Mateo reached the lounge, seeing the impossible sight before him, confusion the like of which he had never encountered speeding round his brain. He saw Mariam in the doorway, poised to open it, as the tangled web of flashing unimaginable veins slowly started rippling around her in an intelligent way, as if they were guided by an intelligence. Mariam pulled the door open with all her might and jumped through. She passed through the entrance and floated into empty space. Where the path leading up to the front door should have been was an eternal endless chasm of stars and space which she glided through, each moment causing more confusion than the last. Mateo watched it happening in slow motion. As the door was yanked free from its magnetic hold, a terrific rush of static air seemed to flow back to the lounge. This was accompanied by a feeling of complete terror, as a loud artificial sounding boom echoed back to him, followed closely by a radiating beastly growl. He watched helplessly as Mariam leapt through the door and floated there suspended in mid-air, behind her an infinite expanse of stars. Mateo was completely beside himself, none of this could be happening.
Mariam floated still, weightless, in a beautiful galaxy of starlight. She turned herself round to face the house, or where she thought the house should be, and saw just a doorway pulsating in infinity. In the doorway she could see where she had just come from, the blue vein beast slowly swirling itself backwards towards Mateo, and she looked at him tearfully. Oh no, Mateo, she needed to help him. She tried to float back to the house, but the doorway just got further and further away, accelerating at an incredible speed and was light years away in seconds. She was stunned into silence, suspended in space. This couldn't be possible, yet here she was, frozen in an infinite universe, unable to find any direction she could travel. All of a sudden, without moving a muscle, she began to travel, accelerating away in an unknown direction. Stars sizzled past her at light speed, myriad galaxies appearing for one fleeting moment before the next one rushed by, the timeless span of order gradually breaking down, before disappearing completely and she was left alone. Alone in the darkness, aimless and powerless, before she also faded away into infinitity.
MATEO
Mateo watched with a mix of confusion, horror, intense grief, frustration and anger as Mariam floated in the infinite vacuum of stars and galaxies. None of this could be happening; his mind would not accept it. She turned back and they made eye contact, both of them knowing something was deeply wrong. Their eyes were locked together for what seemed like forever. Neither of them wanting to look away, as looking away would be letting the other go, a probable goodbye which neither could do. As if sensing their shared sentiments, the blue flashing web beast swirled around into a new pattern and turned its attention to Mateo. The doorway behind it started to fade, Mariam floating away. He tried to get to the doorway to join her, but as quickly as his feet moved, the door would shrink a little more until it had vanished altogether into a tear in dimensional space.
“Mariam!” He shouted so hard his body nearly crumbled with the effort.
The beast seemed to roar back at him with a semi-natural grunt, the sound bouncing off the walls towards Mateo, hurling the sound-waves at his chest. This knocked him back forcefully and he turned to run. The only other way out was the back door, so this was now his primary goal, the only one he thought could keep him alive. He scrambled through the lounge, never looking back, while the beast of blue veins burst itself apart into an uncountable array of particles that spread across the lounge towards Mateo. This was accompanied by more partly synthetic grunts and grinds that hit Mateo like a hurricane force wind, causing him to stagger a couple of feet and smash to the ground. The particles filled the air, flashing like fireflies in the night, filling the room with pure blue. The flashes created thuds and thumps that engulfed the whole room before collapsing down on to Mateo, who screamed. The whole of the room pulsed faster and faster, the foundations of the house seeming to shake underneath Mateo. The jarring flashes and dissonant vibrations swirled around him, the foundations of reality now beginning to shake. With one last deafening and body trembling crash, Mateo was surrounded by silence.
The beast had whisked itself away. Mateo looked around to see if he could see it before he made another attempt to escape, and realised; he was no longer in the lounge. He spun round and saw that he had slipped through the tear in his dimension, and felt his body and mind pulling itself apart. He tried to fight it, bring all of what made him him back together, but this caused the pulling to intensify. His mind felt tormented, haunted and his body felt like it was being put through a blender, all the while Mateo was trying to resist. Eventually the torture became too much and he let out a deep breath, stopped fighting, and let it be. Within an instant his mind and body were calmed, and an immersive light engulfed him, comforting him. His mind cleared a little and he was able to make out imagery which
