The Last Magician

Amanda's Search

Amanda gazed around the room for a logical starting point. The bedroom had little furniture and much of what remained seemed to have been eaten away by something she preferred not to dwell on. The parasites, it seemed, had been unaffected by whatever force of devastation had wiped out all other life. In fact, they seemed to be thriving where everything else had perished.

She found a chest of drawers at the back corner of the room. The dull glow struggling through the hollow window frame fell short of the room’s far reaches, and there appeared to be no working lights to add further illumination.

Jack had not asked how she had come to be in the house; his house. She had anticipated the question as they recovered from their comforting sex, but Jack had been somewhat distant and distracted. It was only to be expected given the circumstances and in many ways it came as a relief. The only answers she could give were based on the vague recollections that had come to her. If she doubted them herself, how could she expect Jack to believe them? There were holes in every memory, loose ends to every thought, and since Jack’s arrival another question had risen to the surface.

Why this house?

Squinting at the shadowy niche, she found that she could divide the shadows enough to see that the drawers were in quite good condition to some of the other pieces she had seen..

As she edged closer she saw that a section at the back corner had rotted, or been eaten away. The ragged edges of the wound opened into the top drawer, but the shadows were too deep to allow her to see inside.

A voice in her head told her she could have already made an effort to search a little of the room while Jack had lain unconscious on the bed. It could have saved some time if her disordered mind had not judged it best she remain by his side; hindsight had a habit of making such sound decisions look unreasonable.

In her defence, this situation could not be described as ordinary; nothing could anymore. For her, it all began on the doorstep of the house; Jack’s house.

I’m dreaming, had been her first waking thought, until a sharp pain ripped through her lower back. She knew of no dream capable of bringing such real agony.

Arising from her unconscious state she found herself propped against the step by a front door, the stone edge pressing into her back as the source of her unease.

Lifting herself up eased the pain but failed to do anything for her confusion. Unfamiliar sights surrounded her, an odd taste in the air irritated her back of her throat and every sign of life appeared distorted and, ironically, dead.

Her thoughts returned to her current task as she took hold of the dull brass-coloured handles and pulled the top drawer open. It was empty. She pulled it a bit further, tugging as it resisted her effort. It would result in nothing more than a waste of energy but she had to check. Hope was still lingering like a distant memory.
With an ancient crack, something snapped in the darkness and the draw rolled outwards. She had expected to find nothing but as the drawer fell towards her she wished that had been true.

Something moved in the back corner of the drawer. It glistened in the poor light, and when it shifted Amanda realised what lay before her. It was a slug, thick, bloated and black.

Amanda took an involuntary step back. She did not scream or shriek, but she felt her stomach rolling. The sight of slugs would not have affected her so but what repulsed her was its size. The creature was so much bigger than any she could recall seeing in years long passed. She remembered that she had once owned a cat that had been only fractionally larger than this monster. All the details hidden from an uninquisitive eye on an average slug were magnified grotesquely on this beast.
Then she noticed something that made her stomach take a deadly lunge.

A long, pink tail protruded from under the thing’s head. A rat’s tail.

Bile and vomit splattered the drawer and its occupant. Amanda twisted around to redirect a second wave, lost her balance, and thudded to the floor where the second gush exploded into the dirt floor inches from her face. Flecks spittle hit her cheeks, but she was in no hurry to wipe them away. She was concentrating more on gaining some control over her stomach.

Shakily she got to her feet, compelled to get as far away from the drawers behind her, and its hideous contents, but Jack’s words prevented her leaving before her task was done.

That’s one thing we’ll have to get used to, Jack had told her She had to search the other draws.

She closed her eyes tightly until wild, white patterns began forming on the backs of her eyelids, then she opened them again. The room came back to her as the patterns disolved and she slowly turned to face the drawers.

This time she did scream. The slug sat on the lip of the drawer, the front end of its fat mass stretching out towards her, reaching for her. Teeth glistened on its underbelly, hundreds of malicious daggers, stained with dark blood and littered with torn flesh. Its hunger to taste her became apparent as it reached further, stretching beyond what gravity should have allowed.

Amanda kicked out instinctively; not at the slug, but at the drawer itself. She struck it hard, so hard it jarred up her leg, forcing her to cry out again. The movement of the drawer was swift and somehow, served a purpose she had not completely expected.

She stared at the drawer, incomprehension dazzling her mind. Then she lowered her gaze slowly, following the dribbling trail of sickly yellow down the front of the drawers, right down to the floor where she found the severed head of the slug. Realisation dawned, and she suddenly had the urge to vomit again.

She held it down and diverted her gaze from the dismembered corpse of the creature. She had every intention of continuing her search, but she just needed a moment to compose herself.

She inhaled deeply, just once, as the stench of her vomit travelled into her lungs bringing back the nauseous sensation she was trying to rid herself of. She hoped this was not something else she needed to get used to.

“Are you alright?”

She glanced up, expecting to see Jack standing in the doorway, but she was alone. It struck her where the voice had come from.

”Fine,” she called out into the darkness of the house.

There was no response from the gloom, but she assumed he had heard her.

Knowing Jack was listening out soothed her nerves. She wasn’t alone, and it was
something she was finding hard to come to terms with.

During the short time between her awakening and Jack’s arrival on the doorstep, she had found thoughts of despairing loneliness creeping into her mind and some of them still remained with her despite his companionship.

When she had been outside the house, she had been scared and abandoned, a child lost in a strange world. For some time, she had remained in that state.

She had attempted to pull herself to her feet, using the door handle for support. It dipped unexpectedly under her weight, spilling her into the hallway of the house. A yelp of surprise had escaped her, and the silent response from the residence suggested strongly she was just as alone inside as out.

Questions had already begun pouring through her mind in a great torrent and the empty house only added to flow while offering only dead silence as an answer.

Her inquisitive mind allowed her to move a little way into the house, but uncertain fear let her go no further than the nearest room; once a living room, she assumed. Time blurred as she stood in the centre of the room, swaying and losing any sense of reality, and after an eternity she glanced at her watch and had discovered that the laws of time were no longer to be trusted.

Despair may have taken her at that moment had she not spotted the form of the then unnamed Jack crawling towards the house. Instead the dark veil lifted briefly from her and she hurried to the door in time to catch the new arrival as he had collapsed at her feet.
She stood now in the still of the bedroom contemplating the frantic moments that had followed. She had known not to shout for help, she knew instinctively that none would come, and had instead hauled him inside.

Something had overtaken her then, an internal auto-pilot that had driven her to take him upstairs to the comfort of a waiting bed, administer his cracked lips with water and cleaned his facial wounds with a rag torn from her own clothes. Then she had simply waited for him to come round. There had been little else she could think to do.

Now Jack had awakened and like her he knew very little of anything about himself or his surroundings. Except the house; he had remembered that.

Just as he should have questioned her, there were queries she wanted to ask him. All questions seemed to be on hold now, at least for the immediate future. How long passed before they could satisfy each other’s curiosity would depend very much on what happened next and how many more surprises awaited them.

She turned once more, for a final time, to the chest of drawers. Avoiding the dead upper-body of the carnivorous monster, and without touching the trail of its blood, Amanda took hold of the second drawer and carefully pulled it towards her.