Voiceless

The kiss of death was still wet on his lips, and he raised his hand slowly to wipe it clean off, only to find that a firm mask had settled where his mouth once stood. It had been carefully brushed on, its edges almost seamless with the lines of his face, and its texture so close to flesh that only a close inspection, the slight change in texture, its lack of moisture where the rest of his face was running thick with sweat, the slight discoloration where his real skin had turned white, where the blood had stopped flowing, only the smallest changes, the slightest hints would reveal that the flesh that stretched thick between his chin and his nose actually hid a mouth, that the muffled noises coming from behind it were the flurry of a tongue and the rasp of vocal chords and not the gears of his head churning and cranking his eyes to move, his brain to form thoughts. But the thoughts that passed through it, that formed from the synapses and flashed across its surfaces, wound through the coding and the wiring between the line breaks and under the syntax and through the circuitry from contact to contact until somewhere, indistinct but definite, coming to light cohesively, the thoughts which made him, the thoughts which bound him, the thoughts that called him from the darkness of corporeality and into the realm of the ethereal...his thoughts were muddied and broken, terrified and incoherent, the frantic dribble of words that would have left in sharp cries were it not for the simple fact that where his mouth once was he had only skin, a false film that was quickly becoming much less false, much more flesh. He felt his veins, his dry and bloodless veins, branching empty like the roots of a withering tree, creeping out of his lips and into this new skin, tearing their way from his body and welcoming their new host as one of their own. His eyes darted as his hands clawed at the skin which was now sweating just as viciously as his brow. His jaw locked, a quick and sharp movement, and the joint building up and solidifying until it was no longer a joint, just a solid mass of bone that held his mouth in an eternal clamp, his imperfect teeth locked together as best they could. His tongue remained mobile behind them, trapped behind a cage of teeth, locked eternally (or at least as long as it continued to exist, which in this point after death could very well be an eternity) at what was now nothing more than the terminal end of the throat.
He glanced around at the cold, unforgiving stone that surrounded him. The walls were rough and ancient, hand-built it would seem, mortared together close and jagged. the room wasn’t cramped, but it wasn’t large. He was sitting on a bench, likely as old as the walls, a single slab of gray stone, unremarkable but flat and stable enough. His back was against the wall, and the far wall looked to be about 10 steps away. The room seemed to be roughly square, he didn’t have the motivation to do any precise measurements. The floor was a thick, dark dirt, and the ceiling hung a good 10 feet above it. All boundaries were sturdy, and all were definite. There were no doors in this cell, only featureless walls. No lights hung, yet the room remained illuminated. Not brightly illuminated, but illuminated nonetheless. This puzzled him, that a room could have light without a source. Of course, the whole matter of his being alive despite his death was confusing in and of itself, and the lack of his mouth was both confusing and troubling, but the scientific part of him knew that while those were already established events that couldn’t be traced or analyzed, there had to be some sort of sign of exactly what sort of light this was. He twisted his head around and saw his shadow on the wall. A light must have a source to cast a shadow. He sat and puzzled and the light grew in intensity, his shadow wavered. Hours passed, perhaps only minutes, perhaps days, but mental fatigue set in. The bench wasn’t much of a bed, but it was flat, so he lay down on it, only to find that even before closing his eyes the lights subsided. The moment he noticed this, a wisp of light passed through the air. In noticing it and marveling at it, another shot through, light and smoky but illuminating nonetheless. As his thoughts grew more constant and coherent the light grew, until again he was surrounded by a dull glow. His mind, his thoughts, gave light to his prison.
Just as he lay his head back again to rest, he heard a voice. Muffled, yes, merely the inflections of a voice, a sound which could have been unremarkable save for the absolute silence that had surrounded him, which was not discernibly any sort of language but which was undoubtedly a voice talking. He followed it through the room and found its location or, more accurately, the location of his closest proximity to it. The voice was quite obviously on the other side of whatever wall he was on. What was once muffled was, once located, increasingly clear.
“...not really what I had in mind. I was hoping for something a bit more...I mean, it’s very lovely, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t think he would like it is all and...well, it doesn’t really fit, you know? Not to be disrespectful to the...well, you know, but he wasn’t a saint and he wasn’t an optimist. I just think it would be ironic, you know, to attach something like that to him. And right now we’re all so shaken that...yes, I understand that they need it soon but I think that, given the circumstances...yes, I know that the circumstances aren’t necessarily special to them, but they are to us and I mean well...oh I don’t know it’s...it’s strange isn’t it? To think that something this sudden and, well, tragic, isn’t really so unremarkable? I just...listen, I’ll call you back, I need some time to stop and think...I...bye.”
The choked tears that followed were heartbreaking. How he would respond, had he only the chance...that his wife, in the face of such a tragedy, was worrying about such insignificant things as epitaphs. He would give every word of comfort, every consolation, tell her he didn’t care what was on his epitaph to matter how cliche it may be. Trapped in a cage only feet away from all he had left behind, unable to speak, only to listen.

The Blessing

It was a blessing, and it was lovely. The gift of heaven, as it was taken to be called, had appeared on the doorstep, unwanted, snuggled softly within a womb of pristine blankets. It wasn’t the answer to any prayers but its sweetness was undeniable and, besides, its new owners couldn’t easily leave it outside. They lifted the heavy crib that had been left for them and, struggling, lifting, pushing until they were red in the face and short of breath, brought it inside with the gift of heaven in it. They set it in the spare room they had hoped to rent out and retreated to the adjacent room to rest. Still sleeping, it spread its long arms out and retrieved the wallets from both of them, emptying the contents into its gullet before returning them to their rightful pockets. They noticed. How could they not? But there was nothing to be done; the blessing had to be fed.
Its arms reached out again, its face still serene, and spun forward the hands on the clock. The day was over with nothing done, their pockets emptied to its healthy appetite, exhausted by the circles it spun them in. They retreated to bed and closed their eyes, but it lifted itself, crawled through the ears into their heads, and stole the sleep from their minds. It would push them to the ground every few hours, and only by standing over its peaceful crib and pleading, begging with the gift of heaven could they return. It watched them through the bars, looking from within the outside into their own prison.
They woke in the morning and the routine continued. The blessing demanded more, and they were obliged to comply. Its arms reached again for the clock and turned it, tentacles sprouting from its perfect smooth back and wrapping around their lives, pinching off the phone lines and holding the doors shut. Every evening they would bring offerings of money to its whitewashed shrine, and it would tilt back its soft head as they dropped their meager coins down its throat, shredding the bills with its razor teeth. The room was adorned with animals, the exotic pets of a noble god-king, as it sat within its heavy throne.
It grew, and so did its demands. The nightly offerings strained the budget of the two, and what little they could keep for food needed to be safely hidden. After every offering its tentacles would search their pockets for any change withheld, intentionally or otherwise. They grew in number and reached throughout the house, holding everything in its intricate web. The time was still its own, and it fed on their sleep with no satisfaction.
One evening its tentacles lashed out tenfold and wrapped around the necks of its caretakers, traveled down their waning throats and scraped their stomachs clean of food. They didn’t sleep that night, but they didn’t awaken that morning. The blessing had taken everything and lay at wait within its shrine. Time passed but no money came to feed its hunger. It waited, but soon lost all patience. The gift of heaven returned to heaven, its tentacles reaching up and hoisting itself through the sky. The shell it left behind was the body of a sweet baby, devoid of tentacles and razor teeth, eyes closed but not asleep, not awake either.

Ashes

There was very little left. A few charred fragments of cloth, dyed black from the heat with edges singed, rested gingerly upon a small pile of ivory and charcoal colored ash. The room was vacant, but the window had been left open. The hastily drawn back curtains, having lost their hold, now loosely fluttered in the breeze. A gust built up on the street with the passing of a delivery truck and rose to the second story, roaring in through the window and sending the curtains back. The soft fluttering of pages filled the room, as the half-dozen books which covered the table, left open and dog-eared, flipped softly in the sifting air. A soft clinking sounded, as the strands of a wind chime hanging just to the left of the window, partially obscuring a shattered picture frame, rocked gently back and forth, filling the air with a vaguely cacophonous but nevertheless soothing set of chimes. The setting sun glowed red, reflecting on the doorknob and dead-bolt and leading down to the gray cement floor, gliding over the not-quite-sine waves of carpet glue and past dark splotches and finally to the somber remains, where the wind flapped the fabrics and sifted the ashes, blowing them gently into the fallen white sheets of the unmade bed, mingling with the red and blending into a dark amber. The sun glinted off a metal key where the pile of ash had once been, glowing red in the setting sun.

The sun set and the sky darkened. Shadows grew across the room, darkness devouring everything until sound was all that filled the room. The pages fluttered and the wind slowly rippled through the curtains, softly whispering the night and the blackness it entailed. A coolness settled over the room as the chimes softly sang of the night, of hope, of desperation, of beauty, all emotions sounding together in the lightly harmonious, gently percussive dissonance the air played quietly on instruments of brass. The whites of the bed faded, and the cement and door no longer met but merely blurred together, indistinct and invisible. The key glowed red.

Another gust of wind rose up, this time determined to make its course around the room. Swirling back from the closed door, it caught a few loose scraps of paper from the makeshift table library and blew them down, fluttering slowly, until one of them rested upon the key. The light was extinguished, and the paper invisibly blackened as invisible smoke rose from it and out through the open window. Light suddenly danced from it as fire sprung up and illuminated the room. The paper writhed and crumbled as the flames spread to the window curtains where, ushered along by the wind, they quickly climbed, illuminating the room in their flickering makeshift light and spreading their heat to the wooden window frame, which was quickly set ablaze as well. The fire, moving cautiously at first, reached its arms out to the wallpaper and quickly spread in a circular path about the room, blackening and curling the wallpaper along its path until the wooden structure of the walls was heated to the point of combustion as well. Burning from within, the flames climbed to the ceiling. Having demolished the thin wallpaper, which settled slowly in ashes on the ground, the room was momentarily lit only by the burning square of the window, the curtains having lost their hold and been blown onto the street below.

The silence was eerie, broken only by the faint crackling of flame, as the room sat dimly lit in expectation. A strong gust of wind and a splash of rain extinguished the windowpane, and the room was again plunged into silence and darkness. This lasted but a second. The inferno within the walls grew, and as the intensity began to destroy the drywall the roof fell in, sending a burning length of wood down upon the books and tables, illuminating the room once more and rekindling its flame. The table and the books burned, as the drywall was burned away and the walls again were plastered in fire, painting the room orange-yellow as the black and white ashes of papers floated throughout. The wind-chime fell, surrendering its music as the bed sheets and mattress burned away their stains in a redeeming blaze. The key was a dull bronze, flickering red in the reflection of the inferno surrounding it.

The fire spread throughout the building, escaping through the roof and sending billows of smoke and sharp tongues of flame up to meet the stars. Sirens swelled softly in the distance, slowly growing louder and changing pitch. On the eastern horizon the sky turned orange as the sun began its slow climb through the vast canopy of what would soon be blue but was for now a deep, fiery amber.

Three cycles prior, from that very same vantage point, the sun had seen into the source of the blaze, rebounding its light from the building on the far side of the street and in through the window, past the gently fluttering curtains and softly singing wind chime and into a bed of two. Though they had previously become one in the cover of night, where beneath the darkness invisible lips touched and merged, legs and arms and bodies fused, and a surge of emotion and lust eased the two together in a singular convergence of mind and spirit for a timeless moment, they had slowly melted back to their old forms and sought the solace of sleep to hide from any lingering traces of guilt.

By morning each clutched their pillows with ringless fingers and had fully become two separate entities. The morning sunlight through the window beat down upon the closed lids of their eyes, knocking an invitation to open. One accepted, and glanced over at the female form laying beside him, drunken by morning drowsiness but nevertheless quite aware of who she was. Before his mind could wander too far, though, the ringing of the chimes in the breeze evoked yet another thought, this one a memory.

The chimes were ringing as he looked up at her, standing, speechless. Maybe it was excitement, maybe it was horror, maybe it was love, maybe joy, maybe all of them, and maybe none. He held his breath and listened to his own heart. The beat was rhythmic, winding forth in powerful accelerando, thumping emotion strong against his ribcage. A second passed. Two seconds. Three. She tried to speak, but the words that formed so rapidly in her mind came out only as a croak, so she nodded her head and smiled. Seeing her cue, he stood and wrapped his arms tightly around her, supporting her on her weakening knees, as she returned the gesture. He pulled back a moment as she offered her hand, and he slipped a shimmering ring over her finger. The two shared a blissful sigh before returning to each other's arms. Their lips met, and his breath breached her parted lips, and together joined in a sentimental kiss her eyes swore herself to him, and his did likewise. The air was sweet, and he could taste her perfume on it.

The air was stale, and he tasted sleep bitterly on his tongue. Emotion surged behind his blank face, and he looked again at the woman next to him. Her lips still bore their scarlet dressing from the evening before, and her face blushed gently in the morning cold, soft and fragile. Her eyes fluttered, and her lashes scraped the pillow like stiletto heels echoing down a tenement hallway. She stirred and rose halfway, resting on her elbow as her crimson bedclothes hung limp from her body. Her blood coursed, sanguine, through her veins.

His mind was quick to cast the blame, but it was his eyes that had first strayed, his tongue that had first spoken. As ashamed as he was to admit it, it was all his doing, and he had been the first to act.

An act. It had all been an act. He didn’t love her, he didn’t need her, and he knew that the words he had whispered meant nothing. He knew who he truly loved, and the band around her finger proved it. He blinked. Dark circles under her eyes, black streaks where the mascara had ran from sweat. Her luscious dark hair lie tangled on the pillow as her drowsy eyes looked out through black pinholes. Her mouth creased gently into a smile. He saw her now, as red as before but black as night, a dark seductress, luring him in and feasting upon his infidelity. She saw him from across the room, instantly knew from the glow in his features the details of his engagement, and acted as a spider to draw him into her web. The black widow had lured him in with dark cunning and the red hourglass of her flawless figure.

His closed his eyes and thought again of her soft cheeks, her glowing eyes, her gentle complexion, her honest demeanor. His own betrayal was too much to bear. Bitter thoughts raged within him towards the sultry seductress sharing his bed. The sly, unashamed desecrater of his future marriage. Such destruction had her prim hands wrought.

She felt him tense and saw the photograph on the wall and she knew. She didn’t even need to ask. God, he had lied, and she had believed. She wasn’t angry, she was tired. And sad. And if she were able, she would rise and grab the eraser from his bag resting several arm-lengths away on the carpeted ground, and wipe the whole night prior clean. They'd never met. They’d never touched.

And what strange a place to meet as a library? A graduate student. He would need to make a living, he would need to support a family, and from behind the stack of books he eyed her. She made contact, the sly devil, and he fell into her trap. His research could wait, he had plenty of sources at home regardless. Instead of studying books, he studied her, and rose to meet her. They met outside that evening, with smooth greetings passed behind collars turned up against the night. The dinner had been classy, accompanied with blood red wine and brought to a finale with smooth black chocolate.

She could throw it all up now and she still wouldn’t feel relieved. He could do the same. She felt sick for playing any part in any fidelity. He hated her for it. She wondered how such a kind person could lie like that. He marveled at how such beauty could hide such malice. She made up her mind that she should go. He decided that she never would.

Reaching for the night stand, now fully awake, he grabbed for her room key. It was short and blunt. He fingered the key ring, and found her car key.

“I think that I-” she was stopped short as she saw his hand raised. Her breathing quickened, and her heart followed closely behind in its beats. She started to scream, but he was over her now, and she found a pillow covering her face. She writhed and clawed out from beneath his weight, and the key now risen high in the air found its target in her chest. Once, and the force of his fist caused a rib to crack. Twice, and the key’s point found its point of entry. Three, four, five, six, each digging deep, the wells springing blood as white flashes of pain coursed through her body. The suck of air as a lung was pierced, and her mouth gargled with blood under the muffling pillow. 10, 11, 12. The blunt force of his fist against her body, the sharp entry of the key beneath her skin, until her breathing halted and her head span and she found herself nowhere, her consciousness subsided. The air from her lungs rose and mixed with the stale air of the apartment, hovering briefly around her killer before escaping out the open window, rising through the morning breeze and mingling with the passing clouds. A minute passed, and her body lie cold.

The fever of madness had ravished his mind, and before his mind could make any attempt at rational thought the deed was done, his skin flecked with splattering blood, the key dripping the scarlet aftermath, his hands dyed red in the hot but cooling blood. He sat in a daze as the madness subsided, his body restraining the now lifeless vessel of what was briefly his consummate partner. Panic and guilt cascaded upon him, and like a child he hid the fruits of his crime, wrapping her pitifully in the bed sheets and laying her on the ground at its foot. The sheets could go with her, and the stained mattress could be covered.

Her body still ran with gore, and it ran from the bundle in a gentle stream across the carpet. His hands, dripping as he paced for what must’ve been hours, left deep splotches on its surface, marking clearly his path to the window, around the table, to the door (blood drying on the door handle), but drawn back, again towards the bed (bloody hand print on the pillow, which was now on the ground), and running this peculiar gauntlet until his mind was empty.

And so he tore. The frail old carpet stood little chance against him, and he shredded it until the last of the spots, which save for beneath the table ran throughout the majority of the room, had been removed. He shoved the torn carpet beneath the bed as he worked, and by mid-afternoon his labor was finished, his nails chipped and hands raw, but his face holding a satisfied (if not terrified) smile. There were areas where the thin carpet hadn’t been enough to hold it, and so the concrete itself was now stained with the quarry of her veins, black against the gray with pools of reflecting red. He stood, and he saw, and he knew this could not go undiscovered. It wasn’t the trial or the jail time that troubled him (for punishment was temporary and second to his own internal, eternal anguish), but the disappointment of the one he thought he loved. How shattered would her life be, her fiancee now murderer and adulterer days after their engagement? He gripped the key until his hand bled, and in a fit of rage and despair struck out against her portrait, shattering the glass which stuck in him like a pin-cushion, and yet the sensation wasn’t even felt. His extremities were numb and his head was light, his eyes were blurred and out of focus.

He felt the flames of despair growing within him. Stepping to the window, he looked down at the world beneath. So great had his hope been, but greater far the life he had abandoned. He had passed the point of no return, and he could only wait until the full implications of his actions were clear to him, the remains discovered, the consequences carried out. There was no more time, nothing more to do, and it scarcely mattered. His head grew hotter as his rage and despair, at himself, at his fiance, at his mistress, at his life, grew in burning intensity. And he felt it rising within himself, in a crescendo of a scream which couldn’t leave his lungs, growing instead within him and burning to every extremity. His thin shirt began to smolder.

Heaven, Hell, and Convenience Stores

A relentless fever of excitement and despair was at once the main occupant of the small parking lot, situated haphazardly between the street and the 24-hour convenience store, which, despite its advertisements of hot dogs and cola, established itself as the unofficial mecca of the rambling drunks of early morning, the unluckiest (or least wanted) members of unanticipatedly large and thus undesirably dry parties, and the troubled husbands who suddenly found themselves on long walks with nowhere in particular to go. The cola was watered down, by any rate, and the pre-cooked hot dogs had long been re-cooked and set to rest at a moderate temperature, masking partially but not entirely the day-old staleness and second-rate ingredients.

The street had, unsurprisingly but by no virtue of its own, become a voyeur of late-night maladies. The slightly impaired flick of a sputtering transmission into gear often ended abruptly amidst crushed metal, broken glass, drunken curses and hastily scrawled phone numbers. Other times it met its fate with the dull thump or light crack of steel bruising skin or cracking bone, skull meeting asphalt with a sickening thud inaudible by either party, be it over the screeching brakes and droning engine (or, in some cases, the suddenly racing engine and newly placed distance between the two subjects) or over the sudden wave of the bearer's unconsciousness. The street was far from bloodthirsty, but had certainly drank its share.
The tar bubbled in a handicapped parking spot, melting and churning the paint into a dark swirl in the quickly dividing ground. The flame from beneath leapt up into the sky, lapping the stars with its hellish tongue. The ground dropped like a pothole, the wind slowly fanning the sulfurous smoke which rose ominously from it but suddenly dissipated. The parking spot shifted back to its prior form, unchanged save for a shadow covering it, as well as the dark soles of black shoes, which rested at the end of legs that blurred in the darkness into a cloaked figure.

The door jingled a merry hello, followed briefly by its sharp slam. The cashier (Dwayne, his plastic name tag said) didn't bother to look up from his tabloid; a customer was a customer, after all, and it wasn't every day that the prime minister of New Zealand was proven to be in cohort with space aliens. The fifth page, as well, promised undeniable proof that not only was Elvis alive and well, but he had opened an invitation-only cafe in Chicago that had served such personalities as Oprah Winfrey, half of the Baldwin brothers, and Verna Wyatt from Utah, Elvis' biggest fan (only the third had given a testimony, but she swore to God she saw the others there, and besides why would you accuse such a sweet old lady of lying?)

He heard the thud of food and chink of money placed lazily on the counter and an affirming grunt (typical amongst the nighttime crowd; it seems that where the police stop caring, nature imposes its own noise curfew) and rung it up silently, eyes rarely straying from the $1.50 tabloid he wouldn't bother to pay for: a pack of plain, off-brand potato chips, a bottle of pickle relish, and a bottle of club soda. He looked up at his mysterious guest and his face turned as white as the receipt he was holding, sans the message typed neatly in bluish-purple displaying the total, an abbreviated list of the items, and a plea urging the recipient to come again and donate a few dollars to the lottery machine in the corner.

The guest's raiment consisted of a black hooded cloak, a ragged black t-shirt, black shoulder-length hair, and (behind his cold, black, infinite, expressionless eyes) the fury of hell. His(?) skin wasn't particularly pale, nor his hands particularly bony. Had his teeth been visible (neither smile nor grimace was born upon his shallow face, shallow save for the infinite depth in its eyes) they wouldn't have been pointed. The fires of the underworld coursed through his blood, mingling with the plasma and burning through the capillaries, but that wasn't apparent to the stunned clerk. He wasn't visibly set apart from the rest of the store's late-night patrons, save for the fury of hell. It permeated him completely, surrounding him like a dense mist and biting hotly at an absolutely terrified Dwayne, who had been standing motionless for several seconds now. A gloved hand snatched the receipt and the freshly bagged groceries with an otherworldly hesitation, as though the intricacies of operating its corporeal form were too much to bear. With an awkward but simultaneously cool, collected, brooding gait, he walked out of the convenience store. The bell sang behind him as the door slammed shut. Dwayne shook his head slowly and pondered the benefits of sleep, scanning the room for a suitable pillow substitute, but returned instead to his tabloid. The world, after all, wasn't getting any more sane, with or without a good night's rest.

Max, the drivers license he held read, was waiting outside, leaning against the hood of a white Mercedes, twirling its keys slowly. Upon further examination of the license, he was 47 years old, 48 in October, 5'9", and had green eyes. Flipping through the rest of the wallet, he worked for a pharmaceutical corporation in public relations. The age and corporation were off, but the rest was good enough for now.

The door opened and a minion of hell walked out of it. "Excuse me," said Max, approaching the dark figure, "I don't mean to bother you, but do you happen to have a cigarette?"

He slowly stopped walking and looked at Max. His face was almost puzzled, but his mouth remained in a grimace. His eyes leveled with Max's, his gaze empty and infinite. His mouth snarled slightly, baring a hint of his crooked teeth.

"I only ask," Max continued, unfazed, "because I've been meaning to start. Need something to clear my head. But my wife can't stand the smell, and I don't want to start a fight over something I don't even like. I'll tell you what: If you lend me one and I like it, I'll go inside and buy two packs: one for me and one for you."

"Well," grunted the shrouded stranger, "I'm not one for charity, but I know a good deal." He looked down and reached into his pocket.

This was the pivotal moment, and Max took action appropriately.

There was a flash, very brief, lost upon the minion of hell, who was busy digging through the clutter in his pocket for a roll of tobacco.

Max, the 47 year old public relations agent, stood dazed. How he had made it from his house to the convenience store was evident enough: his car was resting silently by the gas pump. The question on his mind was why, exactly, he had driven 40 miles to the convenience store across the street from his office building, why all the cards that had been inside his wallet were now in his pocket outside his wallet, why he was watching a strangely intimidating man digging through his front pockets, and, most importantly and most mysteriously, why a swirling, glowing cloud of a vaguely human height was slowly advancing from behind him.

He opened his eyes groggily and sat up. The morning sun was just rising above the horizon now, turning the sky a dark pale grayish-blue and causing the dew that had settled upon him to shimmer like the stars he had seen only moments before. It ran, now, down the front of his shirt and left streaks in his freshly cleaned glasses, now clouding over his dark, black eyes. He smelled, he surmised, unpleasantly like dampness. There was something fiery in his throat and head.

Standing up, he made a quick analysis of the situation. He, a 47 year old public agent, fairly well off, had spent the night on the greasy asphalt in front of a convenience store, which he didn't even recall ever coming to, only a momentary flash of who knows what involving a vagrant and a cloud of iridescent gas. Vowing off for good dark chocolate after 9 PM and cursing the headache his unintentional nap had given him, he staggered towards his car in an unseemly, unnatural gait. He sleepily turned the ignition and was halfway through a right turn onto the adjacent street when he was inadvertently subject to the laws of the physical universe.

Two objects, as it is universally recognized, cannot occupy the same space at the same time. This can be said of two people, two buildings, or (in the particular circumstance) two automobiles. Unfortunately for Max, the other automobile happened to be a tractor-trailer. It is theoretically possible, though of such a low probability that it is considered impossible, that (since atoms have so much space between them relative to their size) two objects can pass through each other without occupying the same space in the material world. Surprisingly enough, in the case of Max's white Mercedes which currently sharing the same proximity as a Coca-Cola painted tractor-trailer, this happened. Unfortunately for both Max and for the scientific world, this only happened through one layer of the innumerable atoms composing the two cars, and had an almost entirely immeasurable effect on the collision.

With the truck going 60 mph and Max going approximately two, it wasn't even a fair fight. The Mercedes was crushed, both at its factory-designed crunch points and almost every other point it held. It was set aloft and tumbled, each collision with the hard earth further shaping it into an unrecognizable chunk of metal, plastic, and (for a premium price) leather. Somewhere after the screech of the semi's brakes and before the second or third landing the occupant, having forgotten to fasten his seat-belt, involuntarily left the vehicle and came to rest in an indecipherable mass at the end of a long streak of blood and bone fragments.

A second law of the physical universe had been broken, however. The tractor-trailer had never been constructed by any known corporation and had certainly never been christened by the Coca-Cola company. In fact, it hadn't even been present when Max began to pull out of the parking lot, so the collision was no fault of his own, even had he been perfectly attentive.

This all certainly came as a surprise to Dwayne, who had never been behind the wheel of a truck in his life and was entirely certain he had fallen asleep inside the convenience store. But even the fastest reflexes physically possible couldn't stop the collision between truck and coupe. The screech of the tires hurt his ears but fully pulled him out of his half-dreamy state, at least for the time being. Badly shaken, after having finally stopped it and having inadvertently killed a public relations agent, Dwayne climbed out of the cab. He rested for a bit, leaning against the side of the truck next to the now-open door. Tired and confused, and in a reasonable state of shock, he stared for a few seconds at the side of the truck. The glare on it from the sun was certainly bright, much brighter than the sun itself appeared. Shock and fatigue can do strange things to your eyesight, he half-figured, half asleep and half catatonic. In any case, he was now (by absolutely no fault of his own) accidentally responsible for the death of another driver. He staggered, his body stiff but his knees weak, a few feet forward into the street to examine his incontestably deceased accident partner.

The former body of the former Max was mangled beyond recognition. The street drank what blood it could but couldn't keep up, and a pool slowly formed around the recent cadaver. Something unworldly though, something stygian, drained as well. It sizzled on the concrete in an ethereal state of half-being, despite the coldness of the morning. It seeped down, through and beyond the now-satiated street, and down through the dirt beneath. Down.

A startled vagabond, clothed in all black, ran quickly towards Dwayne in a hung-over stumble. He wondered briefly how he had drunkenly sleep-walked from another convenience store on the other side of town, which he had promptly collapsed in at 10:00 the night before, and why there was a crust of tar dried to the bottom of his shoes. At the moment, however, he was more interested in the wreckage, the impact of which had woken him from his deep slumber. He stopped wordlessly next to Dwayne, in front of the semi whose side softly reflected the deep gray-blue of the sky, and trembled. Dwayne nodded toward him with a recognition he didn't share. They stood silently, knowing nothing of the recently concluded battle in the long war between heaven and hell. But they both shared confusion, and were both overtaken with a relentless fever. For the vagabond, it was one of excitement. For Dwayne, it was one of despair.

The Forest

The forest seemed to perfectly capture my own indecisiveness. Like myself, it knew exactly where it was going, but didn't seem to know how. The last traces of summer were draining away from the vibrant woods, yet the green still stuck on the leaves, hesitant to leave in favor of the brown and orange hues yet to come. The whole of nature, really, seemed to be in a state of transition. The sun had begun to set in the distance, drawing the day to a prompt close, but the twilight had not yet set in. Not to say that it would be particularly noticeable, as the sky was so overcast that the possibility of stars was rather nonexistent. The moon, however, had begun to shine its halo through the dense cloud covering. The sky was, with the setting sun, a perfect shade of slate gray, but simultaneously showed no sign of rain. The air wasn't right for it. A cool breeze blew halfheartedly between the trees, winding its own serpentine path through the foliage, much in the same way as I did. I had chosen this time to walk for its somber aesthetics and its subtle beauty, and had chosen my route entirely arbitrarily. The forest was encroached by a rapidly sprawling suburbia. It was once vast and grand, an endless sea of greens and browns, but the city was closing in. A free spirit cannot be constrained within boundaries of asphalt and concrete. It needed a release, an escape, but none was evident. Its future was certainly extinction, the passing of the seasons just a small part of a certain future: minor details, like the rank of a fallen soldier. In the end, death was death. I was desperate, and the forest was my final solitude.

It was a seemingly simple path. Why shouldn't it be? Aesthetics and beauty rely little upon complexity, and it was the simplicity of the forest that drew me, how it worked without trying, flowed without movement, and devoid of any effort drew itself simply into immaculate complexity, perfect and organic and simple and infinitely interconnected, as the freeways and airways and railways and alleys and networks of cables and signals only dreamt of. How different was it from the Labyrinth of Daedalus? A prison with no locks, but nonetheless impossible to escape, manmade and awe-inspiring but nevertheless a terrible death trap, all left to starve and die to feed the minotaur of progress.

This was open, and it was pure, and it was free. I could hear the rush of a river in the distance, and I continued along my path, sometimes well beaten, sometimes cutting through foliage, never caring. The path didn't matter, this forest, this freedom, was already my destination.

The trees at last thinned and I came to a cliff. Below me I could see the river winding its way around the rocks and between the trees, the tops of which flowed and swayed with the wind, echoing the ripples and the rush of the river amidst them. The open space consumed me, and the air rushed around me and through me, into my lungs, through my blood, stretching to every limb and organ, every part of me open and free, one with the endless expanse that surrounded me. I closed my eyes and felt the freedom, opened them again and saw it stretch before me.

I was eager to join, ready to ease myself in with the nature around me, organic, flowing, free. I stepped to the edge, sending a handful of rocks crumbling down to join the river below. My left foot reached forward, and came down to rest firmly on the nothing between myself and the valley. Standing now, with one foot in the swirling breeze and the other firm on the ground, I felt no fear whatsoever. I reached out my other foot now, struck it down on the void. Several more, and with each I felt myself further away from the cold, concrete world and more ingrained in the flowing life of nature. There was a good 10-foot divide between myself and the cliff, and I looked down and saw the tops of the trees pointing up at me, the flowing river oblivious to my presence. Across the valley now, I could see the endless expanse of forest, stretching through hills and mountains and glowing and green beneath the gray afternoon sky.

I took each step slowly, not out of hesitation, but savoring the freedom around me. At last I reached the far ridge. Looking back I could see the spot where I had stood, and far behind it, above the rising trees, the faint hint of a skyscraper. Ahead of me, though, was nothing but nature. And, directly before me, a singular path, cut through the underbrush.

At first it was very narrow, and I could hardly walk it without being assaulted on either side by the rogue tendrils of various shrubs and bushes. This narrow section didn't last horribly long, and the path soon widened considerably more than I had originally expected. I heard the fluttering of wings overhead and a large shadow passed over me. Looking up I saw the silhouette of a bird, black against the already mostly darkened sky. A feather floated slowly down and landed several feet in front of me. and I examined it with curiosity. It was much more colorful than those of any of the birds I recalled seeing in the region, and much larger as well. I decided to examine it in more detail later. I was free from the world I had once been a part of, now a part of the organic network that surrounded me. I would have all the time I needed.

The grayness of the late afternoon had only intensified since I had crossed the valley, and the sky held an even deeper level of melancholia than it had previously. I reached into my pocket and palmed my watch, which gleamed brilliantly as I removed it. A family heirloom, with in all probability very little monetary value but still a good deal of emotion vested in it. As I brought it out into the light, however, I didn't hear its ticking. I checked it, and the hands had stopped, frozen against its ornate background as though they had merely been painted on it. It was an old watch, and this wasn't the first time it had given out on me. No matter, I returned the watch to its rightful place. I glanced briefly at the sky; I had time to go a bit further before night would arrive. Sleep, besides, was of little importance.

I walked further, noticing that the fauna around me was growing much less vibrant. Indeed, the further I walked, the more the plants appeared to be dying. I stooped to examine one of them: a simple shrub, with a single leaf hanging from its deadened form. It felt extremely brittle, as though any slight force would snap it in two.

Looking back towards the path, I noticed a tree sitting in the middle, several yards ahead of me. Thus far the carefully woven path had managed to evade any trees, and there was ample room on either side of it upon which it could have gone, but the tree remained directly in the center. Something about it troubled me. It was leafless, a dull, gray-brown, with a form that sprung up from the earth as though it were trying to uproot itself. Its wretched limbs twisted nightmarishly into the air, as if in a cry for relief from its terrible shape. In the summer months it would no doubt be quite lovely, but as it stood, leafless and eerie, it inspired in me a sense, not of fear, but of sadness. Sadness and pity for the grotesque form of the tree that stood before me, set at the focal point of attention at the very center of this very peculiar path. Where the nature around me had previously woven effortlessly into a tapestry of awe and beauty (even the dying trees and bushes around me flowed together in uniformity), this stuck out shockingly.

As I passed it (with reluctance, in all honesty, due to its peculiar nature and its disheartening and agonizing form) I could have sworn I heard soft, gentle weeping. I looked up into its twisted branches and saw nothing. The sound lasted but a second, so I assumed I had just imagined it. Trees, after all, don't make much a habit out of lachrymony, even one as pitiful and twisted as the one that stood before me. Troubled still by its sight, I passed by, and didn't feel altogether comfortable until it was a good several paces behind me.

I came suddenly upon a grove of them, clustering either side of the path, each one more hideous and somber than the one beside it, crying out an intense but very personal pain. The air felt hushed, as though I had wandered into a room that had suddenly fallen silent. The quiet was deafening. The twisted limbs of the trees stretched over the path, creating a canopy of deadened branches that scattered the remaining sunlight and complimented the gray skies with a pervasive sense of gloom. I felt my own spirits gradually begin to sink, which felt entirely natural in such company. This wasn't the forest I had come to for release. It was certainly free of the slow push of suburbia and civilization against its boundaries, but it wasn't natural. It didn't flow. It wasn't free to simply be and exist, it was instead enslaved by the aura of self-loathing that surrounded it.

The silence was suddenly broken with the horrible sound of shrieking from behind me. An intense agony at once filled the air, carrying with it the deepest level of pain imaginable. Choked sobs and terrific screams of unimaginable torture wove together in an otherworldly symphony of horror and damnation. The cacophony hit my ears with such powerful dissonance that I had to steady myself from reeling backwards. I heard the heavy beating of wings and turned to see a monstrous figure flying towards me and up into the monochromatic sky. With the sun at its back I couldn't get clear enough a view to make out its features, but it looked much like the bird I had seen earlier. Like a bird, at least, in that it had wings and talons. Its figure, from what I could make out, was much less like that of a bird and much more like that of a man. Or maybe a woman. Needless to say I had no further desire to stay in that grove of death any longer, so I turned back in the direction from which I had come. I knew, at least, that the forest there was what I had hoped for, dreamt for, thirsted for in the dead of night when the only sound I could hear was my own heart beating and steady breathing, and yet the strains of civilization still crushed me.

As I approached the tree I had seen earlier, I noticed something was amiss. The ground was littered with oddly familiar feathers. I retrieved from my pocket the one I had discovered earlier, and found them to be similar in size and color. The base of the tree still twisted in repulsion, but bore deep scratches. I reached to examine one of them: it was about an inch deep in the knotted wood, three slashes running parallel to each other. All up the bark and even into the limbs of the tree the same pattern ran. It was as though a flurry of strokes had been taken against it. I withdrew my hand from the gash I had been examining and found my fingers covered in a thin red sap. Stepping back a foot I saw it running in a stream from the wounds and pooling gently on the ground, carrying with it the oversized feathers and dyeing them a bloody shade of crimson.

I stepped back further as the foul stench of death filled the air. Disgusted and disturbed, I hurried back along the path. I attempted to do so, at least. I didn't get more than twenty feet before I felt my crushed and battered legs squirm and twist. My broken feet burst through my shoes and stretched, pointed and writing, before digging into the earth. As my roots burrowed deeper into the hard ground, I strained and pulled up to free myself, but it was to no avail. My torso, I had failed to notice before, was shattered. My ribs pierced bloodlessly through my skin and rose to dislocated shoulders at the base of my splintered and fractured arms. I felt my body freeze, pulling up and reaching to escape the grasp the ground had on me or, more specifically, the grasp I had on the ground. My arms stretched and pointed, and more sprouted, first from between my shoulder blades, then from the back of my head, then from my heart, reaching and straining for the sky, for the sun lying behind the dull gray clouds, which carried a mellow glow while growing darker and darker.

My bruised and crushed face flattened and my socketless eyes scabbed mostly over. My mouth was frozen almost shut as my tongue solidified and snapped in half. The roof of my mouth turned to bark, and my broken teeth melted into an ivory sap that crawled slowly down my throat, resting in my wooden lungs.

You no doubt saw the figure of what I was at the bottom of that valley, as you too took your first feeble steps to the other side. Look down and see yourself for what you are: broken, shattered, and finished. Feel the scars deep and sticky in my ashen bark. Do you hear the beating of wings in the distance? The air is moving, flowing around the pummeling feathers. You can run, but they aren't coming for you. Not yet, anyway.

Even if you could hear these thoughts, it would scarcely make a difference. Your roots are already writhing and digging. The more you struggle, the more wretched and horrid you'll look when it's all etched in solid bark.

Look! A new traveler on the road, joining our fertile corpses at the bank of the river, and sprouting now across the chasm in this grove of the damned.

The Sky

NOTE: I suggest you read my other short stories first, as this is the oldest of the three I've posted so far, and I would at least like to think that I've matured a bit as a writer since I've written this.
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The sky was dead.

Not to say, of course, that it had ever truly been alive. In many respects it had never even truly been there. It was an entity measured entirely in its absence, the small incalculable nothing that separated terrestrial dirt from the endless expanse of space. And yet, by the way it had been personified throughout history, it was very much alive, almost human. A glimpse of sunlight through an expanse of clouds could speak more than any words. Or so they said. A great cold autumn sky spoke of boundless bittersweet memories and, accompanied by the gentle bite of a passing breeze, evoked a romanticism and nostalgia so deep within the soul as to breach the very core of humanity. Such skies stopped time. Or so they said. And, on occasion, an eternal blanket of gray masking the light of the sun, reducing its brilliance to a numbingly morose luminescence, encasing the earth within its somber grasp, springing shadows from the earth like the tombstones of a cemetery. This was the sky of anguish, the den of suicides, the grandiose mimicry of all the darkest corners of the human psyche, the manifestation of apathy. Cold, unfeeling, agonizing gray. In some ways, then, it was not so different than now. A mass of steel and concrete had replaced its living, breathing emptiness, but still the grayness remained. The emotionless, despondent gray. Looking upwards was no longer a sign of hope, rather an indirect means of despair. It evoked sentiments more macabre than any prose ever written or any language ever spoken. And so the cold, dead sky became ignored. Society, after all, couldn't afford to grant their attention to death.

The destruction had lasted but an hour. The source of the first missile had never been determined, but it scarcely mattered. The missiles set off like the spores of a dandelion, floating gently along the atmospheric breeze before crashing down with thunderous determination. The cities crumbled and the forests burned, and for a while the planet fell silent. But mankind would not be crushed that quickly. For years statistics dictated that total destruction was an inevitability. The trenches had been dug and the tunnels had been set, and for weeks the blasts rocked the night and well into the morning. At last it was completed: an artificial valley set deep within the crust of the earth. Not visible from space, but large enough to hold the survivors. Radiation suits were distributed in every major city and bomb shelters sprung up at an alarming rate. And still we were not fully prepared. Many shelters failed, and many never reached them. In the end, very few remained. of those, most would die of exposure. The rest made their way across land and sea until at last all were settled in the valley. They embraced their earthly damnation with optimism. The struggle for life at the core of our being never left us. But still, the surface was irradiated and the open sky posed a threat. The fallen cities proved a wealthy harvest of resources, and the great monuments which once brought humanity closer to the sky now locked it beneath the earth, a barrier of steel and concrete separating us forever from the barren fields above. The sun was enslaved by mankind to do their bidding, its energy gathered and its brilliant light illuminating a wasteland of twisted metal and blood, which had set itself loose in the sudden final sigh of millions, as their life was torn from their frail vessels of flesh and bone. Rivers ran red where streets had once been, staining the nation from coast to coast. Yet standing above this graveyard of flesh and steel was one building. Tall, dark, foreboding, It was the glory of human achievement, the only structure spared destruction. Its miraculous existence absorbed the rays of a sun that no longer shone on mankind. It stood tall above the rubble, rising into the sky its creators no longer knew. It was the last sign that life had existed on this miserable little planet, a monument to both the ingenuity and ignorance of man, the headstone of the concrete tomb they had dug themselves. Its silent epitaph spoke the closing chapter of the human race. Or so it would seem.

Centuries passed. Mankind repopulated. Space was running thin and we couldn't build up, so we dug in and built out. Levels sank deeper into the earth and the valley became a cavern spanning hundreds of miles. The surface was forgotten and the sky of concrete continued to expand. Dull, featureless, gray, it watched over all of society with no remorse.

I was one of them. I had never seen the sky, never felt the warmth of the sun, and never been witness to the splendor of a starry night. I was born long after the war had shaken the earth, long after the dust had settled and mankind grew comfortable with its new living arrangements. As all things eventually go, the memories had faded into myth. Dedicated to the concept of rebirth, the survivors had destroyed all visual records of the pre-destruction era. The literature remained, however. Physical history was unimportant, but literature, in many regards, held our collective souls. The last remnant of a bygone world as far as we knew, it sparked the interest of the more imaginative. Suffice to say, few cared.

Not that our previous world was completely forgotten. The final building left standing was one such myth that would never die. It became a cultural icon, with films dramatizing daring treks to it and theorizing on its contents cropping up every several years. For some, it held a vast treasure. To others, it had held a second group of survivors. The more radical of these even went as far as to say that the surface had been repopulated by those left within its walls, and an equally thriving world rested just above the surface. These ideas, however romantic, never held much credence, and it was questionable whether or not their followers even truly believed them. Science had taught us, after all, that the surface would never be capable of supporting life. The damage that had been done was permanent, and the surface was irreversibly polluted.

This was not enough for me. I had heard talk of the surface for all my life, and the numerous theories were just words to me. I needed to see it. I had heard that there was a passage to the outside world in the vicinity of humanities original descent below the surface. Apparently, some twenty odd years after it had first occurred, a renegade group of survivors suffering equal parts claustrophobia and disillusionment wanted out, so they dug their way up. In a rather cliched twist of fate, they were never heard from again.

It took me years of research and thousands of dollars in bribing, but I had found it. I had nothing to live for here. Not to say my life was bad, rather that it was entirely unremarkable. Born the first and only child of two loving parents, medicated at an early age for "sky"-induced depression (an occurrence so common the drugs had become over-the-counter), raised an average student, and just recently finished working on a business degree. My life had its own peculiarities, but they were nothing more than the occasional blip on a flat graph, averaged out into a monotonous nothing, filed away in some ethereal filing cabinet. In short, I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

I stood at the end of a long tunnel, hidden behind a bookshelf in a long abandoned building in the poorer section of an unremarkable suburb of the world's capital. Its founders had named it Jamestown, likening themselves to the first of the New World settlers. But names were unimportant. What was important was that a doorway stood in front of me. It was notably ancient and covered in dust. I tried the knob, but it was locked. Not a problem, as the hinges had rusted through and the wood had rotted long ago. A swift kick broke a splintered hole through it, and two more allowed me to squeeze through. There were of course no lights, but I had brought a flashlight. I didn't bring anything else. I figured that, whatever was out there, I wouldn't need it. If another population had grown, they would have water. If it was desolate, I wouldn't be long. All I needed was a glance.

There was a stairway carved into the rock, so I climbed it. It spiraled upwards, slowly but steadily, the smooth walls illuminated by the artificial light in my hands. The stream of light pierced the darkness, for the first time in centuries. Darkness this ancient had a heaviness about it, though the light showed no restraint, weaving its way through lifetimes of obscurity in the blink of an eye. After what felt like an hour I reached the end. A ladder sat propped against the wall in front of me, and above me was a hatch. I pushed my hand against it. It was unlocked.

The sunlight that streamed down momentarily blinded me. I closed my eyes and pushed the rest of the way. Upon opening them, I expected to see a brilliant blue sky. I was almost afraid to. My life had been spent fantasizing about this moment, wondering if it was everything I had been told it was. Trembling, I opened them, and was welcome by an inviting yet unexpected canopy of green. I looked around and saw more of the same.

I was of course familiar with the concept of vegetation. We had grown it in our underground cities in much the same way it had been cultivated for thousands of years. But never before had I seen it like this. A sense of green pervaded the air, permeating every inch with its lush existence. I climbed out and was surrounded by a forest. It had obviously never seen the touch of man, and every inch of the ground was covered with the most vibrant foliage I had ever seen. I felt the raw, unfiltered, unconditioned air, and something within me awake, something that had been hibernating for hundreds of years. In my mind I was at ease, and my past seemed as insignificant as a blade of grass. Here there was nature, and I was immersed in it, I was a part of it. I was alive.

Something was missing though. The air was silent. I heard no scurrying of animals (I had never seen an animal, only ever heard them spoken of in much the same way as all the surface was: vague and mysterious). The call of birds did not fill the air. There was nothing. Nothing, except for the trickle of a stream. I followed the noise and noticed, scattered amidst the trees, large steel poles. These, I theorized, held the solar panels which powered our underground hive. I found the stream and, without a moment's hesitation, plunged my cupped hands in it and sloppily drank. I felt a chill run down my spine. Suddenly all the water I had ever drank seemed fake. It repulsed me to even imagine it. This was pure. This was as it was meant to be.

I sat down just to take it all in. It was all unbelievable. No amount of rational thought on my behalf could explain it. My senses were overloaded and my mind was buzzing, and the light was growing dim. Nightfall was coming fast, and I had to see the sky. All above me the green canopy was still present, so I got up and continued on. Coming across a clearing, my heart stopped in its chest. Above me, in all their marvel, unobscured and unclouded, were the stars. Their sparkling light shone down upon me as my dancing eyes gazed up at them. I staggered and fell backwards. The soft ground cover caught me. It felt like I had gone hours without blinking, I was in too much awe to stop for even a second. Always there had been gray hanging above me, be it light or dark depending on day or night. Here there was black. But amongst it was spread the most brilliant array of light imaginable. Its infinite depth, far from being unsettling, was comforting to me. There was nothing standing between me and eternity. I was vaguely aware of my body slipping into unconsciousness.

The next instant I was flooded with light. I saw the blue sky. I saw the clouds. I saw the sun. I could scarcely breathe. If the stars had been beauty, this was perfection. The somber gray that had haunted my dreams for years was gone, dissipated into my quickly vanishing past. I averted my gaze and the sun burnt into it. I had to force my eyes to move away, they were far too fixated upon its splendor to worry about the pain. Despite its burning appearance, the day was cold. It must have been autumn, but the plants showed no sign of it. Perhaps they had changed and adapted. Perhaps the Earth was just a colder place than it used to be.

I looked down at my feet and was flooded with vertigo, again sending me to the ground. I realized that I was standing a mile above the world I had once known. The heights were invisible to me, but the thought of them sent me into a panic. I looked up again at the sky and the feelings faded. Whether or not the world down there even existed scarcely mattered, there was more than enough life here to make up for it. In the distance I saw the rising black peak of a building, and I felt myself drawn to it.

I remembered the stories of the tower, the fascination with it I had had since a child, and the urge to approach it was irresistible. I rose once again and tore off towards it, the sunlight streaming around me as I passed alternatively beneath vegetation and sky, the smell of life surrounding me as I ripped my way through the undergrowth.
Finally I reached its black steel and glass walls. The forest had woven its way against it, and it was difficult to make out amidst the heavy plant life surrounding me. I saw the door, and it had already been busted open.

Light was streaming in from the high windows, and on the floor amidst the newly swirling dust I saw a seemingly formless lump of ivory. Upon closer inspection I found it to consist of human bones. Close by were six more of the same. Human skeletons, each bearing an identical brown pack. I read the inscription on one of them: "Jamestown." I gingerly picked it up and opened it, dumping the untouched ration supplies on the floor. They had never been needed. In the hand of one of the skeletons was a crowbar.

In the far corner of the room a short staircase lead to a wooden door. I tried the handle, but it was locked. I examined it; not a scratch or dent marred its smooth surface. The previous visitors had never made any attempt to open it. They had never made it that far.

I looked back. The vegetation pressed against the high glass windows, encroaching upon this small remnant of humanity left upon the surface. The steel support pylons for the solar panels were almost trees in their own right, but this was a foreigner. I walked over to one of the skeletons and grabbed a crowbar. With one swing I brought it down, but I felt my body weakening. As the dust cleared, I saw a stairway behind it. I started to climb. With every step it became more laborious; this was more than just fatigue.

At last I reached the top, an artificial plateau situated high above the forest. As far as I could see, the earth was green. The trees formed a luscious blanket, a soft sea of green beneath which all of mankind lay. My knees weakened, but this time it wasn't from emotion. Throughout the centuries, nature had adapted. Mankind, deep within its burial mound, had been given no chance. Humanity was a stranger here, as foreign on earth as it would have been anywhere else in the universe. The beautiful panorama stretched before me, the ultimate paradox, a banquet of cyanide.

And so I lay here now, my body slowly weakening. With slowly fading sight I gaze up at the sunset. As the hues of the sky turn from blue to orange, I can see why the sky inspired so many in the past; its brilliance is almost intangible. With it comes the vitality to fuel one last moment of introspection, before I join those in the building below me and, ultimately, all those beneath the soil. I'm fading away quickly, surrounded by vibrant life in a world in which I can play no part, but beneath the roots lives an oblivious society, trapped beneath a dull gray sky. With one last look I see the brilliance surrounding me, the unimaginable hues and the infinite, awe-inspiring bounds of space. As my pulse slows and my breathing fades, one final thought lies trapped within the cavern of my skull as the synapses cease their firing: I couldn't be happier.