What was once the heart of their community had become a field of rotting corpses, a waste no scavenger of flesh would pick clean, for its bodies were of concrete and its bones of rusted steel.
The cadaver John stood within had once been an apartment complex. Never a place of grandeur or any great hope, yet still a refuge and home for dozens of souls.
Now it was a grave twice over.
Once, for those it took with itself into the ground over a decade before—the opening line in a tragedy of neglect written by the fickle winds of fortune.
And again that day, for the poor bastard laid out on the rubble who could no longer wait to be buried there with them.
John wanted to look away. The scene before him was not one of a final, gentle peace. Yet… his eyes were stuck.
It was his obligation to bear witness. His penance for having done nothing more.
The woman behind the bar poured three glasses. In each went the same pungent liquid of a clear, caramel brown over a single block of ice too flawed in form to impart the intended sense of class.
A man with dirty blonde hair took one drink for himself and raised it. “To another young life, lost before his prime.”
The woman readily joined him and the clink of glass summoned John out of his malaise just long enough to pay honors in languid reverence.
As the other two imbibed, he peered at the contents before setting it down untouched and fading from the conscious world once more. His behavior invited looks of pity, but the man and woman had already exhausted their consolations that night and so lingered stiffly in the memorial silence. Their expectations for the meeting had not been high, but it proved more difficult than they anticipated to see such dull eyes where there had once been such a bright spark.
Eventually those dull eyes settled on the dim, color-warped TV that hung off-kilter on the wall. John’s mind never quite registered the content of the changing images even as he sat fixated.
The man, however, had something to say: “They never actually show the City, do they?” He gave his friend a quick tap on the shoulder. “Hey… that offer still stands if you want it.”
John slowly breathed in. The bartender furrowed her brow in suspicion.
The man continued, “I know it sucks to say, but there’s nothing left for you here. Come to Joule—start fresh.”
“You’re not serious, are you?” the woman asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“There’s nothing there but corrupt trillionaires playing king—nothing but trouble, anyway.”
“Clearly, you’ve never been there,” the man dismissed. “There are wonders in that place you could only dream of.”
She shook her head. “They can only afford those ‘wonders’ by sucking us dry.”
The man grumbled under his breath, “We were like this before they spent a penny…”
“There’s something wrong about that place,” she assured. “Give it five years and all their shiny toys are gonna break down, too.”
The man said nothing more on the matter, though his deep grimace showed there was plenty more he could.
Nothing they argued was new to John. The young city was either a hedonistic cancer on society or the hope of humanity. Most believed the former.
He took his glass and swirled it about, watching the flow of the dark liquid around the clouded ice. He finally took a small sip and savored the nostalgia of the overpriced swill. The other two took notice.
“Everything about that place is excessive,” he declared. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re already bankrupt and are just pretending as long as they can.”
The bartender wanted to nod in agreement… but she could see in his eyes that he wasn’t speaking in caution.
John downed his whole drink then looked at the man offering a promise too good to be true. In the end, what more could he lose? “Might be nice to pretend for a while.”
The man grinned.
The bartender opened her mouth to speak, but the words stopped in her throat. She looked away, clutching at the breast of her shirt as a glint of light betrayed the damp of her ringed eyes. Though her concern was genuine, it wasn’t for John’s wellbeing that she held back tears.
Was the world she called home really so unbearable to so many?
As if to answer, the power cut out and left them to the dark.
It was so brilliant, John worried he might go blind.
An archipelago of glass and steel nestled within an evergreen sea. Upon dozens of white-stone islands, immaculate skyscrapers gleamed in the sun as they grasped at the heavens, each more grand than the last. Not content to merely rise to glory, they made war with gravity. Impossible overhangs, extreme angles, grand bridges dozens of stories high and hundreds of feet long. Upon the most prominent of surfaces were the beginnings of great murals. The heights were adorned with imposing sculptures. Its edges were trimmed in elegant patterns. Lush plant life filled its seams and hung from its walls. The souls traveling its meandering pathways smiled and laughed. The air was so fresh, so full of energy. One could almost hear the city itself breathe in steady rhythm.
And at the heart of it all was its greatest achievement: a tower that had seized all the world’s titles and humbled all other ambitions in the comparison—all before it was even complete.
John took a bite of the best sandwich he had ever had and relaxed into the most comfortable bench to ever grace a sidewalk as he leaned back to stare in awe. This new world was so far beyond the one he knew, yet even he could see this was just the start. The most defiant projects still waited their final touches, and many new ones were still being planned.
The job offered by that taller, blonde man—John’s old college pal, Ed—was thus: to build the tools the city needed to realize their ambitions, to bring the edge of what was possible within reach… and then, perhaps, to stretch beyond.
“They’re insane. This whole place,” John declared.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Ed was the very picture of the starry eyed young businessman: hopelessly drunk on the wine of reckless optimism.
John laughed. Then he snatched that cup and drank deep.
All those years stuck in school, hearing of all the controversies from the sidelines, hearing nothing but jealousy dripping off their tongues. Then after he graduated, when he let “cooler heads” caution him into the “responsible path.” Enough of that.
There was lost time to make up for, but his fire was lit. If the job sounded difficult, that meant there were plenty more opportunities to prove himself.
And prove himself he did.
By that same time the next year, he had already completed his first project with the company to resounding success. Great work brought great rewards. As Ed predicted to him from the outset, the glory for singular engineering achievements belonged to John’s fellows, yet they all pointed to him when asked how it all came together. And, to John’s greater surprise, the company well understood what that was worth.
A raise, stock options, and a hefty bonus got him a lavish apartment with all the creature comforts he could want and more. Nearly every weekend became an adventure—usually following one of Ed’s plots. Bold concerts, stately dinner parties, spontaneous trips with new friends, or simply traipsing around the city to delight in its novelties which grew in number by the day.
He met some nice women. Had a good time. Suffered a couple heartbreaks. Broke a few more. Nothing ever stuck, but he was in no rush.
It was a good life, and he enjoyed it… for a time. Yet, somewhere along the line he was beset with a worry he could not put to words.
At the start of his fifth year in the city, his bosses announced the next big project… and John felt nothing. No interest, no excitement, not even a critique. It was a good plan—objectively measured—but that was all. Quite frankly, it felt too small to him for such fanfare. His coworkers clearly believed otherwise, as they applauded and took to their work with all the same vigor as ever.
John reasoned that he had expected too much, too soon. Or maybe he was just getting older and could no longer run on unbridled passion. He compensated with reasoned discipline. He needn’t let his fickle flame hold back the fellows who relied on him.
Ed received a promotion with the new project, and their nights out on the town became rare. Within a couple of months, John stopped going out entirely—save to wander the city alone and listlessly gaze at the sights. His upscale apartment started to bore him and the excessive cost of it began to offend. He downsized to a cheaper place and sold off all the junk that was just taking space. His hours he spent in the office increased week by week, even while his paycheck did not—nor was such devotion ever asked for.
Everyday he felt himself slow down just a bit more, and so everyday he reminded himself: he was one of the most fortunate people in the world; his work was something to be proud of; he was content and the high he had been running on those first four years was unsustainable, anyway. All of it was undeniably true.
Why, then, did he feel held back again by a heavy premonition?
Into the earth he descended. Smooth and silent, like a specter returning to its grave. Only that ever so slight feeling of one’s insides lagging behind gave any indication the elevator was moving at all. John rode alone, thoroughly detached from the present and looking the part.
The machine slowed to a stop without so much as a tremble. The doors slid open and John shambled out, beginning the trek through a garage washed into sterility by cold, electric light. Winding past pillars and dividing walls, he made way to the modest little sedan tucked in a far corner of that fourth floor down. When he had arrived that morning, there was hardly a space to wedge a bike in on account of some event in town he never bothered to ask about.
Now, late in the evening, there was no longer a car in sight save his own. Yet, as John reached out to the door handle, his ears caught the echo of a shout.
A sound nipped his ear like a drop of hot oil and snapped him out of the haze of his thoughtless routine, freezing him in place to listen. There were two voices: the louder he could guess was a man. Most of the exchange was made unintelligible by its own echoes, but the few words he could pick out from the man were… crude. Barely a moment later, the shouting reached another level of intensity.
It was a good time to get out of there.
As he told himself that, he turned around to see if he could spot the source of the disturbance. The pillars and central elevator wells made it difficult to see much of anything on the other side in the dim, neutral light.
The lights were usually brighter than that, weren’t they? Maybe a power issue?
He left his vehicle and got closer. With every step, both voices in the verbal arena grew clearer and the seething anger carried thicker in the air.
John’s brain itched. It wasn’t his business, and no good would come of getting in the middle of it. It probably wasn’t anything too serious anyway.
His feet kept marching towards them. It was only proper to make sure nothing bad was happening, right?
A part of his mind felt like it was pulling away, left behind as he carried forward. It suddenly struck him how stuffy it was down there as sweat dampened the back of his neck. The summer had already begun to take its leave, but one final heat wave must have snuck its way in.
Halfway across the garage, John could finally see the ones shouting. Just the two men—as it had sounded before—both suitably white-collar in appearance. From where he was it didn’t seem that anything worse than shouting was occurring, but a few more pillars still obscured his view.
He stepped closer.
The man on the left, seething out accusations until his entire head went red, was an older gentleman: short, greying hair with a receded line; about average height; not particularly well-built, but he had done well enough to keep weight off—or perhaps, not enough to keep weight on. His face was sunken, boney, with the complexion of a life lived in apathy to one’s health. With neither jacket nor tie, and several buttons of his wrinkled shirt undone, he could not have looked a sorrier excuse for a working professional compared to the target of his curses.
A very sharply dressed man with a three-piece suit and a proud bearing stood to the right, always just out of the other’s reach. He seemed about middle-aged with a lush head of black hair in a slicked side part. His air of self-importance deflected with impunity every complaint screamed at him until the older man had to take a breath. Then, with a dismissive quip, the proud man would wrest the opportunity to stab back. His words were keenly sharpened and keenly aimed, sending his opponent into an even deeper rage and continuing the cycle.
John was now certain it would be dangerous to get involved. He would have to leave this to the cops.
His feet disobeyed his reason.
He was about a car’s length away when the older man’s rants went downright hysteric and bled murderous intent as he took staggered steps forward. The suited man’s once untouchable poise finally cracked and he backpedaled nervously. The arguing had reached its end, but the fight had not.
John rushed up beside the suited man, holding a palm out towards the other. “Whoa! Hey now! Let’s not do something we’ll—”
The older man snapped his bloodshot eyes towards John. “What the hell do you want!?!” The man’s hand moved as soon as he spoke, knocking a pained gasp out of the meddler.
So quick had it happened, John couldn’t even try to block. The pain was sharp along his lower left ribs—deeper than it should have been—and arrived with the sensation of a dull crack. He leapt back reflexively, pushing the suited man with him. “What was that for!? I’m just trying to—” The point of impact stung and he felt a spreading warmth around it. He clutched at the wound to find his shirt soaking through. The blood still inside his veins went cold.
Was it a knife? How? There wasn’t even a glint the whole time he had been watching.
John’s eyes went wide, those small muscles almost pulling hard enough to tear the corners.
Whatever ‘man’ he thought he had seen before was fading away as if he were witnessing the shifting form of a dream… or rather, a nightmare.
A twisted abomination stood before him, its pallid features cast in heavy shadows by the somber, orange light. It wore the same clothes as the human that once stood in its place, but that was all they shared. Its mouth was snarling and savage. Long, pointed teeth protruded through the inflamed flesh of its blooded lips—those on the jaw more prominent than the top. Its eyes, set deep in its deathly gaunt face, were but mottled scarlet orbs with neither iris nor pupil. Its bony hands stretched out freakishly into thin, jagged claws—its right palm already traced in crimson.
A part of John wondered if it really was just a nightmare: a terror born of his fatigued mind. What he gazed upon was an existence wrought wholly from malice, a creature he thought utterly impossible to the mundane world he inhabited.
The sharp pain in his side; the heat of the thick air he forced into his lungs; the rapid, heavy pounding of his heart. Every sense told him it was all too real.
Before him stood a demon, and it held a singular purpose: to rend soul from flesh.
Such a sight should have broken John’s mind down to its most base instincts. He should have stood frozen in dread to accept his end or forced every muscle and ligament in his body towards an immediate escape.
Instead…
Behind John, the suited man turned and ran with all the urgency he could muster. The monstrosity’s eyes snapped towards its fleeing prey and it gave chase with equal focus.
If John still had any instincts for self-preservation, they had abandoned him that night. As the demon passed him by, he kicked—swift and firm. His foot found its thigh with just enough force to send it stumbling to the ground. However otherworldly it was, it still had a bipedal form and all the weaknesses of such.
John wasted no time to watch it fall, immediately seizing the opportunity to run. He went the opposite direction of the suited man to force a choice in target between one or the other. It scratched the cement behind him loudly as it twist about and recovered. A wretched howl stabbed at his ears, succeeded by hurried stomping of leather soles upon the smooth stone. Each impact closer than the last, the distance between them far shorter than John had hoped.
Adrenaline was already flooding his system as he sprinted. He had become numb to his wound. All he could feel was the pressure to keep out of reach of the murderous beast that dogged his heels, and he mustered up every effort his muscles could give him to go faster, even to the verge of tumbling forward as his feet struggled to keep pace.
Still, those horrible claws drew closer.
John wished desperately for the means to turn and fight. One cheap trick had worked on the fiend while it was distracted, but he was unarmed and now alone. Any more bravery would see him helplessly torn asunder, so his mind raced to find an escape.
He was too far away from his car—the demon would catch him by then—and any other routes of escape were now behind him. In fact, he would soon find himself cornered, save one hope: a maintenance door that with any luck had a cheap lock.
He rushed straight into it, bringing his full weight and momentum to bear on the handle. Some inner mechanism gave way with a dull crunch that jostled the bones of his hand. He scrambled through the door and slammed it shut behind him. It uselessly failed to latch and clattered back open, but he had expected as much and never stopped moving. Three short, tense breaths later, he heard his pursuer crash through and turn towards him.
The maintenance tunnel was even dimmer than the rest of the garage and just as empty of any useful tools or debris. As John rounded a corner at the end of the first stretch, he looked for a way out before he could find himself in another dead-end.
Halfway across the next stretch, he reached a door leading back into the garage. This latch, at least, he didn’t have to break open as he hurried through… He just hoped the demon was too blood-crazed to operate the handle.
Only a moment later he heard an impact, then a frantic scraping of sharp bone on metal that faded as John’s legs carried him away. It likely bought him only seconds, but that alone was much more than he had just a moment before. And, more importantly, the demon was no longer between him and the way out.
The lights in that cement cavern seemed on the verge of burning out as he looked for his next good option to escape. Nothing but a faint reddish glow illuminated his world, yet, John felt as if he had never seen it more clearly.
His chest pounded as his heart worked overtime and lungs grew desperate. Yet, he could barely feel the weight of his own body as he ran.
He had never felt so close to death… yet an unbidden grin crossed his lips.
John spotted the man in the suit and turned towards him. He was rooting around under the hood of a car where he had been arguing initially. It seemed his fears had come to fruition as he swore deliriously at the sabotaged machine.
John shouted as he passed: “This way! Move!”
The suited man was startled but got the message and sprinted after, lagging behind only a few feet.
With at least one elevator already sitting at their floor, that could have been a way out, but the lift doors were relatively slow and all too willing to open for a “late arrival.” Plus, the angle of that path would cost them some of whatever lead they had. The only other ways up were the four, long ramps up to the surface. If they tried by foot, however, John felt confident the abomination would prove to have the best endurance between the three of them.
Thus he chose the long path all the way across that floor to his car. If that abyssal horror chased them mindlessly as it had before, John believed they could make it just in time to seal themselves in and take off… Except…
Shouldn’t it have been closer already?
Only their frantic steps echoed through the empty garage, and not a single shadow shifted in the thickening darkness as they passed pillar after pillar.
The outline of John’s plain sedan blurred into the cement around it, but he could once again see the reliable, old vehicle sitting exactly as he left it. Just a bit farther and they would secure their escape within its protective shell.
Then a pained shout erupted behind him, followed by the muffled thud of a body crashing to the ground.
Desperate panic grabbed at John. His body understood exactly what had happened and what it meant for his chances. Even so, he immediately skidded to a stop and spun around, barely keeping upright. He saw the suited man on the pavement, clutching his leg in agony as it walked up to him slowly. The sickly pale demon seemed to gloat over its helpless prey, its oversized mouth locked into a permanent smirk from the mess of razors pouring out. Its claws were raised and its fingers danced with anticipation.
Without hesitation, John charged at it, leading with another kick, but he wouldn’t manage to catch off guard a second time. It braced a leg and pulled an arm back to block right before the moment of contact.
John could feel the damage he dealt as muscle dented and sinew strained, but it was so far from enough. He snapped his leg back to keep it from being caught in retaliation, but even with that right maneuver, the demon was on him before he could properly ready himself again. A claw flew towards his head from the left and he scrambled to block. Pain flared in his forearm on impact and he slid to the side.
He tried to grapple the demon’s veiny, translucent arm in retaliation and found some success. Yet, its skin was slick and slippery, and for its strength, it took both of John’s arms just to fight against the one. Under such odds, the end to that fight would be obvious.
When he saw the flash of pale yellow on his right, it was already too late to keep the unnatural blades from slipping into his lung.
Adrenaline kept John struggling, for what little good it did. The demon knew its victory and he could have sworn it sneered in derision at his weakness. Every inch its claws sank in felt deliberately drawn out.
John gasped uselessly as his lung flooded. He struggled commendably against the other claw as it inched towards his face, but his last wave of desperate strength was already fading. He stared into the pupilless gaze of his would-be murderer as a cloudy darkness began to swallow his world for good.
There was no promised slideshow of memories, no final reflection of his short life. For John, the coming of the end emptied his mind of all but one fervent desire: a violence of his own. One tempered in righteous indignation. A consuming fire to burn that evil which had visited such injustice upon him.
As the last traces of oxygen in his blood were consumed and the ember of his life faded, he felt something strange. An intangible sensation that swept through his whole being: a wave that crashed against his very soul.
On impulse, one arm shot up to grab at the demon’s head, sinking a thumb into it’s eye. In the blur of his remaining vision John saw a tremendous bright flash. A heavy, wet crack resounded even through his dulled ears. Warm liquid splattered his face. Black consumed all as he fell to the ground.
He could still feel a pressure in his chest as the scent of burning flesh permeated the air.
Then, he felt nothing at all.