WebWorld (5.6)

We were under water. Or it felt as if we were something like that.

We were through the looking glass, out the back end of the wardrobe, on the other side of the portal.

The light here was blue. Here meant next to nothing. There was nothing familiar. There was no up or down, no sea or sky. This world of smooth clouds and soft rain just floated in place, surrounded by shadows that seemed to be cast by nothing visible.

I had my body. Or some representation of it. And Karen had hers. She was next to me, covered and deformed, head to toe in scales and growths. Her hand was still in mine though it had morphed into something only two-fingers, more like pincers than a hand. Looking down, I knew mine had done the same.

“Are we dead, do you think?”

“Not dead. Not alive. Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“Or does it? But you’ve forgotten anything except hurting, and now it just feels like existing?”

“We have a job to do. Somehow.”

There was a silver halo around her, smothering her whole figure, it moved like a fluttering candle, twinkled like stars. She was beautiful beneath it, the light beneath her skin pulsing like a heart-beat.

They were starting to emerge now. And I don’t think I can come up with the words to explain what they were. I had thought they were humanoid, but that was a simplification. They were bipedal, but their form was amorphous, some hybrid of cloud and mist. They were tall, and they might have had one head or two, it was hard to be sure, perhaps one head with two faces set at forty-five-degree angles. Eyes were points of white-brightness; their faces were blue and maybe weasel-like, sort of, and snake-like, and something altogether else-like. They cast multiple shadows that didn’t match their physical form.

I could see by the way they converged that they were still attacking us, still inflicting pain and death. Logic suggested that I was probably already dead, my brain just hadn’t caught up and quite finished shutting down. It seemed there was a lot that could happen inside a dying mind.

Well, don’t waste this.

And I realised that I was fighting them. Between me and Karen there was a force of violence, something flaring and incinerating that wafted out from us towards them. We held each other in some kind of psychic death-grip, and I had the feeling I was the only one who didn’t know how I was doing it.

 - Go. – I think that’s what one of them was saying. Although it wasn’t truly saying, there was no sound and no language, just a feeling of intent, that could have come from one or any or all of these assembled shapes.

“Go?” I tried my voice, hearing the strange echoes it made in here.

 - Leave. – Ours –

“This planet? No, it’s ours.”

- No – First – First and foremost – amidst the waters –

“Before there was land?”

- Before the water seeped away –

Billions of years.

“You’re killing us.”

- Make way – make way –

“There won’t be anything left.”

 - Your time is past. Gone – Gone – Gone – more than one of them adding to this notion – Gone,gone,gone – The lizards. The apes. –

“You killed the fucking dinasaurs?”

 - Our time –

“Not so fast.”

- Our world –

“We can’t. We can’t give it to you.” Though I was fucked if I knew how to stop them. Maybe it was just stalling. Just holding them in this embrace until it was over for all of us. I thought I could do that. I hoped I could. I tried to think of Zara, out there in the world, maybe with this agony still slicing through her. “Look at me,” I said, “I’m the one who can hurt you now. Me and her. And we’re gonna.”

“Sorry,” Karen said. Her voice sounded quite different. Electronic.

- Too late. Look – Look – LOOK –

They showed me. And, oh man, did they show me. I could see the earth, an eyeball floating in space, half-sun-warmed, half dark; but the whiteness faded into it, growing thicker and deeper, forming pillars and mountains, wrapping itself around and around the planet until it was a ball of string, until it buckled and under the grip of this force, crumpling like a squashed soccer ball, and butterfly-like spores floating through the void, falling into the sun, winking out like fireflies.

“You’d die too.”

- rebirth – recharge –

“You’re a virus.”

- we – alive – alive like you –

“It doesn’t matter.” I couldn’t unsee. I couldn’t put that image back in a box. This was after-all what I was born for, to change that vision.

- die now –

“Not me. Can’t you feel it?”

Karen whispered, sort-of-whispered: It’s not deep enough, not yet.

It was weird to be so psychic. What do you mean?

The eggs are still living. I can hear them crying.

Like babies?’

Yes.

Oh God.

But we have to.

I know. But I don’t know how to.

I think I do.

And I still don’t know what it was that she knew, or how. What I thought of as madness was a connection formed deeper than mine was. And there was a little bit of her that was one with them, that felt with them. A little bit of me as well, but more of her. And so this must have hurt in a way I could only feel the edges of. But still, she was steel. She pulled me forward, and when she did, the scene shifted. In the middle of a murky swamp of greens and teals and sky blues, there was a path of red and orange, a mirage of a path, that seemed to be smouldering, that was hot to the touch.

“Oh crap.”

“Trust me.”

Crap, crap, crap.

Whatever the secret is to walking on hot coals, dream-me didn’t know it. There was no cushion of air so long as I walked quickly enough, there was just the burning every time I put my foot down, the smell and taste of charred flesh. I tried to believe it was in my mind, but the burning sensation sawed through that, it jolted through me with every step.

And beyond that, a cavern, an opening in to a field of black and soft-glowing blue.

“This way.”

“I can’t walk.” My feet stumbled and skidded on the blessedly cool ground.

“You’re not very good at this are you?”

Her feet were ribbons, burnt meat, but she walked on them like she was walking on air.

“How are you doing that?”

“I don’t think I can explain.”

“Just help me then.”

She took my arm over her shoulder and dove us further into the cavern, into the mix of blue-black colours, into shades that merged into pinks and magentas and lilac-purples. There were puffballs clinging to the walls, smooth and white, but striated with sunset colours. I’d seen the likes of this in the real world.

“Poor things,” Karen murmured.

“What do we do?”

“Kill.”

“I know. But how?”

She reached out for one of these puffballs, she gripped in both hands and just tore it apart.

I winced. I couldn’t help it. It felt so brutal. I could feel the cold, the sense of bleeding and falling. I was feeling them dying. And from the way Karen buckled as she did what she did, I knew she felt the same thing. Her eyes were thick with tears. “We have to.”

I look back.  I tell myself: it was us or them. A whole planet worth of us if what they showed us was true. And I still don’t know if it was. All I felt was as if there was a cold, viscous liquid being poured through me, growing colder until the cold was nothing but pain. I lost touch with my body, I lost touch with my actions. I didn’t even know if I was doing what I thought I was doing. Nothing existed. Nothing was real.

“Nate,” I heard Karen’s voice.

“What?”

“We’re bouncing back.”

“What?”

“Feel that?”

Like an electrically charged cord pulling against my back.

“It’s over.”

“It’s done.”

I wanted the last thing I ever saw to be Zara’s face, but that couldn’t be. There was no help for it. I felt the pressure building, I felt the light growing bright. Existence converged on one spot, into one molecule; and then it exploded with every ounce of violence the universe had to offer.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work