The fact that we survived the impact of our fall proved further that a Red Dream had been joined by our meeting—the Deadworld was denied the full measure of its power over our flesh and blood, allowing wonder to undo the work of wisdom. Burning debris rained down seconds after we crashed to the shrouded earth, yet the darkness fought back the fire’s light, begrudging it an impossibly small dispersion.
Miss Patience rose from beneath a mounting pile of burning wood and fallen rock, throwing it aside with little effort. Her dead eyes, while incapable of affecting me with their hunger-inducing glare, bore into me with a hatred that almost set me aflame. Just before launching into another uncalculated rage, she paused—an expression formed, for the first time reflecting her human origins.
Black Molly’s teeth scraped together violently as she spoke through a mouth no longer designed for speech, her tongue bleeding as she struggled through her words. “You’ve made a fine revenge of things, little killer. You’ve destroyed all that I’ve worked for, and now you’re trying to add me to your collection of artwork. I am carved from a darkness you can’t even remember, much less imagine. I’m a collage of grimmest truths, assembled by grinning poets that watch and laugh from behind this game of light and darkness. And like some angry child, you would break me apart and leave me in ruin? Destruction is the cheapest form of art, little killer. I wouldn’t hold my head too high, if I were you.”
I became Goya laughing at Pollock. “What do you know of art, Sara? You simply eat your own. You really think that warrants my admiration? You took a fragile darkness and filled it with petty evils, nothing more. What would your cult of well-wishers think if they could see you now? Would they see a great and dark mother of the underworld, or merely the breeder of freaks and fools? They worship a blind mother who gathers them into filthy holes and sets them about the task of appeasing the crawling worms of the earth with offerings of stolen, rotten meat. I’m going to do you the kindness of opening you up to the elder darkness, releasing your stolen shadows to the bowels of the deep earth. Perhaps if your offering proves precious enough, I’ll even redeem myself to the shades I’ve wronged this day. In either case, Miss Patience, I will hold your head high for all to see.”
My father was already in my hands as I flew at her. The scream she issued was almost as much a violation of natural law as her alien sight. His killing edge sank beyond her flesh and into bone, splitting her sternum and unrolling the sallow lengths of fat that curled beneath her unclean flesh. A vile fluid that must have been blood washed over me, and I resisted the urge to retch from the smell. The Queen of Cannibals backhanded me into the air, dashing me against the unrelenting limestone. I slid from the wall and fell back to my feet, bleeding and doubled over. She lifted a giant length of burning lumber and brought it down upon my head. I crashed to the stone floor as she casually kicked me into a large debris fire. I lay in a heap, burning, and she paused to enjoy the sight. I certainly couldn’t begrudge her a last look at me—a fallen artist beneath the prehistoric earth, crumpled body steaming and bloodied flesh sizzling beneath angry flames. I would have loved to see what it all looked like, myself.
Miss Patience laughed, ignoring the sucking wound in her chest. “You remind me of your last work, little wick, full of fire and failure!”
She wasn’t the only one capable of ignoring wounds. I charged the queen once again, colliding with her. She moved only slightly, laughing hard and horrible at my apparent failure. I wrapped my arms as far as they would reach around her bulk and sank my sisters into her many layers of wan flesh, using them to hoist the giant cannibal over my head.
While resting within the flames, I had spied the engulfed ruin of a church steeple across the cavern, the splintered wooden cross at its peak somehow still intact. I raced across the uneven stone, holding Miss Patience high, and slammed her into the jagged tip of the cross. I ducked my head as the spire exploded from her left breast and shot past my shoulder, splashing her foul liquids everywhere. Miss Patience fell quiet, grasping at a stake thicker than my leg. Its length was ablaze, slick with boiling blood, its wicked tip well beyond her reach. I shed my burning coat and threw it to the ground, watching as Sara Kain tried in vain to pull herself free from fire and death. She was beyond even the significant shelter our dream provided.
She looked upon me with pleading eyes and held out her clawed hand. “I don’t want to pass without telling someone. I’ll tell you . . . and then I can fade away. Please!” I waited until her flesh had crisped and blackened, sloughing off in places, sizzling as it slid down between glowing embers. Finally pulling her seared body from the pyre, I laid her head upon the smoking remains of my coat.
“Tell your final tale, Miss Patience,” I said in frozen tones. “And should your story please me, I will spare it from the hungriest monster of all—oblivion.”
“Very well,” She said. Her teeth sounded out a terrible rhythm as they scraped and gnashed. Her words fell from her mouth like stillborn babes plummeting to the cold earth, naked and hopeless.
CHAPTER TEN
“It was a splendid morning. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. The birds were singing, I was taking some muffins out of the oven, and my family was waking to the smell of my masterful breakfast. My little ones were the last to drag themselves down to eat. I honestly don’t even remember what their names might have been. I think the tall one with the blue eyes wore glasses that didn’t fit quite right—her vision must’ve been poor. She would have been easy to sneak up on, I imagine. My husband was a nice man, thin with rangy arms, but wide muscular calves. I believe he might have been named after someone famous, someone tall. After the table had been decorated with baked goods and fried delights, my family and I began our meal. I can only remember where everyone’s eyes were looking, and how far their hands were from the butter knives and expensive forks, and I could easily imagine how the little girl might have tasted. I should probably feel awful for thinking that, but it’s true.
“The little boy—I think it was a little boy—said something about having a nightmare. It’s always the children who know first. His hand was adorably tiny as he wrapped it around his fork and clumsily delivered food into his messy little mouth. I think I might have loved him, then. I might still, but I’m not sure. I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? My husband was talking to the little girl with the crooked glasses. His hands seemed so weak-looking as they gestured alongside his words. As I picture them, they kind of remind me of a couple of dead, featherless birds. Yet there we all were, with our pointless words scattering the breakfast table as we shared our morning meal. At some point, as hard as it is to believe, I think I actually declined a plate of bacon that was passed to me, instead reaching for a grapefruit! Can you even imagine such a thing!
“I do recall there being a steady breeze. The wind chimes never let up for a second. I was trying to hear something behind the noise of the tiny chimes, something that seemed out of place on such a beautiful day. I remember that I needed to look out the window, and thinking how odd an impulse that was, and how I had never in all my life felt something so strange. It were as if something from a dream had taken over my free will. Right there in the kitchen at breakfast, surrounded by greasy dishes and sunshine—the most unusual moment of my life (of that life, anyway).
“No one at the table had any idea how terrified I was at that moment. They just kept eating and talking and laughing. Beneath my clothing, I began to tremble. I couldn’t speak. I just turned my head toward the window and looked out into the yard. There wasn’t a thing amiss. Everything was accounted for—trees swayed in the breeze, sunshine dappled patio, and a big blue sky hung overhead. But then I realized, in the very second I turned away from the window, something had indeed changed. The sound I couldn’t hear for the chimes had entered the room. It had to have come in through the window, naturally. I was still paralyzed. No one even noticed the invading thing. They were still carrying on as if
the whole world wasn’t about to change. The little boy looked at me, and he tried to speak. (Yes, I’m sure now that it was a little boy.) His words, along with his entire body, just sank away into the sound of the soft breeze, gently, finally. Then there was darkness everywhere. I still held a grapefruit in my hand.
“I think everyone imagines the Darkness as an event that was visible at a distance, like some kind of apocalyptic tidal wave, rolling slowly towards land. When everyone sees the wave rise up above the clouds, they run screaming, falling over each other as they go. But it really wasn’t like that at all, at least not for me. Of course, it could have been different for everyone, so who can say?
“The world seemed so much smaller, more personal, like everything had been locked into a closet, but the darkness gave the impression that the closet might go on forever. I looked out the window again. I can clearly remember staring at a tree that was all lit up by a stray beam of light falling from somewhere above. Its branches were bizarre, wrapping around one another like eels in a bucket, and they were filled with the strangest, blackest fruits, each one the size of a cantaloupe. They looked absolutely delicious, but they were squirming every which way, like something might’ve been trying to get out of them, or like the fruit itself was breathing. I really didn’t know which. But neither reason would’ve made me want to eat them any less, not even when some of the fruit fell off the tree and rolled into the darkness, where I swear I heard them scurry away on little feet. I couldn’t take my eyes off the tree until I saw my little girl walk up to one of the branches and sink her teeth into a low-hanging fruit. Her glasses were gone, and she was looking around as if her eyes were working just fine. I think she looked at me briefly before she backpedaled into darkness, her smile all sweet and black from the fruit. I wanted to chase after her almost as much as I wanted a piece of that peculiar fruit, but somehow I knew I wouldn’t catch her. I was quite a mess, then. Just a thing that cried and cried. When I finally turned away from the window, I saw my husband, dressed for work and walking out the door with his briefcase. All he said to me was, “Don’t wait up, honey.”
“I wandered around the house for quite a while, looking at familiar things. While I sat on my bed, staring at the cream-colored walls, I thought I heard someone knock at the door. I hid under the bed at the sound of the front door opening and what could only have been the footsteps of a large crowd of people entering my home. Whoever they were, they came right up the stairs and into my room. I could see quite the collection of footwear from where I lay—dirt-encrusted boots, well-worn slippers, sneakers, even some expensive-looking high heels. There might have been twenty or so people in there with me, and besides the sound of them walking around on the wood floors, I couldn’t hear a single one of them so much as breathe. They just kept walking around, moving close to one another and then away, like a gang of socializing mutes.
“After a while, little drops of blood started falling to the floor. They didn’t react to it at all, they seemed far too busy scuffing up my polished floors with their nonstop mingling. Severed fingers littered the floor next, then all kinds of body parts. The blood started to pool around me, but I hadn’t even the tiniest inclination to pop up from beneath the bed. This went on for several minutes, with whole limbs and heads and whatnot thudding wetly to the floor. Long after it became obvious that there were far more body parts than could have been provided by twenty people, the strangers left the room—at least, their feet and ankles did. I can’t vouch for the rest of their bodies—trudging through blood and carnage as they went.
“Once they were all in the hallway and moving down the stairs, I could hear them talking incoherently. I suppose they were just your everyday, ordinary crowd of partygoers. They just stopped by to wander wordlessly around my bedroom and shed hundreds of pounds of mutilated body parts. Of course, the blood and meat has a completely different effect on me now, but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that. After I heard the front door close and the voices move out into the streets, I decided there was no safety to be had inside the house. It took me some time to gather enough courage to leave, but finally I put down the grapefruit and made my way into the darkness of the streets.
“The outside was dark, terribly so, yet I could see far and clearly. There was a sense of enclosure to the darkness, as if it were a structure built up around the world, providing shade. My feet were still tucked into my blood-soaked wool slippers, and they made a comical squelching sound as I tiptoed around. Whenever they creased from my movement, little red bubbles appeared. I remember at one point as I wandered around, I noticed the branches above my head were creaking from the constant breeze. But when I looked closer at all the pretty autumn colors, I realized they were moving all on their own—they were waving against the wind, probably trying to shoo away the gigantic moths that were playing about their branches.
“There also seemed to be a kind of melodic absence tolling somewhere in the background of the world. It was tiny and fragile, and the slightest thought could block it out. I think it was just a fancier form of quiet—it reminded me of cursive writing made from silence. The air was incredibly soft and forgiving, and I moved about as though I were in a dream, never worrying about tripping or falling. Lesser technical issues were completely resolved during the Darkness—you never had to worry about splinters, tripping, swallowing wrong, stubbing your toes, frog-in-the-throat. It were as if all the jagged edges of the previous reality had been blunted, if not entirely removed. That’s not to say the Darkness lacked subtlety. The nuances were exquisite, I assure you. I could feel the shadows trickle over my skin, tickling like cobwebs against gooseflesh. And whispers could become various kinds of insects. I once whispered the story of Little Red Riding Hood to a pet of mine, and suddenly all these little red crickets were hopping out from the corners of the room. Nasty-tasting things, crickets.
“Anyway, enough of all that. This is my last story, and I’ll hear it finished before you cobble me into some kind of bone-gilded music box, or whatever you plan to do with me after I’m dead.
“Where was I? Oh yes, I remember. I was walking down the sidewalk. As I snuck around the neighborhood, I could see a line of people twisting out from behind the brambles of what I remembered to be an abandoned house. The house was peeling paint and the lawn was wildly overgrown, and it had been the source of endless complaints by the neighbors. All the people were silent and apparently happy, as everyone was smiling. I hoped that it was a crowd of neighbors waiting to receive rations or the like from some form of emergency services group. I walked up to the back of the line, somewhat in shock from all that had already happened. I suppose I played up my fright a bit, as I was in desperate need for some good old-fashioned pity.
“I wandered, sobbing and shivering, over to the people at the end of the line. They didn’t even look at me. They were all too busy staring at what looked like movie tickets. They cradled the little things in their cupped hands as if they were too precious to hold one-handed. In a somewhat breathless, exaggerated tone, I questioned the woman at the end of the line about all the darkness and insanity and what have you. She placed an index finger to her lips and shushed me. That’s when I noticed her footwear. I’ll never forget that pair of red sneakers as long as I live—which, in view of my current situation, won’t be that long. She was one of the mutes that had wandered around my bedroom, flinging bloody body parts all around!
“My little epiphany seemed to be the woman’s cue to activate her next level of weirdness, because just as I figured things out, she curved her face into a dreadfully vapid smile—the sort you’d see stretched across a sugar-drunk child’s face. I quickly exchanged my indulged expression of horror for the real thing and ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction. Those stupid, blood-squishing slippers made a fine joke of my exit, by the way.
“I ended up squeezing myself into a small gardening hut in some random backyard. I just sat in there, scared like you wouldn’t be
lieve, wondering how long I could stay hidden before some horrible thing or another prompted me to leave. Do you know that I stayed in there for two weeks? Well, at least it seemed like a couple weeks. Time was a tricky thing during The Darkness. I never got hungry, and I never had to powder my nose, so to speak. The Darkness was a wonderfully immaculate enterprise, at least as far as the more unpleasant requirements of the human body were concerned—another one of those dampened technicalities I mentioned before. I should also mention that sleeping was all but impossible, so all I could do to pass the time was hum old show tunes and talk to myself. At one point, I began to sing a funny little song. It was a really odd ditty, full of all kinds of cut-up and pasted-together rhymes and songs I’d heard. I don’t know where it came from, but the more I sang it, the braver I became. Just when I had worked up the courage to leave, a small piece of paper was slid through the crack in the wooden door. All it said was Louder, please. I decided that it might be wise to wait a bit before leaving, song or not.
“When I finally felt safe again, I crept slowly from the shack and skulked around the edge of the yard, on the lookout for people wearing familiar footwear or smiling like psychopaths. I could see that the line of people had stretched into nearby streets, all of them clutching their tickets and grinning. I have to admit that I was pretty curious about the movie showing inside the abandoned house. I eventually decided that I needed a change of scenery, so I carefully made my way through side streets and parking lots until I was closer to the downtown area, where I hoped to encounter sane individuals. I had no idea what a tall order that was.
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