We were tempests unshaken; cursed clocks, frozen in time…
The Cursed Clock
The grandfather clock ticked and tocked away in the living room. We had tried our best to keep the dust away and off the furniture, some sort of desperate attempt at retaining a routine from a past that seemed so long ago, but in reality, we let’s just say that I shaved the day it all began and my beard has barely begun to come back in.
There wasn’t enough time to even determine where it originated. We heard about it on the news one morning and by the end of the initial “breaking news” segment, it was everywhere. Death came swift and precise. Half the population was gone between weather reports. The infection never spread because everything was already infected. All it needed was the proper conditions and the proper trigger to bring it all around and down.
Even the birds are silent. The haunted wind is the only Spring song that can be heard. How many are still alive? That’s anyone’s guess. When will our time come? Who knows. All that matters is getting through the day, hell, getting through to lunch without incident would be a miracle within itself. You can never be too careful with so many unknowns just around the corner.
Around Every Corner
The streets have been emptied of everything that could try to get away. It’s not like there was any time to panic-buy toilet paper, formulate a conspiracy against some Communist nation, or even politicize it by claiming some decades-old policy was to blame. It couldn’t even be joked about as a hoax. It just came as silent as a breeze and left as quick. Life simply dropped off the face of the Earth. By the end of the first day, eighty percent of all living things had been rendered extinct.
Planes fell in torrents of fuel filled rainfall. Everything shut down and yet was so drastically active. No warnings, no organization, no calming speeches. It was as if the entire world had been a piano concerto, but the grand piano was rapidly turning to dust, leaving nothing, but memories behind.
Not even those religious nuts in the deep barrens claimed these were the End of Days, but I think that was because they fell victim to the abrupt collapse and were shaken to an undiscovered core of themselves, where a terrifying logic resided. A line of reasoning which dictated that their creator could not have done something like this. Even more damning was the following thought that even the Devil himself was not this malevolent.
By the end of the second day, all the planes had rejoined the surface in one form or another. Fires raged unhindered across the globe, burning away whatever else had not already been taken by this nameless ghost. By the end of the fourth day, most of the fires had burned themselves out.
The corpses didn’t stay long. Many disappeared within hours of falling, leaving nothing but an eerie mold-like slime in its wake, which then dried out into a strange crystalline web-like structure. Some survivors claimed it glowed in an otherworldly purple when the nights were darkest. I, for one, dared not stay up that late to find out for myself. The more I learned about it, the more I didn’t want to know. It only added to my daily worriment waltz.
The Worriment Waltz
I had that dream again, the one with the slender figure at the end of a hallway. Bright lights behind it, darkness everywhere else. I could move closer and closer, yet I was not walking or running, it was more like I was being summoned, beckoned, brought about to that stickman in a suit. His shape came into being, his features were definite and sharpened like a blade, but right as his details emerged, as I began to get a good look at his face, the light behind him would die, leaving me in absolute darkness, drifting in a void with no direction or meaning, and a single ghastly statement: prepare for unforeseen consequences.
I always awoke after this, drenched in my own sweat. Sometimes I would head downstairs to get something to drink or eat. The house would be so quiet that I half wondered if the others had fallen, but I was always too afraid to check.
Our food supply is beginning to run low, not that rationing is doing any good: even canned foods were not safe from this calamity. As I said, we had always been infected, every living thing. If you were organic, you were already dead. How long this had been, no one knew, and right now, I doubt anyone would ever find out.
There are days when such thoughts occupy my mind for so long, that I forget about my hunger; about my loneliness; about the unknown and what is known; about how much is left and how much is left to go; about when it’ll all come to an end, or if I should do the job myself because God works too slow?
Other times I find myself pacing the backyard of this farmhouse. Most of the trees and vegetation has gone away to crystalline dust, but some still remain. I remember one of the others here, Jacob, had said that everything was turning as dead as a desert. I disagree: life can survive in the desert. This, whatever this is, can only be described as an extermination, an extinction – the execution of life itself.
I am always grateful for the few hours of sleep I get every night, but I must confess, there are times when I just want to run like hell from all of this, never to wake up again.
Run Like Hell
You’d think that being so universally rendered obsolete would cause the remaining few to band together and fight for survival, but desperation and greed, coupled with the unmistakable need for power still rules, even in times like these.
A band of men, because of course, it’s men, bearing a southern Confederate flag no less, came to our home. Loud and proud, though I couldn’t see or understand why or of what, they came. All that concerned me was that they had weapons and we did not. We gathered up what we could and we ran. We didn’t look back. Why would we? I felt like Lot with his family, fleeing the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. I heard several gunshots, but couldn’t tell from which direction they were coming from, or going to. We just kept running, more afraid of turning into a pillar of salt than anything else.
The echoes rang out over and over again, gunshot after gunshot, echoes upon echoes within echoes, it was like a fireworks show gone horribly wrong. And then all went silent. Nothing could be heard. Even our own footfalls upon the earthen path before us seemed so far, far away.
Eventually, we all had to stop. We couldn’t go any further. The sun was directly overhead and we had been on the run for well over an hour. Marcy, a young woman in her early twenties, fell to her knees and began to sob. I limped my way over to her, and despite the acid burning in my muscles, I gently placed an arm around her shoulder, but she acted as if I wasn’t there. Then again, sometimes I wonder if I’m even there at all.
We were all becoming ghosts, and when it happens (don’t mind me)…
When it Happens (Don’t Mind Me)
The first thing that struck us, was the rancid smell. It wrapped itself around everything and lingered on like an unwanted guest. At first, we thought we had somehow come across an unknown dumping ground, and in a sense, we were horrifically right.
Mira, Marcy’s younger sister by at least a few years, was the first to notice it. Before long, we came across an anomaly: a forest of pine trees, seemingly untouched by the infection which had consumed our world so easily. The sight of those old trunks made us wonder if we were all suffering from some mass delusion, and yet, we didn’t seem to care. It hadn’t even been a full week, and the sight of trees felt like a distant memory.
Without saying a word, Mira and Marcy began to walk towards the mysterious forest. The rest of us were still stunned, to the point that we wouldn’t remember that awful stench until some time later. The breath of Spring blew at our backs, almost urging us on, daring us to step forward into the oddity before us. The next thing we knew, we were deep within the woods.
Even the sun couldn’t break through the branches and foliage. We trodded on through the thick of its unfamiliar landscape like deer, unheard, and unseen. I don’t know how long we had been walking when a particularly stiff breeze blew by, causing the trees to bend and moan. For reasons unknown, our little party of leftovers looked upwards together and beheld a sight none of us were prepared to see.
There, high above the ground, hanging from the branches was the root of the smell we had picked up earlier. Swaying like the most unnatural of fruit ever to be borne of this world were the bodies of dozens upon dozens and even dozens more men, women, and children. Their bodies were so full of rot that the maggots and flies caused their bodies to convulse and twitch in inhuman ways. Their limbs intertwined with one another and blotted out the sun. How we mistook them for the branches of the trees we may never know.
Like a wave, the insectile buzzing came down upon us all; another car crash in this new reality. Once again, we found ourselves running in every direction, in any direction, just as long as we got away from the horror above us. By the time I had stopped running, I found myself all alone.
Another Car Crash
It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, except there were no cars involved. Just a man and the sudden and inevitable wall of reality running into them like an 18-wheeler without any breaks. Down to his knees he fell, down upon the ground, he let himself get run over, down and down he went into the pit that had always been under him, but just like those Looney Toons cartoons of old, gravity doesn’t affect you until you look down.
Thunder roared silently in the distance as his wails held back the oncoming storm. He was letting go, yet still held on to the idea that she was ever there. And then it happened, out of nowhere, a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ scenario. Knelt down on the road, cradling the puppy’s limp and bloody body, the man sobbed, I blinked, and found a smear of entrails in their place and a shoe with a foot still inside.
I was running even before I knew or understood why I was running, let alone from what. The thunder was still silent. No lightning to be seen. Blink, and you’ll miss it; blink and you’re already there. For the first time since finding myself alone, I felt truly scared. I didn’t know who that man was, what his story was, or even his name. I just happened to cross paths with him just as he found the puppy’s remains. Moments later, he joined the furball.
Later that evening, I found an abandoned auto-repair shop. I decided that this would be a good place to spend the night. Maybe even find some food if they had a vending machine. An hour later, Mira and Marcy stumbled upon the same shop, and therefore me. They seemed a little worse for wear, but were overjoyed to have come across someone they knew. We shared what food we could find and did our best to find some sort of comfort and security within our little shelter. I dared not tell them what I had witnessed earlier in the day. Hell, even I wasn’t so what I had seen, yet it played over and over again in my head.
Blink, and you see a man cradling his beloved pet; blink, and he’s gone in a mist of crimson and a puddle of burgundy. The smell of burning copper flooded my senses, but I did my best to ignore it. I rolled over in my makeshift cot only to find another body next to me: Marcy. She said she was lonely. I said I was too. She asked if I could hold her for the night. I did.
It was a temporary fix for both of our troubles. Mira slept across from us, bundled in her battered sleeping bag, sound asleep. I figured I should try to do the same. I leaned in to wish Marcy a goodnight, but she had passed out. They must have been exhausted beyond reason. A temp fix indeed.
Temp Fix
Three days have passed since I found Marcy and Mira, or should I say they found me? Doesn’t really matter. There’s always safety in numbers, or so we’ve all been told.I haven’t been dreaming, at least not dreams that I can recall. Marcy has been staying next to me when we sleep. I guess having a body next to her helps to calm her down. Mira confided in me that a few years ago, her older sister had an accident and fell into an old abandoned well. She was left there in the darkness for nearly a day with only her head above the water and the endless abyss below her feet. Ever since then, she’s had trouble sleeping alone. Her situation saddened me, but also brought on a wave of relief. I thanked whatever gods there may be left that her trauma was not by the hands of another human being.
For some reason, that little fact made it all better at least for a little bit. A temporary emotional fix. On the morning of the fourth day together, we found ourselves on the outskirts of some desolate metropolis. Cars, trucks, and other vehicles clogged the streets. There were even some planes lodged in the skeletons of hollowed-out skyscrapers. Everywhere, that ominous crystalline ash covered whatever it could, like a blanket of alien moss, and yet all I could think of were the red vines from H.G. Wells’ THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. The parallels were uncanny, yet one was a sheet of delicate dust, almost heavenly in its apocalyptic beauty, while the other was gruesome and sinister beyond imagining. I couldn’t even begin to reason which I would rather be when my time comes, but I guess I can take comfort in the fact that one of those is real and the other is fictional.
The first thing we did was look for some suitable shelter. Mira had spotted a Hilton hotel off in the distance. We figured that’s as good a place as any to find some food and even comfortable beds. We made our way over with very little ceremony.
When we got there, there was no sign that anyone else had been there lately, but I suggested that we should remain on guard, just in case. After voting on a room to stay in, the Presidential Suite, we set out looking for food. We raided the kitchen and were surprised to find a decent amount of items to eat. Having barely eaten anything in over a week, what the Hilton had to offer was a godsend. Maybe there are still some gods looking down upon us, bringing whatever good luck they can muster or afford. Whatever the case though, the trust in them is slowly fading. What good is a god if they can’t fix things with a nod?
Trust Fades
I still don’t know how it happened, let alone why, but happen it still did, and I’m sure if you were to read this without any sort of context or understanding of the circumstances we were going through, you might say to yourself that this was all inevitable. Despite all that, I had no intention of bringing harm to anyone – I simply wanted to help.
Mira, Marcy, and I had been staying at the Hilton for almost a week. Venturing out into town now and again, searching for things to salvage, but never for very long. Most of what we needed, hell, even wanted, was within that empty hotel. It still amazed us that no one else had bothered to camp here or to turn it into some kind of base for survivors. Then again, it was quite possible that no one else had really gotten as far as we had.
It was on the tenth night when everything changed for us. Mira was in the guest room on the opposite side of the Presidential Suite, while Marcy and I shared the queen-sized bed in the main room. I awoke that night to Marcy tossing and turning under the covers. Not really having a nightmare, but chaotic nonetheless. She said she was unable to fall asleep. Anxiety, restlessness, insomnia – it happens to everyone more often than not these days.
Instinctively, I rolled over and hugged her as she pushed herself against my body. A comforting warmth washed over us, and for a brief moment, everything was peaceful. I had begun to drift back to sleep when she rolled around to face me. In doing so, her lips came into contact with mine. We froze in the twilight of the late night early morning. Everything seemed to fade away until we were alone together; only us and this empty, dead world.
I began to pull away, not wanting to make things awkward, slightly ashamed at what had just happened, but she raised her hand to my cheek and brought me back in, this time for a more deliberate and intentional meeting. Before I knew it, both of our clothes were scattered upon the floor and we were in the throes of making love. It wasn’t that we had any strong feelings for one another, even though I found her attractive, circumstances made us closer. We weren’t particularly hungry for sex either or a longing for a release. I think if we had been, this would have happened much sooner. No, this coupling was all about comfort and wanting to belong; about being lonely and lost; about holding another and wanting to be held. When we had finished and exhausted ourselves, we did not go back to sleep.
We stayed up and talked about our lives, or the lives we used to have as we held on to one another, arms in a twisted ballet, stroking and caressing, yet never really letting go, keeping the contact going as if we were all that remained. We talked about the hopes and dreams we used to have before the calamity. We talked about our fears of what has yet to come or what may never come at all. It was during this intimate and sacred time of reveal and revelation that I talked about the man and his puppy, about what I had seen and experienced prior to finding the pair again.
I had been talking for a while, describing the man in details that even I was shocked to have recalled, before I noticed that Marcy had sat up and was as rigid as a board. The color drained from her face and the warmth we had began to fade, like a dying fire in the middle of winter.
“Is everything alright?” I asked cautiously.
“That man,” she mumbled under her breath, “He was…” her voice trailed off in sorrow, in pain, in detachment, like a lonesome rain that never grew heavy, yet never ended and seemed to go on for days and nights and days and nights.
“It’s okay, Marce,” I replied, sitting up myself and placing an arm around her. “You can tell me. Who was that man?” For some reason, I became extremely fearful of losing everything once again. Marcy stood up, yet she never took her eyes off of me. Her nakedness glowed in the morning light as she slowly walked away from the bed and myself. Something had taken a hold of her, as if there was some kind of baptism of fire happening behind me that I was entirely oblivious to. I turned to look out the window only to be greeted by the sunrise; a distant sky with bright fingers of gold, like Jesus trying to crack a smile as His tomb was closed behind Him.
When I turned back around, I found Mira standing next to Marcy. She was still in her nightgown, standing there like mismatched twins, some kind of off-hand recreation of the scene from The Shining. I felt like everything was falling out of place. Rugs being pulled out from under my feet and over my eyes.
“Marcy?” I asked tentatively, my voice cracking like ice upon a frozen lake. “Mira? What’s going on? What’s wrong? What’s happening? Did I do something?” I began to panic, but panicked about what, I couldn’t tell you. They were just staring at me, through me, maybe even past me, far into something and somewhere else altogether.
Slowly they backed away and into the living room then out the front door, which had been left open somehow, before stopping at the safety railing. I wanted to run towards them, to grab them and wake them up. Something, anything — just to bring them back, but I was so afraid, so gripped with an unknown fear and dread, a fear and dream of the unknown, of something I do not know that I do not know.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, viciously, then opened their mouths impossibly wide, like macabre nutcrackers and out came a synchronized scream of television static being transmitted through dozens of amplifiers, all feeding into each other’s feedback; an eternal loop of chaos and noise; cycling cyclones of unrelenting nonsense. I dropped to my knees and covered my ears, but to no avail: the noise pierced through me like a hot metal spear.
Then, just as abruptly as it came, it ended. When I looked up again, the sisters were gone. A section of the railing was missing too. My heart sank at the one and only thought which had come to my mind. Timidly, sickeningly, I stood up and made my way over to where the sisters last stood. I looked down and there I saw them. Twenty-two stories below in misshapen Rorschach splatters of crimson between them. The cruelest butterfly I had ever seen. I wept without restraint right then and there.
I don’t remember crawling back to bed. When had been a really good night transformed into a really bad night a mere twenty-four hours later.
A Really Bad Night
It was like a low growl, that kind of growl a dog makes when it knows there is an intruder, but doesn’t know WHAT the intruder is; a good growl, both threatening yet filled with fear at the same time. It seeped through the walls and carried on through the studs and support beams, slithering along the corners and edges of the room like an invisible snake made of slime.
A torrent of sweat beaded upon my body, soaking my sheets. I may have even pissed myself out of terror, but I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t bother to check. The noise just continued to crawl around the crevices of the room.
I tried closing my eyes and covered my ears, but nothing worked. That immutable grating of ghastly gravel penetrated my senses and impregnated my brain. It was inside my head,
roaming freely through my memories and fantasies, burying itself deep within my chromosomes.
The whole surreal affair was like trying to let go of a dreaded memory
by holding on to the experience which it had brought. Something lost, but always around the corner waiting to be found; a memory hidden in plain sight; a virus infecting everyone without a symptom; a nuclear strike on an atomic level. All of those things don’t mean a thing because I have no fucking clue what I’m talking about. This God damned noise is driving me mad, yet I can’t find the strength to get up and run.
I am tired of running. I’m tired of searching for the “I don’t knows” and “who really knows.” Now I’m starting to look for the “who gives a fucks” because I want this all to end. Just putting it out there, out in the open: please, let the end come soon.
Maybe I just need to have a little faith, but how can I when whatever gods there may be left Mira and Marcy in a bloody mess?
I had intended to at least cover up their bodies, but when I got to the bottom floor, I found a disturbingly beautiful orchestration of crystalline plants, like a bouquet of toxic, yet exquisite flowers, propping up various structures of the alien substance I had been encountering for some time.
I swear, I could see the faces of the sisters within those queer blossoms. Maybe this is the sign that I have truly gone mad, that this is to become my new normal. Whatever the case, I didn’t dare get any closer than I needed to be, and left the sublime, yet terrifying display as a memorial to those lives I had barely known.
Your New Normal
I had a dream about her again. It was long before any of this happened. Well, it was long before anything had happened. We had barely known each other, worked the same job, decided to hang out one night after work, and spent some time together, along with a few other co-workers, but we both knew that we were there for each other’s company. When we all decided to part, she and I took the same train home. She sat next to me, of course. The next thing I knew, she was asleep with her head resting upon my shoulder.
Naturally, I placed my arm around her and let her rest. It had been a really long day, after all. I skipped my stop and continued on to hers. When we got close, I woke her up gently. She looked up at me and smiled. Without a word, she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek…
And that’s when I would wake up. The reality never went like that and we never had our kiss. Parts of me regretted never taking the next step, yet a majority of myself knew that she would never accept me for who I was; who I am. Maybe that’s why I betrayed her trust in the end, along with her friendship, in the way that I always seem to do.
Anyway, it’s just a dream. I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this. Maybe I just needed someone to talk to; needed something to write down in this new normal. It’s been more than ten years since that train ride. Last I heard, she was happily married. Why do dreams torment us so? Why do things happen in the way that they do? Clearly, I don’t know.
Makes me think about destiny and unforeseen consequences: is a hero chosen to succeed or do they succeed because they are chosen? So many answers to so few questions, yet here they all are, and consequences have actions. Unforeseen consequences — what a miserable combination of words and letters. I’d rather be told in detail the way I am to be drawn and quartered than to be made aware that I need to prepare for “unforeseen consequences.”
Maybe the problem all comes down to choice or at least the illusion of it. Whether chosen to take on a great evil or taking down a great evil because you are the chosen one makes no difference — you are a slave to the only god that matters: Entropy.
Try as you may, the light must burn out eventually; life fades away; things fall apart; centers cannot hold.
“Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.”* Not really sure where that came from, probably read it somewhere. What am I even talking about anymore? Nothing makes sense. I keep seeing the ghosts of memories and dreams wherever I go, and I can’t tell the difference between the fabrication or the reality of the matter, so what matter is any of it? Make sense? No? Fuck it — I can’t seem to get myself organized anymore.
I just need to breathe. Just breathe, and accept this new normality, that the world I once knew is no longer there, erased like so many tears in the rain.
*Jeffrey Cranor
Just Breathe
In many ways, 2o2o, this dreadful year, feels very much like Year Zero, another turning age, a pivotal time, just as the previous year zero separated B.C. from A.D., or B.C.E. and C.E. for those non-religious beings who walk among the stars — no matter. Religion doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Not to me, not to them, not to the gods themselves.
This is truly the beginning of the end, and we still cannot make out the consequences of all of our faults, mistakes, and actions. Survivalism is the name of the game now. Before this, we watched our violence with apathetic emotion, watched as our lofty nations crumble quite literally before our eyes; seeing how far we’ve come by seeing how far we have yet to fall; feeling proud in all we have accomplished because that is what the propaganda machine told us; bruised, broken, and bleeding — it didn’t matter because we were a part of a greater whole, but look at us now.
We called ourselves peaceful despite all of the gunfire in our streets. Reality was on the t.v. We didn’t use to feel for ourselves, but that is all gone now. I am trying to see it all now, trying to believe that there is still something more, some new day where blood isn’t caked into the sandy beaches. Shame on us, we were all doomed from the start, and all we ever knew, ever were, was zeroes and ones.
There’s a pounding in my head, it’s almost like gunfire, but in the most irregular fashion. It’s more like raindrops, pounding out chaos into an illusion of order, in a way soothing and calming, but I know it’s not real, not true. I know this because I was there when the whole world went away when everything fell apart. But don’t think we didn’t help, that we didn’t have a hand in it all. We were both passengers and conductors on this track we rode upon.
The crystalline fungus, that eerie glow: that’s the only thing that calms me now. I know it’s deadly, a symbol of my own eventual demise, but at least I know that life will go on in some form. Sure, it’s not my preferred choice of life, but it came from the Universe, so it must be a part of Nature and therefore, a part of the grand cosmic plan, part of those mysterious movements and moments from beyond the veil of all there is to know. If nothing else, those delicate and alien structures are a reminder of our own fragility.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but know this, whoever is reading this right now, that I am right behind you in spirit, or whatever may be left of such a thing. We march forth to the unknown epilogues of our existence together but face it alone.
Right Behind You
The holes are all in their places…
Something else has arisen from the ashes of all we used to know. Either I was hallucinating or there is a new threat, a new alpha-being among us.
It had been so long since I came across another human being that when I stumbled upon a camp of a dozen or so folk, I immediately slapped myself, believing I had completely lost it. They had fortified themselves on the outskirts of a maximum-security prison. I had asked them why they didn’t stay inside there, because to me, that seemed safer than out in the open, but then one of them, Gary, simply mumbled: “it’s cause of those damned Hellwalkers.”
“I beg your pardon?” I asked curiously. Clearly, I didn’t realize we had started giving names to the things out there, but then again, that was one of God’s commandments to Adam: name the creatures of the Earth, but something tells me that we weren’t supposed to name the things that were not of this world. And if they were born and created here, then they are proof that the Creator of all things was truly mad.
“Hellwalkers, humanoid things. They stumble about like zombies with their elongated skeletal arms dragging along the ground; their short, stout legs crushing anything and everything beneath their elephant-like feet; their skin runs pale and translucent blood-red hues, shimmering, shifting, slithering — it crawls over their bones, but the worst thing is the sound they make when they mate,” Gary rambled on in a monotonous and indifferent tone, like a soldier describing war from having participated in one too many for his soul to bear to the unaffected citizens.
“You see, they have no faces,” he continued, “their heads are like the joints between our limbs, charred and blackened underneath and along what would be their jaws, yet bone-white across the front and over their foreheads and skulls: no features or remnants of what they used to be or if they used to be anything, to begin with. They kneel forward and their backs open up, cleaving down the spine like a zipper coming undone, ribs spreading out like a gaping maw of teeth and sinew, and from that unspeakable opening arises a sound so—”
As if on cue, a most frightening screech rippled through the air, like the worst a cat has to offer coupled with the low growling rumble of a threatening bear; the prehistoric hiss of an ancient crocodile accompanied by the savage undertow of a choir formed by the collective cruelties and sufferings of humanity. A song that I wished I could turn off, but couldn’t. I felt my bones shiver and saw that everyone wanted to go into hiding, but no one dared make a sound, no one dared to move.
Gary chuckled a gloomy chuckle.
“That’s why we’re not in the prison,” he said after a few moments. He seemed almost proud of himself, congratulatory in the accomplishment of proving his point and of having made it this far. “They know when they’re being talked about.” The hellish howling continued for several minutes as the group went back to their routines, cooking dinner, cleaning out the old warehouse nearby where they slept. The disconnection between the Hellwalkers’ song and their nightly preparations gave me a nauseating spell of unease, like when I used to see people walk on by or walk over the poor, broken, and starving in the streets as they hurry on over en masse to receive their shiny new device only to be replaced the following year.
Gary handed me a bowl of stew and some hard bread. Soon the howling blended in with the wind and eventually faded away. We all made our introductions while we ate. There’s Julia and Hank, Gary of course, and Todd. Mary, Hanna, and Robert. I feel like I’m forgetting someone, Oh yes, Jason and Lars. I think that’s everyone. We spoke of where we were from, what we did before all of this happened. Eventually, they offered a place for me to stay and to join their group. Of course, I accepted, we are social beings after all, but something still bothered me, something about the Hellwalkers, about the other creatures that have spawned since the calamity; the sounds, the screams, the voices, the noises, the things I have heard was all becoming a static channel of white noise in my memory, and the more I go on, the stranger things become.
I beg my mind to turn this off, pleading with it, but to no avail. All the while, a looming question is held suspended like a swinging pendulum over it all haunts me when I’m awake, yet curses me when I dreamt: are these creatures the result of the virus or are they being born from within us?
Turn This Off Please
The year is almost over, at least I think it is. The collapse of well — everything has made keeping track of the days and nights a minor concern. Yesterday, our little group came across an old farmhouse, abandoned of course. Either that or had been cleared out long ago when the raids were an everyday concern. Now there’s barely anything of worth left to raid. As expected, we didn’t find much: some oil, canned veggies, and clothes. We gathered what we could, but I found something that would change my course forever — a telescope.
It wasn’t the most expensive one in existence, something you gave a child or teen to get their curiosity going in the stars. We made our way back to camp with the items we had looted. I wasn’t the only one excited about the telescope apparently. Gary said that with the collapse of society, the skies would be like they were in the pre-industrial age, a feat that hadn’t been seen in centuries.
We all gathered around the campfire later that night. I’m coming to realize that Gary is a fount of information, mostly useless or pointless things, but interesting nonetheless, as is the case with most people like him. After we ate, Gary was telling me about where the planets would be this time of year, and if we did our calculations properly, we might be able to see a few.
After almost an hour of setting up the telescope and making the proper adjustments, we took the lens cap off and peered through the veil of stars above us. Gary said that the easiest planet to spot in the wintertime was ♃, that silent gas giant and protector of the solar system. Several minutes and additional tinkering went by before the facts-filled man let out a gasp of both awe and wonder.
“You need to see this,” he whispered with unfettered bewilderment. He stepped back from the telescope and I stepped forward. At first, I didn’t know what I was looking at, and then it all came into focus. There, nearly dead-center of the lens lay the object of our quest, like an orange ball suspended in the vast and infinite cosmic sea: ♃. Yet this was not what garnered the gasp from Gary. To the right of the floating orb was another, almost a twin of sorts, but surrounded by the most elegant rings in the solar system: ♄.
“Is that,” I began to ask, but was promptly cut off.
“Yeah, it is. ♄. These two planets haven’t been this close to one another in over 800 years.” I kept my eye on the lens, unable to tear away from what I was witnessing.
I continued to stare in shaken awe as to what I was seeing, trying to comprehend the enormity of the conjunction. Finally, I peeled myself away, wanting to share what had been shared with me to the rest of the group only to find no one there. I turned around and Gary was gone. I quickly looked back at the campfire to find nothing, but darkness and silence. Even the telescope had vanished into thin air.
A strange electrical buzz echoed in my head as I found myself looking up at the sky, expecting to see a vast array of stars only to be met by a blinding darkness. I suddenly grew o so tired and collapsed where I stood.
So Tired
Two familiar voices woke me up, voices I had thought were long gone and dead: Mira and Marcy.
“Hey — wake the fuck up!” I heard one of them shout, but which one I couldn’t tell. My head pounded like a speeding locomotive on its way to derailing off some cliff.
“Are you even listening to me!?” The voices were clear, distinct, recognizable, and yet they spoke in unison as if they had been merged into the same being. Their unique inflections weaved in and out of each other, like rolling waves coming and going with the tide. Their words panned from left to right, then back to the left again, almost as if the sounds were circling me in the same way a predator circles its wounded prey.
—Pray—
My eyes tore open as I sat up drenched in sweat. Nothing but silence surrounded me. That’s not entirely true, a gentle breeze rustled through the dust hills that had begun to form against the nooks and crannies of various structures. Even in its dying throes, Nature doesn’t take long to reclaim its realm.
“Can you believe this guy?” the sisters spoke again, “there’s a whole Universe of discovery awaiting him, but he’d rather sleep or ponder piles of dust. Maybe it hasn’t dawned on him yet that there’s a reason he’s survived while others have not.”
“What are you talking about?” I mumbled to the emptiness around me.
“Maybe we were wrong, maybe he needs it to be spelled out for him; have his hand held.” I sprang to my feet and spun around, trying to find the source of the voices, but was only greeted by the hollow breathing of a hollow world.
“O — I can see it now, the gears are slowly turning,” they continued to mock me, or was I mocking myself? Had I finally gone mad? “What’s that quote again? ‘the madman is not the person who has lost all reason, but the person who has lost everything but reason.’ Is that how it went? Not that it matters. Logic and Reason are their own form of madness, trying to put structure to chaos and entropy.”
“What do you want from me!?” I burst out in anger and frustration, not caring who or what heard me.
“Want? What we want is for you to stop looking and to start seeing.” My anger continued to grow, I felt like I could tear a tree right out of the ground and throw it all the way to the sun.
—⸻—
—⸻—
—⸻—
—⸻—
—⸻—
The sun…
My head shot up to find that endless black sky once more, only this time there was a bright white ring of fiery light, not unlike the totality of an eclipse, burning like a judgeful eye. Beneath it flowed a solitary waterfall, a cascading river of luminescence as if this alien sun was leaking, pouring, emptying itself of all its secrets upon the ground below.
“Yes, yes — I think he’s getting it now,” the sisters whispered in restrained anticipation, “I think he’s figured it out.”
I could see where the shaft of liquid light hit the Earth and could feel it beckon to me, beckoning me to this new, almost dawn-like sensation upon the horizon of possibility. Without another thought, I made my way towards the light, always towards the light.
Almost Dawn
The light, it beckons to me like a beacon, like a moth drawn to a flame or a fish to a lure, I move in closer. I barely sleep now and when I am awake, all I can see is that light, shimmering, ascending, descending, leading me along a path I have always been on since before the global pandemic hit.
I must admit though, it still feels like only yesterday that all was right in this world, or as right as the world I had lived in had been, and even less time since I found myself staring at a grandfather clock in some country manor before we were forced out; fewer moments still since I found the sisters, and Marcy and I had found one another, if only for a night. But in truth, it was barely an evening and everything else was so far into the past that I cannot recall them with accuracy. All I can see is that ring of white light, that accused eclipse.
Even when I sleep, I no longer dream, save for that eldritch circle, hovering above me, staying before me, never escaping my sight. It’s the moment when I lose consciousness that I savor the most, but those, like sleep itself, have become the rarest and most precious commodities.
“There’s not much time left,” I hear the twisted voices of the sisters say from time to time. I’ve given up on trying to find where they were and given in to the idea that they’re in my head, but whether or not they’re a figment of my imagination I cannot determine.
Finally, I crossed over the last ridge after what felt like a year-long trek across this barren wasteland that I used to call home. Planted deep within some unnamed valley and beneath the endless ebon, sky lay my destination — my destiny. Spiraled across the nape of the valley and below the leaking light from the alien sun, puddled in a luminescent lake, like molten white steel. It was almost as blinding as the darkness that had expelled it and yet curiously it did not lighten up the surrounding area as one might expect it to. Instead, a vast field of those crystalline coral flower formations crept along the valley floor like a fungus, carpeting anything and everything that got in its way.
“Go,” the sisters urged softly, “you will find your salvation there.”
“What if I don’t want to be saved?” I asked to nothing in particular and heard nothing in return. It was then that I realized that there was no sound at all in this strange area, not even from my own breathing or frantically beating heart. Within this mysterious valley, beneath this monstrous sky, I felt like I was finally home.
Home — what a strange word I found on the tip of my tongue, so unknown, so foreign, so alien to everything I have come to know up until this very moment: home. Home is a fantasy; home is a dream; home is an escape; home is an endless pining for the fictitious unreality that can and never be — this home, this place, this salvation — this cannot be real because home no longer exists!
It struck me then, after the words had left my lips, that I had been speaking aloud. My voice echoed throughout the ominous valley and eldritch sky. A terrifying slow pulse, subtle, yet fierce emanated from the empty sky above, the panting of an endlessly old predator, waiting, eternally patient, for its prey to come.
“Home,” the sisters whispered, “come home with us. All will be well for all is well when you are home.”
“Stop it,” I bellowed, “there’s no such this as home anymore! Home is gone; home is dead; home is lost!”
“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place —”
“Enough!” I yelled with every ounce of energy I had left in me, hoping, praying that it would be enough, and for a brief eternity, all I heard was the cosmic breathing of the void. I stood on the edge of the world, wanting nothing more than to lay down forever, but this was not going to happen, not in my wildest dreams.
A collective of voices, like a swarm of bees, erupted all around me, all shouting, yelling, screaming the same blasted word: H-O-M-E! I tried to cover my ears from the sonic violation my mind was enduring but to no avail. Even placing my head between my knees did no good. Tears had begun to well at the corners of my eyes, but something told me then that I should open them. A warm, familiar feeling; a comforting feeling both welcomed and needed; a feeling of being —
“Home”
“HOME”
“home”
“Home”
“HOME”
“Home…” I could barely get the word out, and yet out it came: “home.” Barely a whisper, barely a murmur, barely a crack in my voice. I opened my eyes as a numb buzzing spun around my head, panning from left, right, left to right; left then right, over and over again, constantly building speed, pulsing like a quasar, no — that’s not right. Pulsing like a pulsar. Rapidly revolving around its axis, which just so happened to be my head.
My eyes continued to rise up from the sodden ground as the electric static noise approached a climactic crescendo before ceasing altogether, falling silent to the sight before me.
Seven tall, lanky figures stood before me, covered in shadows, yet flickered like television sets that had no signals to receive. They buzzed, crackled, and glitched in haywire fashion. Three digits formed each foot: two facing forward, one facing back; four fingers at the ends of their hands. Their faces were non-existent. All I saw was the empty, cold, eternal void of the outer edges of the cosmos, peering deep beyond the veil of what we claimed to be our reality; this place that they called home; this place they wished to take me; this place I feared so dreadfully, yet welcomed with unfettered glee; this place that felt like home.
And to think, it all started with a virus of unknown origin. Perhaps this is what was meant by preparing for unforeseen consequences.
FIN
A Place for Stories 