What lies below

My skin burned. It burned like a spit roast pig slowly turning over an open flame. The heat ravenously lapped at me and the way my skin slowly wilted and peeled away was like petals from a flower in winter. My thoughts screamed louder than any other sound in the world, but nothing left my lips. My mind wanted me to move somewhere, anywhere, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t. 30 minutes passed with my eyes sealed shut, body frozen in place like a corpse. I wondered, as I felt myself grow crisper whether this was hell. Whether I’d died and I’d done something so cruel in my life that it warranted being barbequed alive without even being given the luxury to scream. There was the constant crackle of flames and rushing wind around me, falling as frequent as rain. My eyes finally opened, and I saw darkness directly above me with a weak promise of light towards my feet. I was in a kind of tent, constructed of the fallen roof of the pub next to me, propped up on chunks of brick and concrete. It was enough to cover my whole body with an inch or two of room for my breath to flee. My peripherals teased more of the diabolic artistry that awaited me. Looking to my feet I could see small drops of bright orange hellfire clattering to the pavement in a deadly shower, the claustrophobic shelter under which I found myself being the only protection. I could hear the tiles sizzling and scorching, inches away from my face. A beam of light suddenly broke through and cast onto my left shoulder. Shit. The tiles were giving way. The hole was small, so I foolishly didn’t feel an immediate panic. Moments later: a single drop of flaming rain landed above, stalked down towards the breach, trickled in and landed on my clavicle. The patch of skin hissed and caught fire for a few fleeting agonising moments before cooking like a piece of bacon, the meat quickly turning darker and crunching like autumn leaves. I managed to find my voice then. The way I screamed; my vocal cords threatened to tear. With tear-flooded eyes, I lost my vision again and in a panicked state I started spasming like a trapped animal just trying to move away from the danger.

I wiggled desperately towards the light at my feet. I figured there must be an opening. I paid no mind to the grazes and cuts I was accumulating or the bloody trail I was leaving. My feet poked out into the open and they were tickled by the drops of fire. My legs followed and I gained an angry scar on my upper thigh when a drop streaked across my leg like a falling comet. The world was being unveiled to me in a teasing manner during my escape and gradually I saw the full extent of this apocalyptic tapestry. The ash-soaked sky and a swirling crimson inferno that dwarfed the sun and seared with an insanity inducing heat. The panic growing inside me was smothered when I realised how hopelessly fucked we were. There was an all-encompassing numbness, a dumbfounded awe at every nightmare I’d ever had materialised before me. I was in an alleyway and the street ahead was overflowing with an impenetrable mob of screaming people. They flung each other out of the way, trampling their friends, family and neighbours until they were nothing but stains on the pavement. I stepped towards them and felt the wind grasp at my fingers as the stampede continued past. I tried to garner somebody’s attention but whenever I caught someone’s gaze, there no trace of recognition in their eyes, there was only insanity and I felt suddenly like the only living person on Earth. The terror on their faces was something I could only imagine in the eyes of prey, stupid, confused and threatened. I looked to the direction that they were running from, and the creeping fingers of lunacy began worming their way into my brain, greying the hair atop my head and drying my mouth in an instant. Seeing the hateful machinations before me; I shamelessly admit that I lost control of my bowels.

I saw great godlike goliaths, casting their evil shadows down upon the street, the ones that stood were taller than any building we had erected. Most sat, propping themselves against apartment blocks and corporate buildings communing to each other in a nightmarish lingo of gravelly screaming. The kerbs were neatly lined with tall, beaten down cages on legs that resembled snakes in how they coiled. The cage’s contents seemed to pulsate and squirm, but it wasn’t until I reluctantly dragged myself closer to the horror that I saw that the cages were packed to the brim with frantic, squealing rats. Crammed in like canned tuna they clawed and scratched each other thoughtlessly attempting to give themselves more room, small flurries of blood and flesh shot from every side as the rat’s claws would tear into their brothers and sisters and fling chunks of them from their entrapment. I had no idea why such a ghastly contraption had been assembled but the sight alone turned my stomach and I doubled over, vomiting into the crowd. The putrid stench mixed with the acrid air made me vomit again, this time just bile and blood. The people flooding past me didn’t even seem to notice, they charged straight through, submerging their feet and kicking specks of it back at me.

Two titans screeched to each other before one rose to his feet, standing over 30 feet tall. From this angle I regretfully had a more complete view of the things. Their skin pulled so taut, I could see every individual bone and the subtle twitching of their intestines. It was pale to the point of transparency, I thought I could even see some light shining through. The eyelids and lips… were non-existent. The teeth, white like ivory underneath a messy coat of darkened blood. The monster leaned back, tilting its great head to the flaming oasis in the sky. Its eyes rolled up into its skull and a sound left its mouth that was so shrill and ghastly it would be impossible to attempt to describe. Primarily because I only heard for a second before my eardrums burst and blood gushed from both sides of my head. I collapsed to my knees, cradling my pounding, bleeding head, so overwhelmed I didn’t even register I’d been knocked to the floor by another person who had fallen. I didn’t feel the horde stamping over me or my ribs cracking and breaking. The crowd was thinning as more victims of the incapacitating roar dropped to the ground or even died instantly. My sobs were choked and blubbering and as a whimper for help escaped me, a last desperate escape attempt from someone knocked me unconscious with a fierce trample over my skull.

I had no idea of how much time had passed, but when I awoke the streets were empty. I lay completely alone in a pool of mine and who knows who else’s blood, allowing the cooled puddle of human remains to counter the humidity and the denseness of the air. I could hear a wet tearing sound in the distance and for the rest of my life I wished I had stayed on the floor staring at the supernova in the sky. There was a pile of corpses as tall as a house, their faces frozen in their final moments of horror, some curling from rigor mortis. The goliaths methodically dug into the pile, plucked out a tasty looking human and popped their head open like a grape, letting the juice slowly spill into their waiting open mouths. Then with a talon like fingernail, surgically slit the body’s skin open and slurped the innards from within then tossed the skins thoughtlessly to one side. The street was well on its way to being completely covered in the empty husks of what were once people. This was…unreal…it had to be, there was no possible reality where this could be happening. And yet, lo and behold, the impossible. And I knew it was real. Because we’d seen it start. My heart had stopped when that memory resurfaced. I feared something much worse than these devils.

I was with my daughter, Sam, it was my weekend with her, and she’d wanted to go to the city. I didn’t get the attraction; I work in the city, figured I spend all my time here, what do I wanna spend my off time here for as well? But you know how kids are once they set their minds to something and so there we were, in the city. We watched a movie, we ate, we shopped and the whole time I was protesting and digging my heels in like I was the fucking child. She asked me to go to the pier, there was some kind of fair there and she wanted to go on the Ferris wheel. I said no, I said we should go home, the game was gonna be on soon. I think she’d finally had enough of my moaning and told me that I didn’t have to see her if she was such an interruption to my weekend. What kind of father makes their kid think something like that? I was about to apologise, first mature thing I’d do all day, when there was this…earthquake. Lampposts were getting shaken out of the ground, cars skidding all over the road like dodgems. I saw people go flying out in front of them…

Great long cracks started forming in the road, splintering the concrete and with a deep rumble the street began to part. The earth itself! Cracking like an egg. That was when we first heard the screams from below, when the way to hell and earth was opened. A hand surfaced first, its great spindly, scythe-like fingers curling onto the road and pushing the crevice open even more. Then another hand. Then the eye… a huge milky eyeball pressed against the entrance, a blind, instinctual hunger in its eyes. It locked eyes with me for a moment and I couldn’t move, I’d found a new level of terror. It really was only a moment, but that was long enough for Sam to get swept away into the crowd of running people. She screamed for me, and I snapped back to my own body. I fought and clawed through them, crying out her name. Her face. I can’t forget her face, red and flustered, tear stained. The way her hand was craning for mine. But then a second titan started climbing out. It tore open the ground with a crack like thunder sending chunks of concrete and stone flying every which way. I got shoved away as people fought for their lives under the sudden shower of debris. Pushed away from the crowd and from Sam. I was sent sprawling into an adjacent alleyway. There was a cracking sound above my head, I looked up and the pub next to the alley had been rocked by the debris, it was falling apart like a house of cards, the roof sliding painfully slowly. Sliding in my direction. I tried to get to my feet but I’d hurt my leg when I fell and it gave way when I tried to stand. I thought I was going to die. I looked up one more time…

And I saw the world before it became hell.

I had to find Sam. The world had ended but mine hadn’t, not yet.

I slowly came back to myself, drawn back to the moment by the thought of Sam. I’d have to leave so I could find her, but movement seemed like a certain death sentence; the creatures were clearly hungry as the pile of skins was getting higher by the second. One of the giants picked up a, now quite still, cage of the rats and lifted it above its head. With a mammoth sized hand on top, it pushed down, and the cage began to collapse towards the brazier. The rat corpses cracked and popped as they turned into a meaty slush. The cage had a sieve bottom on it and blood and juices from the rats began pouring from the underside of the brazier into the giants drooling and lustful mouth. I felt sick, bile started churning uneasily in my stomach for there was no food left in me to void. When the cage had been drained, the demon tossed it aside without a second thought and it tumbled down the street making a terrible, clanging racket. When it rolled to a stop it was a mere stones throw from me. I begged God for another way, but the devil was the only one present that day. I rolled onto my belly and crawled inch by inch through the pool of blood that I had been resting in. Tears started to pour freely from my eyes and streak down my cheeks as I felt my state of mind start to crumble. I could feel every life still warm in the blood; it was probably just my imagination, but I had visions of memories not my own, of the people who found their final resting place within these filthy streets. They didn’t cheer me on, encourage me or hope that I found my daughter…they were jealous and bitter that it was me that breathed and not them. I couldn’t blame them for that, I would likely have done the same. That didn’t change anything though, they were the ones that didn’t survive so that meant I couldn’t throw my life away, I had to keep crawling. I froze a few times when I felt a monster’s head turn in my direction, not even daring to breathe or wipe the blood running into my eyeball. After far too much time I reached the cage and it was drastically bigger than it looked from afar, it had to be over 7 feet in diameter. I lifted the lid which had sprung upwards back into place upon release and climbed in, trying not to touch anything but slipping on the blood and ultimately touching everything. I made sure to stay as near as I could to the centre as the rat remains were mashed firmly into the sieve layer at the bottom. It looked like food remains that get stuck in the sinkhole. My plan was incredibly dependent on a theory which I had no real reason to believe but was trying anyway for lack of other options. From what I gathered, the creatures weren’t stupid but simply single-minded, sustenance was all they thought of, so flesh and blood. They wouldn’t pay much mind to a cage that had been thrown away and whether it had stopped rolling. It took a lot of effort to get the thing moving, it was far heavier than it looked but with the depleted levels of strength in my muscles I shifted it forward just enough to get it rolling. The street went downhill, and I picked up speed far quicker than I expected. I was thrown from my feet in seconds and banged around every wall of the cage, new bruises and sprains it seemed. The cage was making far too much noise clunking and crashing, and paranoia filled every fibre of my being that my plan wouldn’t work, that they’d catch me and find me and ea- the bile that had been churning in my stomach suddenly paid a visit and sprayed into the air and then landed back atop my chest. I hoped I would come to a stop soon and that I had put enough distance between me and those hellish beasts as my threshold for this had long been exceeded. In the brief moments I was facing the correct direction I tried to steal looks ahead and on my final check I saw

Oh shit!

The cage was tumbling off the road, towards the river. In an act of desperation, I planted my feet to the ground to slow down but it was less than useless, and I barrelled over the measly railings and plunged into the freezing murky waters. The rat remains were washed from the sieve and floated around my head, threatening to touch me. I banged against the cage lid to get out, but I’d landed with the top pointing towards the riverbed… and the lid would barely open. Please no, I didn’t come this far to die in a fucking river, I thought as I slammed myself repeatedly against the cage door. The pressure in my head was so intense I thought it could simply pop like the giants did to its food. The cage shifted a little! It was working, my god! It moved more, and more again. It was…was it rising? The cage was heading to the surface and the moment the lid was free I swam from my entrapment and further down the river, breaking the surface finally and sucking hungry lungsful of air. I looked back and saw the cage in the hands of a monster. I guessed they weren’t as single minded as I had suspected. Looking my vehicle of escape over a few times, it slammed it back into the river, huffing to itself as it returned to eat. The sewer was reachable from the river, I could get to anywhere in the city from there. I was completely exhausted, but I couldn’t rest yet. While I knew I hadn’t seen the last of the titans, I prayed that I hadn’t seen Sam for the last time either. So, I swam downstream, the blood and filth staining the water as it was cleansed from my body. The emptiness in my heart made me wonder how much of me was being washed away too.