to everything that had happened in the past few days and frankly her entire life could have been in there. The building itself didn’t seem that conducive to a nightmare and was generally unremarkable. It was made up of brick, only a few storeys tall, with tall windows that were hard to see through from a build up of dirt and dust. Pipes shot out from the sides of the building and into the ground or behind the building into a coursing river. A few concrete steps led Beattie up to a set of double doors, firmly rusted shut. At this point though she was not concerned if she could open a door or not, or if she was dreaming or not, or if she was alive or not. All she had to do was get in the building and she was going to do that no matter the circumstance. And so she did, and was greeted with a rusted grate platform with steps leading down to a large stream of water flowing from one dark tunnel to another on each side of the building. Beattie made her way down to the stream, a heavy clang echoing through the building with each step down the stairs. When she reached the lower floor, she looked into the stream and saw that her reflection was a young man in a beanie grinning back at her.
The face floated out from the stream and up next to Beattie. Around the face was a white glow which slowly shifted from apparition to fully formed human figure wearing jorts and a baggy white tee. Beattie stared at the apparition, waiting for it to do something worth her time.
“What’s up shawtyyyy? (You already fucking know)”.
The voice seemed to come from the apparition without it moving its mouth, retaining the same grin it had held so far.
“My friends are missing and the TV told me to come here.” Beattie replied.
“Listen mannn, I know all about it. I got eyes all on this block. 53rd born and raised. (Shoutsout).”
“Ok dude.”
“Listen fam, I can let you in on the shtick. I try to tell everyone, but nobody’s ever listened. Zero listeners on everything.” The apparition lamented.
Beattie began to open her mouth to speak again but was quickly cut off.
“There’s just one catch bro, you gotta play along. You gotta best me in a game of rhythm and song. A rap battle if you will”.
“If you make me rap I will kill myself so that I can become a ghost and beat the fuck out of you.” Beattie retorted.
The apparition sensed that she was being one hundred percent serious and decided to maybe not do the whole rap battle thing. Instead he simply pointed to the tunnel on the left side of the building and told her to follow the left wall of it as far as she could. There was no platform for her to walk on so she was forced to wade through the untreated water. Still deadset on her path, the water did nothing to halt her. Like the rest of the building the tunnel was quite unremarkable. It too was made of bricks and there was nothing to look at besides the water rushing through. There were also small lights buzzing on and off every so often so Beattie was not completely lost in the dark, but they did not offer much comfort. After a considerable trek through the tunnel, it widened out a considerable amount and a metal grate walkway appeared for Beattie to walk on. This walkway also introduced the appearance of many rusted metal doors, connected to the floor and appearing every so often along the way. Some of them seemed to have nameplates but they were too dirty and it was too dark to read any of them. Beattie felt completely disconnected from her surroundings. It really felt like she may as well have been dreaming. She heard a distant echo appearing from behind her. It sounded like the apparition from before. This threw Beattie off and caused her to stop pushing forward for a moment. This gave her a chance to look at one of the nameplates in more detail. This one happened to be polished which made it very easy to read.
WATER WORKS.
At that moment it clicked. The putrid smell from the maintenance hallway was the same as the one in this water treatment tunnel. The two locations must be closely connected which meant she could be close to finding where Jane disappeared off to. Beattie’s pace quickened and now she was more careful with scanning the door nameplates, looking for any that were polished and readable. After an hour of walking, Beattie finally reached the end of the tunnel. On the way she noted doors labelled after the local mall, an arcade, multiple police precincts, city hall, Candles Park, and Everything Industries. Now at the end of this hall was a final metal door, significantly larger than the rest. The door itself was labelled with the words “Marble Castle”. Beattie shoved the door open and stepped inside.
06: STATEMENT
Weeks had passed since the discovery of the Marble Castle trafficking ring in Whisperville, MW. While Beattie was wading through the tunnels of the 53rd water treatment plant, a camera operator for a local TV program had been trailing close behind and captured all of the evidence that incriminated Mayor Castle, various high ranking employees within Everything Industries, and other government and police officials. All of the footage was broadcast that night and led to widespread coverage over the country. The sewers connected to various high foot-traffic areas which then funnelled to a series of underground chambers and holding cells. Countless documents and photos were recovered that allowed for the entire network of those involved to be brought to justice. Jane was recovered from one of the holding cells underground, Hayden was found in a nearby city with no memory of the related incidents, and Beattie had not been seen since the footage was broadcast. After the broadcast ended, everybody turned off their TVs, the late night show was canceled, none of the criminals were charged, and nobody talked about the ordeal ever again.
