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Chapter One of BOOK 2

A Rumspringa is a rite of passage where young adults are given free rein to experience the secular world without intervention. 

Chapter 1

Cocoa looked up. To her amazement, her customer had vanished like she was never there. She looked down and the sandwich she was making dissolved into thin air, leaving no trace. Glancing around, she shuddered to see everything fade into an inky black around her, her hair net dropping from her head and cascading toward the floor. She never heard it drop. As she reached out to grasp something, anything, she could hear a whirring noise faintly in the distance, then louder. She was moving! Or the space around her was moving. Her joints and muscles stretched and popped with anticipation. Shapes and objects in the room slowly came into focus. She departed Martin’s Sandwiches where she’d worked for the past two years and now lay in a room that smelled like pencil shavings. 

Her journey would soon begin but she would never have guessed today was the day. She sat up and smiled to find her sister Charlene sitting across from her on the concrete floor. Their mother’s driving pod parked beside them—still warm. She had prayed for weeks that her rumspringa experience would have elements of the familiar. And she had manifested it. 

How much more familiar can you get than the faint smell of mom’s spaghetti close by?

“You already talked to mom and dad?” Cocoa asked.

“Yes, and trust me, you don’t want to. Dad tried to convince me we shouldn’t leave. I already talked to the sandwich shop too and told them you’d be away for a few months. Let’s just go! There’s nothing to lose and it’s our time to take this journey. This dimension is so last year. You made me wait to take my journey because you were scared to go alone. Well, here I am, so let’s get it little sissy!”

At that, Charlene reached underneath her to retrieve a piece of paper that held clues to the journey ahead. Cocoa followed suit and, just like that, the walls of their quaint little garage glowed a molten blue, flowing from top to bottom. Both girls screamed as they jumped into their single portal, disappearing from their family garage. 

Cocoa felt the same movement she remembered from the sandwich shop portal but a trillion times faster. The air flowed quickly underneath them as their bodies slowly broke into smaller and smaller pieces. Easier to travel light in these old portals than to carry big bulky bodies through time and space. Cocoa felt serene and beautiful floating through the ethers like she was swimming in a pool of clouds. She felt her sister’s energy circling her in a whirlpool as they lit up with joy and anticipation at this most auspicious time. They could see the moon and asteroids and the undeniably bright stars in their periphery along with the dense realization that they were traveling through outer space. Thank the stars, their bodies were broken down to the atomic level because breathing in space could get tricky.

Cocoa sensed Charlene’s presence drifting further and further away. That’s fine, she thought. She figured they would be headed on different journeys anyway. Cocoa’s essence traveled through these lit up blocks of space, weaving in and out of asteroids and other space debris flowing fast. The sky was raw and beautiful to behold, a million times more awe-inspiring than the Aurora Borealis. Most travelers chose to doze off at this phase of the journey, but Cocoa couldn’t help feeling wide awake. She could see the lit path faintly in front of her and hanging a sharp left away from something. Cocoa turned her consciousness toward the massive area the portal took a detour around. The thing was dark—darker than dark and bigger than a thousand suns, more than she could fathom. She couldn’t see it per se, but instead sensed its ominous presence and couldn’t help but want to look at this thing closer–wondering if it was a planet or a burnt-out star. She leaned closer to this thing that had its hold on her and some of her energy escaped from the portal. She felt it. A pull stronger than she’d ever felt in her entire life. Gravity stronger than going on a rollercoaster pulled at her cells relentlessly, leaving her mind spinning and barely able to grasp what was happening. Her cells escaped from the portal, which attempted to pull her back inside, but the thing pulled at her like an alligator submerging its prey under the deadly water. Come to me, she heard, come closer to me. She gasped to find the thing had consciousness and it was speaking to her. The black hole had drawn her in on purpose, luring her into its depths only to whisper to her, Go deeper inside and be one with me. Cocoa’s essence panicked and she started to resist the pull, colliding through pieces of asteroids. As she drew closer to the black hole, nothing was around its perimeter and her last sign of the portal seemed like long ago. She screamed into the hole but no one responded. She slid helplessly into the mouth of the beast, and into its depths as it had requested. Orange dust sprang forth out of the black abyss and Cocoa was gone.