The One-Way

Michigan's Upper Peninsula is a strange place. It has a different feel, a different look, a different culture, even compared to its counterpart, the Lower Peninsula. The locals call themselves Yoopers. It is hard to find a Yooper that hasn’t claimed to have had an experience of the supernatural in that mysterious land, whether it be a Bigfoot or UFO sighting, or even close call with the Michigan Dogman.
It is a sparsely populated area, mostly unspoiled by mankind's progress, low on infrastructure, and high in natural resources. Mining has been a huge industry in the UP for centuries. Vast deposits of iron and copper lie beneath the surface of the land.
I found myself traveling across the vast unpopulated peninsula as part of my work. Apparently, my employers couldn't find anyone in the area to service the UP franchise locations, so I found myself having to travel long distances from my home in Northern Lower Michigan.
I knew better than my actions would show from the beginning, but I had made myself upset and careless. I pulled into the first gas station north of the Mackinac Bridge, expecting to fill up with gas, but as soon as I looked at the price per gallon on the pump, it put me into a state of mild shock. The price of gasoline had apparently jumped overnight. At this price, with the distance I would have to travel, I would have to endlessly fight with my employer just to be compensated.
With the pump handle already in hand, I paused to wage an internal debate. The price of gas would inevitably decrease as I traveled north, and I didn't need a top-up quite yet, so ultimately, I made the wrong decision and hung up the handle, driving off.
I had either overestimated the amount of gas in the tank, or underestimated the sheer amount of undeveloped wilderness between me and my destination, because after what felt like hours of driving with no civilization and no traffic, my car dinged at me incessantly, the angry red light flashing "LOW FUEL".
"I know, I know. Just hang on. There's gotta be something soon." 
But it wasn’t long at all before my car sputtered and coasted to a complete stop. I didn't have to glance at my cell phone to realize that there were no cell towers within a 50-mile radius of this place, the actual middle of actual nowhere.
I slammed my fist on the steering wheel and shook my head, reaching over and popping the trunk. I retrieved my empty red plastic gas canister and left my car on the side of the road, trudging forward, the heat of the sun beating down on me.
As time wore on, the weather eventually cooled as the sun set. I had already walked several miles, and my feet felt like they were blistering and about ready to start smoking, but the cooler air felt pleasant on my sweat-soaked skin.
Not long after sunset, I saw a light on just over the next hill. Its dim illumination spread across the newly formed fog which seemed to spring up suddenly. As I approached the light, it became clear that is was in fact a gas station. I exhaled in relief. I picked up my pace to make sure to get there before they closed.
"We're closed," said the elderly man through the glass door of the station when I knocked desperately to get his attention. His face held a deep frown, creasing the corners of his bristly face, his white beard protruding outward from his chin instead of down.
I threw my hands in the air and put them behind my head, bellowing at the sky. The gas can flew from my fingers and clattered to the ground. The fog was getting thicker. It was getting hard to see past the dim glow of the unbranded gas station canopy. There was a strong metallic scent in the air, as if permeating through the land itself. You could taste it.
I directed my frustration toward the man in the station again. "I just need a couple of gallons of gas! That's all! I'll pay you double!"
The man stood on the other side of the door, watching me. He said simply, "No gas."
"Can I at least come in and make a phone call?" The man acted like he didn't hear me at all, turning his back on me.
I groaned and dropped down onto my rear, leaning my back against the cold glass of the station's front door. I rested there for a while before I heard a rumbling noise. It was difficult to see, but i could soon make out two headlights in the distance down the road, piercing through the fog.
Before long, a large semi-truck pulled into the lot and parked. A figure in an orange cap and dirty jean jacket hopped out of the cab and began marching toward me. As he approached, I could focus more clearly on him. He had a wide nose and scruffy black facial hair, his dark brown eyes as wide open as possible, darting around as if searching for something.
When he got to the door, he looked down at my defeated form and said simply, "Excuse me."
I got up and stepped to the side as the man banged on the door with his fist and announced, "Delivery!"
I was about to break the bad news that the station was closed, when I saw the old man appear again. The wild-eyed man tipped his cap. The old man reached up for the door lock, but then narrowed his eyes. "You're not the regular guy," he said. His hand dropped back to his side. "Who are you?"
The wild-eyed man pressed his lips together and his breath quickened. After a moment of hesitation, he shoved his hand into his jacked and produced a large semiautomatic handgun. I swore under by breath and stumbled backward, falling back down onto my butt.
The old man, lip curled upward and tapped on the glass. "Bulletproof," he said, shaking his head.
The wild-eyed man leaned down quickly and grabbed me by the collar of my shirt. "Get up!" he shouted as he pulled up hard. I did as I was told, standing up quickly. I soon found myself staring down the barrel of his weapon. That barrel looks awfully big when the end of it is right between your eyes.
"I'll blow his head off!" the wild-eyed man shouted, confirming my worst fears. The last thing I needed today was to be held hostage by some nutjob.
"Hey, man," I started, "Come on, I have nothing to do with this, he doesn't even know me!"
"Well that's a shame for you, isn't it?" The wild-eyed man pressed the gun to my forehead and I shut my eyes tightly.
"Okay, okay!" I heard from the muffled voice inside the gas station. To my complete surprise, the old man relented immediately. He unlocked the door and swung it open wide.
The wild-eyed man and I stepped inside the dimly-lit convenience store, where the old man and I were positioned next to each other at gunpoint. 
"We don't keep any money in the building at night," the old man started, only to be interrupted.
"I'm not stupid," the wild eyed man said, annoyed. "I know what you're doing here."
"What have you done with the regular delivery guy? Do you even know what's in that truck you stole?"
The wild-eyed man fidgeted nervously. "Don't give me that crap," he snapped as he thrust the gun toward the old man's face. "I know all about your 'deliveries' here. How truckloads come in, but nothing ever comes out. Show me what you're hiding."
"Convenience store stuff. Pop, chips, candy. That's all." The old man looked visibly annoyed and frustrated.
"Oh no, That's not nearly all." The wild-eyed man motioned toward the door marked 'Staff Only - Keep Door Closed'. He flicked the handgun in that direction. "Open it."
The old man let out an endlessly protracted exhale and glared at the wild-eyed man, and then to me briefly, before slowly making his way behind the counter and grabbing the keyring beneath the cash register. He unlocked the door and held it open as we all filed in.
instead of your average cramped gas station backroom, we walked into a massive loading bay, a tall garage door on the left side of the room right in front of a ramp that gradually sloped down, down, down... down... until the ramp went completely underground into a massive tunnel, wide and tall enough for a semi-truck trailer to easily fit.
"I knew it!" I could hear the smile in the wild-eyed man's voice as he spoke. 
I was starting to get curious myself at this point. A strong metallic scent, the smell of pennies, permeated the area, wafting up from the tunnel. It bit at my nostrils and even started hurting the fillings in my teeth. I covered my nose, but I could still taste it in the air.
The wild-eyed man exclaimed after a few moments, "Well? Aren't you going to invite me in?"
The three of us descended the ramp, which kept going and going, far longer than I would have thought. The tunnel was lined with very old wooden braces that creaked and dropped dust onto our heads and shoulders as we passed. You could tell the age of the ancient braces by the size of the logs used. Trees just don't come in that size anymore. These trusses were constructed from 2-foot wide timbers slotted together without fasteners. Broken, decrepit lengths of rope hung from some of them, reminiscent of hangman's nooses.
Illuminated by a string of incandescent electric lights, we soon came upon a huge vault door. the door looked like a more recent addition, using more modern tech for the locking mechanism. the old man didn't seem to think there was a reason to argue, because before he even opened his mouth, the wild-eyed man had already pushed the barrel of his gun into the old man's back. He wordlessly punched the passcode into the numbered pad.
The vault door slowly swung open under its own power. Just beyond the door was a second door of the same size and type. The old man entered the small room created by the doors and walked to a computer terminal nested in the wall. He punched in another code and a few more keystrokes.
The computer emitted a loud, echoing beep that started the wild-eyed man and me, followed by a deafening whooshing noise. 
"What's going on, old man?!" The wild-eyed man was more nervous than ever. He clearly had no idea what he had gotten us into.
The computer screen flashed "PRESSURIZED" in giant letters, and following a second beep, the inner door gradually swung open with a warm gust of metallic air.
What we saw on the other side of the door was a darkened mineshaft that seems to go endlessly on into the depths of the Earth, but right in front of us, in the exact middle of the floor, was a cylinder constructed of cinderblocks, about waist high. It reminded me of the design of those old-fashioned wells you see on westerns and cartoons.
The old man stretched his arm toward the well, palm up, in a presentation gesture. "There it is."
The wild-eyed man blinked several times rapidly. "Is this a joke? I'm looking for loot, not some well water!"
Puzzled, I approached the well and peered down inside. I saw nothing. I don't mean I saw an empty well, I mean i saw nothing. It was pitch black, and the only sound I heard was wind gently flowing by my ears as it seemed to have a slight suction to it. A ventilation shaft had been constructed directly above it, and it seemed to be sucking air in from the outside.
Something about the well was off-putting, almost disorienting. As I stared into its depths, I managed a simple "Huh."
There was no echo. the sound that escaped my lips simply vanished. It had the bizarre sensation of one of those rooms lined with sound-deadening material, except the was even less reverberation.
I shouted, "ECHO!" into the hole, but heard nothing in return. Even the sound echoing off the walls of the tunnel seemed to be sucked in by the black void in the well.
The wild-eyed man was soon next to me, peering down into the well. He slowly reached his hand down toward the void. I noticed that the man had become distracted enough to loosen the grip on his handgun.
"DO NOT TOUCH IT," the old man roared, catching both of us off-guard. I had already made a grab for the gun, which I successfully pried from his left hand, but clumsily dropped into the well. I expected to hear the gun clacking against the side of the pit, or any sound for that matter, but it just seemed to completely vanish from reality itself.
Somewhere in the commotion, the wild-eyed man's right middle finger had touched some sort of surface of the void. The tip of his finger vanished before my eyes.
The wild-eyed man yelped and whimpered. "This feels... so weird..." He didn't seem to be in pain, just concerned and fascinated at the same time. He traced a circle around the void surface with his finger.
The old man knelt down and rummaged through an old wooden toolbox that had been haphazardly left on the cave floor. He stood up carrying a pair of pruning shears. He handed them to me. His voice was clear and very stern. "Take these shears." He dropped them into my hand. "Cut off the finger at the knuckle. Whatever you do, do NOT touch the One-Way." The look on his face told me he was deadly serious.
The wild-eyed man had dipped three of his fingers into the inky blackness and was swirling them about. "I... I can't feel the tips of my fingers!" He came to the dawning realization a bit too late, as he tried to pull his fingers out, but the darkness was not giving anything back. He yanked harder and harder, beginning to panic as he pulled so hard, he was beginning to separate his knuckles.
I took the snippers in one hand and sighed deeply. "Hold still."
"What are you doing?! My fingers are stuck! Get some grease or something!" He wrapped his left hand around his right arm and began pulling.
"It won't do any good," the old man said, his voice full of regret. "We call this darkness 'The One-Way'. It's some kind of gateway to... another place. But whatever goes in, does not come out."
The wild-eyed man screamed in frustration as I lowered the hedge clippers close to the surface of the One-Way. With shaky hands, I attempted to place the blades on either side of the wild-eyed man's stuck fingers.
"Stop! There's got to be some other way!" The wild-eyed man shouted and moved away from me.
"Trust me, this is the best outcome." The old man spoke solemnly, then pulled his thick leather glove off his right hand, uncovering a craggy old hand , the index finger missing. "I'm thankful there was someone around to do the same for me."
I grimaced at the sight. "Let's just get this over with." I slowly lowered the shears toward the wild-eyed man's quivering hand.
"Wait a minute!" The wild-eyed man shouted. "What's on the other side of this thing, anyway?"
"All we know is that it's a place not fit for human survival." The old man seemed to grow annoyed. "Now can we please get on with it!"
"How do you know?" The wild-eyed man asked, pushing me away as I got close. "I mean, if you can only travel one way, how could you possibly know what's on the other side?"
"Listen!" The old man's voice was almost at the level of a shout. "If we don't cut those fingers, you are going to bleed out!"
"He's not even bleeding!" I protested.
"Give me the shears, I'll do it myself! We're wasting time!" The old man held his hand out toward me. "Do I really have to explain this? The portal is only one way. As we speak, he's pumping blood into his fingers, but none is returning. On the other side, his fingertips are turning to overstuffed sausages, filling with blood, if they haven't already burst."
"B-but I don't feel anything!" the wild-eyed man stammered, his eyes wet with tears.
"Your nerves can't send a signal to your brain when they're on the other side." He frowned at both of us and tapped his foot as we stared at him, hesitating. "Are you done stalling? It will be easier if we just get it over with."
I turned and faced the wild-eyed man, staring into his deep brown eyes. He sighed and nodded. "Make it quick!"
I positioned the shears as closely as I dared to the surface of the One=Way without touching it. I maneuvered the blades on either side of his fingers, debating on whether I should take one finger at a time, or all three at once. The wild-eyed man had gathered up some of the cloth from his shirt in his mouth and bit down hard, squeezing his eyes shut tight.
All of a sudden, the wild-eyed man screamed in my ear as his hand came violently downward, as if being yanked down. The shears fell from my hand and into the void, disappearing forever. Also disappearing was the wild-eyed man's entire hand, above his wrist. At this point he had become hysterical, screaming bloody murder and reciting every obscenity he knew.
"Something's pulling me!" he wailed, "There's something alive in there! It's trying to pull me in!"
The old man's eyes were fully wide. "Oh my God!" he moved with the speed of a much younger man, grabbing a rusty old hacksaw from the ancient toolbox, then nearly bowling me over on his way to the well. "Hold him steady!" He bellowed as he positioned the blade of the saw in the crook of the wild-eyed man's elbow.
No longer hesitating, I grabbed the wild-eyed man's shoulders, but still he resisted, so I wrapped my arm around his neck and put him into a chokehold, squeezing a tightly as I could.
"I'm sorry." That was all the old man said before going to work. The dulled sawblade ripped through skin, tendon, and muscle, as he made a jagged cut through the wailing man's arm. The old man worked up a sweat as the blade reached bone. he put all of his muscle into his strokes, making short work of it. Blood flowed everywhere, coating the old man's hands and arms, the saw flicking blood and gore up into our faces. Most of the blood disappeared down the void.
Suddenly, there was another sharp, strong yank, and the old man's work was instantly undone. The thing from the other side had pulled the wild-eyed man's arm all the way in up to his shoulder, almost taking me with him. His hoarse screams filled the cavern.
The old man stumbled backward when it happened, only to quickly recover and assess the situation. "Oh... Oh god, no."
Not only was the wild-eyed man's entire arm trapped by the void, but it had taken his ear and some of his cheek. He desperately tried to move his head up from the blackness, but it was tightly fastened. his legs were the only thing grasping to the wall of the well, he had been taken so far in.
I pressed my hands to my ears to try to relieve myself of the tortured screaming so I could actually think about my next course of action. I watched the old man rush back to the toolbox to try to find another piece of equipment to use after he dropped the hacksaw into the blackness.
I know many people will judge me harshly for what I decided to do next, but I still stand by my decision. I just wanted to spare myself the trauma of hacking a man's arm off, then slicing off half his face just to save him. Particularly, a man who had held a gun to my head.
I grabbed the wild-eyed man by both his ankles and heaved them forward, essentially tossing his entire body into the well. His screaming ended abruptly. It was suddenly dead silent in the cave.
The old man just stared at me in shock, his jaw slack. "What you have just done was..." He paused for a good long while to search his vocabulary for the proper adverb to describe my actions. I said nothing and waited for him to speak. "...abominably cruel!"
"Or maybe I saved him. Maybe he has a better chance on the other side!"
The old man just sighed heavily and shook his head. "No." He trudged up the ramp slowly, exhaustedly, as if he had just finished a hundred meter dash. "Come. I still have a lot of work to do."
I glanced back at the dark well. I wiped my forehead with my hand, only to find my fingers drenched with blood.
The old man called back to me, "Help me finish my work and I'll fill up that gas can of yours."
We started up the truck that the wild-eyed man had stolen, and backed it down the ramp. We spent the next couple of hours unloading the truck's cargo down the well. The cargo was sealed tightly in large crates, and when I asked the old man what was inside, he told me that I was better off not knowing. I believed him.
After making sure the contents of the truck would never be seen in this world again, the old man made good on his promise and filled my gas can. He even gave me a ride back to my car.
After filling up my car and spending an entire night in the drivers' seat trying to fall asleep but failing, I said to myself, "It's a good thing this road is a Two-Way." I made a U-turn and drove back south to the Lower Peninsula, vowing to never travel to that accursed land ever again.
Category:Liminal Spaces 2022
Category:Glisario
Category:Dismemberment