by Robert Lyons
That bastard Mori … Even in his death, he set up a trap!
“My, my, Renga, this really is a disaster,” a voice chided. “Are you really this naïve? Letting some human fool us Haarä? Your mother would be displeased— if she was alive to see this.”
Just behind Renga’s massive frame, a smaller Chroma appeared. Their facial features looked so similar; it was almost impossible to tell them apart, save for the height difference.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Rignor!” Renga roared, turning to address the rest of the Chroma who were still sane. “Those undisciplined dogs have gone berserk! Recover the doctor’s body! It cannot get devoured!”
7.
Standing outside of the backstage lounging room, Zayde brooded by himself.
After Joseph departed, the other artists began to prod and poke at him, trying to get him to spill the beans on what projects were in the works. To Zayde’s surprise, even these minor celebrities listened to and enjoyed the material he produced.
Granted, he would never show them the song being working on for the past two years, but Zayde was becoming overwhelmed with their unceasing curiosity. The thought that they would try to steal what he was working on and pass it off as their own never crossed his mind, but he was afraid if he didn’t break away from the group, he would eventually cave in and show them a sample saved on his phone.
At the very least, the good music thumping the air around him from the concert was helping Zayde feel less miserable. His social battery was already running on low when he arrived at the venue and there was no chance for him to recharge it since he wasn’t in control of the instruments.
Maybe I can leave now. I did show some face, so Sydney can’t be pissed if I bail.
The phone in his pocket vibrated, signaling an incoming text. Checking the sender of the message, Zayde didn’t even bother to read the note before slipping the phone back into his pocket. An overwhelming sense of guilt nearly made him bring his hand up to his mouth. Zayde’s stomach was tied up in tight knots.
Dammit! Why do you keep talking to a horrible person like me, Kendra?
“What are you doing out here by yourself?” Sydney’s voice suddenly speaking behind the young musician nearly made him jump out of his skin. She closed the door, joining Zayde in the hallway. “Don’t tell me … you’re already burned out?”
Awkwardly scratching the back of his head, Zayde shrugged his shoulders. “I just needed some fresh air.”
“Babe, if you don’t get out of that shell, you’ll never be more than some small timer. Listen, you need to go through some uncomfortable spots of growth if you want to get far. I know that scares you,” Sydney sighed. “Trust me, I remember all the info-dump you gave me when you decided to tell me about everything you gave up on in your life. Does that make you a quitter? Probably, but don’t let that be the case with music.”
Zayde’s posture could only be described as “tense.”
“I want the best for you, so please don’t fight me the whole way. You have some crazy raw talent at your disposal, Zayde. You need some direction, that’s all. I’ve been in this business for a while. Nothing is guaranteed, but if you have other people vouching for you because you got buddy-buddy with them, then you have good chances of going big. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Of course that’s what I want, but they were getting under my skin. Do they have to keep pushing me about my projects?”
“Chill out, Zayde! They were just curious about your future work, that’s all. Why don’t you grow a thicker skin and come back inside? You moping out here isn’t making you look good. Please remember that your actions also reflect on me, as well.”
“All right, all right. The last thing I want is for them to talk shit about you. Sorry, Sydney.” Zayde leaned his head back, taking a deep breath. “Promise you’ll fend them off when they get too annoying?”
“I think you are more than capable of doing that yourself, Zayde.” Sydney winked, leaning in to plant a kiss on his lips.
His twitching hands settled on her hips, pulling her closer to him. Their relationship could be considered as a fairytale; at least that’s what it was from Zayde’s perspective. Most people questioned what Sydney what she was doing with a “lower league” kind of guy. Their cynical comments never bothered him much; Zayde took pride in the fact that he was surrounded with naysayers and jealousy.
One of the musicians suddenly opened the door. The light from the lounge room was casted on them. The couple froze up.
“Don’t mind me, lovebirds. Security just said that a car jumped the curb rammed into one of the ticket booths outside! Caught on fire and everything!” the musician said in an inappropriately excited voice, leaving them behind in the hallway.
A couple of moments of silence later, the pair resumed.
“I love you, Zayde.” Sydney was less than an inch away from her boyfriend.
He, in turn, hesitated.
Shit…
“Zayde … I said, ‘I love you.’” Sydney’s tone slipped from sweet to tense.
“I-I love you, too.”
Oh, the cringe! Both of them thought at the same time.
Zayde wanted to slap his own head, but his hands were preoccupied. No matter how much of a performer he was, it didn’t discount the fact that Zayde was still a horrific liar at the end of the day.
“Sorry. I know we talked about this. The whole ‘don’t say it if you don’t mean it’ conversation. Honestly though, we’ve done so many things, I figured you’d be able to say it by now.” Sydney pulled back, looking away.
Oh, this is getting really awkward. Zayde tensed up.
“Listen, Sydney … I just didn’t want to lie to you. I only want to say it when I really mean it! Wouldn’t that mean more—?”
The music coming from the stage was cut out. Both Sydney and Zayde turned their heads to look down the hallway that led to the platform where the musicians were playing.
“They stopped the show because of the car accident!” Sydney’s voice was beyond agitated as she disengaged herself from the loose hug that she was held in. “Someone must have died!”
Oh no…
Zayde felt a skin-crawling sensation rush through him. His spine stiffened as he felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. The dull pain that momentarily covered his body converged, focusing into a single point of pressure. At the moment, the spot was located over his chest.
Something is about to go very wrong!
The chorus of screams from hundreds of people soon filled the silence left by the interrupted performing band. The hairs on the back of Zayde’s neck began to stand on end. Heart beating out of rhythm and adrenaline slamming into his blood vessels, Zayde’s body was getting ready to fight for his life without even knowing the situation.
There’s something here … something evil.
“Sydney, we need to leave now! Something’s coming!”
“Zayde? What’s going on?”
An object slammed against the wall at the end of the hallway. Within a second, a humanoid raced into couple’s line of sight. The entity slammed his head into the object with an open mouth, momentarily revealing the massive fangs.
With eyes opened wide, Zayde suddenly recognized the object thrown into the wall was a human body. It was the remains of the musician who had decided to go investigate the car crash. The creature feasting on the corpse was also recognizable.
“Oh my God!” Sydney’s body began to quiver as her voice cracked.
Reaching out and snatching a hold of Sydney’s hand, Zayde turned back on his heel, pulling her weight behind him. He had seen enough stories in the news and footage scattered across the Internet to know what that beast was. As Zayde turned away from the newfound threat, the pressure that threatened to crush his chest suddenly transferred, relocating to his back. The compression point was pointing back to the monster, relative to Zayde’s position.
Why the hell is a Chroma here?!
“AHH!” Sydne
y’s blood-freezing scream met Zayde’s ears as her wrist was violently ripped from his grip. Whirling around, Zayde saw that the Chroma had somehow covered a distance of over seventy feet in a blink of an eye. The red-colored eye gleamed, glowing in the dimly lit corridor like a flame from hell itself.
“Sydney!” Zayde screamed, about to lunge forward. The young woman who he had met at a party many months ago and had been seeing up to this point was now on the ground.
His fist tightened as he began to charge the monster.
Zayde gained some sort of strength from seemingly one day to the next, but this situation was way above his abilities. He couldn’t understand how he had become this way, but going up against this enemy was way out of Zayde’s league.
Gritting his teeth, Zayde took a step forward and raised his hand over his head, readying to bring down his fist on the assailant. This is not about me being too weak! This is about me being a coward! Fuck being a coward!
The Chroma’s head shot up without warning, the glowing eye locking onto Zayde with a leer that brought the young man’s entire body to a grinding halt.
Why can’t I move?!
Without breaking eye contact with the young man, the Chroma lifted Sydney’s struggling body up toward his gaping jaw. The razor-sharp, shark-like teeth were coated in bloodied saliva.
“Zayde! Zayde!” Sydney screamed as she tried to fight for her life. Nevertheless, all of her thrashing amounted to absolutely nothing. The Chroma’s strength was never going to be overcome by a human.
Sydney! Zayde screamed in his mind, since his jaw didn’t respond to his commands to move it.
Blood sprayed all the way up to his unblinking eyes. There was nothing Zayde could do but stare as the Chroma’s teeth sliced right through Sydney’s soft neck and shoulder. She continued to scream, taking shallow breaths to fuel her extended shouts of agony. All of this violence only seemed to encourage the Chroma to chew into her flesh with more vigor.
Move! Dammit! Fucking MOVE!
The Chroma suddenly stopped feasting on Sydney, dropping her from his hold and slowly standing up. Sydney convulsed on the ground, choking on her own blood. Her eyes rolled up to the back of her head as the tremors in her body began to subside. Zayde had never seen this much opened-up flesh in his life and the sight of it was giving him nausea, but he lacked the ability to eject the contents of his gut.
“You … different…” The Chroma’s voice was guttural, laden with a strange pronunciation of the vowels and consonants. “You … have power.”
They can speak our language?! The horrid realization hit Zayde.
The red eye glowed brighter, reaching a degree of intensity that Zayde’s retina was about to be burned out of his eye socket. The center of his vision turned black, spreading across the rest of the pupil until he could no longer see anything. His body experienced the sensation of being lifted off the ground.
What’s going on?!
Zayde found himself floating in darkness, with no ability to discern direction. Spending what felt like an eternity in that space, he began to wonder if he had died.
A wave of relief rushed over him when he caught a hold of a sound. That newfound comfort was short lived as the sound became gradually louder and more recognizable. It was the sound of someone’s nails scraping a pane of glass.
That was when Zayde saw a snapshot of a delicate hand scoring what seemed to be a window, leaving deep grooves in the surface. A glowing cyan overlay of transparent talons surrounded the fingers momentarily.
Images of violence, war, and death were projected to Zayde like a presentation. In the midst of all the severed limbs and people choking on their own blood, he saw creatures, peculiar and strange. In their own way, they resembled humans, but they were more akin to what Zayde figured a demon would look like.
The gory movie reel ended abruptly as Zayde’s viewing party was stopped at an image of one of those demon-like humanoids feasting on the body of a human.
His foot shot forward as he regained the ability to move. Zayde found himself a step closer inside of the spectacle; it was no longer an image. He had stepped into the world of horror and violence.
The fire in the pit at the far side of the room was the only source of light. Situated in front of him was the demon that possessed a white left eye and a golden right eye. The humanoid monster’s maniacal glare was filled with delight. Upon spotting that creature, Zayde’s entire body began to violently shake. There was a building pressure that threatened to crush his chest and skull just by being near the beast.
“What is this?!” Zayde’s voice echoed in the room as if he were in a cave.
Without warning, the woman on the ground began to shriek.
Jumping back from the sudden outburst, Zayde’s heart rate accelerated as sweat poured down his body. The beast in front of him came alive, tearing more pieces of flesh to feed the murderous hunger.
The woman continued to wail as the monster chomped deeper into her neck and shoulder. When he ripped out a sufficient amount of gore, the monster slammed the woman against the floor, pinning her. The beastly humanoid let out a small chuckle as excess blood dripped out of his mouth.
“Humans do taste better when they struggle,” the monster growled as he continued to gorge. “That feeling of helplessness tenderizes the meat.”
The woman’s screams were cut short after a deep pop, originating from her spinal cord, echoed throughout the room. The twitching of her limbs stopped, as she was rendered motionless. Zayde could do nothing but was watch as the unsightly beast devoured the human victim.
The stench of blood filled his nose.
Stop this! Stop it! Zayde repeated over and over in his head.
“Oh?” the monster announced, removing his face from the mincemeat that used to be the woman’s neck. “There is no stopping this…”
The monster loosened his grip on the woman he had partially devoured; her body hit the floor with a soft thud.
“There was never a way to stop this. This is all because of you…” The monster turned toward Zayde. The pale-white skin highly contrasted against the jet-black hair that covered most of the face. The jagged teeth were stained dark red from the recent “meal.”
“You’re the last piece … the catalyst to starting the chaos. Your existence has triggered the war, but your presence is no longer needed.” The monster’s sickly mouth twisted into an evil grin. The beast reached his gnarled white hand down toward the young man, grasping for his throat. It was then that Zayde realized that given his current height, he was far closer to the ground.
Am I … very young? Is this a memory?
Stuck in place again, Zayde could do nothing as he watched the clawed hand close in. He shut his eyes; the only remaining means of escaping this fate was to disconnect himself from it. However, the hand that was coming to choke the life out of Zayde never came.
He cautiously opened one eye.
What…?
Zayde could feel his eyelids blinking, but the darkness was all around him once again, essentially equating to blindness. Noise battered his ears. It was a deep, resonating sound that shook the foundation of his soul.
Mind flooded with a series of still images of the room, Zayde struggled to gather what was happening next. He deduced that the monsters’ hand successfully grabbed his throat. The last group of freeze frames was the blurry flash of his arms coming up to grapple the monster’s hands. That’s when Zayde saw the ribbons of light, seemingly sprouting out from his arms and flicking back and forth like enraged serpents.
Static noise soon took over, drowning out the previous sound as the universe around him suddenly shifted to a bright, white dimension.
The barrage of noise stopped. Soft music played.
There was something about the harmonious piece that yielded a feeling of peace over Zayde’s soul. The tranquility brought on by the song was a sensation that he had been seeking for months.
It was soothing, and despite his expertise in musi
c production, he could not identify a single one of the instruments that were contributing their part to give the rich tones of the harmonious sound. Soul battered from sorrow and agony, Zayde was elevated with the song. Weightlessness replaced his anxiety.
This is touching my soul…
His eyes widened with the realization.
Wait—I know this! I know this song!
Zayde blinked to find himself in the room again. Located beside the mutilated woman on the ground was the monster that advanced toward him previously. The dismembered body of the golden-eyed monster was discarded all over the ground.
A female voice spoke up.
It wasn’t originating from the external world. This was coming from somewhere inside of Zayde. Unlike all of the elements that had assaulted him so far—there was something about the voice that gave the young man a sense of security.
Turning on his heel without uttering a word, Zayde left the corpses behind. Just ahead of him was a door hidden in the darkness. The only reason he knew it was there was because of the light bleeding through the small spaces between the door and the frame it was bolted to. Zayde reached out, pushing the door open with some effort. The light flooded in as the door swung out, leading out to the unknown.
Warmth blanketed him. His young body gladly accepted the comforting sensation. The female voice whispered in Zayde’s ear; he couldn’t discern what she said. The white light was ripped away from him in the blink of an eye.
Zayde was plunged back into reality, waking up to the sound of wet chewing.
An agonizing pain was running rampant in every muscle fiber of his body as he slowly pulled himself off the ground. Evidently, when the Chroma stared at him and somehow triggered him to go into a trip into the depths of his own mind, Zayde’s muscles loosened.
The Chroma from before was seated on the ground about ten feet away from where Zayde was lying on the vinyl flooring of the hallway. Underneath the monster’s body was a pool of dark-red blood, slowly flowing away from whatever was right in front of the humanoid.
Finally pushing himself up to one knee, Zayde struggled to gain control of his aching body. The wet crunching that had stirred him suddenly ceased.