Chapter 1
In the midst of November the cold, dry, lonely November. A woman was packing her bags. Her gaze was empty. Her house sat in the deepest depths of silence; the only sound was the quiet rhythm of her own footsteps as she moved around the room, gathering what little she owned.
She stepped outside and sat in her car. The streets were empty, as if she were the only living soul left in the city. Her eyes looked dead, her pale skin colder than the weather itself. The dark circles under her eyes hinted at something deeper something old, something unhealed.
The sun still had hours before it would rise, and she still had a moment to breathe in the cold, silent air before the world collapsed back into its usual chaos. The engine growled to life, breaking the stillness, and she began to drive fearing the morning fog but moving through it anyway.
She passed through the hollow streets and onto the broad, endless highway. The road stretched forward without end; she had no idea where it would take her. In one hand, she held a bottle of vodka. She took a sharp, burning sip. The liquor tore down her throat, and her face scrunched as the warmth fought its way through her chest.
The sun had not risen. The moon had not set. The cold wind wrapped around her like a nostalgic embrace. Time felt slowed, suspended. Her memories flickering across her mind like an old film reel. And then, through the faint wind, she heard a little laugh.
A familiar one.
Without fear, she glanced into the rear-view mirror. A little girl sat in the backseat, small and quiet. She didn’t flinch. She wasn’t surprised and she wasn’t scared. She simply looked at the girl with a strange amusement, her calloused hands tightening around the steering wheel.
The little girl said her name. “Liarah.” Her voice sounded as though she were about to ask something important. She smiled. A soft, warm smile that didn’t belong in such a dark morning.
“Are you happy, Liarah?”
she asked.
Liarah stared at her through the mirror, annoyed almost offended.
“No,”
she said quiet harshly.
“I’m not.”
As if she should’ve known the answer without even asking.
But the little girl didn’t change. Her smile stayed exactly the same. With the same calm voice, the little girl asked another question:
"How's life going?"
She said it almost in a mocking tone, as if she were mocking her for doing something and getting this kind of life in return. Liarah sped up in rage, looking at the girl through the mirror, her eyes spilling with anger and something close to regret.
"I'm alive and breathing, but every single second of my life I want to die, but it feels as if I'm an immortal being, why can't my flesh rot, why can't I die?"
She says as she takes a huge sip from the vodka bottle, the veins popping out of her hand from how tightly she grips it. It looked like the bottle might just crush in her hand. Her balance on the steering wheel falters, the car losing its stability.
The girl chuckles...an innocent sound but looking at her, it felt like a mocking slap. Once again, in an innocent tone, the girl asks another question:
"Do you miss Dad?"
Liarah’s breath turns uneven, almost as if she’s seen a ghost. Her eyes tear up, her hands shake, and she chews on her lip to hold back her cries, refusing to appear scared.
"no. no. NO. no. no. NO."
She repeats the denial over and over, as if she would die if she didn’t say it that way. She shakes her head repeatedly, then screams:
"NO! NO NO."
She breaks into cries, crying like a child, hiccupping, screaming, squirming. She looks almost vulnerable. She stares at the little girl in the front mirror, her gaze helpless, her breath stuck in her throat.
The girl wears a calm smile, almost creepy, as she says:
"Don't get scared Liarah, come with me."
Liarah nods repeatedly and tries to take the little girl’s extended hand, but right in front of her eyes, in a mere second, the girl melts into ashes. Liarah’s hand fills with dark black ash. Her eyes tear up as she breaks down, horrified. She screams and cries in a sorrowful voice:
"NO! PLEASE"
She cries like a dying deer while somehow still driving. For a while, she sobs loudly, staring out at the broad, empty road. The sun still not risen, the cold morning unchanged. She realizes that after the girl vanished, she’s alone again. The emptiness feels unusual; not a single living being is in sight as she drives toward her destination.
Her emotions turned numb after crying for what was probably an hour. Her eyes have no more tears left. Her body feels numb.
After driving a while longer, she hears a scream, a faint one. Her eyes flinch. The scream is full of pain. She hesitates, unsure whether to stop and find out what it was or keep driving. Then another scream. Huge. The kind that could tear ears apart. Her ear bleeds as she becomes horrified. It feels like the earth shook. She breathes as if the sea were pulling her into its depths, and she couldn’t breathe. Her hands shake, yet somehow, she keeps driving.
Then, from the corner of her eye, she looks into the front mirror and what she saw felt like a fake reality. Cold sweat covers her forehead.
Through the rolling gray fog, a figure emerged a grotesque, hulking silhouette that seemed stitched together from nightmares. Its skin hung loose and mottled, blotched with bruises and raw, angry sores. From its torso, faces twisted, silent, and screaming, jut out at impossible angles, their eyes wide and pleading. Its arms were impossibly long, ending in gnarled, clawed hands that scraped the road with a hollow, wet sound. Three pale, featureless heads leaned forward, hair hanging like black curtains over sunken faces, their mouths gaping as if silently wailing.
Her body numb her hands shaking the creature whimpering and sobbing its voice as deep as an ocean the earth beneath her shaking due to the strong weird voice. Her body was full of goosebumps for a moment she forgets how to function, how to breathe or to do anything that's when her balance loses and her car crashes into a pole on the highway. The car falls off from the concrete road into the never-ending fields. Liarah screams and cries in pain her head bleeding she could feel her bones fracturing but she manages to drag her body out from the disheveled car into the fields. Her hands dipped into the mud as she grips on the muddy ground dragging herself away from the big ugly unhuman creature while crying in pain with the corner of her eye, she observes the creature which was close, so close that she could smell it, she could smell its rotting flush and blood. Her insides crunching as she was just about to puke just by its smell. The creature was constantly weeping its voice could tear ears apart. She struggles and tries to get away from it, but she fails and gives in. The creature was towering over her the terror in her eyes visible than it picks her up she feels like her bones would crush from the pressure. She screams and with a swift move the creature ingulfs her whole in.
Her eyes still opened, she couldn't believe what was happening to her she was falling into a huge never-ending pit it was black, all black. Dark. Terrifying dark. She felt like falling from a huge mountain, but it wasn't ending. Her body numb not moving. The only thing that was functioning was her brain she couldn't move, not at all. Her arms open up on their own submitting to her circumstances. Her hair moving as she fall more deeper into the pit she thought as if she was immortal. Why was she not dying? Why was she still breathing? Her brain screaming and crying for help, but she couldn't speak. As if she was paralyzed but than her back hits a hard surface, she looks at her hands trying to move them, feel them, but she couldn't move. She tries to scream but she couldn't. Tears fell from her eyes as her face remained expressionless. It was all dark above her. On her left there was a huge empty room. She drags her body into the room there was a man lying on a bed. She gets closer to the figure than realizes he was her father. Tears streams down from eyes. The man was lying cold on the bed surviving with the help of machines all weak too weak the bones on his body peeking out from the layers of flesh his breathing slow yet steady. His eyes were closed but it wasn't hiding the huge dark circles that lied under his eyes as she was looking at her father a familiar figure appeared in the room. She was the same girl that was in her car. Her own younger self but this time she was crying and she seemed horrified. she was standing Infront of the man looking at him while crying, weeping and sobbing the man opens his eyes ever so slightly as he listens to the little girl's sobs his eyes empty and tired he looks at her with a slight calming gaze the one that gave her comfort. He slowly moves his hand to the girl; the little girl holds his hand in her smaller once as her legs give up and she falls on her knees right Infront of him on the ground. She sniffs in her tears than looks straight in his eyes and speaks.
"Dad I'm scared s-he would burn me."
she stutters slightly. The horror visible in her voice. The man looks at her but couldn't say anything only tears streamed down his eyes, his grey orbs were blank almost expressionless, yet the grief could be seen. The little girl speaks again.
"Dad I'm sorry. I'm sorry dad."
Liarah was watching all this she still couldn't speak or move her face. She shakes her head repeatedly wanting to stop her past self. She moves to stop her, but her hand passes through her more tears fall down her eyes as she shakes her head wanting to scream.
The little girl slowly moves and takes off his oxygen mask. Slowly, he squirms, wheezes in need of oxygen.
"I'm sorry. She told me to do it dad."
she pats on his head watching him while crying till he stops struggling and his body falls cold his eyes wide open one last tear falls from his eyes as he dies the little girl hugs him singing a soothing melody for him. The room all quiet, cold. Liarah's body was numb. She couldn't speak, cry or scream. The only thing she could do was to witness all this in silence from the start all over again. And for her it was worse than death. After a while, a tall, thin woman comes in the room. The atmosphere changes instantly. Liarah recognizes her; it was her grandmother she gazes blankly, looking at the girl hugging her dead father, singing a lullaby for him, then walks to them, patting the girls head and speaks.
"You did it, Liarah. The community would be happy; he will go to heaven. Stand up, let's do the funeral rituals."
The girl was still crying. Yet that old woman drags her away brutally. Liarah watches the whole scene with silent tears she gets out of the room to her right. There was another room she crawled to. That room had a huge dining table, people were sitting all around the table, everyone wore long black coats, they were all men. Old men. Her grandmother was sited between them. The girl was hiding herself behind half closed doors, watching everything silently. The dimly lit room and the eerie atmosphere made the girl shiver in fear. Right in the middle of the table there was a huge pile of uncooked meat it looked uncooked or poorly cooked. Blood was still dripping through it one by one everyone took a piece from it and ate it with their bare hands. The girl watches those emotionless people eat raw meat; her whole body jumps in disgust as she stumbles on the door and quickly tries to hide back but her grandmother spots her. And the next moment the girl watches the old lady stride towards her in anger. The woman yanks the little girl forward towards herself and drags her in the dining room making her sit on one of the chairs than the old lady forces her to eat the meat just like everybody else. The girl cries silently as she takes a bite out of the meat. She couldn't tolerate the taste of the decomposed meat so she pukes it out in the plate everybody watches her without any reaction or words. Her grandmother slaps her hard across her face as she screams in pain and before she could recover from the previous slap another fresh smack falls on her cheek the girl cries silently looking down not having the courage to look in her eyes. The woman screams.
"STAND UP"
The girl obeys.
"NOW GET OUT."
The old woman points at the door sharply. The little girl falls on her knees, holding onto the woman's feet while crying saying.
"Sorry, sorry, madam, sorry."
the woman holds her by the hair and drags her out of the room than shuts the door. Everybody still the same. No reaction, nothing. The woman calmly returns back to the table than apologizes to everyone they all stand up hold each other's hand and in a loud voice they start to sing a bizarre melody they hummed than sang it and it repeated for a while. Liarah gasps at the sight as fresh memories flash in her mind she pulls on her hair and crawls to a corner than closes her ears as she wheezes. She shakes her head and hugs her knees turning herself into a ball as the melody fades after a few seconds. She turns her head up looks around there was nothing. No room No people no one just silence.
The only thing left there, was the cold unyielding silence and a huge dark hole in the wall. It looked deep as if one could get lost in it once entering it as if there won't be a way out after going in. It was tunnel-like. She crawls toward it. After crawling further into the tunnel-like hole, she felt like it was pulling her in, engulfing her, she reaches the place. Her heart skips a beat at the sight. She feels like she is hallucinating.
The walls and ceilings were not just walls anymore. They were claimed. Claimed by the strange hanging figures that looked like trees made of flesh. It looked like as if people got stretched, pulled, and reshaped until they lost their humanity. Their lower halves resembled legs. Stationary, unmoving legs.
Their legs didn't touch the walls. They were suspended, as if rooted upside down. The branching, vein-like extensions spreading from them felt less like limbs and more like nerves or memories they were thin, tangled, reaching outward, filling the space.
The air felt heavy and suffocating, like breathing inside a chest. Sound behaved strangely. Voices felt swallowed. It was as if the place refused to acknowledge noise. Her guts twisted at the sight. It was oddly calm. It was uncomfortable.
She could feel them. They watched her without eyes and listened to her without ears. This place felt like it remembered everything. Everything from her childhood till now.
Ahead of the long corridor, there was darkness. A never-ending darkness. She couldn't see what’s on the other end of the corridor. Her heart felt overwhelmed. The noise was so quiet that it sounded loud, almost like she could hear the quietness. The echoes. Her body Shook and sweated.
Then she remembers a vivid memory. She remembers how, as a child, she lived in that small village with barely any kids her age. She remembers the loneliness she felt back then. The way her grandmother always kept her in the house. She remembers how she used to think about what the world behind the village looked like. The only “friends” she had were the birds she talked to from outside the window. The birds that chirped all day long. The only calm and comforting voices she had. Reburning those memories in her head made her realize that this place is comforting. There are “people” around her. People who are quiet. People who would listen to her. Suddenly, the once-uncomfortable air feels comforting. The quiet beings feel like they are screaming for her to stay with them. They look like they could absorb all of her fear and guilt, as if their flesh is made up of fear, guilt, disgust, and all the ugly human emotions. She thinks she would find comfort in being engulfed by them. She thinks she would feel calm.
She closes the distance between herself and one of the “growths.” It smelled like her childhood. It smelled like her childhood bedroom. That haunting room. But somehow, the same smell that triggered her now made her calm. She hugs the eternal undying creature.
The next moment, she felt herself melting into it. She felt her flesh melting within its flesh, and then into the place itself. Just like she thought, she did feel calm. She feels like she is flying on the seventh sky. All the flesh absorbing into each other, into the flesh of the creature she is engulfed by. Just like ashes to dust. Then, after that,
silence.
Dark.
Nothingness.
She opens her eyes when the cold breeze touches her face. She finds herself lying straight on the grass, above her an open sky. Still as cold as before, but she realizes now there is sunlight too. It isn't the same gloomy early morning anymore. The sun has risen completely. Her body lies disheveled in the fields. She looks to her left. The road was never-ending. It was the road from where she reached here. Then she gazes to her right the road was as long as the path she had already covered. The weird creature was nowhere. Neither the memories nothing. Just the sense of realization. No evidence of dying. She realizes she is free. Her grandmother isn’t here. Neither her childhood nor the weird village.
The road on her left is the path she covered.
The road ahead of her is yet to be covered.
Ammarah-
