The Unliving

There is a black metal door standing alone in the mist. 

The sound from within makes the stones tremble at her feet. Insects scuttle away and under her boots. The grass is already dead.

Her heart is tight and hard like a fruit. Ready to burst, ready to pour out of her chest and leak from her skin. 

She should not have come–not without telling anyone. She didn’t even leave a note. If she never comes back, they might wonder. They might search. But what will they find?

She takes one last look behind her. 

The wheatfields. The road. Her e-bike. The distant outline of the city turning bronze in the sunrise. She takes in the cold, the air, the quiet.

The start of a good day. She has had many good days like this one, she can’t complain.

She will not be missed. No one will look for her.

She has no one left.

The hooded man waits at the door. 

Her lips move with the three letter sentence, a banned language that feels wicked on her tongue.

At first, she is afraid she didn’t pronounce it right, afraid she will be turned away.

The faceless man with the hood says nothing. Then he unlatches the door.

There are no questions, there is no test.

She is inside.

She has been waiting for this moment a long time.

A tunnel. 

The air tingles.

She walks on. It is louder than she thought. The music unlike any mortal sound—an electric screech—tears at her insides like carving knives. It is not meant to be heard by human ears. 

It is not music at all, it is only pain. 

Light slashes the darkness of the tunnel in a rhythm that repeats and repeats and repeats, as only agony could. Another sound builds in her ears. Maybe it is her fear, or her own blood, beating against her skull.

No. 

A flapping of wings—giant wings. 

She walks on, quickly.

The wall squelches around her. Damp, sticky, hot. She feels it watching her, even though it has no eyes.

Farther and farther she goes.

Steps and steps.

She is out of breath even though she is going down.

The Song is inside her now, a fast working infection. It sucks at her arteries and fills her capillaries and floods her lungs. It feeds, it drinks.

Soon she will be dead.

Or she will be one of them–those she has heard about. The ones who come and never leave, who disappear into the black door and down a tunnel. Those who seek The Song.

The Unliving.

Then she is in a room, a cave—no. A cavity. 

A hole in the recesses of the earth. A gash in the soul of time. A place before the light. A non place; somewhere no one alive can exist. 

There is no end, no corners and no walls, only shadow. The ceiling is a liquid mirror that oozes her reflection. But it’s not her, not really. 

The girl snarls back at her. Something feral, unhinged. 

Maybe she is already changing.

She looks down. The floor is a another night. A blacker night. A banished sky. There are no stars, no moon—only an abyss. The dark edges of crumbled towers and buried dominions litter the landscape. 

Since when could she see in the dark?

Spiked tails scrape the shadows, creatures scuttling over rocks, trapped and hungry beneath.

There is nothing to hold her, yet somehow she is not floating.

She is not alone.

Bodies spill out before her like a popped blood vessel; screaming, writhing, jumping. She cannot tell if they are trying to move together or break apart. 

A tangle of limbs next to her. Behind her.

All around her. 

They are dancing.

Groping hands and hollow eye sockets. Tattooed necks ripple with sweat and pierced tongues flick with desire. The ground shakes with the weight of their sorrow. The shadow walls echo with the laughter of the insane.

They cannot see her, but they can smell her. Traces of the Above cling to her like old perfume; on her clothes, her skin, her hair. 

They know she is an Outsider. They cock their heads, listening, as though through the noise they can still hear her heartbeat. As though they can remember. 

They reach for her, fingers on her pulse and in her hair. They clear a path for her, reverent.

They were like her once, long ago. A moment ago. A century ago. It’s impossible to tell. Time does not exist here, it has no meaning before The Song. 

She feels dizzy, unsteady. But she feels something else, too. 

Fear. 

And with the fear comes excitement. Anticipation.

She is here. 

She may not escape, but she is here. 

She edges away, into shadow. But the shadow is a wall, and a body, too. More of the Unliving lie behind, invisible, stitched into the fabric of darkness. The wall moves to touch her. It ripples across her back, begging for contact, for a taste of life. It murmurs against her ear, a well of aching voices. 

She peels herself away, looking down at her hands.

Her skin is already pale, turning translucent. She can see her bones underneath. She never knew she had so many.

The Song grows louder.

Her eyes find the stage, a restless storm cloud above the dancing crowd.

The Source.

It screeches from its cage, rattling against the metal bars. 

Once, It was human, too. But now It is all scales and claws and teeth. A terrible thing. A tormented thing. 

Its eyes find her. Want slices through her. Sky. Water. Light.

It wants to escape. It wants to remember.

An unending scream of pain fills her, it pleads with her.

Is this not why she came?

The Unliving continue to dance. They will dance until the end of eternity. 

Or until the end of The Song.

Only she can set It free.

Her heartbeat stutters its last flares of life. Soon she will be one of them. Soon she will forget who she was, that she used to be alive.

She steps closer to the cage.