by Kim Cormack
“Come on…Please, open up,” she pleaded her case. They didn’t budge of course, that would have been far too convenient.
Her eyes were still scanning for ridges as the large cat-like creature crouched down and started making chirping noises just like a house cat excited about a bird that was too close to the window. The wall opened behind her. Someone snagged her by the arm and yanked her through, just as a hail of fire and lava came spraying out of the creature’s jaws. For the briefest moment, Kayn believed she’d been saved. It took a second to register the horror. She watched her flaming lava engulfed arms as her flesh and meat melted from her bones. She fell to her knees and burned as crippling indescribable torture encompassed her entire being. Her soul screamed from within as she burst into ash and disintegrated into the stale air of the crypt.
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Kayn gasped as her soul awakened with her mind still reeling from the excruciating pain of her last death. Something was boiling beneath her skin. It was visible as she stared in awe at her arms. Red welts bubbled on the surface. She’d just exploded into ash and for a moment, she was concerned that she was about to relive that excruciating demise. Her veins were putrid green, instead of brilliant blue but visible to the naked eye. It didn’t hurt. She clicked, this was another part of her Enlightening. It was starting again. How long did it take? Kayn looked at her hands and the bubbling of her skin abruptly stopped. It was as though she’d calmed it down by understanding what was happening. That one thing had ceased but blood was still rushing through her veins, competing with the whooshing echo of her heart. Did she have to calm down or did she need to push it further to get it to stop? She felt like if she didn’t do something to release the energy, she was going to explode. On instinct, she knew what to do. Kayn screamed a blood curdling scream, releasing some of the pent up emotional rage that consumed her. It sounded like it had come from someone else. It was as though she’d stepped outside of her own body. Kayn shrieked again and again as her heartbeat sped up to the intensity of her pitch. Adrenaline rippled its way through her body, with an intensity she’d never experienced before. Damn it. That felt amazing.
Every battle ceased as her screams echoed through the city-sized endless tunnels and corridors of the crypt. The clan that had already been Enlightened understood what that sound meant. There was a moment of silence, in admiration of the amount of power that must have flowed through someone to make them purge it with such exquisitely pitched anguish. Her screaming seemed to move along the walls, echoed and grew louder taking on a life of its own as it travelled through the endless corridors of the crypt.
After all was said and done, Kayn lay motionless on the cold unforgiving stone. Her mind was empty of all mortal turmoil as her eyes came into focus. Kayn stood up and steadied her jelly like legs by placing a hand against the wall, still humming with her anguish. This time the contact caused a warm exhilarating energy to begin travelling up her arm. Any normal person would have yanked their hand away in fear of what came next but for Kayn, fear was in short supply these days and she was quite intrigued by the sensation. It hit her chest as glorious euphoria. Power surged through her being. Addictive, was not even the word to describe it. She felt dangerously explosive and volatile. Kayn didn’t want to let go of the wall but her hands began to feel like they were burning. She staggered backwards and stared at her Ankh symbol as it glimmered with a pale-yellow light. Her symbol had only flickered a few times since the spider rat incident, no matter how horrific her demise. The torches lighting up the crypt flickered and went out. It felt like she was forgetting something important as she stood there in the isolating darkness. Logic stepped in, prodding her to move. Her screaming would have given away her location. They were already looking for her and she hadn’t exactly spent her time in the Testing making friends. It had been exactly the opposite. She sprinted through the crypt using instinct to guide her in the absence of light. She was doing surprisingly well, running blind, until she came to a dead end and slammed into the wall. Her pulse began to race. She experienced another soul-altering surge of energy as the wall slid open into a lighted corridor. She could see! Kayn’s fingertips were crackling with static electricity. Her knife grew too hot to hold. She dropped it as it began sizzling her skin. Kayn clasped her hands together and blew in the center. That hurt! There was a hazy blue energy surrounding her fingers, crackling and hissing in the space between them. With morbid fascination, she put her fingers together, touching all ten in the middle and slowly pulled them apart. A large ball of blue energy expanded and grew between her palms. What in the hell is this shit? She moved her hands around the energy in awe of her new found ability. Each time she took a deep breath, it felt as though she were drawing energy from the room. She wanted more…She needed more. Kayn held the energy in one hand as she touched the wall with the other, expecting to receive the same pleasurable feeling. She was blasted by a massive electrical surge and thrown through the air, landing face down on the stone with an unforgiving thud. Everything hurt. Kayn’s brain seared with tortuous agony as her chest squeezed making it impossible to breath. It was excruciatingly painful until rather suddenly, something switched off in her mind. She got up and brushed herself off with power circulating through her. She didn’t need to run now. She felt capable of leveling the whole crypt. She wanted more. As she reached for the wall, it began grinding open behind her. She lowered her hand and peered down, preoccupied with the static energy tickling her fingertips.
“Oh! Thank God, it’s you! We’ve been looking for you for so long. Where in the hell have you been?” Mel stammered, her voice frazzled with worry.
Kayn had slipped into a trance like state while playing with a new ball of energy she’d formed between her fingertips. She was quite unconcerned with Melody’s presence.
“What is that?” Mel questioned. “Are you okay?”
“Now I am.” Kayn blankly replied, while mesmerized by the steadily expanding orb she was growing in the palms of her hands.
“Kayn,” Melody urged cautiously, “We should get out of here. If I heard you, so did everybody else. I don’t know what you’ve been up to but the other clans all want you. They’re out for blood.”
She casually glanced up at Melody and stated, “Let them come.” The unique grinding of stone on stone signaled the appearance of a Triad. Kayn peered up. It was Stephanie. Wasn’t this convenient? The girl Kevin had been with all those months they had been apart. The girl he still cared about. The girl who had pretended to be her friend then coldly drowned her.
Stephanie stopped cold when she saw her and provoked, “I wish you could have seen the look on your face when Kevin slit your throat.”
Mel sighed, “Oh Steph… do you ever have bad timing.”
Kayn wanted her dead. She wanted to strangle her with her bare hands. In her mind, she heard Chloe whisper, let’s kill her. Stephanie drew her sword, smirking as she cockily strode towards her. Kayn smirked as she held up the orb of energy she’d been building between her palms.
Stephanie froze and enquired, “What in the hell is that?”
With not a touch of emotion, Kayn coolly replied, “You know, I’m not entirely sure what it is…Catch.” She tossed the ball of blue energy directly at Stephanie. It blew her into a million bloody pieces of red pulp. Kayn had felt a disturbing amount of pleasure as she released it from her hands into the air. She snapped out of her trance to the horror of what she’d done. Shards of Kevin’s booty call had flown everywhere, bloody, slimy chunks of meat and oozing brain matter covering poor Melody from head to toe. She began to heave. Kayn rushed to her aid.
“What did you just do? What in the hell? What did you just do?” Melody stammered.
An explosion of energy was usually a Healer’s Enlightening. Kayn had condensed the energy into something more. She’d manipulated it. She’d channeled it into a form and used it as a weapon. “I have no idea. I was upset. I could see my veins,” Kayn attempted to explain. “I wasn
’t myself while I was holding the energy, but as soon as I let it go, I felt amazing and then normal.”
Mel slowly spun around, aghast at the gory chunks of flesh wallpapering the corridor. The corridor now resembled a sick scenario from a slasher film. “Remind me to stay on your good side,” Melody retorted. “Are you okay? You don’t feel the urge to blow anyone else up, do you?”
Feeling dizzy and exhausted, Kayn murmured, “I don’t think so.” She was still in a bit of shock. She hadn’t really meant to blow the girl up, had she? Chloe’s voice sinisterly whispered in her mind, Yes, we did.
Melody urged, “Come on! We have to get back to Zach!”
Side by side the two Ankh, sprinted through the crypt. Melody seemed to know her way through the sliding passageways. Once they’d covered enough ground and were far away from where Kayn had been screaming, they slowed their pace to a stroll.
Melody enquired, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Kayn knew she was asking about Stephanie’s revelation that Kevin had slit her throat but she had to tuck that down deep inside of her for the time being. Thoughts of his betrayal brought up feelings of rage and violation. They also brought up a sense of confusion over what she’d done in response. It wasn’t clear in her mind. She knew she had killed a whole room full of clan while in a rage, but the details were a little bit sketchy. There were flashes of impossible images leading to the big picture. She knew one thing for sure. She’d lost a part of herself during her vengeance. There was a hollow space where her love for him used to be. Kayn responded, “It’s better if I don’t. I do have something for you though.” She dug around in her top.
Melody winked and teased, “Oh hun. I’m not sure I’m ready to pitch for the other team.”
She chucked the bag of figs at her friend and countered, “Ha, ha. You’re hilarious.” She knew Melody loved figs. She loved them more than candy. She’d enjoyed them at one time when she hadn’t been forced to. This was her symbolic fig leaf to Melody for covering her in pieces of Stephanie.
Melody gobbled them up in a heartbeat and teased, “For the record, if it ever was a choice between you blowing me up and me deciding to bat for the other side. I’d totally be into trying something new.”
Kayn began to laugh. She needed her clan. She needed them to shut off the torture and to remind her that even if he no longer loved her, there were people that did. She had people that needed her. Now that she finally had her Testing priorities in check, they had to make their way back to Zach and find their way out of this place.
Melody became a little amped up. She asked, “Can you do that orb thing again? Do you think you could figure out how to do that on command?”
“That was the first time. I’ve never done that before. I honestly don’t have any idea.” Kayn replied as they strolled down the long hall.
Mel asked, “Is that what sent everyone over the deep end or did you do something else?”
“I’m not sure how I did it.” Kayn explained. “My emotions shut off. I killed everyone in that room. It was easy. I didn’t register the pain from my own injuries. I didn’t care about anything but killing him. I killed Kevin the same way he killed me. I don’t want to know if I can do that on command. That’s not what I want to become.”
With understanding in her eyes, Melody replied, “I can’t imagine you doing something like that but when the other clans catch you, they’re going to go fifty shades of slasher film on you. This is the place to embrace that part of you. If you have the ability to turn off your emotions, it might save us in the end.”
Kayn had no clear memory of how she’d killed everyone in that room. In her mind, it was flashes of throwing people around with strength she’d never experienced. Her hands had been burning, she recalled that much. There had been a surge of anger and she’d released it.
“You’ve wounded well over a dozen partially insane hormonally imbalanced egos. You saying, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know how I kicked all of your asses at once,’ isn’t going to stop the testosterone and estrogen fueled redemption fest they feel you have coming.” Melody sparred while wandering down the stone passageway.
She remembered something. Kayn hesitantly placed her hands against the crypt’s wall. She felt warmth as something moved from within the wall, up her arms and into her chest. It began to burn and she was thrown back a couple of feet. Kayn grasped at her chest while struggling to breathe. That time, whatever she’d been doing had knocked the wind right out of her. She looked down at her fingertips. They were once again, full of energy. She would just have to touch them together and pull them apart a few times. There was a second ball of energy. Kayn stared at the destructive orb in her hands. Melody appeared to be in awe of it. She could feel her sister with her again. Chloe’s voice whispered in her mind, ‘Show Melody what it does...Throw it at her. You should kill her. She’ll stop asking questions.’ This was a dangerous game. She was playing with a gift she hadn’t yet learned to control. An ability that wanted to hurt everyone, regardless of clan or status.
Melody urged her on, “You could easily dispose of everyone. We could make it all the way to the end.”
“Yes, I could dispose of everyone,” Kayn whispered, while mesmerized by the energy in the palm of her hand. She made it larger and then smaller, molding it into the perfect weapon. She whispered, “I’m not coming out of here as me if I keep doing this. I’m slipping away.”
“What do you mean by that?” Melody asked.
Kayn gave her an honest answer, “I can’t explain the euphoria of it. How it felt to take energy from that wall. I want to feel what I felt in the moment I released it. It’s a dark feeling. It feels both right and wrong at the same time.”
Melody stood there, her lips slightly parted. She was reminded of what she used to say whenever Kevin had the same expression. He was catching flies. Memories of her humanity yanked on the other end of the emotional rope and towed her back. Kevin had killed her and she’d killed him. He was the last string to cut from her mortal life. All of those beautiful memories they’d created during that week and she now felt nothing but regret. It was something though…she felt something. Perhaps, it had happened for a reason.
“I’ve been there myself.” Mel explained as they started walking again. “The abilities present themselves with the urgency of an addiction. If you’re afraid you can’t control it, that’s a good thing. That feeling in itself shows you have control. You are aware of the danger. Don’t worry about it. We can find a way out of here without using it. We need to find Zach. Last time I saw him he was fighting Kevin.”
Kayn commented, “I killed Kevin and all of his friends. Then I blew up his ex-girlfriend. I have this crazy feeling that it would be a good idea to avoid bumping into him.” Kayn paused deep in thought. She asked, “That was my Enlightening, wasn’t it?”
Melody replied, “That my friend, was only the beginning of it. Your Enlightening can take anywhere from six months to a year. It’s an immortal growth spurt. Except this growth spurt is in your brain. Your partially mortal brain is striving to activate the areas that are dormant. It sucks and on occasion it’s going to be excruciatingly painful. There’s no point in sugar coating this for you.”
Kayn cracked a smile at Melody. Yes…this was definitely the situation to rip the bandage off. She’d already been primed for disillusion and trauma. She’d been attacked by rat spiders and chainsaw wielding hooded creeps. Someday, perhaps this madness would feel like a normal Saturday night.
The girls started to run again. They sprinted beside each other into another open space with a fountain in the center. They paused to survey the area before they ran towards the fountain for refreshment. They splashed it on their faces, soaking their hair with the icy cold liquid slice of heaven. They drank out of the palms of their hands. In the center of the room was a hazy mist. Zach materialized out of nowhere. He stood frozen for a moment looking at his hands. He patted down his chest. Zach covered his mouth with his hand. He appea
red to be silencing himself. Melody warmly smiled. She strode over and embraced him, sensing his need to be held. Kayn could see that he was still stopping himself from speaking but he obviously had something to say. The three chose a sleep chamber to rest and talk openly in. Up till this point, it had been running, fighting and dying with no game plan. It was time to change that. Kayn placed her fingers in the holes and palm down on the wall. It slid away to reveal their safe room. They all jumped inside as it ground shut behind them. They slid down against the cement walls onto the pillows, silenced by mental exhaustion. One by one, they told their horror stories. They gave blow by blow accounts of the hideous situations that they had found themselves in, since falling through the ceiling into hell. They’d each landed on the stone and began to play a role in various versions of their own personal nightmares. Melody told her of the torturous rooms she and Zach had found, both together and separately. They had both been tortured by Triad and Stephanie had been the ring leader. The girl Zach had a short-lived relationship with during the week before they’d been dumped into hell. She’d bound and dismembered them both. She had done this while Kayn and Kevin had been off somewhere together.
