The Void

by Kivak, Albert

  “Yeah!” a chorus of parents shouted. Their children watched with wide eyes.

  “Okay, then, what should we do?” Valerie asked the masses.

  And so the meeting continued, unbeknownst to the force standing outside. Red Cross set up perimeters granting food and water to the survivors. On the playground, tents were pitched up and barbeque pits were roiling. Inside, a clatter of noise spread throughout the hall as the frightened parents and children of Maple Street tried to make sense of their plight.

  VI

  At purple dusk, Clifton walked over to the sinkhole and peered down. A blackness to shame all nights, reached out for him. Most of the residents had been evacuated except for a few stragglers. The mayhem which had ensued had at last been contained. An hour earlier, he had visited one of the local churches in the district to get his mind off the carnage that took his men.

  He sat in the pews, praying to the God whom he had abandoned years prior, only to be sitting there yet again. He prayed to the almighty that he’d come out of this alive. He didn’t want to serve the country anymore; his heart was not in it because it meant terrorizing his fellow companions and snooping on his citizens.

  When he first got the job, he was a proud member of the secret service. That all fell to the wayside as he realized he had to commit to shady transactions and deal in order to reach his goals—to gain what the higher up wanted of him, even if it meant planting evidence.

  He had a conscience; he was different. He wasn’t the same as his partner or fellow agents. Therefore, he was here, hoping for a safe passage back home to his family. Both his wife and children were extradited and under the hawk-like eyes of the US government. After committing treason by leaking sensitive information of the NSA and the CIA works, James Clifton ultimately was allowed a deal to create a justification of the disarmament of its citizens.

  The first order was to down the birdie in a way to make it look like friendly fire. After the helicopter crashed into Embry’s home, Clifton ordered the feds to find any form of weaponry to make a case against Embry. None could be found, except the box compartment where a semi-automatic had gone missing.

  He felt pity for his boy, Morgan, or whatever the hell his name was. He didn’t like the loss of innocent lives. But he knew where he worked (within the shadowy confines of the underworld) the ends justified the means.

  He issued Embry and the boy to head to the temporary shelters, the one housed at the school. They agreed and told him to give them more time to pack up their belongings. Since the copter had made an unwarranted landing into his home, Embry deserved that chance. With or without the owner of the house, the mission had been successful. The stratagems were moving according to plan.

  “Go ahead,” Clifton said. “Come morning, the armed forces will escort you to a safe haven.”

  “Thanks,” Embry had grunted, placing a hand on Morgan’s shoulder, and turned to his boy. “Did you find your mother?” He asked, cigarette as always dangling from his lip.

  “Mommy doesn’t answer,” Morgan replied as he was led back to the house.

  Clifton watched them go. Now, here he was at the stroke of midnight, his back to Embry’s damaged home. He surveyed the ravaged street, which rather than suburban America resembled one of the war torn shit holes of the world. Smoke still hung in the air, leaving a hazy mist which burned the throat. Immense cranes had been ordered in, each fitted with floodlights which illuminated the aftermath of the massacre in stark clarity. Not the hole though. Even the high powered beams couldn’t penetrate that darkness. Curious, he walked over to the edge of the sinkhole.

  A wind buffeted his dark suit and black tie. It fluttered, kicked up, and wrapped around his neck like a scarf. The trees lining the sidewalks appeared to tilt at an odd angle as if leaning to touch him.

  He looked around to ensure the street was empty, then he pulled his zipper down, spread his legs wide open, and urinated. His yellow piss arced out and dribbled down the deep, dark chasm. From far off, he heard a whimpering. His head snapped up as he whirled around to pinpoint the sound. He saw nothing. A rankle of fear emanated from his pores as he whisked up his boxers, looped his belt tighter, and deftly walked away. His polished boots clicked on the asphalt. As he made his way to the mobile command unit, he heard the faint sounds of a little girl weeping.

  VII

  Meredith stepped in view of the hole. She observed the man in charge retreat to his quarters. For the past few hours she had been washing her sheets and sofa cushion at the laundromat. Once she packed her clean sheets back in the hamper, she pushed the handcart down the block, whistling a mournful tune.

  As soon as she entered her house, she remade her sofa, and pulled the cut-out carpet off the floor. Anything with blood had to go. She placed the used fabric and black garbage bags into the pushcart and wheeled it down to the sinkhole.

  She pushed the handcart toward the cliff, and then let go. It dropped down the inky void, hurtling through the abyss, and all the evidence went with it.

  chapter thirteen

  The hole swallowed it all up. The bag plunged downward. The momentum of the gravity caused the plastic to rip. Inside a headless torso, severed arms, limbs, legs, feet, and hand tumbled into the earth, down the natural chute.

  They continued to fall—the body parts of Hanna—plummeting down the sinkhole. The hole seemed to widen and grow in length, broadening the circumference.

  Darkness, then sudden blinding light as the torso fell into a chamber of blackened walls and craggy hills of soot. These were magma rocks which had cooled and became coals. Yards and yards of mountainous coals appeared out of the earth-like ship yard. The torso propelled downward, down past the vast coal system, and into another hole beneath the valleys and gorge, down the gullet of mother earth.

  As it fell, the torso seemed to distend, swelling outwards. Hanna’s torso cracked and huge appendages chattered out of the ribs. A head began to grow. Arms and legs began to reattach themselves. And, in the dark cosmos, its eyes opened.

  II

  Meredith approached the shattered remains of Embry’s house. She saw two figures picking through the rubble and wiped her sweaty palms on the front of her dress. Morgan saw her and ran to meet her in the street, throwing his arms around her neck as she crouched to meet him Embry followed, leaning on the charred remains of his doorframe and watching mother and son reunite. “Your son wanted you. He can remember numbers very well.”

  “He’s good at that,” Meredith said, kissing Morgan on his forehead. “Thank you.”

  “It’s no problem.”

  “I’m sorry about your house.”

  “It’s just stuff. In the grand scheme of things, it could have been a lot worse. Id invite you in for coffee, but I don’t have a kitchen anymore.” Embry said, scratching his five day stubble.”

  She managed a half smile, something which after everything that had happened she thought she would never do again. Instead, she sat on the porch steps, brushing away wood and glass. Embry sat beside her.

  “So, do I just call you Morgan’s mom, or do you have a name?”

  She smiled again, and felt a pang of attraction which was unexpected and unwarranted under the circumstances.

  “Meredith,” she said, watching Morgan as he looked at the police cars and fire engines parked in the remains of the street from the lower step between her legs.

  “I’m Brian.”

  “Yes, I met your wife.”

  Morgan spoke up, interrupting the adult’s conversation. “Mom, you smell funny.”

  “What do I smell like, Honey?”

  “Like bleach.”

  “Yeah, I bleached my hair, kiddo,” she said, smiling ruefully. She patted his head.

  “I don’t suppose you saw my wife today did you? With everything that happened, I lost track of her and can’t seem to get her on the phone.”

  Try the hole

  She almost said it, and had to swallow either a cackle or scream. She wasn’t sure which
. Instead she stared at the gaping maw where she had tossed the remains of Embry’s wife.

  “I saw her earlier, out in the street.” Meredith said quietly. “She was getting out of town. I think I saw her getting loaded onto one of the evacuation busses.”

  “She wouldn’t do that not without telling me. It’s not in her nature.”

  “A lot of what’s happened today isn’t natural,” she fired back.

  “Still, she wouldn’t just go.”

  “She seemed pretty keen to get out of here when I last saw her.”

  And to kill me. Did I mention that part?

  “Don’t be surprised if you don’t see her for a while,” she mumbled.

  Embry looked at her, brow furrowed. He was about to ask her to elaborate when Morgan cut in.

  “No, she didn’t leave,” Morgan said, his voice more strained and serious than any child’s should be. “Hanna’s here.”

  “Where?” Embry and Meredith said at the same time.

  “I sense her.”

  “Where?”

  Morgan pointed behind them, into the shattered remains of Embry’s living room.

  As all three looked on, they heard it. A strange scratching noise coming from the fireplace. Something was coming down the chimney, and it sure as hell wasn’t Santa Claus.

  “What is that?” Embry muttered as he walked into the house and without thinking grabbed the closest thing to him that he could use as a weapon, an iron poker which had somehow remained in place against the brick chimney side wall despite the destruction.

  “Stay back, Morgan,” Meredith whispered.

  Morgan inched toward his mother as Embry neared the fireplace. He peered into the hearth, tilting his head toward the inside of the chimney. The brick walls were a narrow column that climbed higher, covered in soot, blackened like a child’s foot playing outside. Except, there was a foot.

  And a shin, and knee, an elbow, a leg sutured wrong—something that was the horrific vision of a Dali painting where acute angles and oblique laterals all came together to form a beastly creature. It was human in its textural quality, but not human. Hanna’s face peered out toward them and blinked rapidly. It had eight eyes, as she crawled out onto the chestnut floor planks, her appendages moved unilaterally, each joint bending around her like devils’ wings.

  Embry lurched back as it dropped into the fireplace, almost falling over a shattered beam which lay across his living room. Meredith stared open mouthed, unable to comprehend the impossibility of what she was looking at. Morgan just watched. He seemed completely unafraid.

  Hanna’s face puffed up. Her eyes glowed golden yellow. They dripped down her torn cheeks, exposing tendons and muscles. It tried to speak, but her lips were flapping grotesquely like a hunk of kite. He could see her teeth through her open gash. Her mandible gleamed through. Without thinking, Embry raised his gun. He couldn’t help himself; all those years of wanting to kill his wife (in a figurative sense), here he was actually aiming his pistol at her head.

  “Jesus Christ,” Meredith whispered. Her legs wobbled and she feared she might faint, yet she stood her ground. “Shoot it. Shoot the damn thing. It’s not your wife!”

  Embry pulled back and raised the semi-automatic. It shook in his hand as he felt the cold steel brush up against his finger.

  Honeeyyy, it moaned, its head cocked. Whyy are youu doing thiisss?

  “Shoot it!” Meredith screamed.

  Heelllpppp meeeeee…

  Both eyeballs exploded outward, streaming pink veins and ruptured sclera. They spattered onto Embry’s clothes, face, and skin.

  Sheee killleed meeeeee…. sheeeeeee

  “What the fuck—what the fuck is this!” he shouted, his voice a few octaves higher than normal. He pulled the trigger over and over again. No recoil.No sound of gunshots ricocheting in the darkened living room space. Then a boy’s voice calling out in the moody atmosphere.

  “You’re feeding it. Stop it, all of you!”

  Meredith wrestled the gun out of Embry’s hand and pumped the trigger to no ill effect. It was stuck. The fire mechanism had jammed. Hanna grew taller, her skinny mangled legs somehow allowing her to glide across the floor as her joints cackled and popped.

  “Look at me!” Morgan called out, summoning their attention. “None of that is going to work!”

  Meredith’s legs stiffened. She stood frozen as the creature towered over her, almost reaching the ceiling that divided the second floor, drawing closer with its knobby legs. It extended a finger toward her, and she saw broken nails painted red. It brushed Meredith’s face, lightly.

  Abrupt visions of her husband flashed sporadically behind her eyelids. Their wedding night, their first fight over their child, their custody battles, their fear of losing their house, the one-time Meredith lost her footing on a hiking trail and nearly fell off a cliff until her husband snatched her from death’s grip, pulling her back in the nick of time. She had thought their fights would subside, but they only grew worse. The last death knell that tore them apart was Gus, the death of Hanna’s child.

  “I’m sorry,” Meredith mumbled to the being that wasn’t human. “I’m sorry,” her knees gave out.

  “Mom!” Morgan yelled. “Mom, it can’t hurt you! Stop being afraid.”

  And just like that, she accepted. She accepted who she was as an individual, someone who was truly unmerciful to the circumstances around her, and wanted only what she desired without even listening to anyone else’s input. Her fears died down.

  It turned its attention on Morgan. “Do you think you can kill me, little one?” it panted.

  To the adult’s ears, it sounded like a shutter of clicks and clacks. Morgan, however heard it loud and clear.

  “Think good thoughts. Think happy thoughts,” Morgan exclaimed one last time. “. It can’t touch you if you don’t believe.”

  Embry glanced at Morgan, then back at the thing that used to be his wife. He didn’t cower, nor did he shy away. Instead he controlled his breathing and took a step towards it.

  “I don’t believe in you. You can’t hurt us.” He said, looking the ghastly thing in the face. “You won’t hurt us. You can’t hurt us.”

  The four faced beast turn her head and shrieked. She grew smaller and smaller until she turned into a spider.

  III

  A tweet spiraled into a conflagration. The residents of the city, sent off a viral storm of electronic messages. One of them was a flash mob, coming together as one cohesive unit to vandalize and steal the small mom and pop stores lining the Maple district.

  It started with a simple message of downing the new world order.

  Bro, I bet that sinkhole was started by the government.

  --Yea, they’re always trying to steal from us.

  You know, we don’t always have to sit by and watch things turn to shit. Just recently, the energy company decided to bill my parents more—who have cancer, by the way—just because a few other people wanted to go solar and help the environment.

  The place is practically abandoned.

  What place are you talking about?

  They came in hordes. Teenage boys and girls rushed through the sections, snapping up everything as they went, and charged the register stand and the Bangladesh cashier working behind it.

  Out in Maples. The government forced all of them in trucks and sent them away to some camp like refugees. All because of a hole.

  What do you expect? A city in Chicago shut down an entire area for one person.

  So does that mean the cops won’t do anything now since they don’t have a population to control?

  Best time to hit these neighborhoods. I heard they weren’t allowing the people to go back to their houses. We can get free shit.

  But they’re not rich folks.

  It’s free stuff.

  They stole everything and anything they could get their hands on. Candy bars, beer, wine, hard liquor, packs of smokes, magazines, condoms. Nothing was left untouched. They surged ahead,
ransacking the cash drawer and beating the employee over the head with pipes and baseball bats.

  The Bangladesh man’s head cracked open like an egg shell, and blood splattered on the walls, as he slumped to the ground. Two hundred, three hundred, a thousand teens crowded into the store and then began to mill out onto the intersection of Maple and Hughes.

  “Look at that shit,” a teenage boy said. They snapped photos of the sinkhole with their smart-phones. The Molotov cocktails, they’d prepared, burned in their hands.

  “This is a restricted area,” Clifton ordered. “You cannot be here.” He received orders to shoot. Houses doors were burned down. The flash mob entered the different buildings, taking as much possible as they could. Orders were given to subdue the demonstration. The National Guard fired off bean bags, round after round. Pepper spray and canisters of tear gas grenades exploded, setting off white smoke.

  Yet there seemed to be no end in the human forms of retaliation. Their lithe bodies came at them, throwing homemade bombs. One soldier aimed at the flock of teenagers. He shot round after round of rubber bullets to disperse the masses. A rubber bullet penetrated a girl’s right eye socket, and she crumbled to the asphalt. Not many supervising adults were in the vicinity, but her father was, and he ran to her, screaming and crying. He stooped down and cradled her head—her limp head.

  Finally, they were using real bullets.

  Then, the tanks rolled in.

  The teenagers were ripping the body parts of the soldier and tossing them into the hole. They crowded around him like bees in a beehive. Heads piled up like a monument. The heads of dead soldiers and the heads of dead students were top-heavy. The death count for the young Americans grew exponentially as the National Guard cut through them with their sub machine-guns and machine-guns mounted on the tanks.