Through Glass(15)

I stood in the dark. My body still while my hand remained extended out through the chilled air. I looked into the ebony air that surrounded me, wishing my eyes would see, that I could make out anything before me, yet nothing came into focus.

I should leave; run and go. Whatever was happening was not over yet and the quicker I could get away, the better. It couldn’t be that easy, it couldn’t be over. If it was, there would be cheering, but there was only darkness and silence. Something in me begged me to leave right then, but I couldn’t see enough to make that happen. I needed a light.

My hands continued to fumble through the air, my mind relying on them as I ran my fingers over my bed frame. My fingers fumbled along my desk as I searched for my drawers and the flashlight I knew my mother had placed their years ago.

My hands wouldn’t stop shaking as the fear encompassed me. I tried to get the shaking to stop, my nerves to calm down, but it wasn’t working. My breathing was just as erratic and my muscles were horribly tense.

My fingers found the ridge of the desk drawer, the worn metal pull cold in my fingers. I grabbed it and yanked, the screech of the runner loud in the darkness. It ricocheted through my ears, only to be met by another sound.

A bang as loud as cannon fire rattled through the still air, pulsing through the darkness and making me jump. A small shriek escaped my lips as I lost my grip on the drawer and sent it tumbling to the ground.

The boom sounded again, this time loud enough that it shook the window and rocked through the wood frame of the house with the rumble of an earthquake. The pulse rattled the ground under my feet and I heard a series of thumps and breaks as the vibration sent trinkets and books falling to the ground. The sounds continued to rattle through the air as more and more pulses shook my house. I jumped at the noise as well as at the impact. The panicked beating that thrummed through my ears tightened in my chest.

The explosion sounded again and again. The sound growing closer and closer as the vibrating of my house became more violent with each explosion. Like the footsteps of a giant they came, the booms of a cannon as the epicenter of each one crept closer. I screamed as they sounded, my eyes scanning the dark as a new uncertainty took over. I didn’t dare move anymore because there was no longer the uncertainty of silence around me. The explosion sounded again, the sound drowning out the quiet screams that hit my ears from a distance. The shrieks coming with each boom of the cannon. Each pained yell, each panicked screech, was the signal of the ending of someone’s life.

They were coming.

It wasn’t over. The monsters were coming to take those that hadn’t been swallowed by the blackness only moments before. I heard the screech of the monster in the air mingled with the screams of life lost. Everything inside of me went taut.

The jolt of yet another explosion rocked through my house, sending me to the ground. My hand went to my mouth in an attempt to keep my startled scream inside. I didn’t want it to signal the end of my life as it had all the others on the other side of the glass.

Not like this, I wouldn’t die this way.

Only moments after the explosion sent me to the ground, the front door of my house banged open; the familiar sound of hinges and wood creaking through the darkness. I looked through the darkness at the sound, part of me expecting Travis to bolt in, but only blackness met my eyes. The endless expanse of nothing only increased my fear.

The sound of another cannon vibrated the air, more screams breaking through the dark only to be followed by the high pitched wail of the monsters as they moved into my house. My body tensed automatically at what was coming.

The sound was so much worse than before. Before it had throbbed inside of me in a pressurized pain, it had pulsed through my bones. Not anymore, now it was a hot knife through the soft tissues of my body. It cut through me painfully, setting every bit of my body on fire in a white-hot brand that burnt and sent my fear rippling through my nerve endings. My chest was heaving at what that sound meant, at what was in store for me.

What was coming.

I had heard the screams of death in the air, I had felt them rock through me. I had heard the ones yell as they fought back, only to die anyway. The black monsters had killed the people those pained pleas belonged to. They had wiped them from the earth and now it was my turn.

No.

I didn’t want to die this way. I wouldn’t.

I tried to push the pain away, to see beyond the pressure that built behind my eyes. My fear built into an anger as I fought against the pain. My fingers clenched into the carpet as I searched for a way to run, to hide, or to kill the things that hunted me. I couldn’t make myself move. I couldn’t force myself to run from the danger that was coming. I couldn’t force myself to fight it.

Fear gripped me and my pain grew as the screeching increased right alongside it. The tap of the creature’s talons sounded against the stairwell. The slow, steady rhythms of the monsters were barely audible amongst the screech of their kind. I heard it, though, and my body reacted to it. My breathing slowed to match their sluggish gait; my muscles tensed as I kept the scream trapped inside my chest.

I looked through the black, knowing I wouldn’t be able to fight them even if I could move my body through the agony that their cry had trapped me in. As much as I wanted to, I was trapped in my own pain. I needed to move. I grit my teeth, pushing the pain out of my mind as much as I could while my fingers searched through the darkness for anything I could use or any way I could hide.