The Hours of Creeping Night - a Collection of Dark Speculative Short Fiction (5 page)

Rising shakily to my feet, I brushed off my rags and spat out a mouthful of blood. I rubbed my temples. It felt as though I’d just been wrenched out of sleep, my brain not yet fully engaged with reality. The room before me spun. Though the cell was small, the open air around me felt empty and exposing. I longed for the close proximity of warm earth pressed around me.

My skin was snaked in pale pink scars, flowing over my veins in a lattice of forgotten pain. I ran my fingertips over the smooth ridges. I trembled, amnesic with trauma.

Two shadows recoiling in corner of the stone cell shifted, catching my attention. Their sunken black eyes were like empty pits in their hollow faces. Their skin was yellow and leathery, tightly stretched over their meatless bodies. Like mine, their heads were shaven and they wore tattered rags.

‘What is this place?’ I demanded. ‘Where am I?’ I marched over to the vertical slit in the wall that served as ventilation and the only window. I tilted my head, lining up my eyes with the gap. A wasteland of red desert stretched out across the horizons, at least a hundred feet below. My stomach twisted as I saw hundred upon hundred of skeletal people slaving slowly with pick-axes and other tools, contorting while they ground gigantic boulders into sand at gunpoint. Scarlet uniforms punctuated the swarms of rags. Gunshots echoed between boulders and stone towers. I flinched as I watched a uniformed man open fire on a group of women and children, heard their brittle bones shattering. Their mouths stretch open, but their throats are too dry to make a sound. I closed my eyes and pressed my back to the wall. The stone was warm and comforting. A cold sweat dripped down my face in spite of the heat.

‘What is this?’ My voice cracked. I looked to the men on the floor, but their faces remained blank. The subtle rise and fall of their ribcages gave the only sign of life; otherwise they would have looked like ancient dried-out husks. Then slowly, stiffly, one of them began to move. He shifted forward and reached into the dust with gnarled fingers.

It spilled from the folds of his palm. He croaked hoarsely, ‘All we have to eat is sand and dust.’ Closing his swollen eyes he lifted his hand above his mouth and let the grains trickle onto his cracked tongue.

I slid back along the wall. ‘They don’t feed you?’ I asked.

The second man responded, crawling forward on his hands and knees. ‘All we have to eat is sand and dust,’ he repeated monotonously.

I became dizzy. My limbs felt weightless and heavy all at once. I collapsed to the floor where I fell into hazy unconsciousness for I don’t know how long. It could have been hours, it could have been days. I dreamt of liquid fire, endless tunnels, the warm press of grazing sand – and felt the most overwhelming emotions of love and fear... they flooded through me until I felt I was going to overflow.

I awoke to a terrible rumble that shook the cell. More dust crumbled from the ceiling. I lurched toward the window, my joints stiff and achy but my skin itching with energy, and peered out through the slit.

Pandemonium. Gigantic plated creatures snaked through the desert sand, diving and descending like sea serpents, coiling their long, metallic bodies around boulders and people indiscriminately and crushing them effortlessly. Their underbellies were protected by transparent plates, through which I could see a tangled network of pipe-like vessels containing bubbling blue liquid. I watched as one of the creatures coiled its body around a group of people, soldiers and prisoners united in attack, and witnessed as the blue substance burned purple then red, as the creature’s body oozed smouldering, liquid fire, incinerating the helpless beings.

The slaves were trying to run, in a hopeless attempt of escape. The scarlet soldiers were shooting frantically, their bullets rebounding off the armoured plates, but exploding in a splatter of acidic blue when they hit the small black eyes.

The shrill screams of the creatures reverberated in my ears, dulling all other sound. Their voices were unlike anything else. 

It sounded like home.

The memory floods me. I was a child. Scooping dust into my mouth. The ground beneath me trembled and I was pulled deep into the sand, into dark tunnels. Centipede-like creatures slid through the sand around me. I was encased, fed blood, cool and sweet and nourishing, Neptune blue. I clawed myself from a broken shell, every pulsing vein prominent through my translucent skin, raging with the same energy as the creatures, infused with knowledge, love and hope.

I looked down at my arms. Not scars. Birthmarks.

‘All we have to eat is sand and dust,’ the men repeated, kneeling before me. Their dark eyes bore into me, pleading for release.

I could feel my blood heat; my palms burned with the intensity of molten rock. The marks over my veins began to glow purple then red.

I saw it now. I closed my eyes and saw scarlet soldiers grab me the moment I clawed my way from the earth. They beat me, strapped me down and drained me until my veins were empty… But I lived. I was weak, but I lived.

My blood had regenerated.

My family had come to remind me of my destiny.

I looked down upon the shells of men before me, frail and on their knees. They closed their eyes calmly. I covered their faces with my palms. They did not resist. Smoke curled in tendrils as I scorched their skulls, my hand sinking into their thin flesh. I screamed as I clasped tightly and their bones crumbled into white ash.

Three officers ran towards the cell, shouting in confusion and panic. The metal bars melted in my grasp. The guards froze in fear, their mouths hanging open. I grabbed hold of two of their faces and melted their skin before crushing their skulls. I felt the sting of bullets hit me, melt and run over me like mercury. I took the man with both hands and watched the gun liquefy in his grasp. The once snarling dogs whimpered and cowered.

I walked out of the cell and down the spiral stone stairs, destroying all those who stood in my path. Outside, the shrieks of my family urged me onwards, the ground rumbling beneath my feet and dust clouding the air as the stone walls shook.

Down, down further into the darkness I ran. The air cooled around me on my descent and I felt artificial temperature on my skin; I heard the monotonous hum of electric vents, blasting freezing air into the underground cavern. Steel and stone reinforced the walls, making them appear impenetrable.

I passed through a long passageway containing a complex system of carts, pulleys and machinery. The dust-eaters were transporting the sand through machines and reactors. Once the sand was contained, a blue liquid was channelled in, and a terrible noise began – gurgling and grinding – as the machine was activated. Glistening black stones, like condensed solar systems, were carted from the reactors and down long passages branching off from the walls.

I followed the tubes of blue liquid that led to the reactors. It was a labyrinth; the tubes crossed and twisted, leading into different chambers with different reactors. It was hard to decipher which direction the liquid was flowing. Eventually, I traced it to its source.

My heart jumped when I saw her. She was dormant, suspended in a tank of thick gel. Tubes were embedded into her flesh, holes drilled through her armoured-plates to her veins. I pressed my hand to the glass. Her small, black eyes rolled and looked into mine. I saw her intelligence, felt her resignation. Her eyes were cloudy and dull. She was dying.

Her focused shifted behind me. I followed her gaze. Behind me there was an egg. It was, like her, in a tank of thick liquid, wires attached to it and leading into a vast computer system surrounding it, monitoring it. I stepped up to the platform and killed the technicians cowering beneath the desks. On the screens I could see the pattern of its heartbeat, an ultrasound scan of its coiled body and the record of its blood-production – all the varying patterns of pre-birth activity.

I suddenly realised the fate of this infant. Once the Queen died, she would be her replacement. She would never know the true meaning of being alive. Her captivity would ensure the destruction of my whole family, and the assurance of this twisted enterprise.

There was no hope for the Queen. I knew what I had to do.

Climbing onto the edge of the tank, I took a deep breath and dived. The thick liquid pressed against me, holding me back, but I struggled through, my eyes closed, feeling my way with my hands. My fingers caught in the wires and I tore them away. Wrapping my arms around the egg, I kicked with all my strength to take us to the surface. I gasped for air, the synthetic-tasting gel dribbling down into my mouth. I had her, and that was all that mattered.

The Queen stared contently. The blood draining from her thinned in the tubes, then ceased to flow. What little life was left in her eyes faded like a candle starved of oxygen.

Above me, I could hear the chaos still raging outside. I made my way steadily to the surface, the egg held tightly in my arms, pressed close to my body. My warmth made it pulse and I felt the young queen wriggle impatiently. ‘Soon,’ I whispered.

Stepping out into the desert where the dust-eaters still screamed and the soldiers still fought, two of the creatures moved to my side, creating a protective shield as I ran. Leaving the building behind, I felt the ground shake like an earthquake as the creatures attacked it. The concrete split and crumbled, avalanching down into the deep caverns where the explosion of the reactors vibrated the very atoms of the air.

The screaming and the gunfire began to fade. Soon, there was no one left.

The dust began to settle and the air began to quiet. I found myself looking up into the faces of my family as they gathered around me, slowing into a dream-like stillness. An eyrie silence blanketed the world, incongruent to the apocalyptic battle and the long war that had only moments ago ended. The small, black eyes turned towards the egg in my hands as it began to crack, the noise of the breaking shell the first sound of peace. The new queen was born to freedom. We shared the same world.

Bad
Thoughts

I
was someone’s bad thought.

I wish my skin would heal, so I wouldn’t have to wear these rough stitches. My shoulders and arms are scratched and scarred – surely this means it was alive, once. Dead skin doesn’t mend. A thick thread extrudes from the centre of my stomach and I probe it with my finger. Dried blood flakes out of the closed wound. I place my hand on my chest and feel for a heartbeat. Nothing.  There is a metal band around my wrist. Rusty bolts hold it to my bone. There is a strong iron ring on it. Perhaps it was used to keep me chained up.

My damp hair prickles my eyes. I raise my hand to my head and feel three more bolts on the side of my skull. Tracing my fingers down my face, my cheeks feel hollow.

I slouch in the doorway of a ruined church: another bad thought. The wooden cross lays fragmented and scorched in the centre of the tiled floor. The bibles are ash. A red light glows from within the church. But I am cold, numb.

A dead dove lays broken in the shadow of a tombstone. One more bad thought. I scoop it up and cradle in my hand. I wish I could feel the snowy feathers – I know they would be just as soft.

Gripping the crumbling stone archway, I cautiously peer out into the world beyond. My eyes soften. I see blue strangled babies, the flesh melting from a ram’s skull, a man crucified and wrapped in barbed wire, and a child eating bones pulled from a grave. I see wars between scorched skeleton knights and arched, dripping bodies with exaggerated jaws full of knives. A man slices the skin of a woman, peeling it back and pinning her to a wall while he tears up her tendons and plays them like harp strings.

I recoil into the shadows of the church and let the dove fall into the ash.

I did not ask to be created in the dark, creeping thoughts of a human mind. That’s all it takes: the spark of a twisted idea. To live in this world is not beyond your imagination: it is your imagination.

You don’t even know you do it.

I would cry if my eyes were not dead.

I sigh, the dust clouding from my lungs. Shuffling, my back arched, I make my way through the splintered debris of the church to the inner wall. I gasp as I tear the flesh of my leg on a jagged piece of wood. I reach down and smooth the ragged skin over.

I come to a dark window and collapse to my knees, my eyes peering just over the top of the sill. I rest my arms at the base of the window, pressing my face into them and keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the darkness before me.

If I wait long enough, I’ll see him.

He must have forgotten me for the time being. But eventually, he’ll remember.

I wait.

The screams outside seem dull and distant. I’m good at waiting: I can wait days and days if I close down my mind. When I don’t think, I don’t feel sad.

My eyes see him before my brain does.

The familiar face: the delicate line of the jaw, the long nose, the faint blue eyes. He always looks through the window at me like that – absorbing me with his eyes. Sometimes he looks past me and I know he’s gone outside the church.

But today he is looking at me.

Studying me.

A few times before, his imagination has let me stand beside him and I watch myself being transferred onto the canvas. The church is already there, the crumbling stone and broken cross, depicted in oil paint. I stare as I see my shape, my flesh, my face forming with every brush stroke. I look around and I see other canvases. I see the wars of the skeletons, the crucified man with the barbed wire snaking through his skin, the blue babies and the tendon-strung girl.