After swimming beneath the sea of apartment complexes and expressways, we finally sink below the shadows of several steel giants as we approach the heart of the city. There are giant screens hanging all around the plaza; all of them dysfunctional and displaying series of faded or broken images. Faint silhouettes of seemingly random pictures of buildings, forests, and valleys are thrusting themselves between unintelligible advertisements of household products and women's apparel. On the tallest building there is a hologram of a faceless newscaster sitting quietly at his desk, saying nothing, hardly even moving. There are blades of grass sprouting beneath the cracks in the pavement, and distended tree roots penetrating the bottoms of the skyscrapers.
"I feel like there were times when I said to myself 'Things can't possibly get any worse than they are right now.' But when I look around at all of this destruction, I can't help but think about how foolish of a thing it was to say." mutters Lakme.
The gloomy sky had cleared in the hour or so since we departed from the kissaten, exiled by an endless pale blue void. We pass beneath a hotel where the sidewalks were lined with young cypress trees; above us there are scattered stratus clouds, which hang so low that they curl along the rooftops and smear the windows in fog with their kiss.
"Did you ever think there would be days like this?" she asks.
"No." I answer blankly.
After several more minutes of walking, we happen upon a crossroads which is split between our right and left, ending directly in front of us; to our right is a row of office buildings, which are so close together and dull they may as well be a colossal slab of gray tempered glass, while far to our left is a mega-complex decorated with colorful signs, billboards, posters and other means of shallow corporate beautification.
"Which way is it?" I ask, but Lakme doesn't respond; again she's lost in a trance, but this time she looks visibly disturbed before she regains her composure.
"What are you seeing?" I ask her.
"There are bodies in those cars over there. They're all dead, but completely unscathed, like the life was just sucked out of them."
Down the road towards the mall is a dense population of trucks, cars and bikes, parked crookedly along the lanes and onto the sidewalks as if their occupants had all been raptured to heaven in the midst of the morning traffic.
"What happened here?" I ask.
"They didn't even have time to run away." she mutters, seemingly to herself, as if she hadn't even heard the question.
As we move closer, frozen silhouettes can be made out through the fogged side windows; black shadows of corpses resting contorted in the driver seats.
Lakme approached the first car, seemingly out of insatiable curiosity; it's a green 2000s coupe with a black hardtop, which had been driving in the direction opposite of the road.
"Are you sure you should be going near that thing?"
"I have to know what happened before we get any closer. I may be able to see what's waiting for us."
She wrenches open the door with minimal effort, though when she does, the body of the driver jerks to the side, causing her to shriek, before collapsing onto the ground. She places her hand over her heart, taking a deep breath before kneeling down and assessing the situation
"He's dead, but there doesn't seem to be any damage to the car. I've never seen anything like this."
A shadow looms over me, but when I look, there's another small group of stratus clouds, darker and denser than the others, slowly drifting overhead. Their formation is oddly symmetrical, and as they continue to move, they cast an eerie light over the area. Lakme notices them too and instinctively reaches for my hand.
"We need to keep moving," she says, her voice barely above a whisper.
As we continue down the road, we notice that the dark clouds seem to be following us, casting their ominous shadows wherever we go.
"What do you think those clouds are?" I ask.
"I don't know, but it can't be a good sign. Hurry up, we need to get inside, now!" she says, pulling me into a sprint alongside her.
We make our way towards the mega-complex, and, as we get closer, we find the body of a security guard lying face-down beside the door. Lakme tries to wrench the rusted door open with the tips of her fingers, but it doesn't budge. She pats the guard's body down, but finds nothing on him. In the corner of my eye, I see a crowbar lying a few feet away, partially covered by a fallen aluminum trash can.
"I found something!" I shout.
I kick the trash can away, pick it up and toss it to her; she wedges it into the door's crevice and, after a few tugs, the door groans and gives way, revealing the dimly lit interior of the mega-complex; as we enter, a sound like an orthodox choir of bass singers maintaining a low D note rings down from the outside; inside, the dimly lit corridors echo with a ghostly silence.
"Something's coming!" Lakme shouts, "We need to shut the security door!"
Beside the entrance, there is a glass box with a large red button labeled "EMERGENCY." Without hesitation, I smash the glass with the side of the crowbar before tossing it onto the ground and press the button with the side of my fist. Immediately, alarms blare throughout the complex, and a voice booms over the intercom: "Security lockdown initiated! Security lockdown initiated! Please take cover immediately!"
Heavy steel shutters begin to descend from the ceiling, sealing off the entrance and other potential access points to the complex. As the main entrance is secured, the ominous chorus from outside becomes distant until it stifles completely, drowned out by the echoing alarms, which screech like a duck being whacked by an electric baton.
Lakme takes a deep breath, "That was close."
Lakme quickly takes out a small flashlight from her pocket and illuminates the path ahead. The narrow beam of light reveals a hallway lined with abandoned kiosks, their signs covered in layers of grime and dust. Some of the storefront shutters are half-open, revealing overturned mannequins and shattered displays. The remnants of shopping bags and dropped merchandise litter the ground, and the escalators stand still as cadavers rest motionless on the rails like figures left forgotten in a dollhouse. White husks are strewn across the tiled floor; hundreds of bodies seem to litter the mall, continuing all the way up, until they appeared as faint shapes resting against the glass barriers far above us. I hold my gaze forward though, so as to not become trapped in the scene.
"We need a plan B." Lakme suggests, her voice echoing slightly in the empty matrix of several sprawling floors above us. "Look around for an escape route, just in case."
I nod in agreement, and we begin to make our way across the first floor, trying various doors as we go. I notice a map at the very end of the main plaza and point it out to her.
"Here!"
When she approaches, something immediately clicks, which is visible in her expression, and I can see connections forming in her mind as she examines the map closely.
"There's a freight elevator for deliveries on this side of the mall; it goes all the way down to the lot behind the building and can serve as an exit. It may be our only way out if push comes to shove."
As we turn around, I notice a series of bright lights emanating from a dark room; the wavelengths fold into each other, projecting out onto the wall from several screens at once, forming halos and inverted rainbows.
"Look," I whisper, pointing at the electronic store. When we approach, the televisions inside are turned on, although they display nothing but static. However, one screen flickers intermittently with what appears to be a news broadcast, perhaps the same from earlier. On the screen, the same man is talking, or perhaps a different but similar-looking man, but in the little display box struggling to manifest above his shoulder, all that can be seen is a single, crudely drawn picture of a cloud. Before we can make any sense of it, the intensity of the flickering amplifies by magnitudes per second, and then, like a roll of film burning out, the screen jumps up and down erratically before fading to black.
Lakme's fingers brush the screen, feeling the cold glass. "Someone is watching us."
As she says this, a zapping sound fills the air, and the lights in the store flicker shorting out completely. The static from the televisions grows louder, nearly deafening, and then, the screens merge to display a picture of a white room; near the corners of the room are four red pillars hammered crudely into the ground, and in the center is a tree, and on the tree trunk there is a man wearing black robes with long tassels, with black boxes strapped to his head and arms with leather, bound up by his wrists with adamantine chains. He remains still for a moment, giving the impression that he's dead, but suddenly, he springs to life, wriggling like a caterpillar emerging from it's cocoon; before I can make sense of what's going on, a swarm of swallowtails clings to him and obscures him from view, and invades the entire room until the screens blacken once more and resume their vacant ambience.
"Was that Membrane?" I ask.
When we emerge from the store, I look up and the rays of the sun appear to be obscured beyond the skylight ten stories above us. The beige walls and floors assume a pallor reminiscent of being stranded in the midst of an empty quarter of sand dunes during an eclipse. There are shadows bleeding into the air, creeping out from the crevices and cracks. The crying angel in the middle of the plaza is blotted with ink tears of abject misery.
"No. It's...something else."
And then, like a hanged man swinging from the gallows, a winged silhouette veiled from head to toe in white robes drops from the highest floor and lands upon the soiled waters of the fountain with all of the grace of a black swan laying to rest in a swamp.
"Hearken, you wayward souls; wherefore didst thou come here?" he says, with a resounding voice that is almost like a whisper.
"Are you the one responsible for all of this?" questions Lakme.
"Nay, we are but morticians, come to cure
These cadavers of a worldly disease.
Angels, but fallen are we, cast downward,
By traitors to the kingdom of heaven.
You are the hosts of this calamity,
Thou hast ced'd Leviathan invitation.
Banished henceforth is that foul mouth Watcher
Who walks with the other traitors of God;
The demon that calls himself "Membrane",
Whose name in old Sheol was Astaroth."
"You don't look very angelic to me!" she retorts.
"Verily, if I bore a saintly guise
Then your belief would not require much faith.
Angels appear to some as devils do,
And sinners to others as saviors;
But we do not try to hide what we are;
There is no one good but one, which is God."
As he says this, a crack in the skylight above suddenly splinters through the glass, and a faint glow begins to filter down from the clouds, casting an eerie light on the scene below. The plaza, once muted and shadowed, now flickers strangely, as if caught between realms. The ominous singing fills the chamber as a sickly gas navigates through the air, its tendrils creeping along the walls like searching fingers. The atmosphere thickens, charged with a palpable tension as the balance shifts subtly, yet unmistakably.
"Faithless juveniles. How long shall I be with you?" he chides, and with a gentle wave of his hand, he casts the cloud of sickly gas away, dispersing it into thin, harmless wisps that fade into the air. The sudden clearing of the atmosphere reveals more figures emerging from the shadows—each adorned with wings less grandiose than his, but equally as dark and tattered.
He walks toward me, raising his hand, and a black flame appears in his palm, and the closer he approaches, the more variegated the colors, betraying an absence of light. My body is invaded by a surge of warmth; I feel feverish as he touches me, as if I am about to collapse and explode. When I look down at my body, I see my skin turning bright red, and I can feel the heat radiating from within, as if my very blood is boiling. Panic sets in, and I stagger backward, desperate to escape the intense heat that seems to consume me.
"Stay your fear," the dark-winged figure commands, his voice resonant and calming despite the terrifying spectacle.
"What are you doing to her?" Lakme protests, but as soon as she moves to protect me, an invisible force sweeps her aside, causing her to crash through the window of a nearby store.
"Thy kind are a weak and slow-witted bunch,
Less than worthy of all Jove's blessings.
Nevertheless, thou hast Heaven's favor,
Virgin hopeful, Pallas Maria."
When he says this, the sound of an explosion rocks the entire building, though when I look around, everything appears still. I sense an ominous presence, and am captured, violated by a feeling of smallness that seems to pervade all of reality. The sun cocoons as thickly as if it intends to hibernate for an eternal winter. The edges of the floors have metamorphosed into familiar balconies, towels and curtains draped over their rails like tongues, their barriers too tall for anyone to fall over. The rooftops penetrate the clouds like steel bulrushes in a sea of fog. I look behind myself and the bases of the apartment buildings wall the ground in all directions, though the space is too long for me to feel truly confined. In the shadows I see a shadow turned around, but for some reason, I can feel his piercing gaze as strongly as if there were a million eyes on the back of his head; a table fan in the dumpster beside him turns perpetually, albeit languidly, squeaking in a manner that is reminiscent of a rusted swing set. Looking at his form evokes a haunting nostalgia, which I cannot even begin to describe with words.
Suddenly, he twitches, and I can hear every single movement of his body as his muscles tighten and release, as his bones bend and snap, as his skin flexes and unwinds. The pale flesh of his gentle hand glitters in the moonlight beneath the sleeve of his black shirt.
I can hear a faint conversation in the background as he turns towards me, but I do not know where it's coming from; it's almost as if it is coming from inside of me. A man and a woman. I cannot make out the words that are being said; the sounds of their footsteps thump the floor as their flowering whispers wilt into argument. As the man's head begins to face me, I am broken by the last words being uttered.
"If I leave you, it's because I want to die alone."
An explosion rips through the air as black flames consume a section of the concrete towers; the ground rocks from side to side, and a section of the wall collapses and crumbles over into a vast sea covered by grey clouds; as the water begins to pour through like the broken hull of a sinking ship, I see his face. His hand is a white wall that slaps me and his face is a black hole that burns. The world is an inferno.
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