by Davi Cao
Whatever remained in the post-rapture reality melted down in sadness, energy, and light obeying master rules, alien to any human notion. A voice, the World Voice, for it weighted on every atom, dominating all states of matter, the World Voice wandered alone in its tormented existence. If OOOO spoke any truth, the giant pillar traveled in a prison built for itself, the whole universe destroyed to keep it isolated.
“I need somebody ... Please, anybody, come to me ...”
After meeting OOOO, the outside world promised strange creatures, a new population of monsters. To protect himself, Colin opened every drawer and door in the room, looking for weapons. He found scissors, box cutters and the baseball bat he searched for when OOOO praised its supposed creation. The objects melted down, the bat half gone, the box cutters losing its blades to depression. Colin put the scissors in his pocket, the only solid object, saving it for the dangers he would find. With time to spare, he put all the snacks he’d gathered in his backpack, adjusting it to his back.
Packed and ready, he stared at the window to trace his path home from the streets below, wondering about his parents' safety. How he wished for some company, for someone to make decisions for him, to tell him to obey. Following rules, yes, he did that well. His feet shook with terror, the only human being around, the lucky survivor. Others like him should be in town, in the world, people better at surviving than him, people he could partner with and thrive. Seven billion people.
Angeline could still be alive, and her interrupted call could be a mere cellphone meltdown. Earth died in ruins, its debris the product of human creation, and humans won every battle ever fought. Also, OOOO mentioned a certain Mae, the creator of Terra. Was she a monster too, or human? If OOOO had gone away for real, at least one monster wouldn't bother him anymore, nor enter his way. Colin put his ear on the office’s main door and heard noises in the corridor.
“Hey! I just remembered one thing!” a voice came from the other side, hitting Colin with a big bang. “You’re a Creator, aren’t you?” OOOO said.
“No ... I’m not. Sorry, I—I don’t create anything. I'm a project manager, you know, I use other people's talents to do stuff, not my own.” Colin moved against the door, hoping to catch any sudden moves from the other side.
“That’s what I thought, but I was too distracted, was I not? Anyway, you should be dead, you see that? Open the door so I can kill you, if you don't mind. I don't know what went wrong.”
Colin jumped away, hitting a table in the clumsiness of his desperation. He picked up the scissors, getting ready to fight, his courage vanishing instead of showing up. The agile creature knocked at the door, seven bangs in quick succession, a nine-legged machine gun.
“Let me in, will you? You need to die. This world is mine now and it needs a fresh start, you see? It will be hard to admire the World Voice knowing that there are older creations around,” OOOO said.
Colin ducked under a table, fitting between chair legs, the computer above him turned opposite to the entrance. Despite the barrier covering half his body from the door's view, his waist and feet still showed, rendering his disguise useless. He put one chair by the side of the other and lay on their seats, breathing heavily with eyes locked on the ceiling.
“You’re human, I know. I don’t hate you, do you understand me? Actually, I love your kind, I’m a super fan of the worlds you inhabit! But you are a creation and were supposed to melt like the others. There's no air anymore, so you should also be choking to death, shouldn't you? I don't know what happened. Maybe a Creator did something different to you and that’s why you’re still here trying to resist, so let me fix that for you, ok? I could blow this whole building up, I could make these walls disappear, but I won't, just to make it more human for both of us, you see?” OOOO said.
The door shook with a sequence of bangs. The creature used all its cylindrical limbs to strike at the melting wood in a row. Colin’s heart pounded hard at each strike, getting his body ready for the frantic run he considered to be his inevitable fate. With the world lost, with a suffering Voice blaming him for all the woes of existence, a memory emerged from the depths of his mind, sweet, passionate, his savior.
“I love you, Colin ... Always did ... Wish we'd had more time.”
Angeline's last words. A designer, a creative woman, his love, she lived, she would forever live, as long as he did. They would meet again, yes, they would go through that hell together, her helping him create a way out, him doing as she told him.
“It’ll be better if you die now, you know? You don’t like to suffer, do you? You’re not special, let me tell you this. You’re just someone else’s creation, ok? And she’s abandoned your world, so you should abandon it too. It’s the etiquette, isn’t it? I’ll kill you now, ok?”
OOOO hit the wood in a loud sequence of punches. The door then bulged with the pressure of OOOO’s head on it, and its melting fibers allowed the breakup of their bonds because they didn’t care anymore. The creature entered Colin’s room with the calmness of an exterminator.
∙ 4 ∙ Creator
As soon as OOOO entered the computer room, Colin froze his breath. Maybe the creature used more senses than sight to find its preys, maybe it mapped the environment with its hearing, maybe it perceived heat, magnetic waves, spectral dust, so that finding a human hidden under a desk would pose no challenge to its capacity. But if it had to knock on the door to enter a place, maybe it wasn’t so powerful after all. It could be a liar.
OOOO swept the room with its goggled eyes, ignoring the tables while it walked past them. It headed to Mr. Alden’s room, to the closed door guarding its entrance, stopping in front to negotiate with the other side.
“I can break this too, can't I? Why are you making it last so long? Get out now,” it said.
Colin seized the opportunity to leave the office, crawling to the corridor in absolute silence, taking care not to slip on the gel-like floor under his hands and knees. Once out, he heard OOOO breaking Mr. Alden’s door, entering. Finding nothing, it said:
“I guess he must have melted already. Poor thing, wasn't he?”
Relieved to find an alibi to his disappearance, Colin forced the first doorknob down the corridor. It melted in his grip, rendered useless. He tried the next door, pressing it lightly, seeing OOOO's shadowy body hop out of the office when he opened it.
“Hey, you’re still alive! That’s not right, is it? I’ll get you now!” it said.
Colin slammed the door behind him, as he entered an unknown neighboring office, making sure to lock it with the key behind its keyhole. He then raced towards the window, just by reflex, expecting to see a way out, and it took him only one second to realize his trap, seven floors up. The miserable voice haunting the world became background noise, his mind invaded by a new enemy, the need for survival. Injected with adrenaline, Colin's suicidal thoughts subsided. No jumping out of the window.
He punched one of the walls, his hand entering the melting concrete like a butcher disemboweling a beast, and repeated his action until he could peep into the other side. He kicked and threw his weak fists on the surface, opening enough space to pass with his whole body.
In the new environment, a repetition of every other office: computers, tables, cabinets, and papers. OOOO banged the door to the previous office until it managed to get inside, at the same time that Colin ran once again into the corridor, through the new room’s door, and sprinted to the elevator. Without thinking, he pressed the powerless button and heard at a distance the calm conclusion of his hunter creature:
“Now I’m sure he must have melted. Poor thing ... Oh, no, there you are! Hey, don’t you want to die? You should, shouldn’t you?” It stepped outside, only to find Colin running towards the emergency stairs.
The fire door banged on the wall as Colin slammed it after an urgent push. He dove into complete darkness, the stairwell lacking electricity and devoid of windows. But he knew the number of steps in each level, so he ran down in desperation, always r
eady to use any wall as an aide to stop his momentum. OOOO entered the area and probed every surface around him with its dark rods.
“I hate the dark!” it screamed.
As Colin jumped the steps and descended one floor after the other, he heard above him the frantic advancement of his hunter. It made loud noises during its fall, its hard legs echoing in the dark confinement of the stairwell. In one furious moment, OOOO punched the wall until it cracked and melted down. The creature opened a hole that let the faint apocalyptic glow enter the place, revealing a quick black figure going down at full speed.
OOOO's stiff legs, although great at hopping and walking, tumbled in the first gap. To regain its balance, the creature rolled down to the next plateau, stood up, and then rolled down again, its body a waterfall on wild rocks. Colin sped up with the echo of OOOO's constant falls, himself always on the verge of tripping.
At every couple of turns, he counted the floor numbers, hoping to leave at the lobby. When he hit the seventh floor down, he probed the dark wall looking for a metal door, and found the handle he needed to turn. He ran through the doorway into darkness again, surprised to see that wherever he was, it lacked windows. After a few steps, he hit a large object, cold and smooth. Running fingers on its surface, he felt handles, mirrors, a car. The garage, before the lobby, how could he forget it?
A symphony of clumsiness emerged from the emergency stairs. OOOO toppled itself continually, banging all parts of its body on the floor and walls, until it punched the concrete again to open another hole and let more light come in. Its descent noise became fainter and fainter, as apparently it kept its way down until the end. The garage resumed its pristine silence, its darkness intensified by Colin's loneliness. Fear took over his heart, hiding in the gloom of Armageddon, his mind bombarded by the Voice's eternal wailing.
Colin found a way between the cars, looking for the furthest wall he could reach from the stairs. He carried the scissors in his hand, its metal blades turning liquid in a part of its surface, his weapon against any encounter. At every step, his confidence trickled down in drops of sweat. Blind, powerless, he made short strides, afraid to hit anything, afraid to trip on any creature ready to strike him with sharp teeth and long nails.
When he hit a wall, he did what he had learned from the world's new nature. With strong punching and kicking, the concrete bricks bled in meaty spasms, flowing down in slimy chunks, honey dripping from its beehive. A thick fluid with no adherence to anything, bathing Colin’s hands in each of his violent strikes, making no bonds, his skin clean and smooth.
Soon, he created a hole where light streamed in and allowed him the first glimpses of the garage. It became wide enough to allow his head to peek through it, one floor above the ground. If he jumped, he’d fall in the back alley by the building's side.
No sign of OOOO, who had continued its descent towards the lobby, who could be in the city by then, preying on survivors, looting ruins. It moved fast, it should be far away already. Something to watch for though, eyes alert for its presence.
Colin jumped, his feet penetrated into the melting surface to the height of his big toe. Solid bones took the impact with ease, muscles stretching to protect his every joint. Safe, he walked down the alley towards the street, peering both ways before moving one step further.
Empty windows, rosy splotches on the ground, a big teardrop made of concrete and steel flowing down a skyscraper at the corner, its dissected bowels overflowing its edges with bent girders and electric wires, all mingling in its meltdown.
He followed the road to his parent’s house, the only safe haven he could think of at the time. After that, he’d check the beach area to look for any survivors. Remembering the crowd in there before the end of the world, he feared finding a place of death, either by stomping, melting or hungry creatures that found a banquet ready for them.
Reaching the top of a slope, though, something moved ahead. Fast and spidery, it hopped around at great speed. Colin slipped silently into the nearest open building, a restaurant with glass panes at the front, and hid behind the counter. He waited for any sound. A drop of slime fell on his head, disgusting, oozing over his shoulders. He screamed. Looking up, it was the ceiling, melting down.
“Nobody loves me ... the world is gone ... I can’t do anything ... who did this to me?”
The Voice resonated stronger now, reminding Colin of a terror he had placed in his mind's background, a main character in his drama. If it approached, like OOOO had warned about, he would find out the hard way whether the power of its sorrow would make him melt too.
OOOO showed up in front of the restaurant. Colin saw it through the glass, a mutual sight, because it jumped through the window and broke it down into liquid shards, falling behind the counter to strike at Colin. He rolled in desperation, clenching the scissors in his hand, and stood up with one big push of his foot, throwing a table against the advancing creature. He ran towards the door, glancing at all the objects and entrances around him, finding nothing helpful.
OOOO pushed him, taking him down whole, himself turned into a dummy. Colin fell to the ground, swinging his arms in wide arches to hit the creature with all his might. The scissors melted in the first coup, spilling its juice over his contorting body. OOOO danced on him, doing its best to pierce his flesh with its hard legs, moving fast with stabs like a sewing machine. Colin turned his chest from side to side, covering his face with both arms, and kicked his attacker. His feet slid between the monster's thin legs, hitting its body.
A duster swept its fluffy feathers on his skin, OOOO attacking nonstop, causing no pain, a harmless flying cockroach trapped inside a shirt. Colin opened his eyes, uncrossing his arms to see the creature that did its best to murder him, and looked straight into its eyes. It bent its cylindrical limbs and pushed them down against the human, pressing hard against his flesh, looking for murder.
Colin wondered about pain, it bugged him that his nerves gave no danger warnings. Was death not as painful as he thought? Strange, his situation pushed him to the role of spectator, watching the demise of his corporeal existence from the protagonist’s view. Then OOOO stopped and looked at him too. Despite its heartfelt attempts at killing Colin, the creature got no blood.
“You said you weren’t a Creator, didn’t you?” it said.
“I’m not ... I’m not a Creator, I swear!”
“I guess you are, though. That explains everything, doesn’t it? That’s why you’re still here. You’re a Creator!”
It stepped down from Colin’s belly, standing in front of him to let the man recover from the incident. Colin waited, though, paying close attention to every move the monster made. He had no idea of what crossed its mind. A big chunk of melting concrete fell in the middle of them, leaving a gap in the ceiling, breaking their silence.
“If you were just a creation, you’d be dead by now. Creators can’t kill other Creators, and why would they want to do such a thing? It’s the most terrible thing to do, to lose a Creator, isn’t it? So, you’re a Creator yourself! Did you know that?”
“No, I said it already! I’m not a Creator!” Colin said.
“Oh, I guess you’re the new one. You're from the old world, aren't you? It happens from time to time, doesn’t it? When a world ends, one or two creations become Creators themselves. Don’t worry, there’s nothing special about you, it’s totally at random. That happened to me too, didn't it? To all Creators! Isn’t it great?”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“OK, but we should move. The Voice is coming this way, and this building is melting. You don’t want to be under it when it falls, do you? You won’t die, but you may get trapped, if you want to. You decide! You’re a Creator! If I get trapped, I’ll allow it, because it’s funny, but I should try to avoid it, otherwise where’s the fun? So, come with me!” OOOO said.
Colin followed it to the street, still fearful. The creature’s whole act made no sense!
“What do yo
u want from me?” he said.
“Friendship! You come from a world where this concept exists, don’t you? Yes, you do, and I loved Terra! Be my friend!”
“But you tried to kill me!”
“Tried, but didn’t succeed, because you’re also a Creator, aren’t you? Do you like my world? Huh, isn’t it interesting?” it said.
“No, I don’t like it! And stop saying I’m a Creator, because I’m not!”
“Yes, you are! Why don’t you create something for us to see, huh?”
“Stop this nonsense, please! Tell me now, what do you want from me?” Colin’s face displayed his agony.
They walked side by side. OOOO’s head span on its neck, watching the panorama of destruction with eyes scanning the colossal pillar of light. It fixed its attention in a region of the sky and Colin did the same, curious to anticipate any danger that threatened them both. The Voice sounded in his mind in a line of faint whispers, making him feel trashy, a person lacking any redeeming quality.
“Make a craft! I’m curious to see what you can do!” OOOO said.
“Once again, I have no idea what you’re talking about! I don’t even know if I can trust you.”
“No, no, no, no hard feelings, please! Creators are sacred, they only die if they want to, you see? I can't hurt you, and I wouldn't want to do such a monstrous thing!”
“How can I really know that you’re not lying?”
“You just create something!” it said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“How? What kind of thing do Creators do?” Colin said.
“Nice, you want my help, don't you? You must formulate an idea and let it flow!”
Colin conceptualized only OOOO in his mind. The creature’s strange invitation disturbed his thoughts in such a way as to render him unable of other ideas. OOOO watched him with its big smile, paying close attention to his whole body. After a short time, in which Colin remained frozen on the street, it looked around itself, searching for something invisible.
