Darkness.
Silence.
The sweet nectar of the night.
When a baby was born, their first instinct was to cry. They would cry and yell with all the strength they could muster until their throat was sore.
And then they would fall asleep.
The baby cried to get their mother's attention, so that she would be aware of their presence and she would come to them.
I liked to think that they were doing it for a different reason.
They weren't doing it for her. A baby had the instinctual urge to cry the moment they left their mother's womb because it was the only way that they knew to call for Him, to get His attention.
And then, He would hear their call and He would come to them.
The sweet nectar of the night.
Was this what it was like to be dead?
I'd always loved this feeling. I loved it now just as much as how I'd loved it when I was five years old.
But sometimes the light and the noise would pour into the darkness and make me forget. And the corridors would appear.
Endless rows that led to nowhere. The small square tiles lined the entire alley walls, the floor and a ceiling so low that that it grazed the tip of my hair. Sometimes the tiles were teal, other times cerulean.
The stench of urine choked the narrow space.
No matter where I turned, the urinal troughs built from the same blue tiles paralleled the entire corridors on both walls.
Corridor after corridor. I was navigating a labyrinth. Somehow the idea was exciting to me.
My classmates, my elementary school, I needed to see my classmates.
I didn't know what they'd say to me. I couldn't remember their faces. I couldn't remember what they sounded like.
I just wanted to see my friends.
Sometimes I'd turn and enter a small bathroom stall snug behind an intersection, but I never dared to look down to glimpse at the contents inside the squat toilet, no matter how much I tried.
Sometimes my head would be right next to it—only a centimeter from the edge of the bowl, my face almost touching the surface and feeling the cold moisture of the toilet water underneath, but even then, I could never lower my gaze to look.
Metal clicked against my lower front teeth.
Chicken soup.
Very bland.
It was her, wasn't it?
She sat next to me and gently fed the spoon in my mouth.
Red hair. Right, her hair had been turning red lately. I was supposed to ask her something but I forgot.
Then I could hear the laughter in the distance again.
They were in one of the corridors.
If I could just pick the right one. The alleyway to the left led me further away as their voices got quieter. The corridors were also getting darker.
Even though I could still see, there was no light. It was probably because there wasn't a single window inside this building.
I tasted the tip of the spoon.
Porridge.
Bland porridge.
What would your future husband think about this?
I knew I was supposed to ask her something. What was it? I could almost feel the words on the tip of my tongue. I just didn't know what it was.
I took another right. The corridor only led me further away from my friends. I quickened my pace. It was getting so dark.
The bathhouse. Or an array of squat toilets. There were ten square cutouts, each about 25 centimeters wide and evenly spaced.
Water filled the room up to my ankles. These holes were large enough for me to fit my hand through, but when I looked into one of them, I just saw the floors beneath, all containing the same holes at the exact locations as the floor I was standing on.
The water was still, and very clear. The holes lined up perfectly on every floor, stretching indefinitely until the ones further way converged at a single point. Although there were no windows, it was as if I was looking from inside a pool early in the morning, with barely enough illumination but no direct sunlight.
If I dropped something into the hole, the object would probably sink for a very long time.
There was no way to determine how long it would take for the falling object to reach the bottom.
It would continue to sink indefinitely.
It would sink so low that at some point, no light would be able to reach it.
But even then, the object would continue to fall.
Eternally.
I held out a dried leaf and dipped it under the water.
The leaf gently sank through the holes.
Are you scared?
A girl asked me a question. It sounded like she was sitting next to me, speaking softly into my ear, into the darkness, where no eyes could see.
No, I said.
Does it hurt, she asked.
I'm fine.
Is this better? It has to be better. You're not crying anymore. But why here? Why this body and this mind?
I don't know why I'm here.
Would it make you feel better if you were somewhere else?
I don't know what to think.
Do you like what you see?
I don't know anything.
Do you hate it?
I don't know anything.
Do you hate me?
But it's not your fault.
Can I stay by your side until the end?
Cold wind blasted against my face and blew into my eardrums.
"Wake up." A gentle voice, a different one. It came from a child. They used their hand to brush my hair. "You need to see something."
My heavy eyelids eventually lifted as if they had been glued shut. The walls and the ceiling in front of me were missing.
My hands felt the rubble and dust on the floor.
The white-haired child smiled and looked at me innocently. Then it stepped back so I could see the girl in the distance. "Look over there."
Spider after spider, they were piling on each other, forming a small mountain—a convoluted, convulsing black mass, leaving behind a shadow that engulfed the house and the fields behind us, the shapes on the ground dancing with violence. I could barely see her. Liz stood at the top, struggling, fighting with her bare hand. She was missing an arm.
There were so many of them—the spiders were crowding her.
"Impressive, isn't it?" the white-haired child said casually, blood trickling down its wrist. "The economy of motion. She always goes for the clean kill."
After quickly licking off the dripping blood from its hand, it then tapped its finger on its forehead and then its heart. "Always looking out for the fastest way to do it," the child said, "to make it painless for them."
It chuckled. "Sister must've got that from you. Time and time again she would try to show her, 'compassion.'" It lowered her head to look at me. "Do you think they'll forgive you?" It gazed intensely into my eyes. "Your farm animals—all those billions of souls that sit in your stomach. Do you think they'll forgive you because you were able to give them a quick death?" It turned its gaze back to the swarming mountain of spiders in the distance. "To them, it makes no difference. Their hatred is only natural. Those who live will have to carry that burden."
The child began to walk towards the writhing pile of beasts that surrounded Liz.
The spiders towered over the child like a herd of elephants.
With tiny hands, the white-haired child dug its fingers into a spider's giant abdomen and split it in half as if its body was made of foam.
Blood sprayed up like a fountain from the beast's severed body, showering the child's head in red.
Then the child, now with its diamond-white bob dyed in blood, tore up the next spider, and then the next one, then the next one, then the next one. Even from a far distance, the blood still reached me as it rained down my face.
Gore was mounting up like wet moldy insulation.
After a while, only the child and her remained.
"So fourteen's the limit, huh?" the child said as it crouched atop the pile of flesh next to her. "You've lost your touch, sister."
Suddenly, Liz grabbed the child's face with her bare hand, gripping the blood-soaked bangs, trying to crush its little head.
She grimaced as she pressed while the veins on her hand popped out even clearer.
Aaahh! The child yelled out as it grabbed her face and plunged the back of her head against the mound of flesh.
"I've waited for so long! So long! What a let-down!"
The child then climbed on her back and started punching, sending blow after blow on the back of her head. "Year after year after year of waiting just for this!" The corpses under Liz began to rupture into fountains of blood as they descended lower and lower. There was so much blood that it gathered into a wave beneath the corpses and washed over the ground. Then the child punched her head into the earth until I could no longer see either of them.
"What do I have to do to get what I want?" it yelled. "How much longer do I have to wait until I can see my sister again? You're a disappointment! You let him down!"
Some time later, the punching stopped.
Then the small child slowly climbed out of the hole, dragging Liz along by the hair with one hand like a bloody, life-sized plastic doll.
The child suddenly stopped when some of the red hair tore from her head. It reached down for her, this time grabbing more hair for better grip.
The small child took slow steps in my direction, tramping forward, the body in its hand scraping along the blood-wet earth.
Liz fell down next to me like a ragged, broken doll. Her face was filled with bruises and bloody cuts.
The child tried to lay its hand on my shoulder, before Liz suddenly rose and lurched ahead.
She jabbed repeatedly at its tiny throat. The movement was so fast I could barely count. Five, ten, fifteen. The force shook the ground with every punch and the movement was enough to make my ears buzz. The white-haired child took a step back.
"Oh." It smiled, looking at me as it caressed its own neck. "I almost felt something there."
Before she could throw another jab, the child caught her wrist and flung her entire body in the air. Her body flew into the distance before it landed with a crash, scraping against the earth.
The child was already standing right over me. "Better give me your all, sister."
I fell to the ground as my stomach churned at the kick's impact.
It wasn't a kick—there was no velocity behind it. All the force came from the sheer weight of its body. It was as if it was simply hovering its foot in the air.
There was no other way to describe this. Five hundred thousand tons. All the mass and weight of a freighter was compressed into that child's foot. My innards felt like they were melting away. I was no different than a piece of gum stuck under its shoe. If it would move its foot in any particular direction, all my flesh and bone would morph, tear and wrap around it accordingly, like sticking a ball pen hammer into a birthday cake.
Then, all the pressure that was put on my body quickly dissipated as I heard explosions over my head, like a hail of steel beams crashing down. It was the sound of Liz bashing its face in with her fist.
The bloody-haired child flinched but fought the urge to raise its hands to parry her. It just staggered back very slowly, taking in every ounce of that flurry of violence and desperation. I smelled burning flesh. The blows were strong enough to shake off the dried blood in its hair until it was almost white again, like sullied snow.
Then I saw it. Her remaining hand was missing. The sound of dull blasts was now replaced by stabbings. The hand that she'd been using to drive into her enemy was no longer there, instead she was now relying on the bones in her wrist, jabbing it like a dull spear tip that could not puncture its skin. The wrist caved in and little by little. The forearm shrank to only a half of its former self.
She was starting to slow and I could see the movements clearly again. Her breathing was labored.
Eventually she stopped.
The child regained footing. The light bruises and the small nicks under the layer of dirt on its face and neck began to fade, revealing the childlike features underneath.
As Liz grappled for air, it just stood there and watched her.
Suddenly, it slapped her with the back of its hand. A piece of flesh flew off. The impact rumbled the earth, sending vibrations far underneath.
"You disappoint him. Every time we meet you just become a little weaker. After a few minor injuries the body breaks down. You can't even heal properly."
"Let him go," she said with great difficulty.
"This again." The child coughed and spat. "A frail body and a broken memory. What am I going to do with you, sister? You just can't seem to remember, can you?"
It grabbed her head and dragged her forward, until it was standing right above me. "Take a good look. This, is food." It ground her face against mine. "You need them to live. They want you to eat them. They are here to serve us."
"Let him go." Her voice rattled as though there were nails in her chest.
The child grimaced as it covered its face with its hand. "How long are you going to keep up with this?" it said. "She really played you like a fool, didn't she?" It was looking at me. "Still think there's a cure? The only way is to kill it. Either you die, or it dies."
The child grabbed what was left of her remaining forearm and tossed her, sending her body rolling, grazing the sultry soil.
It lifted a foot over my head and pressed its doll shoe into my scalp. I screamed as I heard a loud crack inside my skull.
Liz was now hanging onto its ankle, wrapping her bloody arm around it by the elbow.
The child kicked her face, making her drop on the ground.
She hung on its leg again.
The child just stood and looked up at the sky.
Liz got on her knees, then, very slowly, clung to its shoulders and leaned in for support, before she tried pulling herself up.
She opened her mouth and bit into the crown of its head.
The child tried to pull her head away.
Blood was coming out of her teeth and dripping down its hair. A front tooth fell out.
The child suddenly let out a scream that curdled every drop of blood in my veins.
The teeth had bored their way in.
Then I saw it.
The child was also bearing its own teeth.
It was an expression that I could not fully understand. That I would never understand.
It was an expression of unadulterated awe and wonder.
The child collapsed on the ground, unmoving, with its head to the side.
Liz sank her broken bloody teeth into its back. She chewed on the dress, then the skin and the flesh beneath.
The sound of snapping bones echoed across the terrain.
She slowly moved up toward the head.
Then she went down.
She ate its dainty doll shoes.
Her arms began to grow back out, like the growth of a plant over the course of three months compressed to twenty seconds. Her face and neck were covered in blood and specks of gore.
Nothing was spared.
Liz sat there for a while, her eyes on the puddle of blood beneath us.
When she could finally turn her face up, we looked at each other.
Her eyes were all red, as if coated with paint.
"It's over," I mumbled to myself.
When she heard those words, she just smiled.
Quickly!
Close your eyes!
Before I forget.
"Liz?"
All I could do was scream.
With the left wrist bent inward so that all the fingers leaned against her chest, she balled up the other hand into a fist and hammered the left hand into her ribcage.
I clung to her left wrist and pulled with all the strength I had.
Her hand would not budge. I was like a cobweb in the wind.
The fingers wouldn't come through in the first few strikes.
I pulled and pulled, fighting the cold cramps in my fingers and my hips.
Every architect's dream was to one day build a house so beautiful that even He would want to live in it.
Perhaps at this very moment He would finally show up.
So I'd do it.
If He showed up now, I promised I'd spend the rest of my life trying to create the most beautiful home the world had ever seen.
He would show up and save the day.
He would end it all.
And I would worship Him for all eternity.
The second blow came.
Then the third.
On the fourth blow the fingers dug their way in.
Blood began to pour.
Slowly, after each strike, the fingers sank deeper into her chest centimeter by centimeter, joint by joint.
Liz pulled her hand back out and collapsed on the ground.
I turned her over so she could lie face-up.
Her body was so light now.
Both my hands supported the back of her head on my lap.
Blood continued to pour out of her chest, her mouth and her eye sockets.
"I'm here. I'm right here," I said.
I'm sorry, she mouthed the word.
"Please don't leave me."
I'm sorry.
"Please don't."
I'm sorry.