Outside

         Outside, the blind, fragmented whispers of the condemned.  Moonlight gleamed from the shattered glass and the midnight ghosts, the children of temptation, buckled under the weight of their sorrow.  These refugees felt not only the shame of their indifference, but the heavy sadness of their wasted lives.  Clark Meadows reached for his last cigar and placed it between his teeth, or remnants thereof.  Looking out at this new world he knew that memories had no place here, no right to be.  He chomped down on the cigar, tasting the bitter tobacco on his tongue.  Tonight, I’ll die, he thought.  There was no longer any doubt.  He reached this conclusion with no remorse, only a fine mist of dread.  As the sweat began to bead along his brow, he spat on the ground.  Something was approaching quickly, and it was on fire, screaming.  Shrieking, really.  A streetlamp gave its final performance, and as the glass burst open sparks rained down from it, fell, faded, and were gone.  Dawn would not be for a very long time, if it ever came again at all.  There was a quiet patch of woods near Clark’s boyhood home, so many years ago, an age it seemed, where he would go to be alone and sneak his mother’s cigarettes or read a comic, and as the shrieking object blew harmlessly past Clark he thought of this place and tried to go there in his mind.  He nearly had a sense of it, could almost taste the damp air of that place, when suddenly the images were snatched violently away from his consciousness.  He could no longer remember.  It was a dream.  If the place had ever even really existed, it would surely be nothing more than ash and blood now.

         An hour has passed, he thought, but even the concept of time was beginning to feel foreign, distant.  Two hours, then?  It made no difference.  Clark began to walk down the street that was littered with debris, wrecked automobiles, pieces of human body, children’s playthings, and some dogs.  All of it on fire, or burned badly.  A scattering of other dazed and wounded survivors wandered around aimlessly.  He leaned into a pile of rubble and lit his cigar in the flames.  A block ahead of him, an automobile, driven by no one, careened into a burning house and exploded.  Without flinching Clark continued his stroll in that direction, unaware of his own intentions.  He did not expect to find anything alive or useful beyond the intersection one mile ahead, and there was little hope of salvation past the horizon.  It was difficult to make anything out in the distance through the smoke and darkness, but he could sense that it was all more of the same.  He inhaled the smoke from his cigar and held it, clenching his teeth, and without realizing, he had fallen to his knees.  I am not going any further, he thought.  I will just wait here for it to happen.  I will die right here.

         There was a booming roar from overhead.  Clark felt the vibrations on his back and braced himself for a quick demise.  The roar grew more intense then morphed into a shimmering whine and when he looked up he saw it.  A large jetliner, a 747, was a mere half a mile above him and going down fast.  The engines on each wing were fully engulfed in flame.  It seemed to pass overhead in slow motion and as it lumbered into the distance Clark rose to his feet.  Soon, he was running, sprinting after the doomed aircraft, and an odd sensation overcame him that might have been adrenaline.  He passed more burning houses, demolished remnants of suburbia, grotesque charred limbs seemed to reach out at him, trying to stop him, but Clark ran without a thought in his head.  After some moments, a blind eternity, the plane hit the ground.  The sound was deafening as the metal twisted and crushed, but there was no explosion.  A thin spasm of thought told Clark that the lack of an explosion was unusual, but he discarded the notion like a gum wrapper and increased his pace.  The wreckage was not far, maybe less than a mile, and above the constant rhythm of crackling fire, Clark was certain he heard the panicked and terrified screams of the surviving passengers.

         Before Clark could reach the plane, he saw them.  There were six, maybe seven, blocking the road ahead of him.  One of the creatures saw him immediately and began to charge at him in its sickening way, and the others soon followed.  They were large, possibly ten feet tall, with legs that resembled that of a spider and an unholy array of tentacle- like arms that undulated hypnotically around their gaping torsos.  Their horrid faces were far too gruesome to bear as Clark paused for a moment, studied them with lunatic fascination, and started to turn around but took only four steps before one of the things razor sharp tentacles snapped around his face, instantly blinding him.  His feet came out from under him as he was violently pulled back towards the sound of the things breathing, which was like sizzling bacon.  More tentacles now, wrapping all around his body mercilessly, each one a symphony of exquisite pain and suffering.  A sudden urge to survive overcame him.  Only minutes (hours?) ago he had accepted his mortality, had chosen to embrace it even, but now that death was certain, he very much wanted to live.  This pain and horror and confusion were too unexpected to accept, but the idea of escape was laughable, moronic even.

         The creatures initiated the business of dismembering him with ice cold efficiency.  First, Clark felt a pull at his ankle, a strain, and then his leg below the knee was snapped off instantly.  A nuclear explosion of pain burst from the wound and Clark opened his mouth to scream, but before he could utter a sound some kind of thick, pasty liquid was stuffed into his mouth and lodged into the back of his throat, gagging him.  The other leg was removed in the same manner as the first, though the pain was deadened by shock, adrenaline and maybe a hint of apathy.  Clark was giving up, and the thought of this, a hidden gem in his forest of madness, comforted him slightly.  Just then his arms were snapped off simultaneously at the shoulders, and it was this new pain that seemed to bring it all back into focus and actually heighten his senses, which was exactly the opposite of what he needed.  A carnival of rapid fire stabbings took place now across his lower abdomen and he realized, with acute dread, they are taking out my intestines.

         It was pure torture.  Somehow these creatures were highly educated about human anatomy, because they removed his least vital organs first in an effort to sustain the agony.  His mutilation went on and on for what seemed like days, weeks, months.  They removed everything save for his heart and lungs and then stopped, as if to admire their handy work.  In Clark’s final moments of self-awareness, he felt a greasy, burning liquid being sprayed all over him.  I’m being marinated, was his final thought as the creatures each snapped themselves off a piece of savory Clark Meadows and ate him with their bone crushing mouths until he was no longer there, not even a memory.  Some survivors of the plane crash had managed to come upon this scene, looking for help.  The hideous creatures found their efforts to flee extremely amusing and later, as the beasts noisily digested Clark and the others, they spoke amongst themselves in their ancient language, older than the beginning of time.  Though the language was incomprehensible to any human mind and was mainly telepathic, it was all essentially a joke about the look on the fat one’s face.

Word Count: 1,323