Hey guys! I'm breaking a personal rule because I wrote a second draft of this that I think is better, but I don't want to just quietly update the original. So, enjoy this window into what my editing process looks like. If I were trying for publication, there probably would be a third draft. Mostly, I cleaned it up so that I can write about what happens next easier (which I will be doing!).
I watched a man die tonight. I watched a man die and the date wasn't even that good. Well, it was okay. Painfully average really. They were cute. Nice tattoos. And the dinner itself was okay, cheap sandwiches from a hole in the wall vegan kitchen, sliced soy protein drenched in sauce and maybe a leaf. We held hands in the rain and laughed and I kind of wanted to kiss them but I kind of wanted to go home too, so I slipped away, a small goodbye already fading in my ears, hood back up, the darkness taking me as I vanished through the night.
The station was essentially empty, just me, the angry guy pacing, a homeless man sitting against a wall, and the woman on the other side of the tracks. I sat crosslegged on the bench, my knees hemmed in tightly by the aggressive architecture walls of the bench. Would I have laid down if I could? The answer was unclear. I met the eyes of the angry man for just a moment and saw in them something terrifying. They were full of anger. He spat at me and turned away, heading for the other end of the platform.
A mostly empty train pulled in to the other platform and the woman was gone, heading west. The homeless man sighed. Time crawled by. A delay on the tracks somewhere? The pacer, muttering to himself, pawed something shiny, a round object passed hand to hand, tossed up and down and caught. It was mesmerizing. My eyes kept drawing towards it focusing on it, how silvery it was, how it caught the light. It was extremely pretty, the polar opposite of his ugly face, screwed up and miserable. I shuffled a little deeper into my thick jacket, the cold chill of the November air penetrating even the deep tunnels.
His meaningless pacing had taken him back over to me when a train whipped out of the tunnels and stood motionless before us. We boarded the same car through separate doors, neither deigning to glance at the other. His movements took on a feverish intensity as he huddled into a seat, rocking back and forth and shaking. I sat calmly, leaning against the window. We were the only two in this car, two souls bared against the grimy metal and torn fabric. The doors pinged and then closed.
The usual blur of stations started slipping by. My music fought valiantly against the rumble of the tracks and I counted the lights in the passages in time to the beats of the song, the sad crooning of another lonely woman keeping my company. Perhaps a kindred spirit? Perhaps isolation was the universal human constant. We all identify with it
I don't really want to go home. I don't want to be alone. I want to be held. I could've fucked them, I was pretty sure. I could see it in their hungry eyes, the lingering of their hands, their subtle bend forwards. They were practically begging me to stay, to keep them warm through the cold night. I could've. I was lonely enough. Maybe it would've been nice. Maybe it would've meant something, eventually. But I didn't want that. I wanted something familiar and safe. I didn't know what I wanted. It was deeply alien to me. I glanced at that man again. He was staring at me, that familiar hunger in his roving eyes and darting tongue.
Shit. I fingered the knife in my pocket, comforting and large. The handle, worn and smooth, fit my fingers cleanly. No one could hurt me. No one would ever hurt me again. I sighed and wrenched my gaze upwards, eyes half lidded, one fumbling hand muting the music so I could hear. The car was noisy but devoid of life. As if by chance, the scattered late night souls in the stations we flew through never boarded this car. It was just us and the voice occasionally calling for stations neither of us wanted to stop at. How long would he ride for? How long would I? Would I get off at my own stop? I didn't have that long to decide.
The overhead lights flickered once. I almost mistook it for a blink, before I saw the recognition in his eyes. No, it was more than recognition. It was fear. Primal, angry, and desperate.
The train hissed to a dull stop. It held still for a long moment, doors open. A third passenger slipped in quietly, head buried deep in the darkness of a massive black hood, a sleeveless longcoat swaddling their body. I stared. Their bear arms, exposed to the damp and cold, trailed behind them, more akin to tentacles or seaweed than flesh. One was carved with thousands of intricate tattoos. I couldn't tell where they started or ended, but they were gorgeous and fascinating. The other was bear and plain. They stepped carefully and deliberately into the middle of the car. I kept my eyes fixed on where their own should be and for a moment, something in the depths of the hood flashed slightly. I tilted my head in recognition and watched.
The train hissed once, engines pumping and wheels squealing as it began accelerating. There was a tension in the air. Every nerve in my body said to run. The newcomer, no trace of face inside the lengthy shadows of that hood, watched dispassionately as the man arose. He swayed slightly with the movement of the train, and then found his balance. They faced each other, the length of the car between them. There was something new in the man's face. Fear, I think. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but didn't. I huddled deeper into my seat. The rumbling of the tracks faded away, the tunnels giving way to a deeper void. Dimly, I felt like we should've reached the next station by now. It did not come.
A single eye, glowing the angry red of a dying fire, lit up from somewhere within the hood. The thing spoke with a voice alike the depths of the deepest lake, "Atreya of the Third Circle. You have stolen."
He spat, oozing green phlegm pooling on the iron floor. "What's it to you, outsider?"
Dozens more eyes, red and angry, more than could possibly fit inside that cavernous darkness lit up. Space seemed to fold and bend to contain them all, my brain insistent that there were hundreds, no thousands, all distinct and countable, all coexisting peaceably in the shadows of that hood. "A friend asked."
"Oh, come on! I didn't steal from you."
The response was cold and dispassionate, "A friend asked."
"I can pay you!", he hissed.
It blinked with all ten thousand right eyes at once. "I do not use money", it said. Then it started slowly walking forwards, each silent footfall carrying an implied thread.
"Ah!", he cried, "you cannot touch me!"
The outsider paused and waited for Atreya to finish.
He displayed his stolen silver sphere proudly, "I claim the sanctity of the ground. None of the oath may touch me."
The thing whispered, "I swore no oaths", and then took another step.
And then the world stopped.
Atreya bore aloft a gun, bullets zooming forwards, the sound rocking outwards in great dark waves, the glass windows of the train shattering with the force, the liquid darkness rushing in and plunging us underwater, the hood falling off the implacable beast, the tangle of infinity that made up its head laughing and laughing and laughing as the bullets passed through its form and there was no blood and there was no bullets and there was no gun and it just laughed.
He was running now, up the length of the car, dancing between the slamming tendrils hitting the walls, ducking and twisting and bucking, as the car folded inwards, the walls collapsing, the train crumpling, the seats bending to form and angry storm, the glass in shards, the shards of ash, the ash of life, the thousands of years flying by, the tunnels curving and twisting, gravity failing to restrain us, the sky opening above, the walls marked with teeth, the world threatening murder.
The tunnel flew by and then we were in a station, dozens of versions of the outsider standing on the platform, all applauding, all laughing, all human in face and not at all in body, all carved from madness and laughter and the voices of the damned. It was hissing and it was crying and I was hissing and I was crying and blood was streaming from my eyes and ears and I pressed my hands to my face but my fingers fell off as I raised my hands and the thing, no the things, no the thing, its terrifying eyes were open, it was staring at me, it was inside me, and I blinked with all 184 of my eyes, watching from all angles and I saw it all and I saw everything.
Atreya was rolling, he was twisting, the blades were cutting, blood, black and acidic, was rippling outwards, a tidal wave, clashing with the darkness, filling my eyes, it was in my mouth, it was all I could taste, it poured through to my lungs until I was choking, the angry metal of his gun forcing its way through my lips, the trigger pulled, my brain exploding into a cloud of skull-bones and nerves, nerves on fire, nerves spread over the whole of the station like ropes to hold the ceiling on, because gravity was fighting back, because it threatened to yank me away, because I could see the storm that was the hunter, because I was part of the swarm, because I was never human, because I had failed to exist, because my knife was in my hands, and in my arms, and in my stomach, and I was chewing on the metal walls of the train, and the walls were not metal but bone, and they were not bone, but great teeth, and the car wrenched open, a great mouth, tongue licking, trailing between the razor sharp fangs,
and in the middle of it all, the victim, whose name was already lost to the wind, was crying, and I felt sorry for him, and the mouth was closing around us both, and the beast was hungry, and the beast was the train, and the train was hungry, and the stations all flew by, merged into one, the faces of strangers waiting their turn blending into one, the chaotic face of the beast, and the beast numbered in the thousands, and I still had too many hands, and all of them were digging nails into my back, and the teeth closed deeper, and I was no longer whole, and we were lost and
And there was a hand on my back. A robotically feminine voice confidently declared we were approaching my station. I blinked and we were, the train pulling in slowly to a quiet and empty platform. The time, according to the pale light of my phone was 1:03 am. The monster stood beside me, a hand rubbing my back. Its hood was up still, nothing inside but the darkness, that beautiful darkness. I shook a little. Time slowed down for a moment.
"I'm sorry", it said. "I did not see you there."
"It's okay", I whispered, my voice still full of teeth.
It nodded. "If you have any aftereffects", it responded, "please let me know. I can help." A tattoo, a single word carved from black ink slid down its arm and disappeared into my back. I felt it etch itself in my skin, a worm crawling inside me, wriggling until it found a nest in the nape of my neck, comfortably curling around my collarbones.
"Okay", I said quietly. Then I got up to leave.
The victim was curled in a ball on the floor, bloody tears leaking from the holes where his eyes had been. His stolen gem rolled from outstretched and motionless fingers. After I left the car, I turned and watched one tattooed hand grab it. The figure, dressed in black, held outstretched its other arm, pale, white, bare from marks. "Who wants it?", it asked.
A toothy grin tore itself into being, from wrist to elbow, the arm itself cracking in two, a long sinuous tongue trailing saliva over sharp teeth. It may have said something, but whatever it was was lost to the doors closing and the train pulling away and me standing on the platform watching the emptiness of the world. There was a woman on the other side of the tracks. I caught her eye for a second and watched as her gaze solidified from the quiet joy of connection to a primal terror. I recognized that terror. It was the same as that man had inspired in me.
That man. I just watched a man die. I watched him tear out his own eyes to stop seeing things, clawing desperately to try and penetrate his own brain. I saw him crumpled on the floor, the last vestiges of his mind crawling away. I watched him die and it felt like a piece of his soul had crawled into me and forced its way into my lungs, forced its way into me and I now breathed his air and emitted his accursed aura.
The ground shook slightly as I staggered to the stairs. Their shadows lengthened, each step the size of a mountain and carved with iconographic depictions of the fight. I glanced to the top, the blue sky in the distance, the sun having long since vanished. That didn't seem right. I pulled my phone out again to check the time, only I didn't have a phone anymore, or pockets, or even hands.
I staggered up the steps, moaning to myself, screaming as I passed by strangers. Their faces had all collapsed, as though some great force had crushed them inwards and dragged the remains into a spiral. It was ugly and awful. They didn't seem to acknowledge me at all, and that only made things worse. I clutched the railing for a moment to steady me. I was isolated and alone.
The streets were not mine. I don't know where they were. But I had never walked them before. Buildings were less like buildings and more akin to shattered towers of jutting bone, palaces dripping with shadows and crawling with creatures of the night. They scattered around the edges of my vision, gathering around me curiously. The humans, such as they were, were thousands of meters tall, limbs dangling and useless, dragging their foul bulk through the valleys and streets. The pavement shifted and twisted because it wasn't concrete but liquid, a viscous fluid that slowly lapped up my boots, any footprints vanishing into the ether within seconds.
I wandered for a time, stunned and lost. I bumped into someone by accident and tried to apologize only for them to turn, revealing a mouth full of the sharpest teeth I'd ever seen. I hesitated for a moment too long and they ripped out my heart, fangs sinking through bones, lungs punctured, and I was lying on the street and waiting to die. I was waiting to die. I was alone.
I snapped out of the revery at the sound of the tumblers triggering with the turn of the key. I was outside my apartment. The door was open, the shadowy interior beckoning. It was nicer than out there. Trailing blood and clutching the hole in my chest, I stumbled inside. It looked the same as it always did, merely draped in darkness and malice.
The bed was filthy and familiar, the blankets never warm enough against the chill. I felt strange. I felt sad. I felt broken. I rubbed my hands along my insides, feeling the contours of my guts, the rough trace of my bones. I was an empty shell. My mind refused to settle. I couldn't think about anything.
I burrowed deeper into the blankets to hide from the shrieking outside, the cawing of the carnivores preying on the humans. Had this always been here? Had the monsters always been just out of sight? I lay there in the dark, waiting, tossing and turning. Sleep would not come. My brain refused to settle, refused to be tired. Perhaps I was afraid that if I let go, my organs would fall out, my mind would leak out of my head, my reality would dissipate to the strangeness of this world.
I flipped the pillow to the cold side, the oozy sticky cold side. It squelched as I sank into it, my blood staining the bed crimson, pooling on the floor of the room. My brain wouldn't settle. I counted the seconds as I waited for sleep to come. I counted to ten and then a thousand and then a million. The creeping madness of insomnia was mixing with the normal madness.
It was past 4 am when I stumbled into the bathroom to study myself in the grimy mirror. My body was hollowed out, a donut around a gaping wound that ached agonizingly. My eyes were black pits, empty voids, ringed by dark circles. My hands were longer, narrower, more like spiders or tree roots than fingers. And there was a shadow flitting around my neck. I snagged it in one pointy finger, tracing the word carved on my skin as it wavered and danced. I felt the name of the beast.
It dared me to speak it. Dared me to ask. Would it be mad if I called? Would it pity me? Destroy me? Or would it fix me? The bathroom light hummed dimly as I studied the phrase. The word was sharp and angry on my tongue, both impossible to pronounce and yet endlessly familiar, the tattoo shifting to make the phrasing clear. Was it really so simple?
Sleep came in waves. It came with hands on my back and my front and inside me. It came with whispers in my ear and the careful curl of protection. It came with the silence of the outside and the promise of isolation. It came with safety. It came as the tattoo settled against me like its master, a simulacrum of the real thing, a tamed monster as a show of faith. I slept in the arms of a monster and for once I was happy and safe.