Chapter Nine

For once, I was able to recognize the building that the motorcycle stopped in front of. It was the building that Lucas had stopped at to have sex with that skanky looking woman. The more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got. I mean, I almost got killed… by myself. If he were with me, I probably would’ve had a greater chance of coming out of that alive. God, that was really scary. I couldn’t stop thinking about how bizarre that was. Seeing myself as such a malevolent person, killing innocent civilians just for the hell of it, because it was fun to see the fear in their faces.
And Cedric. Cedric was alive in this dimension. If Cedric had lived in my home dimension, would we have turned out like the evil Whitewood twins in this dimension? And what happened to our parents, were they still alive, or what? If they were, they were probably the worst parents ever. I mean, think about it. They were most likely dead. For children to end up like that, the only cause must have been lack of love and attention. I suddenly became thankful that my mum loved me, and that Orion was still around to help her take care of me.
Mum and Orion. They really loved each other, and they really loved me, too. I became nervous, because I should have been home a long time ago. How does time move in these dimensions? Will I go back to my own London and see that days have passed by, maybe even months? What time is it over there, and is my mum worried at all? What excuse would I have to make up? I mean, I oh so plainly lied to her face about going off with Luke, all because of my insane sister.
These were questions I would have to ask Luke when he was all… finished.
I waited a bit longer. I was so tempted to eat the chocolate cake myself, but found it incredibly unfair since I paid for it with Luke’s money anyway. At that point, I remembered that I wasn’t cold at all, despite the lack of warmth in the air, and it was all because of Luke’s jacket. I wasn’t too concerned about him being cold, though. He was probably creating enough heat on his own.
With that thought lingering in my head, Lucas finally came down, thankfully by himself. I don’t know what I would have said if that girl had come down with him.
“Have fun?” I asked, and to my surprise, I sounded a bit cross with him.
“Yeah. Good time,” he said. I noticed he was still buttoning up his shirt. His hair was all messy, like that “I just got shagged” kind of look. “How are you doing? Were you here the whole time? Well, no, of course not, I had the bike pick you up to get my chocolate cake. Where’s that at anyway? I’m starving.”
I handed him the box. “It better be good. It cost fifty pounds. I only didn’t eat it myself because I used your money that I found in your jacket.”
“Hm,” he said, taking a bit. He didn’t even bother to look civilized as he dug his hand into the cake for some more. “Yeah, it’s good. So that’s all you did, huh? Buy me some chocolate cake?”
“Not even,” I said. “I wish that was all I did. God, I feel so traumatized now.”
Lucas closed the box, and set it on top of his motorcycle. “What did you see?”
“Myself!” I exclaimed. “Well, not really myself. But, like, the Caitlin that’s in this dimension. God, she almost shot me! I watched her kill an innocent person with… with…”
“With your brother?”
“Yeah. With Cedric. It was so weird seeing him. He looks exactly like he does in my dreams. And he looks like me. It’s kind of creepy. Wait, how did you know that this Caitlin would be with my brother?”
“Oh, I’ve met them both before. Yeah, right down scary folk. That girl almost killed me, too. She stole my cake once!”
“Oh, boo hoo,” I scowled. “You lost your cake where I almost lost my life!”
“Well, I did tell you to stay out of trouble.”
“I saw my dead brother! Of course I was going to follow him!”
“Yeah, well, next time be more careful! Like I said, these dimensions may be similar in a lot of ways, but they are terribly different in a bunch of other ways. That girl named Caitlin is not you, and that boy named Cedric is not your brother. I hate to put it this way, but your brother is dead. Whatever Cedric you see is not the brother you had, he is almost a completely different person.”
“Yeah. I got that now,” I said. “By the way, what time is it back in my London? How does time move in these dimensions?”
“Oh, if you’re in one dimension, all the others are frozen,” Luke said. “When we go back to your London, it’ll be exactly the same time it was when we left. Time only moves for us where we are standing.”
“That makes no sense,” I said. “But a long as I’m not gone so long that my mum begins to worry, then I’ll be fine.”
“You can go back whenever you want,” Luke said. “Do you want to go back? Back home, I mean. To your own dimension. Because we can go if you’d like.”
I looked down at my nails. “Are there… other dimensions?”
“Yeah, of course there are.”
“And are they better than this place?”
“Much, much better. I’d have to say this is the worst one, to be honest. So eerie and scary. And the girls are so rough. And the Caitlin here… she’s nothing compared to you.”
With all the redness around the city, I wasn’t surprised now that my own face was turning red.
“So if I go back to my own London, it’ll be exactly the same time since we walked through that purple door?”
“That’s right,” Luke said. “So we can go back whenever you want.”
“Well,” I said, finally looking up. “I don’t want to stay here any longer, but if I can go home whenever I want, I suppose I don’t have to go right at this very second.”
Luke smiled. “So what? We go onward?”
I smiled. “Onward.”
Luke opened up some compartment at the bottom of his motorcycle, and placed the box of chocolate cake in there.
“Ah! You’ve got a little secret stash of it!” I laughed.
“Well, when you’re traveling around, you’ve always got to have your own little stash of chocolate cake,” he said. “Don’t open one of the boxes, though, because I know one of them has condoms in it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Thankfully, you’re using protection. We wouldn’t want any offspring of yours running around these dimensions, now would we?”
“Oh, God,” Lucas winced. “If I had a kid… I think I’d just give it away. Or let the mum have it. I couldn’t stand it.”
“Why? What’s wrong with kids?”
“They’re… small. And irritating. And you have to constantly keep your eyes on them. And kids are just such a hassle. And when they’re older, they end up hating you, and they end up unsuccessful, and it’s just horrible. Really bad.”
I rolled my eyes, and hopped onto the motorcycle. “So where’s the door to the next dimension?”
“I don’t know where all of the doors are, actually,” Luke said. “So I suppose we’ll have to go searching for this next one.”
“What, we have to search for it? How long will that take?”
“Not too long. As long as the homing device on the motorbike is functional, it should be able to locate the door in about a minute. And then depending on how far away it is, we can ride to it.”
“Well, then,” I said. “Let’s get that homing device working!”
Luke twisted some knob on the left handle of the motorbike, and some tiny green lights started flashing on the dashboard.
“Come on, come on,” Lucas said. “It can’t be that far away, can it?”
After about a minute, all the little green lights flashed purple over and over again.
“Aha! There we go.” Luke hopped onto the motorcycle in front of me. “All right, then. Let’s go.”