"You're seventy cents short."
The cashier sighed, staring blankly at the young man before him.
Alden recounted the money, this time spreading it across the counter like he was dealing cards. He finished his second calculation, and the confusion didn't leave his face.
Five dollars and thirty cents. The instant ramen, cheap bread, and discounted eggs in his basket cost six.
'I could've sworn I had a dollar more.'
"Do you have the rest?" the cashier asked, barely hiding his impatience.
"I don't think so."
The man behind him shifted his weight. Alden felt the judgmental stare without turning around. Probably someone with a real job and a family waiting for him.
Alden picked up half the eggs and set them on the counter. "I'll leave these three."
The cashier rang him up without a word.
"Your name tag's on your left," Alden said.
The cashier glanced at his chest, then clicked his tongue. "Didn't notice. Thank you."
Alden turned to leave, bag in hand. Several steps were taken before the cashier called after him, while attending to the next customer.
"Boy. Do you have a trial manual?"
Alden glanced back and shook his head. The trial manual was a book spreading fast across the country, one the government had been pushing hard for the past month. He had no plans to spend money on it, cheap as they'd made it.
He was already turning away when the cashier apologized to the line, stepped out from behind the counter, and pressed a book into his hands.
"I understand you've had it difficult," he said with a frown. "But don't take your life for granted. It's precious. Here, I'll lend you mine."
Alden stared at him. The cashier was already heading back, offering another apology to the waiting customers before sliding back into his routine.
Alden didn't particularly like the man getting involved in his business. But the cashier was doing it out of kindness, and they were long-time acquaintances. Whether or not the man could see it, Alden gave him a small nod before stepping out.
The walk back took twenty minutes. Long enough for the sky to darken, the sun retreating somewhere behind the buildings. Streetlights blinked on one by one. Some stayed dark from busts and damages, leaving gaps in the light that formed something almost like a pattern. The closest thing this neighborhood had to a zebra crossing.
His neighborhood sat on the eastern edge of the city, where buildings shrank and streets grew dirtier. It wasn't a place anyone would like or choose to live in.
He'd lived in the main city once, but certain situations had led him to where he was today.
Finally, he reached the house, or at least what the landlord had the nerve to call it.
This 'house' was just a box with one room that served as whatever you needed it to be: bedroom, living room, kitchen.
All of it under the same four walls. One window had a crack he'd patched with duct tape three months ago and never thought about again.
Still, it was home.
With aching legs, Alden unlocked the door and stepped inside. The air smelled faintly of mildew and his neighbor's cigarettes bleeding through the wall.
"Not this again."
His jaw tightened. After turning on the lamps, he crossed the room and shoved the opposite window open. He needed a real solution to this. But that would come later. For now, he was too tired.
Alden dropped the grocery bag on the little table. His shoes came off with a single wobble each — they weren't quite his size — and he let himself fall onto the mattress in the corner, legs finally loosening.
—Thud—
He was on his feet before he knew it, eyes scanning the floor.
The bag had tipped, spilling some of its contents. But thankfully, the eggs were still intact.
He exhaled, lay back down, then stared at the ceiling.
There was a stain up there, shaped vaguely like a hand reaching toward the light fixture beside it. The first time he'd noticed it, he'd thought it looked kind of cool.
Mold as wall décor. It sounded bizarre.
"What people need to know," he started, "is that art is..."
Unable to come up with a proper flashy word, he simply closed his eyes.
Unfortunately, sleep didn't follow. After several minutes of staring at the inside of his eyelids, he gave up and reached out lazily toward the spilled groceries, fishing around until his hand found the book.
Its cover was hard and sturdy. Yet it didn't feel uncomfortable. From what he heard, it could easily handle damaging conditions.
"Let's see how much you can take."
Alden sat up, starting by pouring a little water from his bottle onto it. The drops ran off clean. He applied more to each part and the result remained the same. Then he held a lighter flame beneath it for a full minute, pulled it away, and examined the result.
Nearly unscathed.
"That's... impressive."
He reached under the mattress and pulled out one of his sketchbooks. The corners were bent with a soft cover from years of handling.
'It'd be nice to get something like this here,' he thought, comparing the two. 'I wouldn't have to be so careful.'
His fingers flipped through a few pages of his book without thinking about it. Several images passed as he did so.
Rough sketches of street corners. A sleeping cat that had died recently. A human hand with long purple nails. A little girl, held between two adults, a hand in each of hers. Alden paused at this drawing. His fingers slowly traced the image up to her face which held a genuine smile.
"Lucky girl."
He closed the book and set it aside.
With the trial manual left in his hands, he fell back onto the bed and looked at the cover.
It had the text 'Trials from Beyond' written in bold letters. The last word was one everyone knew.
The Beyond.
A world people had been disappearing into for decades.
Each of them was invited by some entity that visited them in dreams. Accept, and you leave. Reject, and you stay. Only one in about a hundred people receives the invitation.
He'd never understood the ones who said yes. What kind of person abandons everything for somewhere they know nothing about? He could almost grasp it for people with nothing — no family, no footing, nothing worth staying for. But even those with decent lives and great lives had gone, walking away from everything. Just for what?
Curiosity? Thrill? A new experience?
He couldn't find a reason that held.
'Am I just being bitter?'
His fist tightened, then loosened as he lowered his gaze.
It started with his parents eight years ago, then his sister a year after. All three of them gone. Invited, accepted, and left.
He remembered crying, begging whatever it was to visit him too.
It never did.
At some point — he couldn't place exactly when — he'd stopped wanting it to. Why chase after people who abandoned him?
It is possible to return from the Beyond to their world at certain times. But none of them did so. Or at least, they didn't come for him.
With all the horrors dwelling in that place, they could easily be dead by now.
Alden lived his life to the fullest. So far, it hadn't been the best, but he'd been surviving.
As for the book in his possession, it was something rather recent.
A month ago, the disappearances had spiked. Except this time, no dreams and invitations were reported. People were simply gone. A forced travel? The speculation sold immediately. Though it couldn't be confirmed from this side, and nobody was coming back from the other side to clarify.
Three volumes of a guidebook had been created and circulated in response to this possibility. Despite being pushed out in massive quantities, it still wasn't enough for the population. By supply and demand, they remained quite pricey despite the government's efforts.
"How thoughtful," Alden muttered.
He had zero intentions of spending money on surviving in another world he had no plans of visiting when surviving in this one was already a stretch. But he had a copy now. It wouldn't hurt to read it.
'I should go back and properly thank him tomorrow,' he thought. The idea of selling the book flickered briefly through his mind. "Come on, Alden. That's behind you."
Disappointed in himself, he opened the first page and began to read.
He stayed at it longer than he'd expected. It was just information — dense, practical, and thorough — but handled well enough that he didn't even notice. Actually, he mostly found it interesting.
Finally feeling sleepy, he put the book away. 'I'll continue tomorrow.'
As he turned off the light, the flame briefly turned blue before vanishing.
"Wow! That was cool." His voice carried both exhaustion and drowsiness as he stretched himself with closed eyes.
The little clock across the room ticked rhythmically in the dark.
Tick... Tick.... Tick..... Tick....
Something warm spread across Alden's skin. Gentle, like lying in weak sunlight. He sank into it, his muscles loosening.
Then it began to fade.
Bit by bit, until his skin was cool, then cold. The kind of cold that finds the bones. Alden shifted in his sleep, curling tighter.
What's with the weather?
And then — a strange feeling, like floating.
No. Falling.
No, neither. Something he couldn't put into words.
Murmurs, low and indistinct, drifted from somewhere far away. He frowned without waking.
Were they arguing again?
He tried to shift, but he couldn't feel the mattress beneath him.
[Your soul has been received. Prove it worthy.]
Alden's eyes snapped open.
The ceiling was gone. The water stain. The light fixture. The four walls of his rented box.
All of it, gone.
In its place was something else. Something he could hardly begin to describe.