Taken
If God is omniscient and omnipotent then he knew about this, but still he let it exist.
“If He knows then He doesn’t care, because this shouldn’t be, and we are damned. Oh, we’ve gotten it so wrong.” Susannah didn’t believe in reality anymore. Not in the sense that there’s something solid, logic in cohesion with life. Seeing, comprehending; things that you could understand, could Know.
Her reality was now unintelligible, and she had lost all concept of time as a continuum. She was Nowhere, her faith torn clean and consumed entirely. A strong Catholic in her former life, Susannah had erased all religious concepts from her mind. Blackly, she stared, trembling, smirking unsettlingly but without realisation that she was doing so. A line of saliva dripped down her chin and she made no moves to wipe it away.
Pictures of before, when being alive had made sense lumbered blearily through her mind, and she clung to each one as though if she focused hard enough she could enter into the memory itself, escape this place. Escape the thing that sat amongst the nothingness, observing her silently, wetly.
He’d been a nice, normal guy. He had a nice, normal smile. He’d taken her on a lovely evening out. But he was gone now. Instead, there was this … Other.
Susannah had met him at the gym whilst cooling off at the juice bar after her regular workout session. She’d noticed him looking at her, that nice, normal smile on his handsome face. Not something she wasn’t used to. After all, she was an attractive woman, nothing extraordinary, just a pretty face with a good physique. Her eyes were her best feature. They burned an intense green, set off perfectly by her dark complexion and auburn hair. She didn’t think she would see her own reflection again, and even if she did, she didn’t think she would recognise what it was looking out at her.
“I was a normal girl,” she sighed to herself, hoping he’d hear her and start talking. Normal. That word kept running through her mind as she reminisced, yearning for it.
He’d approached her as she sat reading a magazine and sipping her Soy banana smoothie. Startling her, he’d excused himself and asked permission to sit down. They’d had a long conversation then exchanged numbers. He asked if he could see her again and she’d agreed to a date the following night.
His name was Victor. “Had been,” she said now. She didn’t know his true name. “No, couldn’t be Victor,” she let loose a hysterical giggle, “Too human!”
He’d taken her to a French restaurant across town. After dinner they’d taken a walk in the park. Not something she’d normally agree to, but it was a bright night and the moon was beautiful. She remembered how the stars had reflected in his eyes, as though he had mirrors in his face. “Silly girl, I should have guessed, hmm, somehow.”
Perhaps it had been his delicate touch as he held her hand, or the way the breeze seemed to run its fingers through his dark hair and make it bounce in the light. All she knew was that she had felt at ease with him.
Then he had started to run. First a jog, still holding her hand, surprising her but making her laugh, stop kidding around! He’d turned to her, grinned a grin that had too many teeth in it. Her good humour had faltered, she told him to stop, alarm shadowing her tone now. He had turned away, ignoring her, and picked up speed.
“Were we flying?” she asked the apparition. Again, no response.
He hadn’t stopped, just moved faster until the trees were a blur and the stars were blinding in their brightness. His face had stolen the light of the moon and he’d glowed with cold flames.
Then they had crashed; only it was hard and soft together. “The air gave around us. We were…”
Pressed through, tugged from the other side. Speed of light. The park was gone, the city, the world. She saw a shimmer as she forced a look over her shoulder, then it was gone into the abyss. His laughter was deafening and she’d screamed without vocal chords. She couldn’t feel her body anymore, and for a moment she thought that was gone, too.
“What are you?” she murmured now. She couldn’t raise her voice. The thing in front of her tittered maddeningly. That sound was so full of glee and boisterous knowledge that she felt like screaming and tearing her arms off to get away. There was nothing physical holding her however, nothing she could see or even feel. Yet she couldn’t move.
He was old, she knew that much. Old beyond imagining and powerful in ways the human mind couldn’t decipher; something she could feel, or perhaps he had sent that knowledge. Here, something to chew over while your life comes to an end. When he spoke, she wished she hadn’t urged.
“Do not waste your time, for it doesn’t exist in this place,” insanity, glee at his-its-own joke, “so you see, you cannot waste it!!”
It tittered again, longer and with more delight than the first time, a broken, chittering sound similar to that of a weasel. It was then that she realised he was mad. Time beyond count, perhaps before time as she understood it, that was his age and had robbed him of all sanity.
“W-hat is it you want me for?” she stammered, marvelling that she still possessed the ability for speech. She guessed that soon he would remove it as well as her mobility.
The answer came fast this time, “The curtain between our worlds is unravelled; my world is dying, I am the last … and I need to build. Your world was the closest, and so I came.”
Susannah didn’t get a chance to ask more, for he sent her an image of his meaning that tore her mind apart and blinded her permanently.
But still, she saw. Her world, his; no females left in its universe. The last had shrivelled; extinct. “The walls grow thin,” she murmured, weaker now. Build again … an army.
No more females in his universe, they were gone.
That laugher again as it registered her comprehension. Susannah felt her own sanity become a distant stranger. The human race had never known, though He had, and just watched. “Oh, but He doesn’t care.”
“No, he cares, but not for you. You weren’t his intention. A … mutation, yes, that’s you! Your breed was a plan gone wrong.” He spoke the words nonchalantly, sending her images still, a grin with too many teeth. Far too many teeth.
Ironic laughter bubbled in her throat. She pointed her head at where she thought he might be, felt him towering over her, “You speak of mutation – take a look at what you are!”
One last jab, human arrogance; how stupid of me. She listened as it rose off its haunches, mewling idiotically as the images continued to appear against her will. Taking her eyes was his private joke, for now she had none to squeeze shut. As it smiled at her with one of its many mouths, the others grimacing, frowning, dribbling, grinning with Victor’s mouth; grinning like when the running had begun. She shook with laughter as it pulled itself closer, then her voice was finally stopped as it caressed her with one of its thorny hands.
The world went red, fragments of what had been pierced her flesh, and she sobbed without a voice. She saw her people fail, her race begin to fester, decay, grow deeper as his scent became everything. The last thoughts of her mangled mind were barely registered, but still they came,
“How terrible that this is how it will end.”
missm86
