Escape

by
Scott Maddix

Taralin Scribner was a reader. She read fantasies, adventures, fairy tales and romances, hungrily devouring page after page, even staying up in bed with a flashlight to finish a novel before lapsing into a fitful sleep riddled with dreams of heroes and kings, aliens and monsters, damsels and outlaws. During the day, Taralin felt as detached from the mundane world around her as a Himalayan mountain might feel detached from the valley beneath it.

She had no use for everyday reality, no use for school and parents and summer jobs and boyfriends and the rest of the humdrum world. It seemed to her that there were plenty of people around to do all the banking and cashiering and housewifing, and the world didn't need her to do it, too. Her time would be better spent like the heroes of her books, ranging far horizons, flying around the cosmos, meeting fantastical beings and generally having a wonderful time in a universe more exciting and fulfilling than hers.

Failing that, Taralin spent most of her time and energy escaping the world in the only way she could — by plunging headlong into other people's fantasies. So she read, and, for a while, became the hero or heroine, and lived out those fantasies of beautiful and exciting worlds.

She saw all kinds of things in all kinds of stories, but the ones she loved the most, the ones that gave her the most hope that she could someday live out her dreams, were the stories of ordinary people who, through no fault or credit of their own, suddenly slip the bounds of normalcy and are flung headlong into a great adventure in another land.

All Alice did was fall down a hole, and Dorothy was swept up by a tornado, but both were rewarded with a visit to a wonderful place full of magic and mystery and excitement. 

What Taralin couldn't understand, though, was why these people always seemed so bent on returning to their own black-and-white world, and escaping from the wonderful adventure the universe had handed them.

Taralin was sure she'd never make that mistake. She'd never want to return if she had anything to say about it. As she looked around her, she couldn't see anything worth returning to. The white paint on her house was peeling off the walls, indeed had been for many years. There was a pile of firewood softly rotting in one corner of the yard, and the laundry that hung out on the line all seemed a dull, uniform gray. The familiar sound of her neighbors arguing drifted across the street from their knocked-together tarpaper shack in the middle of the tall grass. She sniffed. The smell of boiled cabbage and dogshit always seemed to permeate the area of small, ramshackle houses that clustered at the end of Mill Road. When I escape, thought Taralin, I'll never ever come back to this hole.

Never.

While she never ceased hope of rescue, Taralin did realize that waiting for some cliché in shining armor to ride up and carry her away was perhaps her least likely plan for escape. So, day after day, when she wasn't firmly planted in a novel or an old, tattered back issue of Amazing Stories, she'd scheme for her escape, her exodus from the bondage that her life represented for her.

One night, as she lay awake staring at the ceiling she came up with a scheme so simple, so clever it was a wonder to her that no one else had ever thought of it before. It required no special training, no special equipment, no spaceship or spell or special powers. Everything she needed could be put together in a day, and before the weekend was out she could be gone.

Saturday morning she awoke early, before her mother or either of her brothers were up, and made breakfast while the gray little birds outside the kitchen window sang gray little songs to themselves in the gray morning light. She looked at the clock over the stove and saw that no one would be up for a few hours yet, and that she had time to do a lot before she would have to deal with family.

Quietly she slipped out the door, letting it close behind her slowly so that the rusty spring that held the door shut wouldn't groan and wake her family. The sun was still hidden by the overcast of clouds that covered the entire sky and made it resemble the blue-gray mold that had once overtaken the oranges in the bottom of the refrigerator. Taralin remembered that those oranges had lain liquefying into a pool of goo for weeks before anyone had thought to remove them. Slobs, she thought.

She picked her way over the dew-soggy ground, avoiding the lumps and hummocks and pieces of broken glass that made the ground something she regretted being tied down to, and made her way toward the scrap pile. In the light of the wet morning the pile was a great, hulking creature the color of dried blood, and Taralin suppressed a shiver as she came near. She kicked a rusted can with the toe of her hand-me-down men's sneaker, and was rewarded with a soft sound like breaking eggshells as the can fell apart, leaving a smear of red across the yellowing rubber of the toe. 

She remembered seeing what she wanted toward the back of the pile, so she circled around, carefully avoiding anything sharp enough to pierce her thin rubber soles. From the back of the pile she could no longer see her house, only the dim trail she had left in the wet grass.

Taralin picked up a piece of pipe from the ground near her feet to poke around the rotting and rusted remains of old cars without cutting her hands, and squeaked in surprise and disgust as a small black spider darted out of the end she was holding. She shook the spider off her hand with a grimace and got down to business. She turned over bits and pieces of refuse, searching for what she had seen in the pile once before.

She spent the better part of an hour poking and prodding and turning over trash from the pile before she found what she was looking for, and, with a sigh of relief, she carried it back into the house.

"What are you doing with that thing?" demanded her mother as soon as Taralin creaked in through the screen door. Taralin jumped.

"Um," she replied, "it's for a science project. I'm going to build a..."
"Nevermind," snapped her mother, "just get that filthy thing out of my kitchen."

Taralin bit her lip to keep from commenting on the filth of the kitchen itself, and rushed to her room, squeezing past Jim, her younger brother, as he entered the kitchen.

"What's she got?" asked Jim. Jim was wearing a dirty tank top and a pair of cutoff gray sweatpants, and his feet, oversized like those of a puppy with a lot of growing in front of him, were encased in a pair of graying tube socks that hung off the ends of his toes by a good two inches. He looked to be about sixteen or seventeen, until you noticed the bareness of his legs. When he reached up to scratch his dirty scalp, you could see that his armpit was still smooth. He looked and tried to act much older than his meager twelve years of age, and Taralin had no doubt he would wind up in trouble, like all the Scribner men. With any luck, Jim would be entering the seventh grade next fall. Their older brother, Larry, never did get past the sixth grade.

"Oh, it's for school," sighed her mother. "You remember school? That place you're supposed to go to every day so they can teach you something? She's making something for school." Their mother was only forty-one, but she looked like she was fifty. The smoke that curled up from the cigarette dangling from her tired lip matched the color of her hair, and her eyes. When she spoke, her voice had the sound of an alcoholic grandmother, and whenever she tried to say anything nice it came out as sarcasm. Her husband had left her after Jim, their third child, was born, and now she worked in the mill to support her children.

The racking coughs that kept her awake at night were only partly due to her smoking. She inhaled enough evil vapors during her long hours at the mill to make her unable to do anything but growl for an hour after she got home. Not that she was inclined to do much else, anyway.
Taralin left her burden on the floor of her room and returned to the kitchen. She wrinkled her nose at Jim. "You smell," she said.

"Oh, yeah?" he snarled, "Well at least I don't live in some loopy book about fairies!"

"That's enough," snapped her mother, but it was obvious she spoke only out of reflex.

"At least I'm not going to spend the rest of my life in sixth grade," said Taralin, making a face.

"That's enough, I said," snapped her mother, and she tried to look angry, but she only looked more tired.

"I'm going to the library to do some research," said Taralin, and her mother nodded and sighed, sending a curtain of cigarette smoke up in front of her face, hiding her from view.

Jim sneered.

As Taralin walked up the drive, Larry's car pulled in, coasting down off the hill. He braked to a stop and got out of the car. "Hey," he said to his sister, "is Ma up yet?"

Taralin nodded. "Shit," he breathed, and walked up the drive like a child expecting a beating. Larry was twenty-three, and hadn't had a beating since shortly after his father had left, but he seemed to hate his regular screaming matches with his mother even more. His mother pointed out that if he hated them so much he'd stop forcing them on her.

At the library, Taralin did some research on a few things she thought she might need to know for her secret plan for the escape of her world forever. She was going all out on this, emotionally, and she knew if it didn't work she be broken, and probably end up just like her mother, the exact fate she wanted to escape. 

So she gathered a few books and took them back to a fairly private study carrel. The first book she had picked up was a text on geology, and she carefully studied maps of her area and decided she was lucky—the land was fairly stable. That alone greatly improved her odds of success.

The other problem she foresaw was a bit harder to solve, as there was no way to know what language would be best to use. So she gathered a number of language books and made some notes in her spiral-bound notepad. She thought, she hoped that would be enough. 

With a renewed sense of resolve she gathered her notes and headed for home. In the back of her mind nagged the inevitable doubts, but she firmly silenced them. The only thing worse than failing would be to have hope of an escape and not take it through faintness of heart.

And of course, there was no danger, really.

Back in her room Taralin plopped down on her bed and picked up her mirror from the bedside stand. She stuck out her tongue at her reflection.

Distantly, she could still hear her mother yelling out at Larry for staying out all night, and his mumbled replies. Heroines are supposed to be pretty, she thought, but I guess you can't have everything. Maybe they'll like women who look like me. She set the mirror down and sat down nest to the object she had retrieved from the scrap heap.

It was a black metal canister about the size of a breadbox, and under the dirt it was still shiny . It had been in the pile, exposed to the wind and rain, for quite a while, and had been covered with dirt and uncovered again numerous times, and yet it had not the slightest bit of rust or corrosion on it. It had a lid that screwed on tightly to make a seal that made a sucking noise when it was unscrewed, and on the bottom were stamped the words, "Benjamin Trotter & co."

Taralin had no idea where the container had come from or what it was for, but she knew it would hold what she needed it to, and that it would last for a really long time. Hopefully long enough.

Now, the hard part came. If she messed this part up, her whole plan might fail.

She pulled out her mother's old typewriter and put in a new sheet of paper. 

SOS: My name is Taralin Scribner. I am a time traveler inadvertently stuck in the wrong time. Please rescue at 12:00 noon on Sunday, June 20th, 1999AD.

Then, as best she could, she transcribed the same message in Russian, Chinese (that was the hardest) and Latin, hoping she'd got it close enough that someone could figure out what she meant, even if the grammar might be off.

She smiled at herself. It was the essence of simplicity. Odds were good her makeshift time capsule would be discovered and its message read at some point in the distant future. If her readings in science journals were any indication, the long sought-after secret of time travel was almost a sure thing someday. Ergo, she thought to herself, my message will be found, and they'll come to rescue me. And if they don't know my name, they'll simply assume I'm from their future, and come back to ask me what era I belong to. Simple!

With that in mind, she carefully folded the note, put it in the canister, and screwed the lid back on tightly. All that remained was to bury it in a good place — and she knew the perfect spot. By noon tomorrow she'd be gone from this backwater pit!

She heard the screen door slam and Larry's car start up, and her mother screeching out the door at his retreating taillights.

After a sullen lunch at the kitchen table, Jim left to go to the arcade with his friends, and their mother went into her room to take a nap. As soon as she heard her mother's soft snoring, Taralin grabbed the canister and dashed out the door for her place.

There was a place she always went when she needed to feel far, far away from home and school and a bleak future, and it was to this spot she ran now, and this was the spot she had chosen in which to bury her treasure.

Behind the house she ran, pausing only long enough to grab a spade with her free hand and then dash off again down a dirt path that lead into the dusty woods behind her neighbors. This she followed until the woods slowly turned green and lush, and she came to a small green clearing almost completely enclosed in the comforting embrace of trees older than anyone alive. Of the whole planet, this was the only place Taralin felt comfortable. The only place that didn't give lie to her dreams. The only place she could feel free from the drudgery and malice she felt at home. If she tried really hard, she could imagine this glade as the home of elves and fairies who would come and dance their in the moonlight when no one was watching. 

Today, though, she was disgusted to find the clearing littered with paper scraps and crumpled beer cans. Nothing was sacred anymore.

With a sigh, Taralin set her homemade time capsule on the turf and set spade to soil. On into the afternoon she dug, until her arms were sore and her hands were red and blistered. She wanted to bury it deeply enough so that it wouldn't be discovered too easily. She dug until the sweat ran down her face and into her eyes, and when she could dig no more she stood there, leaning on her spade, panting, surveying the hole she had dug.

She stood about shoulder deep in a hole the size and shape of a grave.

The reddish soil that formed the sides of the hole faded to a dark brown like rotted wood and finally to a layer of yellowish, sandy soil.

At the very bottom was the beginning of a layer of pebbly clay, and this would have to remain the bottom, for her spade could barely make a dent in it. 

Taralin, herself covered with dirt of all hues and textures, climbed awkwardly out of the hole. Already her muscles were beginning to stiffen up. She hoped the hole would be deep enough. It would have to do, she thought, noticing for the first time that it was beginning to get dim in her clearing. Christ, she thought, how long have I been out here?

Hurriedly, she dropped her sealed capsule into the hole and shoveled dirt back into it from the pile her efforts had formed near the edge of the hole. 

By the time she got back home, Taralin was dead on her feet. She trudged into the house, ignoring her mother's comments about the condition of her clothes, went into her room, and fell immediately asleep.

When Taralin awoke, she immediately regretted it. Every muscle in her body was aching with a different voice, and the layer of dirt on her skin made her itch. After a few minutes the throbbing in her head resolved itself into the sound of her mother's shouts. She couldn't tell what the shouting was about, but she knew it meant Larry was home.

The sun had gone down, and she thought it was around ten o'clock. If the rescue went as planned, she had only fourteen more hours in this place. Or, as she corrected herself, in this time.

Fourteen more hours to survive life in this town, fourteen more hours of her family, fourteen more hours of her life as a dull, gray girl in a dull, gray town. Fourteen more hours. She decided she should spend some time with her family before she left. She was surprised to discover, as she contemplated never seeing them again, that she was going to miss them. As much pain as they had given her, as much love as they had withheld, she would still miss them.

With tears hiding not far behind her eyes, Taralin entered the kitchen, where her mother was chewing out Larry. Jim was in his customary position, slouching in his chair, just watching, like life was another TV show.

"Do you think I'm just talking to you for my health?" Mother looks terribly old, Taralin thought. Like she's going to die soon. Truly, Ma Scribner did look more ashen than usual, and one could tell that the energy she spent yelling at her children was taking its toll. Larry would never see that, though. He was so busy making sure his freedom wasn't being violated that he had never noticed even such a basic thing as his own mother's mortality. Or his own enslavement to his various appetites, themselves a cry for freedom. He'd probably never recognize the irony in that, though.

"Look," he said, for all the world like someone explaining something to a slow child, "if you loved like you say you do, you'd get off my back."

"You think I'm on your back for no reason?" she shrieked. "You think I enjoy this? Larry, I don't want to see my son following in his father's footsteps. But you are. You're just what your father was, a lazy, shiftless, whoring, drunk—"

"I don't have to take this," he said quietly.

"Oh, yes you do have to take this! As long as you're my son living in this house, you have to take whatever I give you."

This was an old confrontation, and Taralin had no stomach to see it played out yet again. Doing her best to avoid drawing attention to herself, she quietly slipped out the door.

Outside, Taralin looked up at the sky and watched the countless myriads of stars swirling around her head like specks in a wisp of smoke. A cool breeze blew from somewhere far away, and she thought she could smell the ocean. A fine night, she thought. My last night with my family, my last night in this armpit of a town. No more harassment at school, no more ignorant relatives. Whatever force brought me here, it was a mistake. No I'm leaving.

While Taralin stood there, staring up at the night sky and pondering her place in the universe, the sounds of tired, old rage continued from inside the house. Just another day with the Scribners.

"That's it!" Larry was shouting, "I'm leaving! Once and for all!"

"You walk out that door, you're not coming back!" screamed his mother.

And Taralin's revery was interrupted by the slamming of the screen door behind her as Larry stormed out of the house. "See ya 'round, Tare," he muttered. "Maybe."

Taralin stood there, bemused, as Larry tromped off to his car and screeched out of the driveway. She heard the door open again, and turned to see her mother standing beside her, watching Larry's car make its way down the road.

"I don't think he's coming back this time," she said. "Shit." And with a sound like a tire leaking air, she went back inside. 

Taralin looked up at the sky again. It was still the same peaceful view.

"Why?" she asked aloud. "Why do I care? It's too late – I'm leaving. I can't start caring now!" 

Still puzzling, she went inside. Her mother had gone to bed and closed the door. Jim was in the same bored position, watching TV now instead of his family, and Taralin wondered whether scenes like tonight actually had an effect on him he refused to let show. Maybe she should say something?

It's too late, she decided, and walked past him into her room, where she lay for a long time staring at the ceiling.

Many hours of tossing and turning later, Taralin fell asleep, and began to dream. 

She found herself on a long, straight road in the middle of darkness, and could see no one else on the road in front or behind her. She knew that the road went on forever in both directions, but she was not sure which way she should be going. Suddenly she heard voices behind her, and turned, and saw her family, standing there, watching, and talking amongst themselves in a language Taralin couldn't understand. As she watched, they seemed to notice her and started pointing and gesturing, beckoning for her to come.

Option one, she thought.

When she turned back around, she saw a tall, white horse standing on the path, and on the horse, a knight in armor as white as the horse.

Option two.

Slowly, the knight rode toward Taralin, and she wanted to run to him so he could sweep her up in his strong embrace and take her far, far down the road. But she couldn't move, because her family had come up behind her and were holding onto her with their grubby hands.

Taralin awoke with a start, and saw with joy that it was daylight, and in her anticipation of the approaching hour of noon the dream was forgotten. She looked at her clock: nine-thirty. She had less than three hours to get ready.

When she had scrubbed the layer of dirt and sweat off her skin she felt much better, and the hot needles of the shower did a lot to alleviate the aches in her abused muscles.

Dressed and showered, Taralin went into the kitchen. There was Jim, right where he had been when she had seen him last, slouched in front of the TV. 

Taralin tiptoed quietly past him and out the door. Jim was the only one young enough to have a chance, she thought. He might get out...or he might never change and just carry on the Scribner family tradition. Taralin hoped he did get out.

Outside, the sun was just burning off the morning dew, and the chill in the air was still enough to make Taralin shiver. She looked at her watch, and remembered she hadn't eaten anything since yesterday's breakfast. It was eleven-fifteen, and only forty-five minutes were left to Taralin's ordinary life. At noon, she would be whisked away to safety, where she'd never be bothered by the kinds of clods she had to deal with here.

Taralin followed her path to the place where she had buried the canister, and was surprised to find a tent pitched in her clearing. Peeking through the open flap, Taralin could see the half-naked body of her brother, Larry. He must have come back late last night, she thought.

What damned luck he'd set up camp here.

Scattered about the clearing were enough empty beer cans to make moving quietly difficult, and as she walked they rattled so much Larry awoke with a snort.

"Wha–?"

"It's just me, Larry. I came here to get away. I didn't know you were here."

Carefully, as if the ground were tipping, Larry climbed out of the tent and pulled on his jeans, which had been wadded up under his head as a pillow.

"Go away," he said.
"It's my clearing," she said. "You go away."

"You got a house to live in, Squirt."

"So do you," she said.

"I can't live there any more. Didn't you ever want to get out and just never come back?"

Tarlin nodded. But she was going to go farther away than the back woods!

"Can't you just go away for now? I promise I'll leave you alone after today. Just please go away!" Taralin was beginning to get desperate. It was less than a half hour until noon, and her big, dumb brother was right there!

"Why?" he asked, suspicious. "What are you doing out here? You got drugs?"

Of course that's what he'd think, she thought. "No," she answered, "I just like to be alone here."

"You meeting someone here? Are you doing something nasty with some guy from school out here?"

"No! Just please leave!"

"Then why's it so important to you, huh? Why won't you tell?"

"Look," she said, I promise I'm not doing anything wrong. Just leave for an hour and I'll be gone by the time you come back."

"Are you sure you're not out here doing drugs? Have anything to share?"

"God, no," she cried. "Just leave me alone."

Larry came up to her and grabbed her arm, twisting it behind her cruelly. "What're you doing out here alone in the woods, kid?" he asked.

"Let go of me," she snarled. "You're hurting me!"

"That's the idea, Shrimp. Now are you going to tell me what I want to know or am I gonna hafta break your arm?"

"Oh, please, let me go!" Taralin was frightened now, for she had seen her brother in a violent mood before, and sometimes people got hurt.

They tussled there in the clearing, as the sun filtered through the branches and the day grew warm. Somewhere a bird was singing for all its worth–and Taralin was crying.

BAMF!

All of a sudden Larry was lying on the ground, and Taralin turned to see what had made the noise. For an instant, she remembered her dream, and the figure that stood before her was the White Knight. 

But then she saw that the armor he was wearing was made of some sort of plastic, and the object in his hand wasn't a lance, though it did look deadly. And the thing of metal and glass behind him, directly on top of the bare patch of dirt that marked the burial of her time capsule, was certainly no horse.

"Taralin Scribner?" he asked, and his voice was the most gentle, melodic voice Taralin had ever heard. She found herself nodding.

"He's not dead, is he?" she asked, pointing at the still form of her brother.

"No," answered her rescuer, "but he'll wake up with one terrific headache. Shall we go?"

He extended his hand to Taralin, and she took it. She was amazed to feel how soft his hand was inside the gauntlet.

As they entered his ship together, Taralin glanced at her watch.

Twelve noon, Sunday, June 20th, 1999. Goodbye, cruel world, she thought, and left.

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