Further, I drift, absorbed by its allure. I suddenly want the sound more than I’ve ever wanted anything. It’s mesmerizing, each beat flinging flares of color throughout the darkness. Every hue imaginable thrown miles in every direction. The closer I float, the louder and more compelling it becomes.
I’m not sure when, but at some point, I started to slightly rotate. The cadence now is unceasing, pulsating louder with every rotation. Where am I? Time seems to have abandoned this place. There’s no way to tell how long I’ve been drifting towards the lights. No way to know how much longer.
The atmosphere suddenly changes. The sound is coming straight at me. The darkness has practically retreated. I’m almost there, but it’s too loud. The beating has grown excruciating and bright. It’s too bright. Blinded by its beauty, the unearthly thrashing is all I can hear.
The colors scream violently, each flash more aggressive than the last. The once sweet melody has transformed into gnashing horror, clawing at my ears, rattling my core.
The light absorbs me.
It’s too much..
I scream, but nothing comes out.
It’s brighter than a thousand suns.
It’s banging louder. It’s so loud!
I’m spinning too fast!
The brightness completely surrounds me. It burns.
My eyes melt from my face. I feel their warmth on my cheek as they drip down to the ground.
“Please, no!” I cry, but no one can hear me.
What’s happening to me!?
My skin is engulfed in white flames. Scorching me, fusing my flesh to the bone.
I’m sinking!
It’s too strong.
It’s taking over!
What have I done?
What have I done??
I snap back to death to see Kalli’s friend, Jacee, standing over me. She’s freaking out, crying hysterically.
“Help me.”
The lights go out, and I fall.
There is no ground. No sight of the brightness or the horrid sounds, only darkness. Faster and faster, I descend deeper into the abyss.
A voice in the dark quietly murmurs, “Someone help meee.” A whisper, echoing on repeat. Each cry softer than the one before it. I frantically look around me. Oblivion stares back.
The echoes fade. Still falling, but faster than before, I catch the glimpse of something under me. Tiny at first but coming at me quick.
I blink and I’m soaring through the night’s sky miles in the air. The wind-worn landscape encompassing the walls of 34 quickly approaching. Before I can brace for impact, I smash face-first into the sand.
“What do you think it used to be like? Before Lethe…” asks a gentle voice I haven’t heard in weeks. With the quickness of a ghost storm, my head snaps up out of the sand. I quickly rise, dusting myself off without injury, as two dark figures pass by me like I wasn’t even there.
The slightly less than a full moon hangs in the velvet sky over the Outlands. The stars in full force between the clouds. Two
shadows, hand in hand, leave behind a trail of footprints in the sand towards the southern gate of 34.
“I think it’s useless to live in the past. Daydreaming about things we can’t change.. It’s torture,” states another familiar voice, my voice.
“Lame! I think we would’ve liked it. Free to do whatever we wanted, be whoever we wanted to be. A million different choices. People back then probably never worried about a thing,” says Kalli, eyes still in the clouds slowly creeping over the moon.
“People back then are Lethe, so I’m sure they weren’t all that great. Plus, I don’t need a million choices. I’d rather be here with you.”
I remember this conversation. It was a few months before she passed. I didn’t realize I used to be such a romantic.
Like a quake, the ground begins to tremble violently, much stronger than a typical quake. The two silhouettes casually pass through the electric field of the entry gate just as it collapses to rubble on top of them. Patches of sand begin falling around me. A crack in the sky splits it like glass. A web of light pierces through behind the fragments. As the structures of 34 crumble, the sand beneath my feet disappears. Into the darkness again I fall.
Seconds later I’m thrown into another reality. Bright blue sky in every direction. The intense pressure forcing me down as I fall leaves a hostile feeling in the trench of my stomach. Adrenaline rips through my veins. The intensity of the wind flying around me is deafening. Just barely able to turn my head around, I smash through the roof of a building; my shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. Torn metal and concrete fly around me. Lights flicker each floor I
crash through until, at last, I land on the linoleum checkered floor she always hated.
Pieces of wreckage dangle from the ceiling above as a cloud of dust rushes in from behind. The two people in the common room quietly continue as if nothing has changed.
This is our apartment, a few weeks before she was scheduled to be reborn. A memory I hope I never lose.
Kalli carefully steps on my doppelganger’s bare feet. His arms wrap around her just as mine did that afternoon. An irrational twinge of jealousy squeezes me. What I wouldn’t give to be there again. She lays her gentle head on his chest as they sway in the silence of each other.
Before I’m able to interject, the walls around me begin to shake. Cracks race on every surface. The sounds of metal buildings smashing to the concrete boom from outside. The sky flashes a blinding streak of red through the open window.
“Kalli!!” I scream.
The memory of her turns and stares right through me in the crumbling apartment like she could almost sense I’m here. Reaching out for her, I fall. The floor reduces to rubble from under me. The world around us slowly collapses into the widening hole. Hands blindly reaching as I fall; they find a pipe barely attached to a broken wall of our home. Hanging
