Apoptosis

A Story by Charley Clucas

My second short story in which I attempted to delve deep into a Lovecraftian writing style and atmosphere. Please enjoy!

Darkness surrounded me relentlessly. Completely enveloping my vision, for that I am glad.

The faces were the last thing I saw before the lights went out. Distorted smiles and frowns, whispering their evil words to me for as long as I can remember. They were in the walls; even now I can feel them around me, a powerful aura which is turning my head backwards. As the lights went out so did the horrible sounds. Nothing but the sound of my own heartbeat was left in the abyss, my breathing irate and I could feel the sweat swimming into my eyes, stinging me. The pain is not good; it proves I am not dreaming as I do not wake when it burns. Its real, oh god its real.

The panic rushed through my body and I start to move, no longer frozen in place by my undying fear. First my right foot, then my left, then my right again. When did I take off my shoes? My toes felt uncomfortable on the wooden floor. Another step with my left and I felt a peculiar sensation surrounding my foot. An adhesive feeling clung onto me like a hand, rendering my left foot incapable of movement.

They have me…

My foot sank into the floor slowly at first, the glue holding my foot down preventing me from running or tugging away. No longer was the ground a solid, secure platform made of hardwood but now a think mud-like texture. I moved my right foot in front of the left which was still attached romantically to the floor. As I let my foot fall to the muck a flash of light filled the room. This light was not natural. It was a red hew of a light. As the vague light filled the room I am noticed the faces were no longer of strangers but of my own. They seemed closer than before, in touching distance of my hands if I was to reach out around me. It Is oddly peculiar how you look so different when you are staring directly at you. Almost alien actually. They were moving in closer and closer to me, gradually moving into me, trying to consume my very sanity. All while I was sinking into the pit of mud around me, faster than quick sand would consume a stone. Is this the end I wonder? What is death like?

Oddly I could not wait to find out; the sinking felt as though I was falling into a sweet embrace, ready to receive the kiss of a Grimm. The sensation was tight, the mud surrounded my chest and squeezed the air out of my lungs, the red light slowly turned a crimson colour and was as striking as young love. The faces, my faces, were still moving in on me from all around, the grins on my faces shew my stained teeth and larger than normal nose. The eyes hollow as husks ready to eat me with their gaze. My neck was now surrounded with the muck. I knew I had to close my eyes, that’s what the priests say anyway. If you don’t then you don’t get kissed but I kept them wide open, I forgot this important point, like many would, at the moment of eternal demise.

The mud filled my mouth and I wanted to vomit, my faces no longer staring at me as I became the floor itself, going into the earth. It blinded me and deafened me simultaneously.

I could feel the air on my bare feet as I slowly fell through the maddening ground which swallowed me. It was spitting me out now it seemed and the kiss of a Grimm was yet to be felt. My lungs had enough air in them to sustain me for the gruelling two minutes it took for me to fall through the earth. Well, this is curious.

My legs were the first thing to fall through, then my knees and my waist. My fingertips were the next thing through and I could feel a fresh breeze tickling them. Almost out of nowhere I had escaped the belly of the earth and has appeared in an unfamiliar place, leaving the horrors of the room I was in just moments ago. I was falling. Through the sky, through a sky anyway. The air was shooting past my body as I made my descent to the invisible ground below. I was too concerned with the falling that I neglected to look what spat me out of the sky. All of a sudden the ground hit me, I did not hit it though, as though I was being punished for something from the very earth below me.

The fall did not hurt me; just winded me. I laid there on my back, facing the cosmos and gaping in amazement at the fact I was alive and not in some form of shock. I could not see the belly that regurgitated me, just a grey, overcast sky with clouds dotting my view. On my back I could feel grass tickling me. It ran its bladed fingers through my hair as I laid there complimented by the breeze rubbing my skin. The only sound was the wind rushing through the grass, greeting it with comfort. I could have laid there forever, or however long forever is.

After a long while I realised that I was cold. This was odd as just moments ago I was wearing clothes but now I am naked although wearing the shoes I happened to have lost in the room of faces. I sat up and looked to the horizon and saw nothing albeit a large pillar in the distance. I found myself walking in its direction, completely naked leaving my body exposed to nature. As I got closer to the pillar I found the weather to be more violent, rain started pouring down on me although there were no clouds in the sky for it to fall out of. I covered my body with my hands, keeping myself as warm as possible.

The structure, if I may call it that, was no structure at all. A leaning transparent tower apparently made with glass. The structure was extremely asymmetric and uncomfortable to look at. Thinner at the bottom than the top; it was difficult to determine how it was still standing securely. The rain smashed against the glass with such force I thought it would fall. The weather was so harsh I could no longer see anything around me other than the tower puncturing the sky. I tried to focus me vision through the glass walls of the tower and saw nothing but darkness. Thunder rolled in the distance and beneath it a gale so strong it was literally ripping the ground from the earth, I could not see what was below the ground or if there was anything at all and I didn’t want to. I had to get out of it before I am lost again. I went up to the towers glass walls but found there was no entrance to it. I circled the base of the tower and found no entrance in any part of its circular design. The gale was getting closer and so was the beautiful grass which made the floor. This wind looked as though it was tearing up the reality of the realm with it, leaving behind a nothingness. The sound of the gale was more of a voice than a wind, screaming in my direction like a wailing mother for her dead child. I circled the tower again, frantically clawing at the walls, trying my best to get it. The screaming was close now, it was ringing in my ears loud enough to make me wince. I closed my eyes expecting the worst.

The gale lost its power and the rain no longer smashed against my numb face. I opened my weak, cowardly eyes and noticed I was in the tower, looking back at me through the glass. There I was, outside of the protection, covering my eyes with my palms. My hair drenched and shoes tied to my feet neatly. How could I be both there and here at once? I saw myself get smashed by the gale, wind ripping apart the matter which made my other body. I grimaced at the fact I no longer existed… I think. Looking through the glass there was nothing. Just blackness. It hurt for me to stare too hard into the void. Not my eyes but my body and innards ached when I concentrated too much on the concept of nothing. I backed away from the glass wall of the tower which I now resided in and looked around. All around me was the circular room with glass walls and a glass floor, I felt to wind and heard no sound. It was completely empty. I looked above me and saw a glass roof, it seemed as though the roof of this room also happened to be the floor of the above, meaning there is more levels. I had to rest for a moment and catch my breath after all these terrible events.

It is oddly satisfying seeing yourself be completely deleted from existence. As if I am now provided with a fresh start on life. All this time I had not conceived why I am here or where here is. All of it made little sense.

After my rest I stood again; awaiting a new event to happen. Slowly pacing around the glass case like an insect trapped in a cup, just waiting for something. Time went by slowly and it felt as though I was turning insane from the pure anxiety of nothing. I sang to myself at first and when that became dull I started giggling to myself. Nothing is a strange thing to understand, how can there be nothing without something there. I mean initially there is something there like that lovely green grass but how did that come about without nothing being there first. Unless something just spawns from nothing with is completely nonsensical. The idea that there is nothing comes from the fact that there was once an idea of something and then nothing came along and told something to be nothing. Or perhaps there was no nothing and no something and just other things. I cannot begin to think what came before nothing and something. Maybe it was a comfortable combination of both nothing and something. Now that is a theory! So before nothing and something was ‘Something-Nothing’.

This idea made me excited and I started to smile and laugh loudly to myself. The discovery of such an important scientific advance as Something-Nothing means that I will be celebrated by everyone. All around me the darkness of nothing turned to the cheers of crowds. People standing and clapping, screaming a name which I cannot remember being called every before but all the same it was a praise. I am famous! They love me and adore me.

I stood and raised my hands, smiling and thanking everyone around me for the congratulations, man and woman through themselves at me alike. Humans appreciating my heroic victory over science and worshiping me for the hero I am.

And then I saw it; absolutely nothing.

There were no crowds, no cheers and no praising. Just silence, ugly, cheap silence. I ran closer to the glass to throw myself away like trash and just bounced off the glass wall. As I stared sullenly at nothing I saw my reflection. Crow’s feet surrounded my eyes and my face wrinkled, it appeared that I aged incredibly in what seemed like hours. How long have I been here and how have I sustained myself without food or water? I started scratching my face, clawing at my cheeks and eyes, my nails sharp and long, they had not been cut in years. I cut into my left eye and I started to cry blood, losing almost all vision in it. The pain was tremendous, a salty sting penetrating my iris and aching for ages. I cannot stand this; I need to take it out. Please… Please… I shoved my finger into my eye socket, playing around with the organ until it wrenched away and fell from its home. The pain wasn’t too bad; I had gotten rid of it now though. The stinging is gone. A flood of blood followed though and I vomited on the transparent floor. The fluids swelled together and filled the entire floor with bile and blood alike, there was so much liquid. More than even my body could contain. The colours formed together to make a brown-red mess. It surrounded me as I was on all fours. My hands and knees completely enveloped by the mess and then I went.

Again I found myself falling through the ground but this time not into the sky. I fell through the mess and appeared on a higher floor in the tower, the one above me to be precise. This one was larger and full of odd machinery. The machinery was chugging uncomfortably, making alien sounds as it grinded metal against metal. I made myself stand and move towards one of the machines, peering at it curiously. I ran my slender finger over the rusted metal; it seemed as though it has been lying dormant here for centuries. As I ran my finger over a peculiar part of the machine it stopped. Like a mouse-trap it caught my finger and trapped it in place. The upper half of the machine that looked more like a capsule started to turn and open. Inside I saw something I could not describe in both words and writing. The sounds it made were to unfamiliar to me and its movements so unorthodox and inhuman I could not determine where one limb started and the other began. Although I could identify it as being humanoid it certainly wasn’t human. It clearly had something that distantly resembled a head but the facial features were of that I have never observed before. For a moment there was movement but as the pressure released from the machine (identified by the pressure gauge) the movement slowly stopped. I would like to say that it had died but I did not know. I reached my free hand downwards into the capsule to touch the creature. The closer I got to the Thing the less grip the machine had on my hand until eventually it released when I touched it. Nothing after that moment was clear. I found myself skipping around the room is queer excitement and throwing myself at the glass in a fit of suicide. There was only me and the machine in the room. The other machines ceased to exist; in my vision anyway.

After that I found myself at the foot of the tower again, where my previous body once was before the gale deleted it. I was laying on a mound of dirt which seemed to be unnaturally made for me to rest on. I looked up and raised myself from the ground, my head aching and my eye stinging; everything in the past was unclear to me, not my history, not my name, not even what I am. I was wearing a dress and a blue set of heeled shoes, making it difficult to stand on the uneven ground. I turned away from the tower to see that I was in the middle of a street. Cars rushed through the traffic and people walked from place to place going about their business. I turned again to face the tower again and noticed it was still there; a tall building that seemed to be made completely out of glass. I stood and noticed the pavement in front of me a step down from where I was. I was standing a business garden outside of the building. I walked forwards and shook violently for my legs were too weak to stand. I removed my blue heels and walked barefoot through the street.

I joined a group of people who were forming to cross the busy street road. My head ached and nothing made sense to me. Insanity had gripped my mind and plagued my thoughts with dark whispers. I could not stand still at the road and walked past the people. One foot in front of the other behind me I heard people scream “Stop!” but I didn’t want to. I kept walking across the road and bang.

I laid on the ground, broken and ruined. My body a husk full of pain and torment; the light slowly faded.

The faces in the walls were the last thing I saw before the lights went out.

A short story by Charley Clucas.