The Flight of the Argos

I stood in mute silence as I watched the thick, steel doors close over the faces of my family, sealing them away in the hermetic embrace of the Argos. With dull, distant urgency, the speakers throughout the corridor boomed names and numbers and around me, the frantic and the hopeful dashed with equal madness, heads swinging back and forth, trying to find an empty alcove as doors hissed shut all around them. Some, obviously, did not belong. They were stowaways, perhaps, picked up on the Argos’ maiden voyage across the United States when it gathered within its titanic belly the chosen and the faithful. 

Others, like me, simply were not chosen. My mind reeled and my body was powerless to move. I had been condemned to death and I could not understand why. Were my prayers not fervent enough? Had I taken too much for granted in the Prophet’s words? One of the desperate shouldered me roughly as he dashed by, knocking me to the ground and in an instant it was clear. I could see before my eyes the Prophet and his Acolytes assembling in their chambers far above us, on the upper deck of the Argos, the great glass dome of the vessel shimmering overhead. I could see each of them drink ceremonially from their chalice, pray for a safe journey, and step into the rooms appointed to them, doors sealing shut. I could see why I had been rejected in that moment: I was unclean. 

I did not know what brought on my visions nor how to stop them, but surely the Prophet had known, for did he not know every detail of his faithful? Were their lives to him like books in the library of the god? Surely, I reasoned, I was touched by the evil of the world and could not be a part of the Argos’ new world. 

“It’s not fair!” I wailed, my voice lost in the panic, confusion, and alarms of the final moments before the second and final launch of the Argos. The other forsaken around me wailed and beat their fists helplessly against cold, faceless steel. But, despite the noise, the despair, and the trembling that came from within, I heard the slightest of sounds that stopped my tears and froze my heart. There was a hissing, like the sealing of the doors, but emanating from the walls all around us. I rose, skin growing cold. The stowaways, the faithless, and the aberrations could not be suffered to live on the ship of the chosen. The automated sequence was pumping poisonous gas into the ship.

I admit a moment of morbid admiration for the Prophet’s vision. Surely there would be those who did not belong, but how to remove them without a host of security prowling the behemoth bulk of the Argos constantly? The only way to make sure was to treat them like vermin in a house. I gulped as much fresh air as my lungs would hold and ran.

I did not know where to run and so I ran without aim, turning when the whim struck me, barreling through the coughing, choking men, women, and children who had been refused the Argos’ salvation. Slowly, grudgingly, I allowed gasps of air to escape my lips until my lungs were empty and burned with the urge to suck in the invisible venom. I ran as far as I could, but the corridors were endless, miles and miles of identical, sealed doorways. Though I had no reason to believe so, I instinctively thought that the poison must be heavier than air, and would fill the bottom of the corridor before the top. I scrambled atop the hinges of one of the chambers and pressed my lips to the steel ceiling, breathing in deeply several times. I felt no worse for the breaths, so I filled my lungs once more, jumped down, and forced myself to run. 

I did not know what provoked my sight-without-sight, but I refused to be sacrificed for it. Let them condemn the unclean and rain damnation upon their weaker brethren; I would be no man’s fatted calf. I ran without seeing where I went and I threw myself through twist after turn in the darkening halls of my tomb. I saw an escape behind my eyes, but that was not what drove me on, chest burning, heart exploding. 

No, what drove me was what I saw my escape would lead me to. The thing I desired even more than another breath of pure air. What every muscle in my body cried out for. The death of the Prophet. 

Sabotage

The expression “wrench in the gears” comes from the Luddite movement in Britain in the early 19th century. Ever larger, more complicated looms were being built, putting skilled artisans out of a job in favor of cheaper, unskilled labor. The machines did all the work a human had once done, only faster. Protests began.

English Industry was not sympathetic. Desperate, some of the Luddites took to sabotaging the machines, breaking their frames or throwing wrenches into the looms’ inner workings. Riots broke out across England as the Luddites gained followers and threatened the very stability of the national economy. The military was dispatched to put down the instigators.

One such confrontation took place at Burton’s Mill in Middleton. The Luddites drew back, into the mill itself as the army advanced. In their haste to escape, several Luddites fell into the colossal machines and found to their horror that wrenches are considerably tougher than human bones. The mill ground the unlucky Luddites into a red stain. The Burton Mill, after the incident, went on to break record outputs every month, as if the machines themselves were working faster.

The government began arresting the Luddites in bulk, publicly executing the leaders and shipping the rest to internment camps to serve out their sentences. Few were ever seen again. Britain’s looms grew and textiles boomed as the Luddite movement was stamped out. When the old mills were finally torn down, decades later, the red-stained wood and iron seemed to be working even when unmanned, grinding away in hushed whispers.

It is perhaps appropriate that they used wrenches to break down the old mills.

Excerpt from "Darkness Beneath the Sun"

Far ahead of the main force, the beasts roared forward with a hunger that drove them onward. Their teeth and claws flickered in the waving curtains of light that they tore through and their mouths were flecked with saliva that foamed at the promise of new prey. Leading them, and as hungry for battle, Reece Dracomyr bounded with eager strides that kept her even in front of the swiftest creatures under her command. Her grin mirrored the fang-filled mouths of the hounds at her heels and the long shafted spear she bore glittered with the raw shine of polished bone. Her eyes were wide and the black plates of steel she wore over he shoulders and chest cut through the air with a hiss as her long skirts whipped behind her like tails of crimson cloth.

As they closed in on the cathedral, the outer perimeter of Creel’s defenses became apparent. Men and women of all ages, cloaked and hooded in rough, raw white vestments formed a circle around the entire, massive structure. They stood, hand in hand, looking defiantly out at the ravening beasts that descended upon them and the pitiless dragoon that lead them with cold eyes of faith. Their voices were raised in a chant of exaltation, as if Creel himself would step out of the cathedral any moment, to save them from the horde that swarmed before them.

“What a shame,” Reece commented, sucking a deep lungful of air down between strides, “faith makes for a poor shield.” Her expression locked into an amalgam of a snarl and a laugh, her spear twirling above her head and her pace slowing ever so slightly. With one, final skip, she came down on one leg, bent her knee until it touched the ground, and sprang upwards with sonic force. The beasts, smelling their food at last, closed the final few yards with great, bounding leaps even as their commander vanished high into the sky above, the light twinkling off of her black armored plates before the clouds enveloped her.

The faithful did not scream, even as their bodies were torn into by teeth and talons. White robes ran scarlet and the whole of the monsters piled over one another to reach the injured and dying while some flesh yet remained. Across the field, Phare turned her eyes from the sight and held her hand before her face. It was horrible, even if she knew what came next.

From the butchery of the front lines, there came a blast of wind that swept through the massacre like a musical tone. It swelled and grew until the wind echoed the hymn of hope the men and woman had sung in the face of grinning death. From their torn flesh and shattered bones, light began to pour forth, like tall wheat growing whole seasons in seconds. Tendrils of cold light wove together, like strands of webbing, drawing one another into a complex pattern of pale beauty. The gates of the cathedral gleamed with an illumination so intense, even the feasting beasts were obliged to cower backward, shielding their faces from the intensity of the glamour.

Phare raised her head and stared through the light, seeing the shapes that formed within. “They are coming,” she whispered to her commanders who advanced on the blinding miracle. A moment later, the light faded enough to be tolerated by eyes of flesh and they all saw what remained of the faithful. The shapes of the fallen floated above their bodies, lit with a brilliant white that pulsed from within themselves. Great, white wings behind them like hands lifted in prayer, while in their hands, they bore blades of licking fire that seemed golden in their alabaster hands. The only darkness on them was their eyes, which were pits of jet that seemed to fall backwards into unfathomable depths that hurt to look at even more than their shining bodies. The angels sighed with renewed life and raised their blades to cut down the awed monsters that cowered before them.

From the skies above, like a red comet, Reece came streaking down, her spear tip white hot and gouts of fire licking through her grinning teeth. When she struck her target, a tall angel whose impassive face turned upward just in time to see the spear pass through it, there was a concussive boom that shook the cathedral’s walls and set its bells chiming. Dirt flew upwards and rained back down as Reece slowly straightened upright in the crater she had made. A trickle of liquid gold ran down the side of her mouth and she glanced back at the beasts who stared with glowing eyes.

“They taste even better the second time,” she promised, running a bright, red tongue over her lips to lap up the divine blood. The monsters knew an alpha when they saw it and followed suit, leaping at the angles with abandon. Golden swords tore through bone and teeth bit into pale, wispy flesh as the two struggled before the tall walls of Creel’s domain. Reece speared one angel and tore out the throat of another with nails that more closely resembled claws. One angel struck at her, but she caught the blade with her voluminous sleeves and wrenched the weapon from his hand, tearing the cloth from her arm and exposing the wrought iron manacles around her wrists. She glanced at the shackles briefly then turned her attention to the disarmed foe. Opening her mouth wide, she let him see the flames that lurked within her mouth. “Who’s unsuitable to be the leader of the Heroes’ Guild now?” she asked and a blast of scouring flame poured from her lips, burning away the angel’s head like it were vapor.

Excerpt from "See Rick Run"

The guns spat the uniformed men’s contempt for their victims with deafening shrillness. Some flinched and closed their eyes. Some stood dully, their minds refusing to recognize the oblivion that scythed down the ragged line. Others spat curses and vain defiance even to the end, their words buried in the abrupt scream of the execution’s thunder.

Richard did not curse; his tongue was dry and his voice frozen in his gut. He did not stare or flinch either. Seeing what was coming was worse than anything, but not seeing it coming was worse still. When death came for Richard, he did what came most naturally to him- what he’d done throughout a life that seemed a hundred years past- he ran.

Actually, he fell. The embankment they’d been lined up across proved to be steeper than it appeared and Richard fell and rolled down the spongy moss and dirt that hoisted the line of men and women in the final, brief moments of their lives. The men with the guns had used fear to force them this far into the forest, but they’d already begun shooting- what was the worst they could do to Richard now?

As the mud and water of the shallow stream beneath him rose to end Richard’s tumble, he glanced upstream and saw dozens of bodies following his path with much the same grace. The idea of hiding amongst the dead flashed into his head for a moment only. Life or death, the only thing that mattered was to run, as hard and fast as he could.

He hit the water, his limbs scrambling to gain purchase in the staining silt and he lunged downstream on all fours. His eyes registered the shapes falling around him, but the sound of his own breathing pushed other thoughts from his head. Rising from the stream’s scarlet water, Richard made for the tree line and shivered as shackles of ice melted from his legs and chest with trembling strides.

The guns’ roar didn’t pause, but Richard felt a tremendous rush of air behind him and he zigged to put the thickest tree he could see to his back. Scouring heat, like the wrath of a vengeful god, blossomed behind him and swelled with bloated zeal. Green withered to black and grey in the licking conflagration but, even as the oxygen from his lungs was torn away by the flame throwers’ breath, Richard ran. Without a direction other than “away,” he cleared trees and bushes and pits with unflinching urgency.

Even after the sounds of death faded and the heat of exhaustion tore at his muscles and even after the forest’s edge gave way, Richard ran. The shadows of buildings and civilization had just begun to creep up from the horizon when he heard it. A distant howl that managed to be both shrill and deep grew by degrees until, with a finality like a popping soap bubble, it burst in a sound so loud it became silence as it washed through him.

Richard did not look back, but he slowed his pace into a pained walk, allowing his exertion to catch up to him. He had no words and just let himself pant as the sky around him bled a torn and tattered crimson.

On My Shoulder

You know the concept of an angel and a devil on each shoulder? Cartoons used it a lot when I was a kid, so I guess the idea just got imprinted in my brain. Anyway, in my room, I have a wall mirror to my immediate left and a window to my right. At night, the light in the room makes the window a sort of dusky, blurry mirror which is what made me first think of the cartoon cliché. I have two copies of myself, one on each shoulder. Since the window-copy is shaded and murky, I decided that was the devil and the mirror was the angel. From time to time, and always in a joking manner, I’d ask them what they thought I should do before I’d make a decision of no real consequence.

One night, a friend called me up, telling me that he had too much to drink at a party and wanted me to go help him home. This guy was something of a pain and this sort of call was nothing new. It was late and I was tired, but I try to be a Good Samaritan, so I was hesitant to just abandon him to the subway at that ungodly hour. I glanced over my left shoulder to the mirror and raised an eyebrow as if to ask what to do. My reflection was unhelpfully mute.

I turned to my right and opened my mouth to ask the rhetorical when I noticed something strange. The reflection, sparse and vague as it was, seemed to have its lips frozen in a silent “no.” I moved about it and it mimicked me perfectly but for that unchanging expression. I checked the mirror, but saw nothing strange in the faithful reflection.

I was reasonably intrigued and not at least a little freaked out. Slowly, I told my friend that, no, I wouldn’t be able to make it and he should try someone else. He hung up and I turned back to the window. The abnormality was gone.

The next day, a Saturday, I slept in and due to a series of strange dreams and the shorter daylight hours of winter, I didn’t wake up until it was dark out. After a groggy “morning” ritual, I took my usual seat and thought of my friend. I gave him a call, to make sure he made it back alright, feeling bad about not going to help him due to some slight visual hallucination. The phone rang for nearly a minute and as I was about to hang up, a stranger’s voice answered it.

The stranger identified himself as a police officer and asked me why I was calling. When I explained, he told me that, regretfully, my friend had not made it home. He’d been savaged by some creature, possibly a rabid dog of some huge size. He said they were working with animal control to track down the beast but, he confided, he’d never seen wounds like those before.

Nervously, I thanked him and hung up. I looked at the window reflection for a long time, trying to see… hell, I don’t know. Something. Eventually, I gave up, but something in my peripheral caught my attention and I turned to the mirror.

For a split second, I saw myself, torn apart and gore-drenched, just as the officer had described my late friend. Written on the mirror’s surface, above my corpse were the words: “the one time you take HIS advice…” My corpse seemed to be grinning at me.

I don’t use mirrors anymore.

Sleep-Study Institute

July 5th – New patient admitted.

Patient No. 738 [Name Withheld]
Age: 28
Height: 5’ 4”
Weight: 120 lbs.

Patient checked into facility complaining of severe insomnia and intermittent migraines. Medical history shows minor success with major tranquilizers but patient discontinued drug therapy after feelings of chemical restraint grew more common (“It was like a lobotomy”). Monitored sleep patterns will commence in room 31.

July 12th – Patient 738’s insomnia has not improved with controlled sleeping conditions, diet, or exercise regimes. Psychological causes are most likely. Routine patient history will be taken as well as cognitive and physical examinations before psychotherapy commences. Patient has expressed discomfort in her bed, mostly attributable to persistent symptoms.

July 15th – Psychotherapy commences. Strong initial resistance.

July 21st – Patient admits and recognizes strong sense of disdain for her mother. No immediate explanation for depth of resent.

July 30th – Suggestions of domestic abuse have become evident. Childhood trauma associated with beds or sleep may explain resurgent avoidant behaviors. Patient considerably more aggrieved with her quarters and regularly complains of scratching her feet and legs on abrasive or sharp grit under the covers. A note about thicker, softer sheets has been sent to the orderlies.

August 12th – Patient treated for scrapes and punctures on legs; thought to be self-inflicted. Patient claims the bedding is responsible (“rows of knives”). Mattress changed and minor tranquilizers added to vitamins to forestall further complications.

August 14th – The patient has successfully been guided to the understanding of repressed childhood abuse. Her mother, it seems, used to routinely tie the child in her bed with rope and leave her alone for up to 18 hours at a time. The isolation, restraint, darkness, and abandonment seems to have been repressed until, moving into a new apartment, the patient acquired a bed with corner posts similar to the one she was restrained in as a child. Recent abrasions are most easily explained as an unconsciously mirrored condition to the damage inflicted by rough rope on bare skin for long hours.

August 15th – Patient experienced violent, lucid nightmares, possibly reliving her torturous childhood. Described physical conditions similar to her trauma (“the bed was holding me down,” “I couldn’t move,” “it was trying to eat me”). This last delusion is especially troubling, as she has insisted avoiding a bed entirely, a compulsion that she is using to shut out the truth of her past. She must sleep in the bed.

August 19th – Exhaustive therapy has made significant progress and the patient conceded to normalized sleeping conditions. Migraines and insomnia have all but vanished.

September 1st – Relapse. Self-mutilating punctures and night terrors have returned. Patient now describes auditory hallucinations, such as heavy, close panting and other, similar sounds (“a horrible slurping”). Regretfully, major tranquilizers will have to be utilized to restore calm and to ensure she sleeps without disturbance in her bed.

September 2nd – [Entry Redacted]

September 3rd – Patient released upon her request.

October 1st – Missing persons contacted facility in regard to [Name Withheld]. She has not been seen since July, suggesting she did not return home after being released, as our records indicate. A troubling affair, given the progression of her deteriorating psychosis (“I’m telling you, that bed’s been growing teeth”), but sadly, not one we are in any position to address after she discontinued the use of our services.

October 3rd – New patient admitted.

Patient No. 739 [Name Withheld]
Age: 25
Height: 5’7”
Weight: 186 lbs.

Patient has been placed in room 31. Complains of sleep apnea. No previous medical treatment for her condition. No night terror issues documented, though tranquilizers will still be utilized until sensitivity is gauged. We have great hopes for this one. So much… larger… than 738.

Charlie's Pal

“Just so we’re clear, saying sorry isn’t going to get me out of this?” Charlie asked wryly as his captors dragged his shackled body down a lightless, stone hall and roughly shoved him through a thick, steel door. Landing face-first, it took him a moment to writhe around and he caught sight of the men who’d brought him in just as one of them tossed a loop of jangling metal at him and slammed the door shut. The sound of heavy locks falling into place drowned out Charlie’s indignant surprise.

He was more surprised to find that the metal projectile had been the keys to his chains. With the nervous haste of someone who’s sure a mistake has been made and is damned sure going to take advantage of it before somebody notices, Charlie fumbled with the keys until his weighty manacles rolled off and onto the filthy, broken tile of the floor.

Rubbing his wrists, Charlie slowly rose to his feet. “Whoof,” he exclaimed, wave his hand in front of his face. “What died in here?” He glanced around and found his answer in the decrepit old man, skin shriveled to a blotchy leather and bare ribs standing out against a sunken chest and swollen belly. “Good to see I’ll be well taken care of,” he mumbled.

A cursory inspection of his surroundings placed Charlie in a long corridor of yellowing tile and pale, white-blue lights that washed out the colors around him. Stains and filth covered the floors, but the right wall was surprisingly clean and hosted a number of stainless steel doors that reminded Charlie first of a meat freezer, then of a prison cell. The door behind him had been secured to an almost embarrassing degree, as if Charlie was going to show some hitherto unseen feat of strength that he’d just decided to hold back while they were beating him. The door at the end of the corridor…

Charlie rubbed his eyes and squinted in the flickering neon light. The tile and concrete looked like it gave way to rough-hewn stone and a crude, wooden door, but that couldn’t be right. “Something written on it,” Charlie wondered, trying to decipher the large, irregular letters that had been smeared on the rotten wood with a dark brown, greasy filth.

“Wendigo’s a comin’!” a voice next to Charlie shouted, startling him. With an indignant cry, he swung around to find the corpse of the old man grinning up at him with sparse, foul teeth in a stained and rancid mouth.

“What the fuck, guy. What the fuck,” Charlie panted, his heart in his lungs. “You couldn’t say something when I got dropped off? No ‘Hello, I am not dead’ or anything?”

The old man chuckled but did not respond except to point at the rotting door at the end of the hall with claw-like fingers. His first two digits had been fused together as if by some great heat, the skin joining them no more than warped scar tissue. He bobbed his head and repeated, “Wendigo’s a comin’,” Glee splayed across his ruined face.

“What’s a fuckin’ Wendigo?”

The wooden door creaked open.

The Wendigo, as it turned out, was-or at least in part resembled- a man. A hulking, morbidly corpulent, fetid man, whose foul, fleshy body was tinted green with mold and filth that grew between rolls of coarsely-haired fat. His torso nearly swallowed his head, which was bald and scarred but no less obscene than the rest of his form. His eyes were sunken, shadowed, and unfocused while his vein-pocked mouth nearly bisected his head with its wide, moist lips.

Charlie gaped. “What,” he mustered. “It’s so much worse than I thought it’d be,” he added to himself. “Hey, old man,” he asked nervously, “how many people walk away from this guy?”

The old man glanced upwards, then back at Charlie. He held up his fused fingers as if to say ‘one’ or perhaps ‘two,’ then thought better of it and tucked his warped digit back into his fist. “Nobodys walk,” he explained. “Some times, no bodies neither.” He laughed violently, his voice cracking and phlegm spewing in ropey tendrils from his gums.

When the Wendigo moved, Charlie expected a ground-shaking tromp. He did not expect the berserker speed that the fleshy colossus descended upon him, leaving him wholly unprepared when the behemoth’s thick-fingered hands wrapped around his torso like a child clutching a toy. Charlie gasped as the clenching fingers tightened into a paralyzing vice and the Wendigo lifted him from his feet to stare eye to eye. Gradually, by inches, the barbarous man’s mouth spread open, growing, widening, lifting like a curtain to reveal his broad, jagged, thick teeth that were washed in a brownish stain and riddled with blackened craters. And yet still, his grin widened, mouth stretching larger than any human’s has a reason to. His maw fixed open in its horrible gape, the Wendigo slowly carried Charlie to one of the stainless steel doors. It opened before them.

“Help me, you filthy bastard! Fucking DO something!” Charlie screamed at the old man, trying to avoid the Wendigo’s glassy stare without looking at the yawning pit of his mouth.

The old man turned his head and raised his eyebrows. In an almost apologetic tone he said, “day’s what’s bad is also days what’s sad.”

The door swung shut and the old man cackled as loudly as he could, gasping for breath but never ceasing, to muffle the sounds that leaked through the door.

Forgotten Mazes

When she awoke, the smell was what struck her first. The air had all the chill crispness of an enduring rain, a stuffy, dust-filled must that gave it the character of long-abandonment. The space smelled ancient and lacked the organic reek of the recently occupied, cold and empty neglect filling the chamber in place of the vitality of life. It smelt dead.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she tried to take in her surroundings as best she could. Furniture lay stacked in disjointed piles at the corners of the room, which proved to be smaller than she’d have expected, no more than perhaps twelve feet in any direction. The furnishings were largely wooden, their flesh blanched with the peculiar white of time-dried mold that gave them a bone-like appearance, sending a thrill of fear down her spine. The rest of the furniture was draped with thick, rough canvas that hid the pieces from sight and merely suggested the shapes of the things within. Doors stood in mute promise on two opposite walls, though, she realized with a grimace and a groan, she could not tell if they were north, south, or even if they led deeper into wherever she’d awoken. Her head thrummed and she had to blink back tears of pain as she glanced down.

Still in my wheelchair, she noted. I suppose that’s good. Her fingers and arms were free and in no pain, which was as surprising as it was welcome. Just as soon as the room stops pulsing, she decided, trying to shake away the nausea and foreboding dread that had planted a blinding ache behind her eyes and a tight knot in her lungs.

Carefully, slowly, she brought her arms down and wheeled herself forward, wincing at the slight squeak of the chair’s wheels in the soundlessness of her surroundings. The ground proved to be uneven planks that had warped under some intense moisture of a previous generation. She made her way through the dusty interior, almost afraid to disturb whatever force of desolation had caused the room to be forgotten by the world at large.

With a shiver, she grasped the old door knob- rusted, corroded brass rough to her soft palm- and turned it with a breathy gasp. The door opened effortlessly, its greased hinges wholly defying the neglect of the room. It swung open quietly and she wheeled quickly into the next room.

Unlike the previous chamber, the new space was wholly bare, lacking any sign of habitation except the trail of footprints in the dust of the floor. She followed it through the long room and through another door until it terminated against the far wall. Feeling her hands along the cold brick, she could just make out the thin wood of a door frame. Her hand passed beyond it, suggesting the passage was open. But when she tried to wheel through, her chair heavily hit a wooden surface. Feeling again, her expression became one of disbelief.

But, I must’ve come in through this way, she thought. I can feel the breeze of fresh air. How did…?

“Help!” she cried into the darkness. “Is anybody there? Please, help me!”

She pounded her fists uselessly on the doorframe. The exit lay before her, but the gap to pass through was barely six inches wide and shrinking, until it, like a lid slowly coming down, shut with a crisp, final snap.