Under Zenith (15 page)

“Shouldn’t you not be touching blood with your bare hands?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

I was just
slightly
skeptical of his nonexistent medical credentials.

“Do you have some sort of disease you aren’t telling me about? Besides being
chronically annoying?”

“I’ll ignore that,” I said.

“How generous of you,” he responded, still checking out my cut to determine if it was fatal. “Yet again, you’ve narrowly escaped death with this little paper cut.”

“That’s a deep cut!” I insisted.

I may have refrained from crying about my wound, but I wasn’t about to have this smug man tell me it was nothing. If I’d been home (and alive) Monica would have called in the national guard by now and watched five Youtube videos on how to stitch up a wound using only items found in your kitchen. Just because I wasn’t a sobbing mess didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

“You’re such a baby,” he said, releasing my arm,
sliding his hand over my stomach to wipe my blood off of his skin, and returning his gaze to the safe house that resembled an office building.

When his back was safely turned I made a face at the back of his head
, but decided not to verbally retaliate.

“How loosely are we using the term ‘invent’ for this task?” I asked.

“Well seeing as how you ‘invented’ a bow and arrow… which has definitely already been invented, I’d say the term is ill used in this context.”

“Perfect,” I said with a smile.

I didn’t know what I could possibly invent to get me up to the safe house, but I was sure I could build some sort of pulley system, or rock climber-esque mechanism. That wasn’t beyond reason.

“I’d ask if you have any ideas
, but I know you can’t help me,” I said.

“Nope.”

“Except for five minutes ago when you
did
help me.”

“
Mhm.”

Apparently that was all I’d get out of hi
m on that subject, though he wasn’t getting off that easily. I’d be revisiting Hayden’s little deviation from the rules once we’d completed this task.

Until the snow came.

Stupid rules.

“See
you up there then?” he asked, not waiting for me to respond.

Before I could turn
my head to look at him he was gone. If there was one thing to be said about Hayden, it was that he didn’t overstay his welcome.

I sighed deeply before returning to the task at hand.
Somehow I had to figure out how to get to the top of a cliff…made of garbage…by inventing something. I still couldn’t see what any of these tasks had to do with getting to heaven, but I wasn’t about to fail them and find out where I’d go instead.

The pile of garbage loomed ominously before me
, but I refused to be intimidated. All I needed was something to toss me up there.

Maybe a catapult of some sort?

With this potentially bad idea in mind, I began searching the area for anything I could possibly use. It didn’t take long to find the appropriate materials in the piles of garbage and before long, I was actually starting to construct a crude catapult.

Most of the materials had to be tied together rather than welded or nailed
, but the ties seemed to be doing their job so I couldn’t be too picky on that front.

“Something tells me you’re executing
a poorly thought out plan right now,” Hayden said, making me jump once more.

“Would you stop doing that?” I shouted.

My nerves were already shot from the task today without Hayden suddenly appearing in front of me, unannounced.

“Stop doing what? Offering my friendly advice?”

“It’s fine if you want to stay here, and it’s fine if you want to leave, but don’t pop in and out like that. It’s freaking me out,” I told him.

“What are you even doing with that stuff?” he asked, kicking the pile of garbage that immediately fell apart.

“You just ruined my catapult!”

“Catapult?” he repeated skeptically. “You were going to try to launch yourself up to the safe house?”

“Maybe,” I answered defensively.

Hayden broke out in uncontrollable laughter at my response, instantly garnering a dirty look from me.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! Why didn’t you just try to build an airplane out of a shoelace?”

Hayden continued to laugh while I continued to stare at him in annoyance. I swear he hadn’t left all that long ago. Apparently it didn’t take long for him to get bored with waiting for me.

“I hate you so much,” I told him, beginning my search once more for something that could help me scale a rusty trash mountain.

“Sticks and stone
s,” he countered.

“What about this?” I asked him, holding up a bright orange, wound up length of extension cord. “Think this could hold my weight?”

Hayden assessed the cord apprehensively, and then looked me up and down, making me suddenly self-conscious.

“I wouldn’t be willing to bet your life on it.”

“That was almost sweet of you,” I told him with a little wink, tying the end of the cord to a desk lamp I’d found.

“Grappling hook?” he guessed.

I lifted my shoulder at him then turned to face the pile of trash in front of me. One of these days, when I wasn’t fighting my way through bizarre tasks, I’d have time to go back and reflect on what in the world had sparked this particular landscape in my memory. Then I’d work on having it permanently extracted.

“Do you really think you have the arm strength to launch that lamp up to the house?” he asked me.

“I don’t need to get it all the way to the house,” I replied.

Jutting out of the mountain of junk was something that looked like a
metal bed frame. I wasn’t sure how sturdy it was, but I had hopes that it would be able to support me as I pulled myself up using the makeshift grappling hook.

“It’s a pretty far climb,” Hayden pointed out. “Do you really want to put so much faith in something that likely won’t hold you?”

There he went; sort of caring again.

It would have been sweet if I’d thought it was motivated by something other than his own selfish desire to get someone to their Destination and clear his previously failing record.
Hayden’s desire to get me through this, no matter what the motivation, was still very useful, so I didn’t let myself feel hurt over the ‘why’ of the situation.

“I guess we’ll find out if it works huh?” I asked, pulling my
good arm back behind me and using all of my strength to throw the lamp over my head toward the bed frame.

Luckily for me, it overshot the target quite a bit an
d came falling back down toward me after curving over the metal pole of the frame.

“Even better!” I exclaimed, grabbing the lamp and wrapping the other end of the cord around it, creating a makeshift pulley system.

“Lucky throw,” Hayden said from on top of the pile near the safe house.

He was such a show off.

“Be there in a second,” I called confidently.

I gave the cord a firm tug to test out its strength. When it didn’t budge
I jumped up and took hold of it, letting my entire weight rest on it just a foot or two off the ground. The bed frame let out a low metallic groan, but yet again, the cord didn’t budge and I took that as proof enough that I would be fine using this to climb.

The arm strength required to pull myself up to the safe house would be a bit of a problem, but I figured if I could simply rely on the adrenaline of a possible fall, I might be able to pull it off. Besides, the climb wouldn’t be a very long one. I only had to exert myself for a short amount of time.

The dirty fog in the air seemed to cling to my skin as I pulled myself hand over hand up the extension cord. I held myself in a horizontal position as my feet walked up the vertical wall of trash as if it were a sidewalk. I could feel the grime in the air settle over my sweaty forehead and I couldn’t wait for the cycle to reset so I could be clean again.

I could only hope the next task would be in a pretty area like the ones before this.

“I’m quite impressed,” Hayden called, now only a few feet away from me as I continued on my upward climb.

“You should be,” I said breathlessly, my arms shaking with the effort of keeping me upright.

I didn’t dare look back to see how far I’d come or I knew I’d panic and let go of the ‘rope’. Not something I really wanted to do right at that moment.

By the ti
me I reached the end of my rope, both literally and figuratively, I was ready to collapse into a heap. I pulled myself up over the ledge of rusty metal and lay on the ground outside of the safe house for a good few minutes, trying to catch my breath as Hayden stood over me with a smug smile on his face. I wasn’t sure what he was so happy about, but it was annoying me to no end.

“Tired?” he asked happily.

So that was it? He was happy that I was showing my weakness once more? He just loved any reason to point out any of my shortcomings, which I was quickly learning were numerous.

If nothing else, d
ying had definitely shown me how out of shape I was.

“It’s easy for you to poke fun at me. You just pop up here without any effort,” I said, finally getting to my feet and steadying my breathing.
“I wish I could watch you complete these tasks while I just stood back and laughed.”

“Maybe one day,” he said.

“Don’t get my hopes up if you can’t follow through,” I responded, walking toward the safe house and away from my impossibly frustrating Guide.

Chapter 15

The
safe house was slightly different from the others in its décor, though the general layout of the room stayed exactly the same. The small room had one bed as usual, though it looked like a hospital bed. Instead of cupboards there were filing cabinets, the rocking chair was metal, and our ‘fireplace’ was a space heater.

“Cozy,”
I said sarcastically, shuffling my feet over the linoleum floor.

“You
created it,” Hayden countered once more.

I couldn’t argue with him there, no matter how bizarre I thought it was that I had decided to pull a junkyard from my memory over anything else I could have possibly used.

“Why this?” I asked him, nodding up to the flickering fluorescent light overhead.

“I know you think I can read your mind, but you’re going to have to be a bit more specific for me.”

“Of all the memories I’ve acquired over the years, why did we end up in a junkyard?” I asked, trying to be ‘more specific’ to discourage any more snide remarks from my Guide.

Hayden shrugged; something he did often.

“We needed something that made sense as an ingenuity task and this worked I guess,” he explained, taking his normal spot in the metal rocking chair while I sat on the paper covered hospital bed.

Not exactly comfortable.

“Oh
we
needed it?” I asked, wondering who the ‘we’ was in this situation. Maybe his super-secret boss? “Who is we?”

Hayden shrugged.

“Would you stop doing that?” I asked in frustration.

“You say that an awful lot.”

“And you do a lot of frustrating things. You see how this works?”

“The snow can’t come soon enough,” he
stated grumpily.

“All I was saying, is that
this task was bizarre,” I told him, trying to make peace. “The other tasks I can understand. They were pretty and kind of heavenly looking. But this junkyard was out of place. This whole situation is like a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be. One minute it’s sci-fi, the next it’s horror, and then it’s like a bad romantic comedy where I’m stuck with someone who looks like you, but is a total jerk.”

“Looks like me?” he asked, very plainly puzzled.

I was immediately kicking myself for saying that since the last thing Hayden needed, was the knowledge that he was kind of ridiculously attractive. Up until this point, I had learned that he was otherwise unaware of this fact. And even now, he seemed to not understand what I had said so I ran with it.

“Yeah
…because you look like someone who would be nice,” I improvised. Very badly might I add.

“It’s the accent isn’t it?” he asked with a sigh. “I think it’s Hugh Grant’s fault. You American girls think anyone with an English accent is a well-spoken gentleman who’s going to sweep you off your feet.”

“Technically, you did sweep me off my feet,” I began with a grin. “And right over a cliff.”

“Details,” Hayden replied, waving the issue away with his hand, though I could se
e a hint of a smile under those stubbly cheeks of his. “Let me see your arm.”

I was thrown off by the sudden change in topic, but obliged as he walked over to me to examine my cut.