by Davi Cao
“We’re going to pick some objects up, ok? I’ll be right back,” he said to Angeline, before leaving.
“Wait, what? Is it dangerous? Can I go with you?” She dropped the racket on the table.
“No, I’m afraid it’s not fit for mortals. You can stay here and finish your game. Keep on having fun.”
She shook her head, shutting her mouth up. They paused the game, and waited until both Colin and Dalana walked up the corridor towards the depths of the house’s arteries. Zach slapped the table and asked her to hit him with her best. She complied, forcing herself to get back to an uncompromising mood. Still, she watched the entrance, waiting for Colin.
“Are you afraid? Don’t lie,” Dalana said to Colin, as she raised her knees up to her chest on her strange walk through their path.
“Hm, very much. If I could enter the intensifier without my mind, it would make me more confident. I’m afraid of what the room will make us do,” he said.
“We can send a creation first. You’re not alone in your fear, you know? I am afraid too, like everybody else. Like Angeline,” she said, turning her face to his. “You shouldn’t have left her win.”
“Yeah, I know, I realized that. But if I won, she would be more fragile, and it can be dangerous in this world.”
“She needs friends, that’s all. Games are terrible because they make enemies out of friends. Deep down, you don’t like to compete either, you just don’t want to admit that.”
“You speak as if you knew me so well.” He shook his head. “Who’s closer to the truth?”
“Regarding your particular case, I think I am the one.”
They silenced when they reached the unprotected tunnel’s edge. From then on, they’d hear the Voice in its full power, and it increased with the intensifiers the more they walked inside the dark corridor. Dalana crafted a big insect, the size of Colin’s waist, and sent it ahead, emanating a blue glow of light around its carapace. It disappeared in the mist and never returned.
“Well, we’d better go ourselves and finish this up,” Colin said, raising his chest.
“Hold my hand. Remember what you want. Let’s keep that in mind,” Dalana said.
He thought about Angeline, about Terra, about Mae, the Creator he so wanted to find. He grabbed Dalana’s hand. Warmth soothed his nervous thoughts, and they walked the tunnel with their heads lowered by the weight of desperation.
The Voice struck them with the surface’s intensity, and it got worse at every step. Angeline, Terra. Utopia, Colin, Dalana. They repeated their goals and spoke them out loud, they tried to talk. All in vain, though, because any sound other than the World Voice morphed into the Voice’s own speech.
“Where are you? I can feel you ... I want you ... I want to be with you, I need to meet you ...”
The wide room at the end had walls that moved around themselves, looking for new company, for any new presence. Grey matter abounded in the floor, the remnants of old melt downs. A few pieces remained solid and intact in their midst, and when Colin tried to pick them up, they resisted his grip. The ground enveloped them, claiming their matter for itself, glad to have found more company. He had to insist, he had to think of any device to help him.
Using both hands to remove it by force, his fingers rejoiced at the objects’ coldness. Their surface presented him freshness, a flavor of friendship and care.
“I want you ...”
He knelt on the ground and hugged the shape, taken by an urgent desire. New friends waited for him, they called him and he wanted them. He then looked to his side and another person looked at him too, wanting him too. The Voice said, the Voice was him, the Voice wanted to find the presence!
“I need to meet you ...”
Colin hugged Dalana and she hugged him back, both lying on the floor. They pressed their bodies on each other with enough intensity to match every cell of their bodies. His bones’ atoms wanted to meet the atoms of her bones, and to do so, he’d need to blend with her flesh, to cross the distances of matter, and for that, their masters, their bodies, would have to want that too.
They wished for it. Dalana and Colin embraced each other and started to blend one skin in the other.
∙ 14 ∙ The Voice Master
The universe’s colossal bells collided. They tolled in a sequence of loud calls, making the world tremble with the power of a moon impacting on its planet. Colin lost his senses, unaware of the room in which he lay, or of the embrace he wished to intensify.
His body ached, and pain pushed him apart from existence. In darkness, he had his moment of loneliness, feeling nothing, even if something joined him. Bang, it sounded, making him terrified of being there forever.
The solid floor and walls rippled in a trance, everything vibrated under the bells’ echoes. Quakes spread throughout the universe, freezing time for those too distracted by the noise. Dalana separated her body from Colin’s, realizing their situation’s danger.
He rolled to the side, unaware of her, his clothes and skin torn into shreds from the separation. She grabbed his legs to pull him towards the entrance, calling out his name to get some help on that hard task.
“Colin, Colin, wake up, Colin, you’re not alone, you’re not the void, you’re born human, you need others, you need me, you need Angeline, come, Colin, help me out, let’s get out of here, we must do it, Colin, Colin, please, I can’t do this alone,” she said.
Silence lasted for a brief moment, before the World Voice digested the loud bang and considered its implications. When it spoke again, it resumed its pleas.
“Where are you? Come to me ... Show yourself ... I am here for you ...”
Colin thus turned his eyes again, looking for a presence. Dark hands grabbed his ankles, red skin burned the surface of his chest, waist, and thighs. He lay half naked in front of Dalana, whom he recognized at last.
He recreated his clothes, he restored his flesh. Back into his self, he stood up and held Dalana’s arm, pulling her towards the corridor, forcing her to run the Terran way, one foot after the other in a sequence of long jumps. Their minds boiled with past and current ideas, half inner thoughts, half World Voice invasions.
“I am so alone ... Please, give me that again ... Show me you can hear me ... Tell me I am speaking with someone, something, anything ... Take me out of this torment ... Talk to me, listen to me ... That’s all I want ...”
Angeline, Terra.
Utopia, Colin, Dalana.
Once they got under the corridor’s protective walls, the Voice faded to lower whispers. Manageable, slow-acting Voice, as destructive as usual, but less urgent. They stopped, stared at each other, and made sure that they still knew their identities.
“We can’t go back there, not the two of us. You have to go alone, or we won’t get the new materials,” Dalana said.
“I won’t go, not without you. Sadness I can resist, but not this, not when I have Angeline and ... and you,” Colin said.
“Can you think of something to get there and do the job for us? I’m feeling strange, I don’t want to stay here anymore.”
“Me too. Let’s go back to the lab and tell them we can’t do it, not now.”
They fled in haste, afraid of each other, of the Voice’s power on their needy minds. Bang! Colin stopped running midair, falling down. Bang! Loud, clear, bone-wrecking. He ground his teeth in a strong bite, one he wished to have the power to tear them into pieces, and so they did. He chewed bone fragments, his heart reminded him immortality still depended on his decision, that he could still die if he wanted to, if only he wanted to disappear.
“I will find you ... I will hunt you down and make you listen to me ... Yes, you are making a fool of me, torturing me ... I will destroy you, find you all and crush you ... And make you hear all I have to say ... Forever and ever and ever ...”
“Think of Angeline, Colin, think of Terra! Wake up, come back to me, we have to get back to our friends!” Dalana said, cheering for him in front of him, avoiding his touch.<
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Terror struck her mind, cornered by the threat of disappearance. The Voice spoke of destruction and it destroyed, unaware of its impact, blind to the ruins under its pillar. Creators and creation would hear the World Voice forever and ever, everything it had to say, crushing and annihilating.
“OOOO must stop this,” Colin said, regaining his senses.
“It is probably laughing at us.” Dalana ran again by Colin’s side.
Nobody played at the ping pong room. The table had merged with the ball and rackets, folded in half on the floor, wanting to kiss its feet. Closer to the lab’s door, only the World Voice’s faint threats penetrated Colin’s hearing. Inside, they could all be dead, including the Creators. He let Dalana open the door, too nervous, too scared to find the ugly truth.
Another loud bang tore the universe in half and then reattached it whole. Before losing senses, Colin caught a scream, either female or male. He wandered through darkness, stepping on nail beds and scorching stones, swimming through rivers of liquid fire, alone, separated from his body.
He went back because of his nostrils. The perfume he knew so well, the one he loved the most, it floated all around his neck, moving like flesh. It had the texture of hair, wavy hair with strands that scratched his cheeks and made him tickle. Angeline held him in her arms.
“You are here, I’m so glad you’re here, still alive, I was so worried!” she said, grabbing his shoulders to stare into his eyes.
“I’m glad to see you too,” he said, regaining trust in his speech, seeing Dalana stand behind Angeline like a shadow, ready to remove her in case they threatened to blend their matter.
“We have to get out of here! It’s too dangerous, everything wants to eat us!” she said.
“Where can we go? It will be this way everywhere.”
“Then make her stop that!” Angeline pointed to Ai.iA.
Ai.iA spun the two resistant objects on the table. In the middle of their paths, however, she had placed a third one, a grey plate, made of a substance like aluminum. She made circles around the plate, approaching it to increase the tension everybody felt in their bodies. Once she struck the plate with both objects at the same time, the loud bang would sound again and not lose power, as it did when she performed her dance.
“I want to go to the outer world. I have to see it and be able to run where I want,” Oliver said, siding with Angeline to reinforce their demand to Colin.
“You won’t survive up there. There’s no air, and it’s hard even to walk,” Colin said.
“Please stay with us. Wait until the end of the world,” Dalana said behind them. “I’ll make sure you have everything you need to be happy in here.”
Bang. Time stopped to all. The World Voice digested the noise, it heard its every vibration until the definitive end. Then it awoke the world from its forced slumber, eternal while it lasted.
“I will destroy you ... Ruin your mind ... Make you suffer like you’re making me ... I will sweep this world and make you pay ... I’ll torture you and then you’ll learn to talk to me ... To respect me ...”
OOOO hopped on Colin’s chest and stayed put in his lap. It contracted its face, recoiling its teeth to one side of its mouth, it spun its head in a constant loop, breaking its pace in useless attempts at stopping the spin.
“Give up on this, OOOO. It could all be over if you want to,” Colin said to his frightened friend.
Having all eyes on him, Colin watched Ai.iA’s ritual on the table with apprehension. In her trance, she ruled the world along with the World Voice, making hostages out of every other thing in existence.
He took Angeline’s hand and led her to the corridor’s door. Everybody followed him to one of the empty rooms, where he sat down with his beloved one on one side and OOOO on the other. The humans did the same, staying close together. Dalana placed herself in their middle, comforting those who looked down.
Zach sung a tale of people fighting the powerful voice of doom, the new world’s first human artwork. He had the words ready in his mind, he labored on them to keep his sanity and inspire the group.
“He found out he doesn’t want to blow everything up if he’s singing,” Amanda whispered to Dalana.
In the song, they were lost souls looking for a place of their own, fleeing from the threats of death that invaded every aspect of their lives, and they escaped because they found their home in the institution of the group itself.
They heard him sing while a thunder storm ravaged the land. “I will rip you to pieces ... Bang your mind until you can’t take me anymore ... Face me and deal with my blows ... Come, give me the chance to fight ...”
Mat, the painter, saw beauty in their hideout. They resisted together, one hugging the other, one’s head over the other’s shoulder, holding hands, doing their best to feel safe under the Voice. He asked for a pencil and paper from Dalana, so that he could draw something and help with the mood.
“This doesn’t work well. Have you never seen a pencil, Dalana?” Mat said, scratching the paper with the rubbery stick created by her.
“Sorry, I’ll have to try other ideas. I’m not from Terra, you remember that?” Dalana said, looking at Colin.
“There you go, Mat. I think I know what you need.” Colin bowed at the man, creating him a pencil.
“Thanks, man, that fits me better.” Mat tested his gift with a pleased smile.
Laura watched him sketch the Voice’s pillar, a vision he had only heard described to him, never being at the surface world, curious to portray the creature’s dimension. When he added small traces to indicate old Earth’s ruins, she began to cry.
Laura let tears roll down her eyes, listening to Zach’s sad songs, hearing the World Voice’s threats, seeing the thing itself in all its might at the paper. The torment in her mind surrounded all escape routes, strangling hope. She sobbed, recoiled on herself, bringing her knees to her chest and enclosing her head between thighs.
Her friends paid attention to her shrieks and gasps, not one of them ashamed of her cry. Their collective will wished for it, for tears and lament. She did good.
Dalana crawled to her, sitting in front of Laura’s bent legs. “Yes, cry, cry, let these feelings flow, we are here for you, we want you well, laughing, crying, anything you want, you’ll always be good for us,” she said.
Feeling proud, Laura raised her head with the mouth wide opened, her eyes squished by a tight frown, displaying her despair for their appreciation. She yelled, she shook her head, she swung her spine front and back to release her agony.
Her chest hurt so bad that she soon lacked air, unable to inflate her lungs. As she cried more and more, her skin changed tone. Blue, the color of asphyxiation, tinted her face. Laura opened her eyes with fear, gasping, raising her hand to Dalana, claiming for help.
Dalana pulled Laura’s legs to make her lay completely on the floor. First, she had to calm down. The humans opened space and offered help, checking her pulse.
“You’re safe with us, my dear,” Amanda whispered to her. “Dalana and Colin won’t let anything bad happen to you, so stay with us.” She smoothed Laura’s black hair, taking it off from her forehead.
“Breathe with me, come, calm down, let the air flow in,” Mat said, gesticulating over Laura.
“Come here so I can make you pay ... Are you afraid to meet me? Come, I dare you! You can only make noises ... Or can you fight too?”
Colin stayed fixed in his place, having lost Angeline to the curious crowd. He had no idea of how to treat any medical case, afraid to do something silly and worsen things. Oliver turned around to confront him, though.
“Won’t you do anything to help? Can’t you do anything except watch people work? When will you get some attitude? You have to stay with us!” he said.
Colin looked at him with tightened eyes, searching Dalana’s gaze. She tilted her head, sharing his surprise at the man’s sudden aggressiveness.
“You’re under the World Voice’s influence, Oliver. It’s aggr
essive now, and so are you. Please, calm down, you have to resist it.” Colin rose both hands over his knees.
“Are you a man or a child? Grow up, boy. It’s not because you’re a god now that others think you’re perfect. You’re doing nothing to help us get out of this hell,” he said.
“I entered the intensifier twice, I took you for a swim, I worked at the round table for a while. I’m at your side. You’re letting the Voice beat you, just calm down—”
“Worthless, it was all worthless, got it? Look at how we are now! I’ll beat the crap out of you, you’ll see, I’ll get to you and you’ll feel my fists.” Oliver dashed over Colin with a hand aimed at his face.
Before reaching his target, however, a cage showed up around him, locking him up. Colin wished for it, and materialized it. The man spat at the wall, trying to hit his foe, trapped behind bars. He punched the iron, he shouted to get out. Angeline took his side, placing her hand on Oliver’s back, inside the cage.
“You can’t do this to him! He’s not a beast, he’s just trying to help us. Take him out of it,” she said, looking at Colin.
“I’ll do that when he gets calmer. Right now, he’s out of himself,” Colin said.
“No, nobody deserves to be locked in like this, not for one second. Do you think the cage will soothe him?”
“What if he hurts any of us?”
“We fight back.”
Oliver stopped hurting himself on the bars, listening to them argue. Colin stared at him and removed his cage. Angeline set herself in their middle, preventing any approach from both, although Colin would never react in an eventual fight with Oliver.
The universe’s darkness descended upon them, contaminating their minds with the World Voice’s despair. Charlotte wanted to punch OOOO, Mat wanted to kick Oliver in the belly, Amanda wanted to slap Ai.iA, who banged the stones in the laboratory.
“Show up ... where are you? I heard you ... You can’t escape me ... I will seek you forever ... I have nothing else to do, be ready for a hunt ... You’ll listen to me ... You’ll listen to me for all eternity ...”
