It's Saturday morning and I opened the door to find a snow white day had been born of the cold February night sky.
Somewhere in the distance I heard a scream of what might be fear or pain or delight. Islington might have gone all upmarket in the last thirty years but the old Islington, The Cally, as the regulars at the pub call it, well there's always the sense it wasn't far away.
Like Dead Nowhere, the real city awaits in the darkness.
Now
Opening the entrance to my Room I feel the kick of the cold air, exhaling warm breath which turns to fog before dissipating like last nights sleep terrors. I resolve to visit the loo to rinse and refresh then return to keep guard. It's a Saturday after all. Plenty of time to work on the project.
The Missus appears from the front door with some post in hand and a look of vague distrust in her eyes.
"Alright love?"
She shakes her head and I'm not sure if it's in answer or in disgust.
"You know," she says, opening the gate and then pointing over my shoulder, "I really don't think you should sleep in there."
"I was just up late, working on... "
I give up on the lie because she’s suddenly wailing, a bleak empty bleat falling from her cold lips and I turn to look back into my Room. It takes me a moment, but of course I think, there it is.
Looking through my window I see a black-eyed beast glaring back at me, sharp battleship grey teeth bared in a snarl, a heavy sledge hammer-like object made of what looks like black metal grasped in claw-like hands. The end of the weapon appears encrusted in what looks like diamonds. It scrapes the reinforced glass with an almost tender touch, before pulling it back to aim it at the centre of the opening.
Before it strikes its cold eyes fall back upon me and I'm rocked by a pang of recognition. I know him. We have spent so long together now and I know him.
We edge over across towards the window and "will that glass hold?" become the last words I will ever hear my wife say. The beast shatters the glass with a single blow and springs through, moving like some sort of insect, a thousand or a hundred thousand more like him clambering up behind from beneath the blank terrain, roaring at us.
A chemical stench burns my nose as this army from the dead Earth pours through the shattered glass, ripping and smashing the hole wider, pouring into the street. More screams reach me, but I'm gone now. I know that.
My children I think, no, not my children, but they are gone too, I'm sure, and for what? Real estate?
My companion all these days approaches me and has stopped, looming over me, and observes my panic with a look of something like pleasure in its eyes.
I don't even consider trying to run.
I've waited here for him all this time.
I knew this was coming. Where would I go?
He runs a speculative clawed finger down my face and I feel blood bead and begin to stream down my nose, then it plunges its middle claw into my head piercing into my skull, forcing its way through my shattered forehead as though it were egg shell.
The last thing I hear is my wife whimpering; incoherent moans, fading to nothing.
***
A vision drops into my cranium, like a coin in a slot machine, deposited by this beast and I see…
...I see…
I see me, through his eyes, a small creature. I see my blank eyes looking out of a small window in a grey concrete box on a dead planet, the glow of our delicious, vibrant world seeping into theirs and then I know hunger, the hunger waking from a million or billion year sleep.
A new vision replaces this, of a vast green planet, full of life and nature and massive biodiversity. The creatures of this world seem both strange and familiar at the same time.
Enormous beasts which look to be a cross between horses and elephants; reptilian cats stalking the undergrowth; brilliantly coloured insects flood the skies in watery waves. Nothing like those from my world.
There are no people, humans, I mean, although there are people-like creatures, creeping in the shade of the trees, peering up into blue skies, although these people appear to be more monkey or even bird than human, chirruping at each other instead of talking.
This world is beautiful; unspoilt, and when I inhale I drown in the cleanest most beautiful air I've even known. The smells are glorious, reminding me of summer days spent as a child in the New Forest. Is it possible to be happier than this? I wonder.
The dream slows and I sense a nervousness in my fellows. A blackening of the sky chills me. The people squawk and scurry, screeching in shrill tones at this unexplained event.
I look up and see them falling, or flying; so many of them that they blot out the sun.
I look at my hands, realise I am one of these people, and emit a pleasurable squawk at the realisation, holding my fingers to the sky, watching through strange bony fingers, oh God, watching them fall on us.
I witness the beasts dropping from the cold blue emptiness and then I am somewhere else again. Falling from the sky.
I'm am the beast now.
I share a lifetime of memories, of worlds destroyed, made dust, then floating, drifting, through space.
We floated through space for so long, swimming on the currents of space in mute, in near death hibernation, clinging together like a rock, an asteroid of existence; a clenched fist looking to land a blow.
Searching.
We see it in the distance, a tiny speck, a blue green orb sparkling in the night. It takes so long to reach it, but reach it we will; we will be fed again. As we reach the innocent globe we descend upon it, dropping from the blue and stripping every ounce of life from the space below.
We are the hunger which can never sated.
For an age we feed. Stripping every molecule of life from this place.
Until we are done.
The green orb now grey, dusty; scraped clean. All consumed, every last molecule until only the beasts were left, alone. Not even bacteria escaped.
But then it hits me again, the hunger, growing in a stomach which at the height of harvest never felt full.
Still, we are patient creatures. We do not allow our hunger to end us, so we kneel upon the dead soil and sink into it, to wait. To wait forever if necessary. For something to come.
***
But we did not have to wait forever.
I hear the sound of movement, the sound of them. Traipsing across our dead world in big yellow, plastic suits, building a million fragile little doors for us, back into their world. As my hunger grows so does my strength.
We are coming.
***
Then I am back, gazing up through blood and tears at this eternal beast. At the end of the universe, as the stars begin to die out one by one, will he be all that is left?
I wonder, as they begin their rampage, if this time they will temper their hunger. Surely the starvation of a billion year sleep would teach them to measure their resources and not allow their new well to run dry.
Somewhere as the world fades, the real world screams become faint and I hear a growling wolf laugh inside my head as a final thought is deposited.
Dinner-time.
Acknowledgments
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