Out of the Light

A harsh clanging sound brought me back to consciousness. I slowly opened my eyes, but nothing was to be seen, nothing to be heard. I quickly lifted my hands to feel around my face to see if my eyes were really open, but my hands wouldn’t move. They seemed to be chained to the wall.

“You’ll never escape.” The voice like nails on a chalk board sliced through the air like a dagger. It seemed to come from everywhere, maybe even perhaps my own mind. I couldn’t tell if it was one single voice, or several whispering as one.

It sent shivers up my spine.

I started to tremble violently. Where was I? How did I get here? Kidnapped. I’d been abducted, that had to be it and I strained to remember, but the more I tried to remember, the further a screw was driven into my head. Some kind of substance was caked on the side of my head, oozing in some places, plastering my hair down in others. Taking a deep breath, I realized it was blood. I could smell the bitter metal in it.

Suddenly, as if someone had flipped a light switch, I could see once more. I saw the delicate glass skyscrapers first. They were engulfed in a blue and orange inferno. The deep purple night sky was ablaze and the stars too close. Then, I looked down at myself and, to my horror, every bit of my pasty skin was exposed, purpled and bloody. My right thigh was sliced right down to the sickly grey bone and through an artery.

How was I not dead, yet?

A blush suddenly crept up my neck. What if somebody saw me like this, dead and naked?

And then I noticed the people.

Only, I wasn’t sure they were really human. Every single face, young and old, white and black, weathered and new, had the same frozen, unblinking expression upon it. Heads were thrown back towards the sky and expressions of pure terror glued on them. However, they didn’t run, didn’t try to escape, they just walked mindlessly. No sounds escaped their lips. I could hear the blue and red fires burning and metal creaking, but no people. Then, I really listened. There was no sound besides the metal, the fires, chains that bound me to the wall of this building rattling. No hint of animals, bugs, anything breathing. Not even me.

I yanked against the chains harshly; I had to get out of there, wherever there was. To my utter disbelief, the brick around the metal crumbled as if it were sand. I stared at it a while until the loud screeching of metal scraping against metal made me clap my hands to my ears. A table had appeared, just out of reach of the crumbling brick, with a set of clothes resting on top. I pulled on the grey shirt and the black trousers. There were no shoes, so I just started walking.

Slowly, I started to feel the warm, then hot pavement beneath my feet. It was scorching from the razing skyscrapers and buildings. The eerie people of this blazing city just passed by, either not noticing me or not caring. Or maybe they just recognized me as one of their own with a look of disgust and horror frozen on my face. One of them, a woman with dark skin and green hair, brushed my cold, dead hand with her hot, ghostly one as she passed. She simply continued on. She didn’t flinch away as I did, just kept drifting with that mindless, terrified expression, head tilted towards the sky.

I looked upwards as well. I couldn’t remember when the stars got so close or moved so fast. You could actually see what colour each and every one of them were: red, blue, orange. The moon was bleeding on the horizon, scarlet streaking its face.

A gas station was up ahead, its windows reflecting the blue fires around it. The lot itself was not burning, but the fire was consuming everything around it. It was almost as if the flames were scared of it, did not want to touch the dirt of that single lot. I automatically started into the building and towards the bathroom. Quickly, I was becoming aware of the dryness of my mouth. I had to see if the water worked.

The charred door to the men’s room swung open and all I could see was the water faucet. Relief filled every inch of my body as I turned it on and the water ran clear. I stuck my head and drank and drank. And then the texture of the water changed. The water had turned brown and slimy. I pulled back, disgusted, and wiped my mouth.

That’s when I looked into the mirror on the wall.

I was a corpse, a dead, bloodied corpse. My skin grey and purple, blood stained across the ripped canvas. It looked so much worse in the light and I could smell the rotting flesh now. Brown outlined my bloodied lips. It was strange; I couldn’t taste the metallic smelling blood in my mouth. Skin was peeling off my arms, exposing muscle tissue. I hadn’t noticed before in the alley. My green eyes looked different somehow. The colour was the same as far as I could remember, but somehow, they looked… hollow.

I pulled my trousers down and winced at the deep gash in my leg. It was still bleeding. I used the plastic cup that had appeared on the sink and poured water over the gruesome wound. It rinsed the blood off the mangled skin around the gash, only to reveal old blood caked beneath. Tears welled up in my eyes as I started scrubbing furiously at the blood, all of it. What had happened to me?

I’m not sure how much time went by, but I scrubbed and scrubbed until the only blood left was oozing slowly out of every gash on my body. It just kept coming. I sobbed as I looked at the exposed bone in my leg. My left foot had no skin, and I’d ripped the skin off the areas of the rest of my body where it’d been hanging off in places. It didn’t hurt; I couldn’t feel pain. I pulled my clothes back on and threw the bloodied towels I had found into the rusted sink. I looked in the mirror, ran a hand through my greasy black hair, and started on my way.

I wasn’t sure where I was going; I just knew I had to get away from here.