Young Writers Society

I wrote this while procrastinating work for my college finals. I'm hoping to write this in an unserious way, without much of a concrete plot, in a Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy sort of style. Enjoy, and please give me your honest feedback. Be brutal.

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Bran pulled his thin blue security jacket tightly over his shoulders as a cold breeze came through Madison Square Park. adjusting his cap nervously, and occasionally sipping the double espresso in his left hand.

He huddled up next to the Shake Shack he was stationed by, his teeth chattering in the cold, as he constantly scanned the crowds of tourists passing through. It was a cold Sunday afternoon, but bright and absent of turbulent weather, so crowds of visitors still thronged around him, as always.

Listening to the thrum of foot traffic, with the sounds of dozens of conversations and the city around him filling his ears, he was struck by the sheer variety of people, from across myriad states, countries, and dimensions.

Bran’s left eyebrow began to twitch, as did a muscle in his left hand as he stood tensely, and tried his best imposing-but-not-threatening stare on nearby visitors. One passer-by, a creature resembling a giant squid but with roughly a dozen eyes, gave him a glance with one, rolled all of them, and moved on.

Bran did not blame him/her/them/it. A short, slim Indian kid in his late teens, he doubted anyone considered him very imposing, but yet city authority, after four weeks of training, had decided he, a part-timer, was ready for the tiny matter of a major purse-snatching ring in Madison Square Park, resulting in his current circumstances.

Well, with Interdimensional Security as stretched as it is...though Bran to himself, as he slowly began to hum the theme song from Game of Thrones’s most recent spinoff (Oberyn Martell: How He Didn’t Die And What He Did While Everyone Else Was Doing Cool Stuff). What seemed to be a three foot tall blob of pale green slime apparently noticed him, as it seemed to turn in Bran’s direction.

Bran watched it cautiously as it approached, but kept up his expression and humming to ensure that he did not appear prejudiced. After the giant cockroach incident, this was a major concern for the security forces.

The slime slowly came to sit next to Bran (stand? park? exist?) and, as Bran peeked at it out of the corner of his eyes, bubbles began forming at the base of it;s body, to come to the surface of its surface (skin?) and pop. Suddenly,Bran realized, turning to the slime, the bubbles were popping to the same tune he was humming.

He stared at it for a second, a voice in his head saying, should I stop? when Bran realized that the voice was not his own and that the slime was, in fact, talking to him.

As he came to the revelation that he was having a psychic conversation with a ball of slime, he was just about able to mutter, “No, no need.” before sharply turning forward again and staring intently. He quickly realized he had said it rather loudly, and seemingly to no-one, as a number of creatures gave him weird looks.

A large winged eyeball, passing by at a sedate pace, muttered something to the human woman next to him about the sorry state of Interdimensional Security these days, to which she nodded vigorously.

Bran’s face was turning red when, suddenly, that same woman’s ornate pink purse was seemingly yanked out of her hands by an invisible force. “Hey! My perfume is in there! I like, need it!” she screeched as she followed it. as it floated further and further away from her at an alarming rate.

Bran was startled for a second before slipping on his ring, yelling, “I’ll get it back, Ma’am!” and taking off after it.

The bag flew down the street, with Bran in hot pursuit, weaving in between the crowds. Luckily, being a weekend, all forms of motorized transport were barred from the roads (a more-encompassing name better taking into account all the forms of transportation across civilizations and species this ban entailed was pending at this time).

Bran practically threw himself across the corner as the bag took a sharp turn, and quickly found himself flat on his back with a bruise on his forehead. He heard a “Hey!” as he got to his feet, and found himself eye to eye with an old man. Well, an old man with branches growing out of his forehead, and his entire right side. 

Bran muttered an apology and extricated himself from the man’s branches. While the man moved slowly behind him, muttering unpleasant things about the saplings of today, Bran scanned the road, hoping against hope to see if the handbag was still around.

Near the end of the street, he caught a glimpse of it, seemingly just waiting there and took off again without a second thought. He reached the end of the road just in time to see it drop down a manhole, which for some reason had its cover off. Cursing his luck, Bran wrinkled his nose as he climbed down the disgustingly sticky ladder.

Once again, the bag seemed to be waiting for him at the bottom, which Bran noted as suspicious, but had no time to think as it took off down a dark passageway, dimly lit by the dull low grade tube lights used throughout the sewers, with Bran once again in hot pursuit.

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This continued for about a quarter of an hour, with Bran always having the purse just at the limits of his vision such that he continued to chase it, as it led him down darker and narrower passageways, with the tubelights more and more dispersed, until finally it vanished.

Bran’s pants were soaked in water and who-knows-what by this point, as he splashed around noisily, looking back and forth to try and determine where the bag had gone, when he heard movement behind him.

He spun around to see a bunch of red eyes staring at him. Suddenly another set appeared next to it, then more. Gulping, Bran turned the other way to leave, but only saw more behind him. Hissing surrounded him, and he heard a snake-like voice, sending a chill down his spine, mutter “Our placessss...”

Suddenly, a dark shape lept out at him, and Bran jumped back, and hitting his back on the tunnel wall as a spider the size of a great bernard landed where he was a second ago, its jaws bared.

It was slowly advancing towards him, its brethren crowding around, when Bran finally recovered his wits. He yelled, “IDSF!” and flung out his right hand. The green gem of the ring on his forefinger glowed, and a glowing green transparent wall appeared in front of him and curved around him. It sparked, and sent scuttling back in pain whichever spiders dared to touch it.

The spiders hung around, glaring at him for a second, during which Bran reconsidered his life choices and regained his lost faith in religion, before a loud hissing voice rebounded across the passage, calling, “Backsss!”.

The spiders, shrieking in what Bran assumed was fear, fled to the edges of the cavern, as one slowly moved towards him from his far left. As it approached, Bran quickly realized it was easily twice the size of any of the others. Dinosaur green, and green poison dripping from its jaws, it slowly came to stand directly in front of his barrier.

“What is the Inter-Dimensional Security Force doing heresss?” hissed the spider, its eight eyes all menacingly focused on Bran, the barrier clearly annoying its spidery sensibilities. “The sewers are oursss. Anything in it toosss. That was our agreementssss.”

An Ivy League student, Bran immediately began to wonder what he meant by “toos” before he finally caught on to the speech pattern, recovered his senses, and stood up straight.

In his best officious tone, he stated, “According to our agreement, we are entitled to enter the sewers in the process of an investigatio-” but was cut off by the spider hissing, “What investigationsss?”

Feeling mildly embarrassed, and slowly blushing, he muttered in a lower tone, “I..I was following a stolen purse. It seemed to have been taken down here by an invisible entity.”

The spider glared at him slowly, before saying, “Firstlies, I am females…” (at which point, Bran once again recommitted himself to a higher power) and then, with a more cacophonic hissing sound Bran realized was laughter, said, “I finds it hard to believe yousss...seems like a jokes...but I do somehowsss.”

Bran, safely dumping religion again, quickly responded enthusiastically, “Then, can you help find the perpetrator...Ma’am?”

The spider’s eight eyes seemed to soften a little as it said, “If there is such a person, they is ours nowsss. We have not found them yet, but we willsss.” The spider then turned around.

As it scuttled off, it hissed back, “Leave quicklysss...I will order them away but some will not follow that order for longsss. I hope we do not meet again, human, though I like yousss...”

Bran felt slightly sick to his stomach, not sure how to feel about that, as he watched the crowd of red eyes fade from his sight. He then realized he was in the middle of a dark, narrow cavern, soaked in sewage, without any real idea where he was. At that point, the gem on his ring stopped glowing, and the shield faded.

“Aw, crap.” he muttered. Flipping a coin in his head, he headed down the passage on his left to begin the long confusing search for home.