White and Other Tales of Ruin

You don’t need to get up.

“Don’t listen to it,” the man in front said, and the injured thing at my feet growled a stinking threat up into my face, stinking and angry.

“How do you know — ” I began, but then I stamped back down on its face, feeling my boot heel striking something soft. Inside me, the soft voice grew harsh before fading away.

“What is it?” I hissed, starting to hack at the strap around my waist with the rough-edged plastic. My own blood spotted my trousers.

“Demon,” the man said.

I stopped for a second and glanced up, but even his hair was out of sight. “You’re just kidding me, right?” I started sawing at the strap instead of hacking, and the heavy threads began to pop apart. The thing at my feet moved, I stamped again, and the man gave me his answer.

“No. And yes, I suppose. And yes, I have been here before.”

The woman across the aisle snorted. “And the prize for the most ridiculously confusing answer goes to…”

“I won’t tell you my name,” he said.

“I don’t think she was expecting you to.” The threads were parting faster now, and I guessed I had maybe thirty seconds to go. Then all I had to do was exit the coach, dodge however many more soldiers, droids or demons there were, find Laura where she was strung up between trees, get her down and navigate my way out of Hell.

Easy.

I laughed manically as the strap popped free. Standing up, I saw the coach for what it really was. As wide as the coach on a train but much longer, so long that perspective stole the end from sight. And all the way along, chairs like my own sat at each window, with a narrow aisle in between.

I turned around and the same sight greeted me, except this time there were shocked faces watching me from each chair. I caught a few peoples’ stares, even though I tried not to. There was interest, anger and resentment in equal measures, and I realised that those who had no idea what had happened here must be blaming me for their tour being halted.

“How the hell do I get out of here?” I asked, stepping into the aisle and glancing over the chair at the man in front of me.

“Same way the demon got in,” the man said. And I wondered how he could talk at all.

I’d once seen the results of a speed-bike crash. The rider had been thrown against a wall and was a broken, shattered mess. Limbs askew. Shape changed. I never thought I’d see the same in someone living.

“Huh?” I uttered stupidly. I could not form words because what I saw stole them from me. He was so badly battered and misshapen that it must have hurt him to live.

“Up there,” he said, nodding back over my shoulder.

I turned and looked along the aisle, noticing a dark patch in the ceiling which could only have been a trapdoor. “Do you know the way?” I asked turning back.

His face did something that may have been a smile, and he shook his head. “I’ve been out there once before,” he said, “thinking I could change things, imagining I could help the hopeless. That’s how I got this.” He didn’t point to anything, but he didn’t need to. I could not make out where parts of him started and ended. Tears burned in my eyes and throat, but I guessed that he probably wouldn’t appreciate them at all.

“So up there is out?” I said. And I thought, out of where? Out of the coach and into the forest and barbed wire and Laura? Or out of Hell? Back into that waiting room perhaps, the stunning woman standing by the wall painting and pointing out intricate details of cruelty and pain I hadn’t noticed before.

“If you must go,” he said, “yes, up there.”

I looked at him and wanted to ask him how I could help. But he’d obviously come here for a reason, whether he’d found his way in by accident or not. I could only guess at what traumas he suffered day in, day out, to warrant a second visit to this awful place. He blinked slowly, one eye only closing halfway because of the knot of scar tissue on his eyelid, and I took it as a message. The strap was to stay around his waist. He wanted it that way. He’d always be confined now, however his condition had come about.

That’s how I got this, he’d said, talking of what was outside.

I turned and walked to the trapdoor, and as I looked up through it I could see reflected light coming in from somewhere. Somehow, it smelled like what I had seen outside should look: blood, rot, pain, death, anguish, nothing fresh, all of it corrupted.

Laura.

“I want to help you,” the woman called from her seat. I turned and saw her straining at the strap, glancing nervously at the motionless thing lying by my vacated chair. A wisp of smoke curled from its broken visor, but I was sure I could see black movement in the shadow cast by its body.

“Why?”

She looked at me, frowning, trying to speak but unable to find the words.

“Why?” I said again. I wasn’t used to people helping me, and I didn’t believe it now.

“Laura’s still alive,” she said. And I nodded, because her son Paul was dead and perhaps, in this, she could shed her helplessness.

“Not if we don’t hurry,” I said, and that was that, agreed. I found the shard of visor composite and knelt by her side, hacking, pulling, slicing and sawing at the strap until it came apart. She stood shakily, hanging onto my arm as her tired legs tingled their inactivity away.

“I’m Chele,” she said.

“Hello Chele. I’m Nolan.” I went back to the trapdoor, knotted my hands and motioned her to climb. “What can you tell us?” I asked the mutilated man as Chele heaved herself up through the trap. I heard her banging about above the ceiling, suddenly wondering whether I’d sent her up first on purpose. If there were more of those demon things up there…

“More demons,” the man said.

“Don’t tell me they’re demons, there are no such things as demons!”

“No such thing,” the man repeated, and a rattle in his throat may have been a chuckle. “Well… this is a strange place, and strange things happen. Last time I was here, when I was out there in all of it, I saw one of them sprout wings and take flight.”

“Cyborgs,” I said. “Is that what they are? Constructs? Artificial-”

“They are what they want to be,” he said, “and here, most of them want to be demons.”

“Hey,” Chele called. “Something’s moving out there!”

I looked at the blackened window of the coach, as did the mutilated man. “How did you…?” I began.

“There are so many worst nightmares out there, it’s not even worth me telling you,” he said.

“Why did you come back?”

He looked at me with his tortured eyes. “To remind myself I’m not still here. I really wish you luck.”

Laura, a voice said inside, and I was wasting time. It was probably a waste of time to begin with — I’d seen her blood, seen the pain in her expression — but the bastards had stolen her away and hung her up out there…

… and for the first time since seeing her I actually began to wonder about why she was here.

If Laura, how many others?

“Hey, you, I’m moving off, are you coming?”

“Yes,” I said up into the dark rectangle above me. I jumped up and held onto the hole’s edges, glancing around me before I hauled myself up. The expressions on the few faces I could see told me that they thought I was mad. As for the mutilated man, he had no expression… but his eyes spoke volumes.

Goodbye, they said.

I scrambled up through the hole and into the space above the coach, a false ceilinged area that must have been intended for ventilation and security.

“Hey, you,” Chele called from ahead.

“My name’s Nolan.”

“Well Nolan, there’s a door up ahead, and something out there smells.” She crawled on her hands and knees and I followed.