EMPTY

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents in this story are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Listen to this warning of a clear final ending—spreading the warning of a distorted beginning. No drill was launched, nor good mercy.

“Please be advised: Do not go outside. Lock your doors. A dead body was spotted in area 41. It is moving; it is running to devour yours.”

It’s been a motionless ride, my world.

“I repeat. Do not go outside. Lock your doors. A dead body was spotted in area 41. It is moving; it is running to devour yours”

Be careful not to overload the hell.

“It is moving, it is running to devour yours.”

As I am still here.

1: SAFE DEATH

HOUR BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE

OMNISCIENT

When death is already an easy thing to achieve, what’s stopping anyone from making it so pleasing, at least?

Physically sick, homeless, and must be a murderer. That's the kind of human you may see him as. He's treading his steps into the pool of luminous water scented by one's artificial heaven, possibly subjective.

You may think he’s glad to be in this room with this thing that consists of liquid, round, and not too big. He can stay here up until how long his body may wish. Sometimes a minute, sometimes less than an hour. Sometimes... almost instantly. There’s no other place you can jump into, other than this resort in the middle of the Polian City alley, hidden, almost. And it is filled with everything you need, especially if you’re physically sick, homeless, or a murderer.

“Kio Ilcito, am I pronouncing it right?” Joas’ voice echoed out of the intercom device placed on both sides of the room. Everything is white, aside from the man and this sparkling pool of euphoria designed in the center of the four-corner chamber. “...Says here you’re being sought as the criminal who proudly murdered his father with a knife. Is that the reason why you should be dying?” he added.

“Not really,” the patient, Kio, answered, eyes following the soft sparkling groove of the water across his feet.“...But diagnosed with something incurable,” he counted, before idly stamping one foot down on a glass stair leading to the pool edge, soaking in a shallow section.

“...Before being a criminal for trimming the brain of a father who owned a dick that doesn't choose,” and another foot, swiping with the drift of warm glistened soak, “...and I regret... I regret doing it later than it should have been just because I wasn't a trimmer.” The patient voiced his affliction, staring at his unblinking reflection over the clarity of the tainted aqua defining his loss.

“Don't make it your last thought about yourself, Kio. You're not a trimmer.” Joas casually demanded, “...Where’s Mother?” he once again questioned, grasping a sharp whiff of expectation audible beyond the device.

The patient carried a prolonged pause before answering in a whisper, sounding almost bored, “Nowhere. But I turned out to be her forced replacement, died the moment she put me out of a hole. Never in my life can I forgive them.” Another beat of pain pounded as he didn't intend to, but delivered to one who listens, one to have him decide.

“Will your death be the reason for someone to do the same?”

“No one will ever notice I’m gone. I'm not sure about the policemen”

“You may die,” Joas announced like an ending play.“...Sink... Freely... Drown with the antidote,” he remarked, seasoned with encouragement and heartily… dark.

The patient shone down his adoration over the flowing moist, receiving his unholy gift, mumbling unaware, “Antidote... My antidote.”

“Your antidote.” Joas rephrased, resonantly grasping his faith in the idea of how humans’ suffering must end only of their own will, to be drowned in a restful delight… after an ultimate misery, and made this Montorium to be found by him.

Straightly as the patient dives down his whole being, his body slaps down the 6-foot drench of drug, flooded with surprise solely for his eyes; awaken, and dilated in uttermost pleasure as though his body and soul had him apart into a different side. He swims, and swims, and swims.

Exploring his imaginative delight, tears as well were immersed in the relaxing insides of the water, dissolving his sorrow and fatigue. His arms dance around the firmness of the liquid, grooving but also steady. His feet flatters as he glides deeper and deeper, and gently going up. He's slowly gulping the fluid of the restful end before he even knows it. It should be enough; it should be gratifying.

Not long after, his skin deflates with dead paleness like a raisin out of its prime. His unmoving body sails upwards, rotating naturally to the front. And right there, the valuable smile unfolds across his face like a corpse that Joas always longed to become.

Hecor, the clinic's head of documentary, entered the room to capture the new patient’s closed-lip smile as evidence of yet another freed soul leaving its bodily wretched life. The brightness of the camera flashed onto the patient’s face with a single click, taking the overly clear image to forever lie in his eyes and in his heart.

Phil, who’s now here to burn the bodies into nothingness afterwards. Phil carried the patient’s body down to the basement’s human oven while humming in a lazy whistle, his song of optimistic goodbye.

Hecor paced out of the room to grab his flip-style phone vibrating inside his pocket. He answered the call. “Cheska,”

“How is it going?” she replied.

“Nothing changed. Still waiting for your… understanding,” he answered, sliding the door of the pool area shut with a loud snap. Hecor marched straight into the lobby, carrying the faces like a nightmare he can’t wipe off his mind— no matter if he's fully awake.

“We’re not coming back to assist with your clinical crime. I want to be a nurse, not a killer. And I never misunderstood you,” Cheska answered.

“When will you stop hoping he could fix his mind?” he asked, while placing the phone between his right ear and his shoulder, turning his visual attention to the camera just to assure he had saved his newly captured imagery of the lost.

“Maybe the world would do it for him,” she asserted, with a hint of indirect threat that made Hecor suddenly space out. His eyes locked to the open window.

“It’s just that… not all doctors save a life by just extending it. You never know if every living creature in this world is living its life. Some were just sort of… breathing,” Hecor told his friend, firm as his fingers glued on the faces flashed on his camera screen like souls smiling over their slowly fading existence, overpowering the solidity of his tone.

Cheska went along the spirit of silence for a second, gathering a reply full of intent, “He told you that, I see. But he didn’t tell you about those who were just lost,” she meaningfully claimed like a daughter of nature.

Hecor dropped his shoulders in disapproval with the urge to protest. She’s smart, and she has heart; his borrowed knowledge has nothing to compete with half of what she possesses. The conversation was just then interrupted by a continuous chime, a ring of desperate suicidal blaring out for help.

“I’m guessing it’s younger than the rest.” Phil interrupted as he returned from the finished duty.

“Who?” Hecor intrigued.

“Someone who wants to die again,” Phil joked without smiling.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Hecor told Cheska almost after a beep.

Hecor walked directly to the entrance before swinging the door open in prepared sympathy for a face he was about to see. But he's not expecting his eyes to widen for a little girl who’s too small, too innocent to be a patient who wants to die, and mostly just beginning her life.

A school uniform with a backpack. A rainbow-colored umbrella in her grip. Hecor ascertains it is not that bad, but still bad.

“Where’s the idiot? I saw him get in here!” the girl cheerfully greeted in expectation of a hospitable welcome. Yet Hecor, on the other hand, was suppressed in panic, and he couldn't even blink.

Instilling a soft tone through his voice, “Sweetie, nice to see you! But I hope not to see you here again. Kids are not allowed to be here. Besides-- wait, do you need him to come with you to school? Would you like me to take over?” his unshakeable worriedness tried to explain the illegality of her presence, being proudly here.

Flashing the most fake-looking smile of innocence with her droopy eyes, she replied, “I can walk on my own. Can you at least hand this to him for me?” she spoke with a hand lifting rainbow-colored umbrella where a goose whistle is making a tinkling noise on its handgrip.“...Idiot left this again on the couch. What a shame, I’m not even planning to get in there.” she added, one brow up while hiding the fact she's casually trying to peek a naughty glance at the narrowly open door.

Hecor constantly nodded, “Alright, sure, I’ll hand this to the idiot, okay? Then you'll go? You--- are you sure you don’t want me to take you to school? I brought a bike!” he smiled, his left hand receiving the umbrella with all the glory of her command, his right hand reaching a gentle tap on her head, an apologetic affection.

“That bike?” Asiana pointed to the sidewalk where somebody's lonely MTB is staying.

“Yeah,” Hecor shortly turned to his side, claiming someone's unoccupied bike.

Hecor shouldn't be paying much attention to the wrong thing, but he's distracted by an unusual pack of flies swirling around something on the ground. It's too thick to see what's festering, but it's next to the bicycle's pedals. He's starting to think he can finally smell it. The stench.

“Hey! I knew it! It’s not a wafer stick! It’s not a goddamn wafer stick! It's sizzling!” Asiana hooted as she got her opportunity to get through, dashing as she finally caught the brother’s habitual seat on a stairway. In his mindless frame of any existence, lighting a cig, thereafter hitting a smoke— their eyes eventually met.

Realizing Hecor had lost his own caution, he turned back to the kid even belatedly, for the little one’s stubbornness is too strong to overcome; Asiana succeeds in her way, fronting her idiot older brother with a shout.

“… It’s bad for your health! You're gonna go to hell!” complained the little girl flowing the genuine words of her deepest concern. Hecor’s left with the umbrella in his grip like his only source of ease, a holder of his running tension.

Joas arches a brow of improper mockery, “You wanna try?” puffing out the smoke as he bluntly talks, much more blatant as he’s handing the blazing cigarette to the kid in a clowning way for the concealment of his mood.

Of course, the tiny girl will not be easily folded. Asiana, with no sign of being offended, spat, “Ew, my breath will stink--”

“Now, get out of here,” he cut in, crashing the cigarette tip against the concrete wall like a pen writing a blaze. That's the only way he could hold down the irritation about his sister’s prohibited arrival, and none must be blamed.

Asiana sought evidence of his assertions by roaming her unbothered eyes around the plain area that looked merely like a normal, unsuspicious room. A coffee table. A leather couch. An abstract painting hanging off the raw concrete wall. “But... I can’t see anything wrong here. Other than you.” She folded her arms, standing her little bossiness, thinking it would overshadow her brother’s unnecessary offense.

“Hecor, can you please take her to school?” Joas aborted his fuming impatience by looking down at his little enemy as he got up. Asiana dominated his outrage by casting her own madness in a way of flaring her nostrils as wide as they could, with a glare, a fearless kind of glare seething to win the argument against someone older.

“Come on here, sweetie.” Hecor put himself back into the quarrel by switching sides to their little opponent. He was about to hang the umbrella on a hook when Joas abruptly retracted it, taking it back to his little sister’s hand.

“My hand is even bigger than the canopy of this umbrella. That’s yours. Now, please, go.” Joas firmly advised.

Asiana doesn’t move as she senses herself about to cry. What does she know? Why is it she can’t know? Simply, he can’t let his belief ruin her dreamy world.

Rather, he chooses to keep her blind by gently reaching for her tiny arm before pulling her by her wrist and guiding her into the doorway. The cost is Asiana’s wild-pitch screaming, a reviving tantrum over her exhausted brother who merely caresses his own temple like he's on the brink of giving up.

“There are dead people in the basement of this room, Asiana. You might not want to catch them walking up here”

Phil’s disturbing phrases seem to strike Asiana to be fearful. The child instantly rushed her way out of the door with a squeal, an umbrella, and a heavy slam of the door. Brother can only pause in the intent of eyeing the little child running away, with his look smeared with blame, never good at consoling the stubborn as soon as she removes herself from their accountability. Asiana left them alone in the awkward shape of stillness, but at least out of her innocent curiosity.

“Hey... uh, anyway, Andres Carino just cancelled his appointment,” Hecor decided it was the perfect time to remind him.

“I appreciate it, Hecor,” Joas tapped his shoulder without looking.

Officially fulfilling the little trial, Joas was comforted to eventually visit a special room, serving as his favorite spot located in the farther area of the clinic. With a sharp breath, he boasted. A chair offered him a rest to stare equally sharp at seemingly none; he stretched his left leg into the bottom of a switch that turned the main lights on, revealing a main view of the lit and a collection.

The illuminated room divulged a glass wall wholly shrouded by a malicious gallery of patients’ legacy in photograph form. They're all bound and displayed evenly like a wallpaper covering the edges very well, composing each patient a pair of reminiscences: one shot dry, one shot drowned but finally smiling underneath the ecstatic little sea... gone but might still look alive. A photo of a man, an old lady, faces of disabilities, filling his sight with faces of what he believes is cured. Like a proud father to his only son, he admires their courage as much as the religious would detest it.

And then, a hiss of nature, or a spirit he accidentally called, is how the waft slams violently from the open window, delivering a cryptic silence like an unknown reminder in the air. Something caused it, as he thought, but not the sensation on his nape rousing when the swift air steals one of the photographs to be detached, hauling his attention into watching someone's little portrait dancing ghostly into the thin air. There, it slowly lands on the bottom, before flipping in a swaying motion as if apologizing for a cause.

To that, the blank space is left deserted on a see-through glass wall where a patient’s memorial used to lie. It upset him a little, but Joas immediately got up and bent down to the floor in a prudent touch, grabbing the image in fear of the slightest wrinkle to cause; he’s not disrespecting, he’s caring too much.

So steady as a painting, he moved carefully to get the image back into its designated little home. His sight, however, decides to show him too much truth just by looking back at the wall; he’s consumed by the sinister breeze yanking his spirit apart from his body, and he doesn't like how it feels. Because right now, he's seeing the space— occupied, finally filled up. But not by the photograph.

Something is looking nearer, granted through his blood pumping very strong as if it’s not true; he’s certain it can’t be true. But he might say so, to that shadow moving at the corner of his eye.

In his puzzling sensation and senses trying to lie, he’s now stuck gazing back at someone’s dolly eyes, reddish under eyes— teary but it’s dry. It's dilated for a heaving stare reflection of disorder, in daylight.

Flaky paperwhite skin is squashed with dents of peeping varicose veins. Its broad arthritic head facing his surprise— friendly getting close to greet him with its sloppy smile in a highly-spirited curl of a stretchy emotive mouth; Joas can hear it squelching, its tongue moving, even its larynx vibrating like an oldman's snore.

Only to this point he realizes... he’s looking at someone's corpse who seems never meant to die and never wants to. The longer he looks, the less he understands this totality of a mutated male human in a hospital gown, knocking to reach his heart, brain, and smelly mind.

He doesn’t know how; he doesn’t know why. And no one knows what's behind its sudden emergence, happily peeking outside the transparent partition, mostly not in the exact space where the corpse’s photograph supposedly lies. It's not the visitor he’s expecting to make him feel a little older.

In relation maybe to this fear, the silence later bends into a catastrophic noise in a hoot of trumpeting alarms, fusing along with the scream of humanity in a pulse of horror coming to grow.

Thus, holding his gaze, not averting from this danger's eyes, Joas ran swiftly backwards into the nearest cupboard. His blind hand rummaged until he found a single syringe as his sole defensive weapon. With the sudden panic of Phil and Hecor pounding behind the closed door, Joas slammed it open and rushed outside for a brotherly goal.

Fear got the jaw of the two who were left by a friend, catching a view of the strange human banging its head senseless against the wall, crying to enter with its whimpers singing like a laughing goat, mindful of its own need, wailing with a desirous toothless grin. Hecor and Phil's throats intrinsically seal with terror before they shut the door, gasping for the oxygen that felt lost after the glimpse of someone they should've welcomed before.

Ashen by dread, with the image of a horrific creature stuck in his head, “What the fuck...” Phil grunted, pressing his fear against the door heavy with a shock comparable to a cardiac arrest.

The sun lacks brightness today, spewing out the smoke of darkness to accentuate the tragedy that mostly happens at night. Joas burst out of the Montorium in a different type of haste while forgetting the earth’s existence where trouble had begun, heels not even touching the ground.

Roaming his petrified gaze, he sees nothing but crumpled pieces of the crowd shrinking in different directions, and the usefulness of the deserted bike nearby. He hopped on and cycled harshly as he rode past the left leg of nobody and squished the kneecap against the wheel —none of his concern. At least he scared the swarming flies away, scattering like the current population.

Dread is progressively boosting through the wheels, whooshing rapidly and squeaking like a toy, blending with the cruising shadows of an increasing number of replicas of the first one he found. And it longs to have the same smile and duplicate deadness but longing merrier. Apart from equal aggressiveness being seen, the hideous entities appear to be spreading violence and unimaginable torture against humanity in a cannibalistic way. No room for any kind of hesitation this time.

He’s deaf to a pang of screaming regret but forced to listen to a yell of a dying world and the topmost selfishness roaring loud, crying out loud but quickly silenced. Lives were being fought. Lives were running away with unknown destinations. And lives are paralyzed; screams are like singing with the melody of their body thoroughly chomped, forehead to toes, from outer layer to the bones. Fighting souls are with eyes closed, but bodies openly skinned alive like stripping clothes. They’re nothing now but a bunch of emotional meat. No one is too young, and neither is too old.

[ Area 32 will be bombarded in a minute. Please switch to a safer area. ]

There’s the worst getting worse. It is the area near and before the alley into Asiana’s school, the exact possible place where she had probably been stuck alone and fearful, hopefully just alone. The environment’s air swiped bitterly against his breathing as he clenched his teeth, clogged by regret and worry.

His palm rakes his face to wipe the drip of his sweat and desperation ’cause still, he found nothing. But he got himself found by a horde of wandering smiles in a corporate uniform, starving in front of the convenience store for his presence he unknowingly offered. Instinctively, he flares up, racing to enter every corner of the greasy road where all he can see are different faces of tragedy anywhere his taunted gaze would set off.

Joas resumes the rush for his final job, cycling harder past the pair of runners paving the way to chase his humanly tease. They are into him, wildly, eagerly, religiously— reaching his arrogant resistance with a screech. Still, Joas is keeping his eyes aware of seeking the kid he unintentionally strayed. Further beyond each passing moment, he's folding up his fear for having endless reasons to have it, after everything he’d seen.

Then, amidst the hopeless ride that had already turned into more minutes, he was finally freed from the chasing game. A familiar umbrella caught his eye on the side of a driveway. It was isolated, aware of its function as a cover, well sufficient as a child-friendly guard. Yet at the same time, the doom remained strong enough to stop him from focusing on either the victim or the threat. Surely no umbrella can be covered.

Dead pals almost next to Asiana turned around; Joas confronts them with the body of the bicycle full of honor and simply bursts the hunting faces off— smiles then flattened as they were blown off to the ground. But not violent enough to take them back into their roots.

Joas runs back away, mindful of one of the fallen corpse rising. But it's moving more aggrressively happy, deep loud snore penetrating dangerously in a subtle means of calling a better mate. It's not letting him pass this moment. Still, is a fair outcome for Joas.

Asiana remains in her terrified position like a scared frog, but her eyes are overpowered by relief. She's still hiding under the vigilant canopy of her little umbrella, but in her innocent watch, the dead found her just as easily as it's energized for meet and greet and something jolly. Thus, before her eyes make her move, a gasp bursts from her mouth the second her feet are harshly pulled up, and she is lifted upside down, with the tip of her head touching the ground and her face reddening with her own blood— driven worse by her crying caused by the freak. A nightmare not even her little brain can create.

Gaining two ways to battle death, the frantic winning dead is now aiming to crunch his sister’s little calves, other than a threatening sight of an explosion in range nearby to end them both at once. But Joas made up his mind, composed through his hand quickly unraveling the pocket of his pants for the syringe of acid he purposely reserved. Now his mind is frozen. Chances are spreading apart. And his heartbeat strumming like a drum. He took his luck and threw off the syringe, flying in the gravity about to plunge into the big smiling head he aimed to switch into cry.

But on negativity’s fond, the syringe leaps over a misguided pattern as he forgot to sum— vaulting down on the dead's chest out of his aim to the lowest probability of beating. When in surprising positivity, his rival explodes nonetheless like a party balloon in contrast to what he predicted, but surely it is a god-blessed set. Bloody residues scatter all over the crying Asiana, bathing her red pasta of gut as the juice of her brother’s unexpected success, doubled as he caught her body as quickly as an athletic reflex or a paranoid mother.

Asiana never felt as secure as she is now in his arms. But Joas knows he's not yet done, so he turns around to see his job seemingly finished, not by his own— intentionally destroyed by the unknown’s uncalled invasion or miracle, leaving him in question as they run away just a yard apart from the forthcoming detonation booming their ground as the first streak’s price. There is a better way for them to die; he’s swearing.

“Please be advised: Do not go outside. Lock your doors. A dead body was spotted in Area 41. It is moving; it is running to devour yours. “

“I repeat. Do not go outside. Lock your doors. A dead body was spotted in Area 41. It is moving; it is running to devour yours. “

“It is moving; it is running to devour yours. “

“What are those... What’s happening?” Hecor, speaking again on a phone call where he’s toning his package of confusion to the same person he just called. Endless screams are departing through their walls, compounded with abrupt gunshots in unstoppable mayhem going on.

“Dad is now working to find its source. But based on a recent observation, their weakest point was their chest, as their head is empty and senseless.” Cheska’s explanation was barely understood due to the noise of the wrecking that overlapped her voice. Joas, recalling his first kill, theorized the information might be in the right doctrine.

Trying to check outside the place barely a world, Phil interrupted, “Are they rabid?”

“Yes,” Cheska answered, informing them in direct caution. “… So stay fearful and alert. We’ll be there in 15 minutes. Run in case we'll be late.” Cheska ended the call, for another moment for them to be trapped with the choir of tragedy outside with the prayers of survival, even unforgetful in the world they’re living in. At moments like this, everything’s too much to ask.

But then something on Asiana’s wrist catches Joas’ lookout for a new doubt; a beaded bracelet that seems ordinary at first, but mysteriously specialized by those tiny red dots of light peeping through the layer. Vocalizing his suspicion, he asked, “Where’d you get that?” his eyes were glued over.

“From Cheska. She told me I look cool with it.” Asiana's playful yet serious answer made him avoid her eyes for a reason. Joas replied with a slow recurrent nod as he knew it, and it was foul.

“Someone will be bringing you home. Wait till later,” Joas plainly claimed.

For what his word has done, the little girl is amused, “We’re going back home?”

JOAS

Those humming growls aren’t always too engaging, but it’s louder, and higher than the recorded powerless report requesting everyone to hiddenly die. This deadly happiness overthrows the cries accepted by them all. Everyone is finally heard.

No one is safe; remembering their worth throughout their lifetime of torture isn’t enough to conclude considering the span. Too short. Too deep. Now, they’re scattering into tiny bleeding pieces crying with regret—“I must’ve ended it when I was whole.” No condolences to someone’s spinal cord swimming in the drainage to never be unbreakable.

It pained them, and so is my soul.

Wet by the drops of their own tears, waiting for the last tick of their time. They were trapped listening to their body being crunched by one and many while tasting the torment of the voices’ plea, yelling no, requesting the mind not to back down against the chews penetrating to the bones, left eaten incomplete, with flies depreciating, dirty, and embarrassed. In the process, the only matter that could numb the despair is to kill their hope, as only the dead become alive.

To say at least, to this world, I had lived as a fellow who granted a cure as a means of death. But only for those who’ve been sick for an unreasonable sequence of living, a sickness that sleep can’t cure— by kindness, along with a beautiful scent of the volitional ending with a grave, with flowers, with reasons, without the harshness of the living world. Without being ended by the carelessness of this living world.

Matter of damn fact, these non-living bodies lived out death’s beauty by knowing how to make it to the living. Even in their dead appeal. They’re eating what I don’t have. I vomit what I don’t want. They are ahead of my way with the knowledge of why they’re running. As I, since then, am empty, clueless, and afraid, wandering in this living world like an amnesiac.

But, for the time being, I will try to run on my feet, as a path for this kid. My first and last objective.

“It’s stupid; it’s really stupid. I won’t leave you here! Please!” Asiana solidly screeched, her tiny voice showered by tears of fearless dedication to be rushing our unhurrying demise. I adore it. I envy it. But not while she’s looking up at my face, unconvincing by her little hands bouncing my arms in an understandable will, ’cause one thing I can’t ignore is the hollowness of this elevator being distortedly tighter; as our destination on a rooftop is to see someone’s help, for the usefulness I can’t offer.

I inhaled sharply, engrossed with the right words to save at least this little human’s brain, “Those dead figures will eat your flesh, happily and irrevocably, that you’re never gonna take it back to your crying body. You hear that?” quietly, I told in a tone meant to horrify, although mindful of the fact that the child won’t listen. I’m talking to a nine-year-old human in a bloody uniform, who normally must be easily daunted even by tales undertoned by factual advice.

“But I’m scared, and you, an idiot! My only home is you ’cause mom’s far away from here. You hear that? I’d rather die beside you than survive with a stranger.” The kid’s tone reduces, and melancholy softens by casually pursing her lips to delay another of her innocent cries. Just not to barricade her sight of me like I’ll illicitly disappear any minute.

A home, they say, is a refuge inside every human being’s psychological disarray for each mind to be held— philosophically human-made material for almost dying people who finally found the desire to survive. To forget the pain built inside since aborn. Materials that are purely therapized.

“At least trust my way, if not him.” Calmly, I defy, partly unsure of the sense I’m inducing.

“Not now… don’t prove it now! I know! I’m never your real sister, so you can’t love me as I do, that mom is right” the kid claimed in a breath truly strange. One brow creased on my exasperated face absorbing those unnatural terminologies that came out of the tiny witless mouth. There’s no way a sensitive mother could tell such a conclusion. Perhaps the daughter merely heard it wrong.

I would no longer be here realistically alive if I, all along, didn’t have even the tiniest bit of love for this needy being. My existence as a resisting living is the language that I use as a responsible brother I am.

“Asiana, please.” I stand up straighter as I hold my composure back, displaying a gaze of first warning.

Cold, abstractly, the elevator doors finally retracted. We went out calmly to set off on this hazy and empty surface of the rooftop elevated against the blood-soaked chaos underneath. Sure damn well, the heaviness of this child’s claim is even more dangerous. Our gaze then rises, routing the sound of a helicopter blade whirring in the approach of our defenseless area where the servant just came in at perfect timing overhead. Intrusion has never been kinder.

“That’s why you are too lazy to save me on your own”

Oh, it hasn’t ended yet, the drama of this kid twisting my dread to punish my gut in unwanted frustration. And I can do nothing but shift my coward eyes afar to forcefully ignore. She has to understand that safeness is not in line with whoever she wants to be with. It’s not.

Imperious glancing back at the child, I speak in an indistinct trail of reluctance, lazily spinning this dwarf-sized umbrella in my left hand for the phrases, “I’ll come after. And... and I’ll be bringing this--fuck” I pick it up as it drops,“...hopeless umbrella.”

Glorious, her face eventually lightens hearing the magical spell of that stupid rainbow umbrella for a greater intent manipulated by fond. Not long before she joined my eyes painfully narrowed, surged by the forceful slam of the wind brought by the twin-seater plane’s continual noise in a fit of landing down, equipping for an additional life to take and borrow. It must be completely returned.

Werth, this kid’s obliging service, finally bounces off the aircraft in his confident footpath coming our way. “Joas,” he called out, “...Where your boys at?”

“I suggested they stay inside.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of her,” casting out his friendly wave to Asiana who’s trying to hide me behind her back, keeping me grateful rather than have her running for persistence not to bind the continuity of her life.

“Did you get the address?” my tongue wrenching for trust, paired with a straight gaze looming until he subtly swallows the underlying threat that can do nothing. All as I breathe for his reassurance that my sister will land safe and alive even without a brother’s splitting appearance.

“I’ll be patient enough to handle this little bratty-looking kid” he expressed before a chuckle, not hearing my question. This public sergeant must be the most trusted person in times of crisis like this; otherwise, he’s stupid. It’s him whom this little damsel shall rely upon for her safety, not to die with me.

“Did you get the address?”

“Of course, man”

Sunken responsibility in my regard, steadily following her little feet as she headed on her way to a new expedition taken by chopper’s little wings. Kid's not even looking back at me. Werth accompanied her in getting her latches on while her pure eyes spoke astonishment just as an innocent kid has always been, even after a blameless argument.

“Am I gonna throw up!?” She yelled out like she was certain.

“Check your bag’s left pocket just in case!” I shouted back.

The aircraft is now preparing to take off for the main event to ensue. The little passenger lastly spins with a beaming smile showing her awareness of danger, waving her palm with a plastic bag across the screen to air a naive readiness for everything to reset the moment she looked away from the truth. My feet still planted on the ground of uncertainty to lend her a single nod silently spelled by a brotherly wish, in a neck hugged by an invisible choker hard to ignore by the guilt.

Until the brave craft was consumed by safe clouds above the ending fateful town, I finally grasped the courage to pace out in a way of striding back to the danger with a loose commitment to necessary resistance, finally breathing with no words to respire. But in behalf of reducing this worry, I’ll try to curse that safeness exists— it merely doesn’t belong to my company— but to my sister. I’ll die without wondering why.

Another basis why these creatures are worthy of silent adoration; their holistic labor supplied with their brainless tolerance, made them all comedic as they crumble, tumbling like merely heavy drinkers on the road. It's time to go.

But unfriendly is a loud bang behind the door that answers our temptatious curiosity, stepping us back from the dark rebellious surprise. The fate of this sacred place to be invaded by non-patient corpses will soon take over the place, and these bodies we own will end up inside an over-bloated stomach, mixed with a fleshy crowd we have never been with on a normal day. No matter how healthy their food is, their belly is impossible to obtain fullness as long as living humanity smells and reeks— wanting to be alive.

We pound off onto the upper floor of the neighboring building like willing survivors, but truthfully lax. Once elevated, our glance dropped to the other side to hold a glance over the current case behind the door pack of tumbling obsession as a masochist, not I, may normally ought.

Natural phenomena, it is, a farewell to Montorium.

We, with no valuable option but to leap from the two-layered-floor building to supersede and freely fall and pop like a bubble. It’s a proper decision that Asiana is positioned in a lofty adventure, because the crybaby wouldn’t certainly enjoy this variety of hide and seek.

“Come on, just jump,” Phil ordered Hecor, stooping down to the bottom with eyes blended with fear of being the first to lose in the early wave.

We headed off one by one with the help of a lower-level roof before quickly surrendering our feet over the window’s edge, diving down as we anchored to the ground soon to be a grassland of apocalyptic corpses.

The power of someone’s god allows us to be freed momentarily— just to appreciate the extent of the undead’s capability of turning the Polian City into a better one, better for their kind.

Victimized bodies, dead or alive, all scattering the pavement’s totality where human flesh is the scent of air, stinking but loved by pests; thus I discern the metallic smell of uncooked meat and spoiled ones unfinished.

We’re stepping on a road of widespread destruction, the product of the undead’s enjoyment in their chosen town, a perfect amusement, setting the sinkhole of hell in line with a predictable disappointment.

Corpses National Party is not yet over. They’re not yet even wasted. A full-course meal to be feasted on is just being heated, to be beautifully designed on a long table encircling the whole globe.

So here, our moving eyes are trying to look for lively smiles to be avoided or met. We haven’t seen one again, but cackling whimpers in the distance are casually remaining. The priority now is to find any vehicle we could use to elude an alternative fate. Yet we landed at the train stop filled with jumbled nothingness. It's quite less dangerous in comparison to my usual danger. The distance apart from the howls is gradually turning tighter and stupider. They owe me a shame; I’m a fancier of all medleys of a corpse.

“Let’s phone them now.” Whining, Phil spoke while my feet remained in stillness, digesting a potential threat as a means of observing the sense of the ruined zone, keeping an ear to the ground as a substitute support.

Hecor elevated the phone up to his head like a sacrifice, ghostly walking as he engaged himself for an area of the signal we must condone. Phil and I stayed behind, followed by hazy brains and eyes lazily reserved over the phone as the sole reliance, anticipating the indication of success with a tone.

Still, I’m aware of each crossing moment shifting the volume of the ambiance, turning higher in an ominous sense. With each pace, I hear it more, something’s— someone’s arrival, waiting to be known, waiting to be avoided, waiting to soar. Despite the intellect’s occupation with Hecor's seemingly pointless device, our feet kept us moving incautiously cautious.

My recognition, fortunately, is merely instigated by a noise unleashed from my very back where something dives down to disturb not meaninglessly. My nose demands my attention to swivel for the fallen mystery behind, slowly, deliberately. The celebrants might want a poke of a cake.

“There we go!” Hecor’s sudden scream thundered through my chest; I almost stumbled. “...Cheska, pick up! please! Pick it up!” Then, further terrorized by fear when I realized where our feet unknowingly shepherd us into— for ourselves to be found mindlessly in the middle of a functioning railroad carrying the remaining pieces of the world.

Rattling in the tremble of peril in our path, hailing the mad arrival of the train getting its way uncontrolled. Clanking, hooting, pushing us to quickly head out down to the rail side. Still holding the awareness of stupidity, we embarrassingly left a pathway for the train to cross. For us to refrain from the inanity, surely from now on.

The train passed; watching it cross is an ordinary sight at first, but the wind slapped me unusually hard. There's an outstanding matter on its roof that gave me something I can't just ignore.

With the dark smoke foregrounding my vision and my thoughts, my feet then balked off the ground.

Now, I’m eyeing a horror, eyeing a little decapitated head sitting over a spacious roof of the train like a ball with ponytails and a crumpled nose. I knew I should follow.

The head, a human’s sliced head with a little age that failed to escape the afterlife in a hurry. Dark dried blood overlining around the eye sockets like a red loose rubber, standing with a dented forehead, and a sloppily slashed neck where death mercilessly took the unrealistically fleeting span of a little’s beginning life. Of my Asiana. Her one eye is closed but doesn’t make a difference; it is meant to be recognized more.

Now, I’m running for another time.

Dull air, humid, commanding time to cease my grief with my moistened eyes moving along the traumatizing imagery, but I'm sprinting with hatred following the track of the train I can no longer perceive; I can’t hear any, I don’t know. Agony, agony, agony all over my vast body.

Those little eyes clouded with a harmless desire linking over my wide sore gaze, now slowly drifting farther along the fastly disappearing train, leaving everything but the perpetual dread. My fellows must’ve already witnessed the detectable grief seething on their side, chasing a friend who's chasing nothing anymore.

She was in the sky, and she was smiling; I left her there, and I stayed there until she faded into the vapor floating above this killing ground she must readily escape. What now, what now she’s here in the opposite of my only need?

She’s not wrong. I killed her. And I was the one she wanted to die with.

A soul who died in pure mistake is my sister, who wanted nothing but to feel the care of a brother wanting nothing but his own business and suicide.

I can’t move on, I’ll never forgive, and I refuse to die the same. These weak eyes I nudged for the wish to see her body that must be around— and the darkness justified by her headless body as the disturbing mystery that dropped a while ago behind the tree; too late to be saved against the flock of molesters a foot away to where I run from, spinning her leg off her waist but already detached with her upper body that remaining to keep her red starry bag she’ll always own and I hope I can take it.

Her remaining pieces are dismembered in different spots as if meant to be collected; in the opposite way was her open belly leaving her tiny liver mushed like a cake— skewering tragedy down to my future, and to the next life I’ll biologically abhor.

Then it saw us. The hungry reveler and its hungrier friends. Blood-stained smile, bragging hellish eyes glimmered with an urge through looming growls in the name of bacterial dominance. I’m seeing a perfect time to surrender, not to participate in a fantasy of this world where, in truth—there’s no safe place for anyone to be buried but a never-ending run.

“Let’s run, Joas!” Hecor’s pleading gaze slips out of the corner of my mollifying eyes.

Running, flying, crawling. You can do anything, and a cruel death however will do the same. It’s sweet until you realize it’s not for you.

“Run... Run!” Phil took over the loudness.

Time closing the distance between the living and the dead, coming heavy on our side. A group led by the one grasping Asiana’s arm. I know it's her's because of the bracelet persisting absolutely on her wrist as though it's much stronger than her bones. Not too long before a huge grinning bite devours the whole, from hand to shoulder, in disgrace to a brother watching already close.

But other than a call of the void, I’m hearing Phil’s thought being careless of what he might be thinking of, “I think this is the time I should tell you--”

There’s the boom that jolted my nerves back alive, but the strike of the shot came out somewhere unforeseen to cause my body to remain standing with life, but not Phil— who left a short whiff of sigh before landing on the already disastrous ground. His cold eyes are still trying to catch the maroon syrup from the pulpy hole next to his brows, like his dream process of death with a tiny circular gap. A tactical vanishing, into suddenly.

“He’s not with us!” A familiar voice from afar, joined the bleed.

Soon, I’ll be too numb.