Enclosed in Memories [MPC 39]

Far along the path to the next town, Lissa and VeeVee found themselves walking almost without thought now. Just moving as the wind took them. A split in the path let them divided however until a wild gust of wind suddenly pushed them down the eastern path. Far down the path, they found something very odd. It was a very tall and elegant old building which stood on the edge of a cliff. “That seems like something to investigate, huh?”

Lissa and VeeVee moved closer to the building but found it blocked by a pair of large wooden doors larger than themselves, carved with a winding lion. Without any warning, the polished wooden doors sprang open suddenly, all on their own accord. What lay beyond them was pure magnificence. It was a circular room designed to look like a warm sunset landscape from the stained twilit floor which shone with a bright marble finish. Each of the walls was fashioned to look like a portion of a blanket of cloud. All of which all linked together to complete the twilight design. A line of equally brilliant marble pillars on each side created a path into the center of the room led by a strip of elegant red carpet with gold trim. Not one part of it was overly gaudy, unnecessary or hard to look at. In fact, it felt strangely welcoming and made Lissa feel a warmth in the pit of her stomach.

Following the long carpet led Lissa and VeeVee to an equally as polished desk stuck in the center of the room. Lissa moved closer and leaned on the polished surface of the desk and peered over the top and down onto the lower surface. The desk was stunningly clean, not a single item strew across the smooth surface appeared out of place or unnecessary. A stack of paper piled neatly in a tray, an array of pens and pencils ordered by size and color in various pots and most importantly a shimmering bell which shone as bright as the desk. Behind the desk, stuck to the wall was around thirty small square boxes, each of them quite empty.

“This place gives me the creeps,” VeeVee complained, sticking close to Lissa and peering around the empty room. Putting her hands on her hips, she smirked and said, “Don’t be silly, we’re heroes. Nothing can scare us, right!” VeeVee still didn’t seem as eager as Lissa did. “So, what do we do? Leave,” he said with a hint of hope in his voice. “Nah! Not yet, we got to explore. How often do you see a hotel in the digital world? I’m serious. How often? I’m guessing not very,” she said, leaning over further so her whole body was leaning against the desk. “Ooh look,” picking up something that lay on the desk. It was a folded piece of card trimmed with a winding golden border and large elegant red font which spelled out, ‘RING THE BELL’. VeeVee looked up at Lissa, almost ready to advise her to not do what the card said but after some ‘umming’ and ‘erring’, he chose to remain silent.

Without any hesitation, Lissa leaned over the desk and pressed the bell with her palm hard. The bell rang out with a loud ‘brring, brring, brring…” sound which bounced off the walls and echoed through the empty room. For a moment it seemed like nothing had happened so she pulled herself up to press it again. Quite suddenly, the wall behind the desk creaked and then moved slowly upwards. With a grinding of gears, the wall vanished from sight and left an empty crevice in the wall, wide enough for one person to climb into. Moving closer revealed that far back in the wall was a pair of metallic double doors. It appeared to be an old elevator. Lissa ran her hand on each side of the doors to find a control panel to call the elevator down but there was literally nothing.

VeeVee pressed his hand against the metal of the door but nothing seemed to happen either. Calling the door a dud, he wanders away back towards the desk to search for further clues. Now alone, Lissa pressed her own hand against the cold metal of the door. For some reason, Lissa’s touch did what VeeVee didn’t. The doors slid open with a slight crunch of cogwheels turning. The Elevator was basic in design and strangely just like the Elevator from her office back home. “Alright, now we’re getting somewhere,” she cheered before walking into the box elevator. “Hurry up, VeeVee!"

VeeVee, however, appeared to not hear her. The doors slid shut and then without any command or button press began to move upwards. The elevator sped up moving at such speed, it caused Lissa to crumple to the floor of the small box. A dull robotic voice indicated as it passed each floor but as it was going so fast; the words were unidentifiable. The elevator began to slow down as it reached floor 44.

Lissa picked herself up slowly, her head throbbing from the speed of the elevator and from the fall, it had caused. “That wasn’t fun.” On the wall of the elevator where the set of buttons that would normally move you up and down to each floor was absent and only an old rotary phone hang on the wall. Picking it up and holding it to her ear, she was greeted with a loop of a robotic voice speaking a list of numbers over and over again. Even hitting the buttons did nothing to discourage the voice from continuing. ‘23 5 12 3 15 13 5 20 15 25 15 21 18 6 5 1 18 19’

Finding no solace with the phone, she slammed it back onto the wall to silence it. Maybe there was something else that would help instead. The elevator had a large mirror hung on the back wall and a golden handrail to hold on to below that. “Hmm, maybe that’d work!” Very slowly, she pulled herself to the railing which seemed unwilling to hold her for too long and stood holding the walls to steady herself. “There should be some kind of maintenance shaft to get out,” she said to herself. She began to blindly reach out for the sort of escape hatch, you see in the movies. There was nothing at all, except for a smooth lid to the elevator. The phone piped up again, louder so it could be heard over her efforts to punch the roof. 
7 18 5 5 20 20 8 5 16 1 19 20

Sighing, she jumped back down. “Well, that was a good idea wasted.” For some time, she merely waited for the elevator to move on its own or for VeeVee to do something to help, perhaps. An hour passed and there was no sign of release. Another hour, then another hour and another after that but nothing changed.

Wanting to release some of her frustration, Lissa banged her fist against the glass mirror. The mirror shattered, littering the floor of the elevator with shards of glass. “Dang it,” she muttered, jumping back to avoid the spikes that stuck up through the carpet. Quite suddenly, the phone burst from the wall and another set of numbers were being shouted by the robotic voice. ‘19 5 22 5 14 25 5 1 18 19 2 1 4 12 21 3 11’

Lissa felt like she was about to faint. The room was spinning all around her and then it suddenly dissolved into nothingness, only to reform a few seconds later, albeit quite different. Lissa found herself in a well-dressed drawing room. A large fireplace crackled as it burned a pile of logs, above it was an elegant family painting. A man with a well-cut beard dressed in a navy uniform, in his left hand, a glass of scotch. The women who sat next to him dressed in a long flowing white dress, with a string of shimmering pearls around her neck; a baby girl sat on her knee dressed in a similarly white dress. In front of the fireplace was two very tall, very fancy chairs, with large lion claws for arm rests. Resting on them, legs raised was the pair in the painting. Although they both looked slightly older, thin wrinkles lined their faces and they were not smiling anymore, merely grimacing instead. Between them in front of the fireplace was the girl, all grown up. Her hair a bright shade of blue; the same as her eyes which shone with a mix of defiance and anger. The girl spoke first, “Why mother, why must I stay and be boring. I don’t want to stay at home all day and wait for a suitor, someone I don’t love, to come and marry me. That is a truly boring life.”

After a deep swill of wine, the mother spoke next. “This is the life we have set out for you. We have that right. Now pipe down and enjoy your life of wealth, like I did.” This seemed rather harsh and indicated that the mother had merely married for money and not love. When the father spoke, it was rich with a tone of unaffectionate distaste. “You were a mistake. I wanted a son. A son I could have been proud of. Get married and find a man for me to bathe in your rightful glory.”

The daughter fell to her knees and cried loudly. The mother and father merely watched, sipping at their drinks from tall glasses. “Remove her from our sight.” Another much older man hobbled in, clutching to a walking stick, helped the child up and then escorted her from the room. The room faded again, dissolved into nothingness and reformed, years later. The father sat alone in his chair, hunched with his head in his hands, lines of age, now cut deep into his face. On his knee sat a letter open and an ink pen in his hand. Lissa moved closer to read it over his shoulder.

My daughter. You must forgive an old man’s mistakes.
I was wrong and with your mother gone, I know I need you in my life.
It was a terrible mistake to cast you aside. With my business ruined and all my money lost, the bank foreclosing on the manor. I ask, no I beg of you. Please help me through this, stand at my side again…

He let out a loud sob and a tear struck the paper. The room dissolved again and faded and then reformed. It was the same room, except now much more dilapidated. The elegant chairs were missing, the fireplace cold and unlit and the painting lay in a corner, falling out of its frame. There was little time to take this in, however, as once more it faded and reformed. Lissa found herself in her own office. Standing over her own desk, holding the letter and with little care – scrunched it up in her hand and threw it into a corner. That was the night she had fallen into the Digital World. The day she had gotten the letter from her father begging her from assistance, help she refused to give…

A strange voice cut over the scene, “You've always buried your fears, locked them away deep in your subconscious. Hidden. But it’s gnawing away in the darkness of your mind, isn't it? Something you can't control." A high pitched and very cold laugh filled the elevator which slowly reformed around her. “Little Lissa. I know all your secrets. Fear will tear you to shreds.”

Lissa stood up, a cold sweat overcoming her and a deep pain in her head still throbbing away but she ignored it and spoke loudly for the voice to hear. “I’m Lissa, the Hero of Justice. I don’t fear you nor do I fear the past, present or future. GIVE. IT. YOUR. BEST. SHOT.” She spoke so vehemently and with so much conviction, the voice stuttered. “You cannot scare away fear. It will find you again.” As it spoke, the room slowly began to fade into a black void. Until it had vanished from view and she was merely standing upon nothing. “It will tear you to shreds...”

The voice and the darkness faded, leaving Lissa standing in an empty room. It was quite strange really. She wasn’t even standing in the elevator, it was a blank and dirty square room. The only thing in it was a smashed mirror, the glass remained shattered across the floor.

The green frame lay discarded in a corner. Shaking her head, Lissa left the room and found herself in a slightly familiar lobby. Columns lay broken and smashed at various heights and the desk lay flattened and broken. The wallpaper hung from the walls and the floor was dirty and broken in places. “It was all an illusion,” she said to herself, slowly. She had little time to dwell on this as she found the sprawled form of VeeVee, unconscious in the middle of the floor. Waking him up with a light slap, Lissa spoke in a hurried voice. “Come on VeeVee. We have to leave. Trust me...”

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