Through Glass

by Rebecca Ethington

  I could see my own fear mirrored in him; the realizations that I had fought acknowledging were now staring right back at me.

  We were trapped inside.

  We were alone.

  I saw the terror in his eyes and felt mine increase. My heart was a heavy mass of lead inside of me; a lifeless piece of flesh that was draining me.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes from Cohen, even though I could barely see through the black.

  He was just there beyond the glass.

  Too far for me to get to.

  The dancing black ribbons grew and grew until I could no longer see Cohen. It had taken him away from me. I could no longer see anything. My room was as black as everything else, the light sucked from it and surrounding me in an abyss of nothing. The skin of my arms prickled where small bumps had started running up and down my arms and across my neck as I squinted into the darkness, trying desperately to make something out. I knew I was in my room—I could feel my desk under my legs, the glass against my fingers—but I saw nothing.

  The blackness consumed me for one moment before the sounds of the screams outside my window grew, pulsing through the air. I turned toward the window, expecting to see something, only to be met with obscurity which caused my ears to prickle as it heightened the noise. The sounds of terror, fear and death rang in my ears as they vibrated through the air and shook the window in its pane.

  The screams continued before they changed, turning into yelling and grunting that was mixed in with the sound of terror. I heard footsteps as someone ran through the darkness outside and then a man yelling back at his wife as he guided her through the dark only to end in screams of death. My hand tensed against the window as I focused on the black in front of me. My heart pulsed the blood uncomfortably through my fingers; the joints straining from the pressure that I hadn’t realized I had applied against the pane.

  Another sound joined the panicked battle outside; the deep grunts of exertion, a man fighting the assailants even though he couldn’t see through the dark. My nerves tensed in fear as the sound continued to grow and swell around me; the cry of a child joining in before it, too, was silenced and another scream took its place.

  I looked away from the indistinctness outside the window as the shouts kept coming in an attempt to move past it. There was nowhere to look; there was only the black that had swallowed me. My heart beat so loudly, so painfully, that my breath sped up to match it, every muscle hurting with each pulse.

  The yells continued, the sounds increasing as someone fired a gun in the dark. His terror filled yells made it obvious that he was hitting monster and human alike. He screamed as he shot, the screech of the monster sounding loudly before a child’s scream interrupted it. The gun only going quiet as the owner’s life ended with his own stifled cry.

  I listened to it all, my eyes shifting wildly through the darkness of my room as I searched for a way to fight back, a way to save them all. I couldn’t see anything, though. Slowly I slid off my desk, my fingers trailing over the smooth surface as I searched for the edge, something that had been so familiar before now felt foreign and scary in the dark.

  I found the edge and dropped my feet to the carpet, the sound of my landing muffled by the cry of a woman that pierced the darkness like a knife. I stiffened at her voice, my head whipping toward the noise. My heart pulsed at the sound, the recognition that I fought against strangling my breathing like a vice. It couldn’t be my mother. It couldn’t be.

  My hands flew out in front of me. My fingers stretching as I searched through the dark for a light. I grasped at the air until I found my lamp, the switch clicking in the darkness. I gasped as I looked through the darkness, the light from my alarm clock nowhere to be seen. The power to my house had been cut. My fingers continued their frantic search through the dark, running over blankets and walls as I began to get lost in my own room. I couldn’t focus. My breathing picked up as the memory of that scream continued to terrify me. Pricks of terror rippled over my skin as my uncertainty of the situation took over. It was a heavy weight inside of me as well as without. It seeped into me as everything good leaked out of the world.

  I pushed the oppressive darkness out of me, trying to block out the sound from outside while I listened to the echo of my heartbeat in my ears. I tried to ignore the familiarity that the scream had brought me while pushing away the pain and terror hearing it had created.

  Night had come and eaten everything.

  I pushed the memory away just as a final shot echoed, the sound triggering a scream. The crescendo of a human’s death rang through the darkness as the last bit of life in the boundless shadows ended. The high pitched screech of death rang high and clear before it, too, faded into nothing. The monster’s call wailed as the scream faded. The thing called out through the blackness that pressed against the world until it was also gone and the silence took over. The hush came and left me alone, bringing the fear right back to the forefront of my mind.

  I stood in the dark. My body still while my hand remained extended out through the chilled air. I looked into the ebony air that surrounded me, wishing my eyes would see, that I could make out anything before me, yet nothing came into focus.

  I should leave; run and go. Whatever was happening was not over yet and the quicker I could get away, the better. It couldn’t be that easy, it couldn’t be over. If it was, there would be cheering, but there was only darkness and silence. Something in me begged me to leave right then, but I couldn’t see enough to make that happen. I needed a light.

  My hands continued to fumble through the air, my mind relying on them as I ran my fingers over my bed frame. My fingers fumbled along my desk as I searched for my drawers and the flashlight I knew my mother had placed their years ago.

  My hands wouldn’t stop shaking as the fear encompassed me. I tried to get the shaking to stop, my nerves to calm down, but it wasn’t working. My breathing was just as erratic and my muscles were horribly tense.

  My fingers found the ridge of the desk drawer, the worn metal pull cold in my fingers. I grabbed it and yanked, the screech of the runner loud in the darkness. It ricocheted through my ears, only to be met by another sound.

  A bang as loud as cannon fire rattled through the still air, pulsing through the darkness and making me jump. A small shriek escaped my lips as I lost my grip on the drawer and sent it tumbling to the ground.

  The boom sounded again, this time loud enough that it shook the window and rocked through the wood frame of the house with the rumble of an earthquake. The pulse rattled the ground under my feet and I heard a series of thumps and breaks as the vibration sent trinkets and books falling to the ground. The sounds continued to rattle through the air as more and more pulses shook my house. I jumped at the noise as well as at the impact. The panicked beating that thrummed through my ears tightened in my chest.

  The explosion sounded again and again. The sound growing closer and closer as the vibrating of my house became more violent with each explosion. Like the footsteps of a giant they came, the booms of a cannon as the epicenter of each one crept closer. I screamed as they sounded, my eyes scanning the dark as a new uncertainty took over. I didn’t dare move anymore because there was no longer the uncertainty of silence around me. The explosion sounded again, the sound drowning out the quiet screams that hit my ears from a distance. The shrieks coming with each boom of the cannon. Each pained yell, each panicked screech, was the signal of the ending of someone’s life.

  They were coming.

  It wasn’t over. The monsters were coming to take those that hadn’t been swallowed by the blackness only moments before. I heard the screech of the monster in the air mingled with the screams of life lost. Everything inside of me went taut.

  The jolt of yet another explosion rocked through my house, sending me to the ground. My hand went to my mouth in an attempt to keep my startled scream inside. I didn’t want it to signal the end of my life as it had all the others on the other side of the glass.

  N
ot like this, I wouldn’t die this way.

  Only moments after the explosion sent me to the ground, the front door of my house banged open; the familiar sound of hinges and wood creaking through the darkness. I looked through the darkness at the sound, part of me expecting Travis to bolt in, but only blackness met my eyes. The endless expanse of nothing only increased my fear.

  The sound of another cannon vibrated the air, more screams breaking through the dark only to be followed by the high pitched wail of the monsters as they moved into my house. My body tensed automatically at what was coming.

  The sound was so much worse than before. Before it had throbbed inside of me in a pressurized pain, it had pulsed through my bones. Not anymore, now it was a hot knife through the soft tissues of my body. It cut through me painfully, setting every bit of my body on fire in a white-hot brand that burnt and sent my fear rippling through my nerve endings. My chest was heaving at what that sound meant, at what was in store for me.

  What was coming.

  I had heard the screams of death in the air, I had felt them rock through me. I had heard the ones yell as they fought back, only to die anyway. The black monsters had killed the people those pained pleas belonged to. They had wiped them from the earth and now it was my turn.

  No.

  I didn’t want to die this way. I wouldn’t.

  I tried to push the pain away, to see beyond the pressure that built behind my eyes. My fear built into an anger as I fought against the pain. My fingers clenched into the carpet as I searched for a way to run, to hide, or to kill the things that hunted me. I couldn’t make myself move. I couldn’t force myself to run from the danger that was coming. I couldn’t force myself to fight it.

  Fear gripped me and my pain grew as the screeching increased right alongside it. The tap of the creature’s talons sounded against the stairwell. The slow, steady rhythms of the monsters were barely audible amongst the screech of their kind. I heard it, though, and my body reacted to it. My breathing slowed to match their sluggish gait; my muscles tensed as I kept the scream trapped inside my chest.

  I looked through the black, knowing I wouldn’t be able to fight them even if I could move my body through the agony that their cry had trapped me in. As much as I wanted to, I was trapped in my own pain. I needed to move. I grit my teeth, pushing the pain out of my mind as much as I could while my fingers searched through the darkness for anything I could use or any way I could hide.

  The sound of talons in the hall hit my ears just as my hand wrapped around the leg of my bed frame; the cold metal feeling like a beacon. I clung to it tightly as I moved, my body screaming in agony as I rolled under my bed right as the door to my bedroom creaked open. The clicking sound moved into the obscurity that I had counted as a sanctuary only a moment before.

  I tried to hold my breath as I listened to each step the creature took, yet I couldn’t restrain it. I couldn’t keep the panting desperation locked in my chest as I listened and the creature’s screech, that I was sure would herald my death, reverberated in my ears.

  My breathing picked up as the screeching did. The long, golden talon clicked against the floor, the sound muffled by the carpet, while I trembled beneath my bed.

  I listened through the pain in my head, my ears perked for any noise as the creature stopped moving only steps away from my head. My hearing heightened from the change and, in one beat of my frantic heart, everything suddenly altered. The screeching grew only to hit a decibel I couldn’t possibly keep in my head. My hands flew to my ears as I attempted to block out the noise, however it only swelled inside of me, the pain bursting within me as it tried to get out. The agony that had incapacitated my body expanded, the pressure growing to every part of my body until I was sure that I couldn’t keep it inside; that one way or another it would find a way out. I opened my mouth in an attempt to let the pressure out, but the pain continued. The pressure in my head causing little white lights to spark in the darkness; stars that I was sure only I could see.

  Loud, popping noises filled my ears. The sound was loud enough to take away the screech for a moment before it began to build again, leaving warm, wet trails running from my ears and nose. I screamed again in fear, my mouth filling with the taste of blood. I knew at once that this was how they had killed the others.

  Even if I had wanted to fight back, I couldn’t, not like this. I pulled at my hair as the pressure intensified and my body writhed with the pain that rippled through me. I screamed as I waited for death to come, for the pain to be my undoing, or for the flash of golden talons, yet nothing changed. The pain remained. The sound of my agony lingered loud and violent in the air that I was surrounded by; it echoed back to me, almost begging them to end it.

  End it now.

  I couldn’t take this pain anymore. I would rather fight the darkness and be burned to ash in a moment. Not this. I writhed as I begged to die. As I willed my body to just give in.

  Please.

  My silent pleas rippled through me, the desperation only growing as the pain did. Yet, I didn’t die. Instead, the screeches of the creatures decreased and moved back to the shriek that merely vibrated through my skull. The lowered sound feeling like a hum inside of me after what I had just experienced.

  I kept my hands against my ears as the tears seeped from my eyes, sobs replacing the screams my body had been racked with as I began to calm. I lay weakly under my bed, unable to move. Everything hurt like I had been stretched, beaten and left for dead. I could still feel the pressurized pain inside of me; the sensation was incapacitating.

  As much as my boiling anger screamed at me to move—to attack them, to hit and punch and fight—I wasn’t going anywhere. They had complete control. I cried as that realization hit me, my sobs shaking my body and sending surges of pain up my rigid spine. I tried to keep the sound inside of me, but I knew it was no use. I wasn’t exactly hiding, anyway; they knew exactly where I was already.

  I listened to the click of their talons through my pain, waiting for them to come forward and finish the job, but nothing happened. The clicks echoed in my ears at the same time that the floor vibrated as they moved out of my room. I stayed still, my body too weak to move and my mind unable to focus on much else.

  My heart thundered in my chest, each beat painful against my ribcage. My eyes darted around; searching for what, I didn’t know. A weapon, a way out. Even if I found something, I was still trapped; the things were in my house. There was nothing I could do.

  I continued to lay under my bed, listening as the clicks moved away. The screech still echoed through the darkness of my home as a new sound joined it. Bangs and crashes filled the space; the breaking of glass, the splintering of wood. They filled the air from every corner. I could only take one guess at what they were doing. They were destroying everything.

  The sounds of destruction filled the air around me as the creatures who had invaded my house ransacked it. The house seemed to rock as the sounds of ripping fabric, crumbling plaster, and bending metal grew louder. The screeches lessened before they would simply pick up again.

  I didn’t dare move as I listened to them loot my house and destroy the relics of what had been my life up until that moment.

  They had come into my world and taken the sun, the light, my family and now they were taking my home. The sobs caught in my chest as they destroyed my life, ripping my very existence to shreds.

  The sounds grew the closer they came. I listened as they ripped my parents’ room apart; the walls of my room vibrating as once precious things were thrown around without a care.

  I listened to the crashes, desperately trying to keep my breathing even, but it wouldn’t take. They were coming here next, and as much as I wanted to hope they would spare me again, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

  I tensed my body, trying desperately to move, however it only seemed to scream at me in the attempt, sending more fire through my bones as they pulsed and ached. I ignored it. I ignored the pain and pressure. I fought through
it, screamed through it. Even then, only my fingers would move. My knuckles screamed in agony as I tightened my hands around the carpet, clenching my fingers into it. Fear rippled through me. My eyes continually scanned the dark in search of weapons I knew wouldn’t be there, weapons I couldn’t yield.

  The sounds around me continued to increase as they came closer. The walls shaking as they destroyed the last of my life. I listened as the destruction of my parents’ room ended. All the while, my heart painfully thrashed against my chest.

  I waited; waited for them to come, waited for the noises of destruction to find me. Yet nothing came except the slow tapping of claws against the wooden floor in the hallway outside my room.

  I tensed as the door to my room finally opened again. The quick pace of claws against wood was loud as the thing moved through my room, opening drawers and pushing objects from my dresser onto the floor. I heard the destruction, my eyes following the noise, although I couldn’t see it occurring. The things could see through the dark. Even if I could move, even if I could get away, I had nowhere that I could go that the thing would not find me.

  As quickly as the monster had come in, it left. The clicking of talons resounding through my house before the front door closed with a bang. The familiar sound of the ancient, wood door seeming foreign and unwanted as it closed and the screeches left me to the silence once again.

  And I waited.

  I didn’t dare move, it wasn’t worth it to try. I didn’t dare leave the space under the bed. I could still feel the vibrating explosions as they moved on. I continued to hear the screams ringing through the air as one life after another was taken.

  Whatever they were, they were killing everything.