1 A Wrong Turn

It was a hot and muggy night in New Orleans, as most of them were at this time of year. The air was humid enough that you practically had to swim through it. The mosquitos were out in force searching for a late night snack. And trudging down the streetcar tracks on St. Charles Avenue was the tired form of one Merrill Rhodes.

Merrill was drunk. And tired. But mostly quite drunk.

He was on his way home from a night out on the town, hopping around various dive bars with a small group of his friends. It was the type of night that left his wallet lighter than he'd like, his steps clumsy from bar food and one too many drinks, and the promise of a hangover that would have him begging for relief.

Yet he was happy.

Or at least content. It had been a good night. A necessary one after the week he'd been through. The ever creeping specter of finals had been looming ominously over his shoulder and the frantic rush to stuff a semesters worth of learning into a week and change had done his stress levels no favors.

But that was a problem for another day. Another Merrill. Certainly not the one clumsily whistling a tune as he made his way down the empty tracks.

Passing on by an empty stop, he wondered what his friends were up to at the moment. They had decided to head further downtown to the quarter - trying to catch some free music - but Merrill hadn't been able to muster up the energy to join them.

He could enjoy himself as well as anyone else, but it wasn't something he could pull off indefinitely. A little extroversion was all well and good, but sooner rather than later he always needed some peace and quiet to refill his tank. Best to throw in the towel and head home while he was still in a good mood, even if it meant he didn't have a ride back.

Now if only the streetcar would show up and save him from all this walking. While the lumbering transport usually ran every ten to thirty minutes during the day, you could go an hour or two at this time of night without seeing one. He really hoped he hadn't missed one after parting ways with his friends. If so, he was stuck going the rest of the way on foot. With a mumbled prayer to anyone or anything that might take pity on his poor drunk soul, Merrill turned around, slipping slightly on the wet grass, and tried to will an approaching street car into existence.

Long seconds passed.

Nothing.

With a sigh for the empty and unfeeling cosmos above, Merrill turned around with a slump and kicked at a small pebble. It bounced off the ground twice before hitting the tracks with a sharp clang. The sound echoed loudly into the night.

Odd.

Here, on the edge of uptown and the garden district, the city didn't truly fall asleep for at least another few hours. Yet he hadn't seen a single soul for a while now. Not even a car, now that he thought about it.

Very odd.

The street shouldn't be nearly this quiet. It gave the area a delirious flavor, like he was half a step off of reality. Or in a dream on the verge of waking up. The type of silence that made his own thoughts all the louder. All the weirder.

He shook himself with a light slap to his cheeks. He was really out of it if this was where his head was going. The last thing he needed was to freak himself out over a lack of traffic.

With a huff, Merrill got back to walking, trying to avoid a few muddy patches from the heavy rain that came and went earlier in the day.

It was a handful of minutes later that something grabbed his attention from the corner of his eye. Overlooking the side of the road was a tree, gnarled and spindly with branches twisting every which way like the tentacles of some deep sea beast – some even reaching all the way down to the ground. However, it wasn't the tree itself – ancient as it seemed – that caught his inebriated eye, but the rather out of place fruit hanging down from one of its branches.

He stared for a moment, checking to see if he wasn't just imagining things. But no, there it was. A fruit on a tree that he was pretty sure didn't grow them to begin with. In the wrong season, none the less.

He moved to walk away. There was no need to get distracted when he still had a long walk before he could collapse into his bed. With how weird this city was, this out of place fruit really wasn't all that noteworthy. It was probably some Mardi Gras decoration someone had forgotten to take down. Or perhaps some new-wave art piece that was supposed to bring attention to third world hunger or the all the plastics in our food. Either way, it wasn't worth his time.

And yet, what was the harm? It would take a minute – maybe less – and he would be on his way. Best to just indulge himself and check it out or it would be nagging at him for the rest of the night.

Merrill ran a hand through his short auburn beard before finally deciding to get a closer look. He got off the track, crossed the street and stepped up onto the sidewalk, slightly spellbound by this splash of red on an otherwise dull pallet of green and brown.

As he moved up to the tree, he finally got a good look at the darn thing. It wasn't an apple as he had first assumed, but a pomegranate instead. And it was hard to say one way or the other, but it didn't look fake. He squinted and went onto his tip toes, but he really couldn't tell from where he was

He once again started to turn away. He had indulged this tangent long enough as it was. And yet, he had already come all this way. It would be a shame to just stop here...

Before he knew what he was doing, he was half way up one of the sturdier looking branches and getting higher by the second. Strange, since he really didn't do well with heights, but that was alcohol for you - liquid courage if nothing else.

Up he went, closer and closer to his prize, hanging so delicately all by itself. Why, he could almost reach out and –

The world seemed to tilt on it's axis for just a moment. The sky and ground flipping around each other in a confusing dance before settling back down.

Merrill blinked slowly – what in the world was he doing? He was way too drunk to be climbing trees like some overgrown monkey. This better not be how he died, breaking his neck after falling out of a tree.

With shaking hands, he slowly shimmied down, scraping his knees a bit, but eventually managing to get his feet on solid ground, pomegranate stuffed into a pocket.

But as he looked around, he couldn't help but tilt his head in confusion. Gone was the stone sidewalk, ill-maintained street and streetcar track. Instead, Merrill was faced with a series of low rolling hills that stretched off into the horizon. The land was covered in a thick carpet of grass arrayed in a kaleidoscope of early fall hues, a scattering of rocks that poked up from the earth, and a bubbling brook off somewhere in the distance.

Merrill grabbed the pomegranate out of his pocket, turning it over before looking back out at the unknown land he'd somehow found himself in.

Huh, he idly thought, before throwing up on his shoes.