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—disseminating 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.”

I am still here.

Proud 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 overthrow 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 pieces crying with regret—“I must’ve ended it when I was whole.” No condolences for someone’s neck swimming in the drainage to never be unbreakable.

It pained them, and so did my soul.

Wet by the drops of their tears awaiting the peak of their time, they were trapped listening to their body being relished by one or many while tasting the torment of the voices’ plea, yelling no, requesting for the mind not to back down against the chews penetrating to the bones, left eaten incomplete, depreciated, 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, 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 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, all 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, creaking 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, engrossing with the right words to save at least this little human’s brain, “We’re not in a movie or games, those dead figures will eat your flesh, happily and irrevocably, that you’ll 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 the child won’t listen. I’m talking to a nine-year-old human who normally must be easily daunted even by tales undertoned by factual advice.

“But I’m scared, idiot! And you’re my only home ’cause mom’s far away from here. You hear that? I 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 cry, not to barricade her sight of me like I’ll illicitly disappear any minute.

A home, they say, is a refugee 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, buried underneath as no eyes can see. All 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 for an impact.

Cold, abstractly, the elevator doors finally outstretched. 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 a perfect timing overhead. Intrusion has never been kinder.

“That’s why... you can’t save me with your own, right?” It hadn’t ended yet, the drama of this kid twisting my dread to punish my gut in unwanted frustration. And I can do none 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 the dwarf-size umbrella on 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 when 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 fitness of landing down, equipping for an additional life to take and borrow. To must be completely returned.

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

“Traumatized. 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 keep 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 her safety not to die with me.

Sunken responsibility in my regards steady following her little feet as she headed on her way to a new expedition taken by chopper’s little wings, 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 preparing to take off for the main event to ensue. The little passenger lastly spun 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 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 beneath the safe selfless 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.

THIRD-PERSON

HOUR BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE

A dreary human living that one might call this 28-year-old man, treading his steps into the pool of luminous water scented by one's artificial heaven— defining a pool consisting of substances that allow any of his kind to fall into a vacuum of ecstasy up until how long they body wish, rested by its addicting poison of bliss for unfortunate minds in their way of conceding upon its activity on its life.

Here, he’s a new patient of Montorium who has cleared up to painlessly abandon his life as he seeks his perfect dream in this suicide place of Joas— must be known as a pre-medical student who lives his void of life and fills it by granting anyone enslaved within an outrageous living and vitality, to be pulled out of misery in the kindest, most beautiful treatment of medicinal help for grasping his faith in the idea that people’s suffering must end only of their own will, all to be drowned in a restful delight after an ultimate misery.

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

“Not really,” the patient 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 to a glass stair leading to the pool edge soaking in a shallow section.

“...Before being a criminal for killing 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 be.” the patient voiced out his affliction, staring on his unblinking reflection over the clarity of the tainted aqua defining his loss. Corrosive darkness exploded on the other side of the border, painting every wall with his dismay.

“Where’s Mother?” Joas once again questioned, grasping a sharp whiff of expectation audible beyond the device.

The patient carried a prolonged pause, before answering in a quivering whisper, “Nowhere, so I turn to be her forced replacement, died the moment she put me out of a hole. Never in my life I can forgive them” Another beat of pain pounded, delivered to one who listens, one to have them decide.

“You may die,” Joas announced as the ending play of a game of life.“...Sink... Freely... Drown with the antidote,” he remarked, seasoned with encouragement and heartily... dark.

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

“Your antidote.” Joas rephrased, resonantly.

Straightly as the patient dives down his whole being, to be slapping his body down the drench of drugged water 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 immersed by the relaxing insides of the water dissolving his sorrow and fatigue while he’s dancing his arms around the firmness of the liquid dream, flattering his feet to glide himself forward, deeper into the dark privilege that grants him unreal yet genuine happiness he gulped from the fluid of restful end. It should be enough, it should be gratifying.

Not long as his skin deflated with dead paleness like a raisin out of its prime, his unmoving body sailed upwards rotating naturally to the front, unfolding the valuable smile drawn on his face like a corpse that Joas always longed to become.

Hecor, the clinic's photographer, entered the white room to capture the new patient’s smile for the evidence of yet another freed soul leaving its bodily wretched life. The brightness of flash shutters onto the patient’s face after a single click of taking its dead clear eerie image to forever lie in his eyes to his heart. Followed by Phil, the Montorium’s mortician, walks in and does his job of carrying out the patient’s body down to a cremation room humming in a lazy whistle as a song of optimistic goodbye.

Hecor paced out of the room, to grab his flip-style phone vibrating inside his pocket before answering a call, “Cheska,” he greeted the other line.

“How is it going?” she replied.

“Nothing changed. Still waiting for your... understanding” he answered, shutting the pool area and beginning to march straight into the lobby with faces of nightmares he can’t wipe off— no matter if he's fully awake.

“We’re not coming back to assist 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 asks with his movement of switching the cling of his phone between his right ear and his shoulder, turning his visual attention to his device as he’s checking 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 him frantically space out.

“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 her head, “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 shoulder of disapproval yet could only shrug in the urge to protest. She’s smart, and she has heart, his borrowed knowledge has nothing to her half. The conversation just then intervened by a continuous chime in a ring of a desperate suicidal blaring out for their help.

“I’m guessing it’s younger than the rest” Phil jerked, interrupting 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's walk leads directly to the entrance, swinging the door open in prepared sympathy for a face he's about to see lastly— yet not expecting his eyes to widen in a salute of a little girl who’s too small, too innocent to be a patient who wants to die, and mostly just beginning her life. Appearing in a school uniform with a backpack and a rainbow-colored umbrella in her grip, Hecor ascertained it was 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, when Hecor on the other hand suppressed in panic where his eyes couldn’t even link in.

Instilling a contact to remain soft, “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 trying to explain the illegality of her presence, being proudly there.

Flashing the brightest shade of innocence in 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, hanging for its company.“...Idiot left this again on the couch. What a shame, I’m not even planning to get in there.” she added, extending a brow upwards 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 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 glory of her command, his right hand reaching a gentle tap on her head an apologetic affection.

“That bike?” Asiana points to the sidewalk where the lonely MTB is staying.

“Yeah,” Hecor shortly turns 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 crumpling around something on the ground, too thick to be seen what's being festered, but it's next to the bicycle's paddles. 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 finally caught the brother’s habitual seat on a stairway in a mindless frame of any existence lighting a cig, thereafter hitting a smoke that eventually made their eyes meet. Realizing Hecor lost the caution, he turns back to the kid even belatedly for the little’s stubbornness that was too strong to overcome; Asiana succeeded in her way fronting her idiot older brother.

“...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 in improper mockery, “You wanna try?” puffing out the smoke as he bluntly talks, much 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 spark out the brattiness on her soft eyebrows with no sign of being offended, she spat, “Ew, angels don't belong--”

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

Asiana seeks evidence of his assertions by roaming her unbothered eyes around the plain area, saying, “But, I can’t see anything wrong here. Other than you” She folded her arms, standing her little bossiness thinking it would shadow out her brother’s unnecessary offense.

“Get out.” Joas aborted holding back 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 bigger as it 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 to the quarrel by switching his side to their little opponent, he was about to hang the umbrella into a hook when Joas abruptly retracted its acceptance, grabbing it off back to his little sister’s hand.

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

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 of her loss. The cost is Asiana’s wild pitch screaming, a reviving tantrum over her unbothered brother who merely glares at her naughty determination.

“There were 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, instantly rushing her into the door with a squeal. Brother can only pause in the intent of eyeing the little child running away with his gaze smeared with blame, never good at consoling the stubborn as soon as she removes herself from their accountability, leaving them alone in the awkward shape of stillness but at least out of the innocent’s curiosity.

Ending the little trial has Joas comforted to eventually visit his private chamber serving like somewhere his favorite spot. With a sharp breath he boasts, a chair offers him a rest to stare equally sharp at seemingly none, in this moment of this meaningless defiance when he stretches his left leg into the bottom of a switch turning the main lights on, revealing a main view of the lit and the collection of his retention.

Sync to his respite, the illuminated room divulges a glass wall wholly shrouded by a malicious gallery of patients’ legacy in photograph form, bonded and displayed evenly at the very well edges composing each patient a pair of reminiscence: one shot dry, one shot drowned but finally smiling underneath the ecstatic little sea... gone only looking alive as a body of a man, an old lady, faces of disabilities, filling his sight a fruit faces of what he believes, is a ‘cure.’ Like a proud father to his only son, he admires their courage as much as the religious would detest.

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 shading a dark essence being a follower to his doom. Somebody meant it as he thought, but not the sensation on his nape rousing when one of the photographs is stolen by the swift air detached by the wind, hauling his attention into watching someone's little portrait dancing ghostly into the thin air slowly landing on the bottom, flipping in a swaying motion as if apologizing with cause untold.

To that, the blank space was left deserted on a see-through glass wall where a patient’s memorial used to lie within. It upsets him a little, but Joas immediately jested out of pause to bend down the floor in a prudent touch grabbing the image in fright of the slightest wrinkle to cause, he’s not disrespecting, he’s caring too much.

So steady as a painting, his eyes hoist to be fastening the image back into its designated little home with no time being wasted. His sight, however, decided to show him too much truth just by looking back at the wall; he’s engulfed by the sinister breeze deceitfully yanking his spirit apart from his body seeing the space— occupied, finally filled up. Something is looking nearer, granting through his blood pumping strongly through his disintegrating psyche by the shadow. 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 stuck gazing back at someone’s dolly eyes— teary but it’s dry, dilated for a heaving stare reflection of disorder to exist as many as a creation in a crazy time; flaky paperwhite skin is squash with dents of peeping varicose veins in the balance of its broad arthritic head facing his surprise— friendly closening to greet him a plastered spread of a sloppy smile in a highly-spirited curl of a stretchy emotive mouth, he can hear it squelching, its tongue moving. Only to this point, does he know he’s looking at an unliving body that seems never meant to die but live again always to a newer life, an unidentified totality of a mutated male human body knocking to reach his heart, brain, and smelly mind.

He doesn’t know how, he doesn’t know why, no one knows behind its sudden emergence to be seen happily peeking outside the transparent partition, mostly not on the exact space where the corpse’s photograph supposedly lies. Not the visitor he’s expecting to cause him a little older.

In relation maybe to this fear, the silence later bent 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. Holding his gaze not averting from this danger, his hands move swiftly into the nearest cupboard making a goal for a single syringe he kept inside as his sole defensive weapon. Panicking mixing screams of Phil and Hecor happened to pound the door at the same time when Joas slammed it open, rushing outside for a brotherly goal.

Fear caught 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 by its whimpers singing like a laughing goat, mindful of its own need, wailing monstrously, wailing with a desirous toothless grin. Hecor and Phil's throats intrinsically seal with terror before they shut the door, gasping for oxygen after the glimpse of someone they should've welcome before.

Ashen by dread, with the image of a horrific creature stuck in his head, “What’s that...” Hecor 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 in the night. His heels aren’t even touching the ground, Joas bustled in a different type of haste forgetting the earth’s existence where trouble had begun, roaming his petrified gazes over the crumpled pieces of the shrinking crowd and for the usefulness of the deserted bike in his front, he hopped on and paddled strongly as he rode past the left leg of nobody and squished the kneecap against the wheel— none of his concern.

Dread is progressively boosting in his wheels whirling rapidly and squeaking loudly, blending with the undead cruising in shadows of an uncountable replica of the first one he found, meant 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 by a pang of screaming regret but forced to be listening to a yell of a dying world and the topmost selfishness roaring loud, crying out loud but quickly silenced. Lives of some were being fought, some had run away yet unsure where to go, and most had just been paralyzed singing along to their scream with the sound of their body thoroughly chomped, forehead to toes, in their fighting soul with eyes closed but bodies openly skinned alive. 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 hole getting deeper. It was the area near and before the way into Asiana’s school as an exact possible place where she had probably stuck alone and fearful. Environment’s air swiped bitterly against his breathing as he clenched his teeth, clogged by fear and worriedness over the safeness of his young defenseless sister he had broken first without knowing. A brush of his palm rakes his face to wipe the drip of his desperateness ’cause still, he found nothing, but himself to be found by a horde of wandering smiles starving by the presence he unknowingly offered. Instinctively, he flared up racing to enter every corner of the greasy road where he’s sighting different faces of tragedy anywhere his taunted gaze would set off.

Joas resumed the rush for his final job, cycling harder past the pair of runners paving the way in a chase of his humanly tease, wildly, eagerly, religiously— reaching his arrogance while screeching the brutal irresistible expectancy. Still, keeping his eyes aware of seeking the kid he unintentionally strayed, harder beyond each passing moment folding up his fear of having endless reasons to have it, after everything he’d seen.

Then, amidst the eroding hopelessness of running, a familiar umbrella caught his wish and sight on a side of a driveway isolated, apparently aware of its function as a cover well sufficient as a child-friendly guard. Yet on the same border, the threat of remained strong in his way flying up to pursue any of them two, surely not an umbrella can be covered.

Turning around to their stun, he confronted the naughty pals with the body of the bicycle full of honor and simply burst the hunting faces off— smiles were flattened, blown off to the ground but not enough violent to take them back into their roots. He runs back away, mindful of its twin arising, moving so determined, growling on a sound penetrating dangerously in a subtle means of calling a better mate, not letting him pass this minute. Still, is a fair outcome for him.

Asiana remains in her terrified position like a frog but her eyes are overpowered by relief, hiding still under the vigilant canopy of her little umbrella hesitating to move. But in her innocent watch, the dead found her just as easily as how it was fueled to make its attack. And yet before her eyes make her move, a gasp busts her mouth the second her feet were harshly pulled up and suffered by being lifted upside down, having the tip of her head touching the ground and her face draining of one’s blood and driven worse by her impulsive crying made by the freak, not even her little brain can create.

Gaining two quandaries to battle death with; the frantic winning dead is now aiming to crunch his sister’s calves other than a threatening sight of an explosion in range nearby to end them both at once. Thereupon he flew up, composed with his hand that quickly slips into his pocket for the syringe of acidic poison he purposely reserved and mentally froze his blood; chances are spreading apart like experiments; his heartbeat strumming in his intention of taking his luck to throw it off like an arrow as he slowed down, estimating the needle in the gravity about to plunge the big smiling head he aimed to switch into cry.

But on negativity’s fond, it leaps over a misguided pattern as he forgot to sum— including the syringe vaulting down on its chest out of his aim to the lowest probability of beating. When in surprising positivity, it exploded nonetheless like a party balloon in contrast to what he predicted but surely is a god-blessed set. Bloody residues scattered all over the crying Asiana bathing her red pasta insides 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 when she was carried in his arms even Joas knew he wasn’t yet satisfied, so he turned around to see his job seemly 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 first streak’s price. There was 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 was empty and senseless.” Cheska’s explanation was barely understood due to the noise of wrecking that overlapped her voice sought by a loudspeaker. Joas, recalling how he killed the undead, theorizing 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 if not yet.” 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 black metal bracelet seems made mysteriously specialized by those red tiny dots of lights peeping within the layer. Vocalizing his suspicion, he asked, “Where’d you get that?” his eyes glued over.

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

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

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

JOAS

ONE HOUR AFTER THE FIRST WARNING

Another base why these creatures are worthy of silent adore; their holistic labor supplied with their brainless tolerance which 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 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— of wanting to be alive.

Speeding as a light, we pound off onto the upper floor 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, might normally ought. Natural phenomena it is, a farewell of the 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 Asiana was 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 the bottom in eyes blended with fear of being the first to lose in the early craze wave. We head off one by one with the help of a lower-level roof before fastly surrendering our feet over the window’s ending, diving down as we anchored to the ground soon to be a grassland of apocalyptic corpses.

The power of someone’s god magically 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 a cloud in the 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 are moving eyes hinting at lively hurtful smiles to be avoided or met. We haven’t seen one but cackling whimpers in a distance were caught. The priority now is to find any vehicle we could use to elude an alternative fate, but then, ultimately, we landed at the train stop filled with jumbled nothingness. Quite dangerous in comparison to my usual danger, the distance apart from the howls occurs to gradually turn 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. We stayed behind, followed by unconscious minds and eyes lazily reserved over the phone as the sole reliance anticipating the indication of success without 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. Despite the intellect’s occupation to one lone thing, our feet kept us moving incautiously cautious.

My recognition, fortunately, was merely instigated by a noise unleashed from my very back where something dives down to disturb not meaninglessly. My nose demanded 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 scream thundered through my chest in the sharpest beat. “...Cheska, pick up! please! Pick it up!” Then, further terrorized by fear we realize where our feet unknowingly shepherd us into a position— for ourselves to be found mindlessly in the middle of a functioning railroad carrying the rest 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 holding the awareness of stupidity, leaving a pathway for the train to cross and for us to refrain from the inanity.

Passing transportation, watching it cross is an ordinary train at first. But, gazing at this disaster, the outstanding matter on its roof possessed my understanding with the dark smoke foregrounding my thought that made my feet balk off the ground, eyeing a train, eyeing a horror, eyeing an eye roundly awakened on a decapitated head sitting over its disturbing spacious roof I knew I should follow.

A head of a human; specifically, a human’s sliced head at a little face of age that failed to escape the afterlife in a hurry. Dark overfilling blood defined around the eye sockets as it was standing by its sloppily slashed neck where death mercilessly took the unrealistically fleeting span of a little’s beginning life, of my Asiana. One eye is closed but doesn’t make a difference, but is meant to be recognized more.

Now, I’m running for another unchanging time.

Sorrowful icy humid commanding time to cease my grief with my moistened eyes moving along the traumatizing imagery, 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.

How can those little eyes be clouded with a harmless desire linking over my wide sore gaze, slowly drifting farther along the fastly disappearing train within the path, leaving everything but the perpetual dread? My fellows must’ve already witnessed the detectable grief seething on their side as they’re now chasing their friend 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.

My fear, elongated with my worse fear of another disease I’m bound to degenerate with. A soul who died in pure mistake is my sister, who wanted nothing but long to feel the care of a brother wanting nothing but his own business and suicide. For I was yet another ignorant, one of the world’s crud in a mass of a human collection of nuisance, a cause of harsh, never owns a cure.

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 drops a while ago behind; too late to save by the flock of molesters a foot away to where I run from, clutching out her limbs off her thin shoulder detached with her back remaining to keep her red starry bag she’ll always own. Her body, in extra torture, was left dismembered in different spots away, bristled— skewering tragedy down to my future, and to the next life I’ll biologically abhor.

Oh, it saw us now. The hungry reveler and its hungrier friends, bragging hellish eyes glimmered with an urge by looming growl in the name of bacterial dominance. But 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 timeless escape.

“Please, let’s run!” 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.

Villainous time closing the distance between the living and the dead, coming heavy on our side led by the grasper of Asiana’s teared-up arm, earning my chance to notice the bracelet persisting absolutely on her wrist much stronger than her bones. All is well getting munched, later a huge grinning bite has it devoured in disgrace to a brother watching.

Other than a call of the void, I’m hearing someone’s call being careless of what he wished for, “I would rather eat bullet--”

Wild is a boom that jolts my nerves back alive, but the strike of the shot came out somewhere unforeseen to cause my body to remain standing with life, not Phil who stoops down while landing for his thoughtless eyes to catch the maroon syrup exuding a thin line from the pulpy hole next to the bridge his nose, an alley of bullet that his brain embraced to grant his dream process of death in the tactical vanishing, into suddenly.

“He’s a traitor!” a familiar voice joined the bleed.

I might breathe to hear the story.