by Quil Carter
This had happened again, just last night.
The little boy was with his sick papa.
“But who will find him if he’s lost? Who will find the little boy?” he would read. “Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again.” Then the book would close, and his silver bookmark would slip between the pages. He would set the book down.
The next night…
“When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him…”
It was back to the beginning. I wanted to ask him why. I wanted to ask him how it ended and why he wouldn’t finish those last pages, but the tendrils of the void had been gradually taking me and now it took all I could to even breathe, and to remember just where I was, who I was, and what was happening to me.
My entire world was his voice and his caring touch. I lived for him to be beside me, and when he was beside me, I lived. I breathed better, my thoughts were more focused, and sometimes, even if just briefly… I felt emotion again.
But it was brief.
The limbo that held no time, no sensations, the abyss that came from having no activity in my brain, was taking me, which is why when I did feel emotion, it was unrelenting horror and panic, an inhuman desperation to plead with Elish to not have it take me again. I was terrified of it, and it was because of that terror that I fought as hard as I could to stave off its inevitable claim on my brain.
If people knew how terrifying it was to be dead, to feel nothing, to see nothing, to be stuck inside of a vast place with no boundaries but yet you felt like the entire universe was closing in on you, pressing up against the last shreds of your consciousness… they’d stop at nothing to become immortal.
His voice glided along the words he read like an eagle soaring on thermal air, his tones varied just slightly to a softer side when he spoke for the boy, and harder, more confident when he spoke as the man. I soaked up the hour that he’d spend with me every evening reading that book, a brief respite from the battle I fought every day to stay alive.
Tonight I wasn’t feeling well, so when he closed the book I stared at him, wishing he understood that I needed him to keep reading tonight. But my gaze never left him whenever he was in my vision. And if he didn’t position me in the recliner towards the television, or if I was able to move my head to the side where he was on the couch, I’d have never stopped looking at his face.
I wanted to tell him… that I didn’t think I’d be able to fight for much longer. That I needed him to help me because… because I was getting tired and each morning I woke up, it was proving to be more difficult to even remember who he was. My moments of lucidity were getting farther apart, but he didn’t know this. All he knew was my gaze and that didn’t falter, even though there were times when I was mentally alert.
Elish… I think I might die soon. Please, don’t let me die. I’m afraid of death, it’s where you can’t find me.
He put a blanket over me and kissed my forehead, then the lights went out. The sparking synapses in my mind were functioning enough for me to feel emotion, and like most of them this one was not good. It was desperation, a sad plea that was so intense inside of me I felt like I would scream just out of sheer frustration. Elish, Elish, I’m going to die. Help me, please.
Sometime later, the lamp on the table between the recliner and the couch turned on. I saw Elish sitting up in bed, and on his face was an expression of sadness that tore my heart.
His eyes searched me, and I wondered if he would find what he was looking for. He must be looking for something because it was like he was taking in every detail of my face. Was he committing me to memory so he’d remember me when I died?
Then he rose, walked to me, and knelt down beside the recliner I slept on.
“I think… I will be speaking to Silas tomorrow,” he said to me, his voice was as sad as his face, but I also heard another tone, it was defeat.
Yes. That is what I saw, not sadness… my master looked defeated.
Elish rested a hand on my forehead and brushed back my hair, and I saw him nod. “Whatever he requires, I will do it. I think it is time I pick my battles.” He leaned in and I felt his lips press against my forehead. I couldn’t move, or react, but his words were enough for me to mentally push away the abyss slowly taking me.
“If we’re lucky he’ll not delay. Maybe I will have you back in a matter of days. Then we can get to more important matters like picking up these shattered pieces. You’re a nuisance, Cicaro, and I’m growing tired of being your sengil.” He patted my cheek and gave me a smile, then he rose. I watched him turn off the light and I closed my eyes.
And I felt an emotion I never thought I would feel again.
Happiness.
Then everything inside of my brain went haywire.
There was nothing I remembered before, the first thing I became aware of was the feeling of my head being electrocuted, but at the same time, heated. It was like an uncomfortably thick blanket was being tightly wrapped around my brain, not my mind, but my physical organic brain. And when it was wound so tight I thought the pressure was going to make my head cave in on itself, a sudden and powerful surge of electricity shot into me and electrified every fibre of the blanket.
My body was frozen. I was unable to scream from the unbelievable pain, but inside my mind felt like it was being violently shaken; the electrical current rattling me and plunging what remained of my consciousness into a blinding light.
And that light was emanating from the coating on my brain, and the electricity, so vibrant and powerful I was sure it was alive, dove deep inside the grey matter, inside every wrinkled fold, and shot light where there had once been dark, and breathed life into what had once been beyond medicine. Like a billion switches were being turned on, one after the other with blinding speed, I felt my brain come back to life.
Then as quickly as it came… a hand seemed to reach out and stop the light. I took in a sharp breath and my body twitched and spasmed, the half-on switches, mixed in with the ones turned on and the others still dormant, absolutely scrambled me. I opened my eyes and saw darkness everywhere but I couldn’t stop twitching. My body was off-kilter. I felt like a knot of frayed live wires, some tied to the wrong partner, others dangling and shooting off sparks. I felt almost worse than before because I now had the capacity to feel just how much I was damaged. I was a fly with only one wing torn off, buzzing in circles, and circles, unable to fly, unable to stay on the ground, just manically spinning, too damaged to do anything else.
My lips pursed and I closed my eyes, but then, realizing that I could now move my lips, I opened my mouth and whimpered out the one thing I’d been wanting to say for months. The name that I sometimes remembered, sometimes forgot, but always, always I knew his presence and his gentle touch.
“E-Elish?”
But there was nothing. He had left me, as if chasing the blinding hot light that had disappeared as quickly as it had come. His absence had been noticed, however; I could hear a low and long drawn-out beeping. It was an alarm, but an alarm for what?
Dizziness descended on me and nausea soon followed. I rested my head onto the recliner and whimpered. I closed my eyes as the unpleasant feelings rolled through me like they were making up for the time I had spent feeling nothing, and then, with a heave, I turned my head and threw up white liquid and bile.
The acidic bile burned my throat and made it raw. I wiped my mouth with a weak hand, but as quickly as I raised it, it flopped down onto the ground. I was too weak to lift it.
More haze claimed me and I started feeling even worse. I tucked myself up into the fetal position and groaned, the room spinning around me, tilting up and down and around and around, taking me on a ride I didn’t want to go on. The alarm didn’t help, my head pounded under its continuous beeping, each sound a hammer blow attempting to crack my skull in two.
I felt my hold on reality slip again, but not back into the void that had felt like de
ath. It slipped into a muddled black fog, like the smoke left over from the white fire in my brain was collecting and choking up these senses I had only just now gotten back.
I wished there was light in this apartment. Why was everything so black? Usually a light was on, at least the electric fireplace or the light on the stove that was usually kept dimmed. There was nothing, and when I glanced around, vomit dripping down my mouth, I saw that the lights of his laptop, and the numbers that were supposed to be on the cable box… were off too.
The power went out. That was why the alarm was going off. But why? What was happening?
My mind was overloaded with questions but I had no answers; even if the answer was right in front of me there was too much distortion in my mind to see it. I found myself only able to stay as still as possible to attempt to keep myself from throwing up again.
Then a light stung my closed eyelids. I opened them and my heart thumped when I saw a shadow holding a flashlight. My first thought was that it was Elish but he’d have no reason to have flashlight with him. Could it be Luca?
The person with the light lowered it, and when I saw who it was I thought I was hallucinating. There was just no possible way he could be in front of me. He was the last person I’d ever expect to see here again.
“Jade?” My ex-boyfriend choked on my name. He ran and knelt down beside me. He placed a hand on my cheek and stroked it, tears running down his face. “Jade, baby?”
Kerres was breathing heavily and the light of the flashlight made the sweat on his forehead sparkle. He looked exhausted, and not just from what I guessed was him running up over twenty flights of stairs, but there was a weariness in him that had sunken his once handsome facial features, drawing out the lavender in his eyelids and highlighting his cheekbones to give him a gaunt, sick appearance. Kerres was tired, but he looked at me as if I had promised him a second life, a rebirth. There was so much love in his eyes, and relief – why did he look so relieved?
“I have to get you out of here,” Kerres said. He rubbed my cheek and kissed my nose. I furrowed my brow at him and looked past him into the darkness, wondering when Elish was going to come to chase him away. He wasn’t allowed here, and yet my mind cautioned me against dismissing him. However, my body felt so heavy, my tongue as well, I didn’t know how much I would be able to say. I wasn’t even a hundred percent convinced that this was real. Everything had this odd tilt to it; my world was a snow globe that had been picked up and shaken violently. The furnace that had seared my mind had done wonders but I had this sinking feeling that it had been interrupted. And now, like a laptop being unplugged during an update, I think my brain had been bricked.
Kerres looked behind his shoulder and back at me. “One of the chimeras… Jack. He says he’s going to kill you. I turned off power to the skyscraper to trap him in the elevator, but we have to get out of here before he escapes.” My eyes widened at this. Kerres grabbed my arm and started pulling me up off of the recliner. I let him, and decided to try and see if I could stand upright.
As soon as my bare feet hit the ground, they trembled and started bowing. Kerres put his arm around my back and steadied me.
“Elish?” I whimpered and looked around, then my legs gave out and I fell to my knees. The dizziness was overwhelming and I felt myself get drawn back into unconsciousness, but Kerres kept shaking me, kept pleading at me to get up.
I threw up, unaware of what was going on. My world was once again swirling around like I was on a spin cycle, and the events that kept transpiring even though my focus was frozen and my awareness reduced, was lost on me.
There was the sound of shuffling and scraping, and I heard the door open to the stairwell of the skyscraper. My awareness came back to me in weak waves, allowing me to register what was in the frame of my vision for only a fleeting moment before it was taken from me; time would then jump forward, and I’d find myself experiencing an entirely new set of sensations.
First I was walking down the stairs, Kerres’s voice was encouraging in my ear but also tight with fear. He was telling me in a low tone when to step, the flashlight lighting up the set of stairs and casting long shadows of the railing onto the grey ceilings. It wasn’t our only light anymore though, there were red lights now, emergency lights.
There was also angry screaming. No, anger wasn’t the right word, it sounded downright hysterical and insane. The screaming was echoing as well, filling the stairwell with its disturbing sound. The man, he was yelling threats, vows and oaths that were sworn on immortal brothers and the dead world we all walked on.
I looked up at the red light above us and squinted my eyes, but even the act of glancing up threw off my equilibrium, I stumbled and started to fall backwards.
Kerres snatched me but his hands grabbing and pulling me ended up further jarring my balance. I let out a gasp as I was yanked forward, and I heard Kerres scream and jerk my arm back as I fell.
My feet left the ground and I was in the air. I saw Kerres’s face and the expression of pure fear, his hand gripping my forearm. Everything was in slow motion but I was aware of the fact that he was getting further away from me, and that his fingernails, white from clenching my forearm, were leaving behind trails of pink with shreds of skin.
Kerres got smaller and smaller, and for just a fraction of a second I was confused as to why… then I felt a heavy impact; so hard it threw my mind from my body and paralysed me from both the shock and the unbelievable amount of pain.
The pain gathered up inside of me, before it was distributed throughout my body. My back throbbed, my arm felt like the two bones in my forearm were being wrenched apart, and my head, my head… my head was being assaulted without mercy, hammered on and pummelled. The pain was too much; I tried to cry out but my lungs refused to allow the air to be used for anything else but attempting to keep me alive. So instead I gasped and heaved, trying to stop my rattled brain from failing me once again.
But it didn’t work – I heard Kerres scream as I was thrown into a seizure.
Then I heard an explosion above us and the ground shake underneath my body. There was nothing after that, but the colourless void.
Kerres
A cry of desperation sounded from Kerres’s lips as he threw himself over Jade’s body. The world was ending around him, there was no other explanation for it. The entire skyscraper was shaking and his Geigerchip was vibrating with anger underneath his skin. He had been taught about the Fallocaust when he was in Edgeview Orphanage, and he knew this was what he was experiencing.
Then the rumbling stopped. Kerres looked around the red-bathed stairwell, shocked that he was still alive, and grabbed the flashlight that was lighting up the floor and the corner of the rubber-coated stair to his left. He gripped it hard, and shone it towards the metal door that led to the apartments on that floor.
He was on floor twelve. They had made it a good distance… he could make it, couldn’t he?
Kerres let out another cry through teeth clenched with fear, and dropped the flashlight. Then he stood up and looked down at Jade.
He tried to push down the panic when he saw his boyfriend. Jade was twitching, his mouth open like a fish that had just been pulled out of the water and bludgeoned. There was blood inside of his mouth, coating his teeth and pooling in their crevices, and his chest kept heaving, kept jerking up like he was suffering aftershocks from the seizure. It was a terrifying thing for Kerres to see, but there was no time to comfort his boyfriend. Something had exploded above them and he had to get Jade out of here.
Kerres picked up Jade and held him in his arms. He started walking down the stairs, carefully but as quickly as he could. Jade was light but it was still difficult, and he found himself having to adjust him often. He tried to push through it, tried to bite through the exhaustion, but it was slow going down the seemingly endless flights of stairs illuminated by red. By the eighth floor he was panting and heaving, and had no choice but to put Jade down and take a break.
But as soon as he
lay Jade down on the stairs, he felt a fresh wave of horror. He could smell something burning, the intense aroma of toxic chemicals that immediately made his head throb. He looked down at Jade and took his shirt off of his back, and gently tied it around Jade’s mouth to filter out the noxious chemicals. Kerres then coughed into his hand, the powerful smell taking away his breath, and picked Jade back up.
Then he saw the smoke starting to creep down the stairs like a phantom slowly stalking its victim. It rolled down each step and coated it in a thick black cloak, a wall of charcoal black only several feet behind it.
Kerres saw it and his heart dropped. He turned and took a step towards the set of stairs of the eighth floor, and when his legs wobbled from fatigue, he let out a frustrated and desperate cry and fell to his knees. It took all he could to keep Jade from slipping out of his arms. He was so weak and exhausted; he could barely hold him, let alone walk eight more flights.
Kerres’s mind raced but the panic that was ripping through him allowed him no other thoughts than doing whatever he could to get Jade and himself out of this burning skyscraper. There was only one thing he could think of doing, and though it filled his heart with agony he didn’t have a choice.
Kerres clung onto Jade and held him, tears running down his face and snot, not just from his own agony but from the toxic black smoke that was now consuming him.
“Elish!” Kerres screamed. He closed his eyes tight and kissed Jade’s forehead, he let out a mournful cry and started to slowly walk down the stairs, every step jarring the young man in his arms and threatening to drop him down the stairs. “ELISH! HELP!” he cried as loudly as he could. He knew what the consequences would be. He knew that Elish would, at the very least, take Jade from him and once again rip his boyfriend from his arms, but he couldn’t have him die in this stairwell.