"Almost Always" is about 50% finished, and is getting up to 35,000 words. Approximate estimate of wordcount when finished is 60,000.
Claire Androu, appearing to the outside world as if in a coma, is actually undergoing trials and adventures inside her head, searching for a worthwhile quest, vanquishing enemies, seeking a way home to consciousness; all this in the world that exists only in our minds: Almost Always. When the difference between life and death is the mere absence of thought, then surely there wasn’t that much to live for anyway. Claire was trying to talk herself out of a nightmare, and was doing a bang-up job of it. It was something similar to trying to talk a terrified pilot out of the sky when he knows all he’s going to land on is deep water, the middle of the ocean. The nightmare was that she was dead. She’d had it before. Familiarity with it did not breed contempt, only a sort of fear of its recurrence. She tried a new tactic each time to attempt to dispel it. So far none had worked, and the power of this one’s logic was failing rapidly— the I-think-therefore-I-am-not-dead basicness of it had not much play against the darkness of her subconscious mind’s convictions, no matter how erroneous. She tried to think of new ideas. I can’t be dead, because I don’t remember dying. I remember the rest of my life quite clearly; turning two years old, my first clear memory— before that her life was a haze and a blur of warmth and someone’s pale blue eyes— all the way up until I got up this morning, at three o’clock, thinking I’d heard something, but there was nothing wrong, nothing out of place. So I must have gone back to bed, I suppose, and that’s where I am now, lying comfortably— somewhat comfortably. This mattress is at least twenty years old. But I’m all right. This was very rational thought, for a dream. Shouldn’t she be waking up from it now? Certainly by now her alarm clock would be ringing. She’d be late for work— Oh dear. She suddenly remembered dying. Dying. Or, almost dying, anyway. There had in fact been a man in the house, where she lived alone, a small man with eyes that reflected light in a way almost familiar. They were the silvery eyes of her little sister, that was it. The man had been in the hallway, had struck her on the head with an object that seemed ludicrously every-day for the purpose— a hammer. So where was she now? On the carpet in the hallway, dreaming about being dead while her lifeblood seeped out of her wound in a red river, thinking practically and arguing with herself about the authenticity of her demise? It was ridiculous. She must have fainted. She would get up now and go to the telephone and call 911. She opened her eyes and staggered to her feet, reached out to the wall for support. The wall was not there. Dumbly she persevered and found herself standing upright before she realized she wasn’t in the hallway after all. She didn’t know where she was. Where was she? The ground seemed to be less than solid, and she stood unsteadily upon it. It was grey and covered with a lighter grey mist, a fog that wrapped affectionate tendrils around the posts of her legs and made her move her feet nervously like a snake-startled colt. She could see no end to this room she was in— there seemed to be no walls or ceilings. There was only a door, looking forlorn and naked, standing by itself about fifty feet in front of her, with nothing, behind, in front, or at the sides, seeming to support it. It was not a big door. It had no glass panes in it. It had a dark sort of varnish, though it was hard to tell in this strange sort of half-light, and a tarnished brass knob that gleamed dimly and reflected the bright fog. The door opened and two figures burst through. They looked like dogs, but they were as big as horses. They had shaggy white fur all over, thick and matted, and big, animated faces. They were not at all intelligent looking., and when they spoke, Claire jumped back with a tiny scream of surprise. “We are the Doorkeeps,” said one of them. “We keep the Door,” added the other, and the pair of them tittered like rabbits. “We’re not going to hurt you,” said the one on the right, and the one on the left added, “Unless you hurt us.” This, also, they thought was funny, and while they giggled they stared pointedly at her until she half-heartedly laughed along. “Where am I?” she said timidly. They sobered a bit, looked at her with their huge brown eyes. “You are in the Anteroom,” said the one on the right, and the one on the left, left without another way to put it short of a Yoda-esque, “The Anteroom are you in,” merely nodded assent. “Where and what is the Anteroom?” said Claire. The dogs said nothing. “Am— am I dead?” The dogs looked at each other and grinned huge canine grins, showing large teeth and purplish gums. They would say nothing, refused to answer her questions. After a moment, they said: “Come with us, if you don’t mind.” “Not that you have much choice, but d’you mind coming with us?” They turned and vanished through the open door. Claire swallowed, inhaled deeply the thick air, and followed with faltering feet. As she stepped through, the Door swung closed behind her with the silence of a cat. She found herself in a long corridor. She caught herself looking for a light at the end of it, but there was none to be seen and she sighed in tentative relief. The dogs stood and surveyed her thoughtfully. One of them said, “How old are you, woman?” “Twenty-nine.” She looked at them and considered them, but the bulk of her mind was still occupied thinking WHERE AM I? AM I STILL ALIVE? WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ME? “And what is your name?” “Claire Androu.” “And who are you?” This question caught her up, as she didn’t know quite how to answer it. “I- I’m a sister, a daughter, an aunt. A secretary.” “Not a mother, or a wife?” said one of the dogs in purring tones. “No,” she said, horrified. “Not anymore.” The dogs grumbled to themselves. “At any rate,” said the same one, “we did not ask you what you were, but who.” They peered at her. Claire steadied her breathing, recaptured her thinking. “I don’t know how to answer that,” she said. “Shall you try?” rumbled the dogs. “No, perhaps you shouldn’t. It is of little consequence to anyone but yourself, anyway. You are different than what you were.” “What, already?” said Claire. Her mind was not on the decomposition of her possibly-dead body, but on the changes that, traditionally, were worked in strange environments. Claire was a great believer in tradition, but she felt no different. The dogs, however, nodded, in perfect unison, towards a mirror that hung on the wall. She turned, rather dreading what she might find there, and was simultaneously both somewhat relieved and somewhat disappointed to find that she looked not a great deal different. Her pale, undecided face looked the same, he indeterminate hair and her hazel eyes were unchanged. Except— she went closer. Yes, she looked very young— her smile-lines were gone, and her face was very smooth. She looked like she had when she was sixteen or eighteen— not a great deal different than what she looked like at almost-thirty. She turned her head to one side, then the other, looking for any sign of something amiss. Then she saw it— a flower-shaped darkness on her left temple. She touched it and felt something like the remembrance of pain. Claire turned back to the dogs. “I haven’t changed very much,” she said. In her voice there was the beginning of a bit of a trace of defiance, of which she felt rather proud. The wound was going to scar, in real life, but here it was just a sort of birthmark. Or deathmark. “That’s what you think,” said the dog on the right. “If that word can be applied to your cognitive process,” said the other. They smirked. Claire looked distrustfully at them, then distrustfully at the mirror. “Oh, you may look the same,” they said, “but you appear quite different to anyone else, at least people from your world. You are in fact, no more than three feet tall.” She looked at the dogs with a bit of alarm. “It could be worse,” they said. She wasn’t sure if they were just having fun at her expense, or if they were serious. They were very big dogs— “Come with us, Claire Androu,” sniggered the dogs, and led her to a door, which they pushed open with their heads as it stood ajar. They invited her with lopsided, shaggy grins to enter. She did, and once more the Door shut behind her, as the dogs howled, “Begin!” All materials copyrighted to Felicity Danielle Dippery. No copying, pirating, or reproduction without express permission from the author. Violation of this will cause her father, a prominent lawyer, to come down on you so hard you'll be searching for a rock to crawl under and hide.
