Atonality Symphony Cells No. 908
The sudden mist and the cold that settled outside the car was unnerving. Skies close to grey, a green, and a blue. Sickening colour.
Barely nothing on the road, but they had seen the coast earlier. The highway’s guardrails and the misty sea. Nothing was out here for miles.
“Can you look out for any signs that we’ve arrived for me?” Charlotte was given a hum as a reply. “I’ll focus on the road, you, on the signs—”
“We just passed it.” Marion interrupted.
“....I don’t believe you.” Charlotte says after a while.
Marion tries to hide back a smile, to which his sister catches in time.
“You little bastar–” Charlotte pinches her brother by his waist, to which he screams and laughs loudly to.
“Stop—STOP! You’re gonna crash us!” Marion yells through laughter.
“I’ll crash us! I swear to God, I will, if you keep being a little prick!”
“Okay! Okay—! There! Stop!” With such short-notice, Charlotte takes her hand off her brother and immediately pulls the car over.
The rough and sudden movement of the car stopping made the sibling’s breaths hitch. There was only silence and their hearts beating fast and thumping loudly in their ears.
THUMP.
THUMP.
THUMP.
THUMP.
THUMP.
“Was that–”
“Y-yeah, I think so. That was the—the sign.” Marion replies, nodding his head, whilst thickly swallowing back a breath.
Charlotte unfastens her seatbelt and hops out of the car to look at the town’s welcome sign.
There it was, in all its glory.
Rust and moist decorates the sign. The white paint started to slowly chip off. Vines and dead plants made a mess beneath from where it stood. To the right, the side of the highway, it greets.
To the left, the dark beach that rumbled with rocks and reefs. The sand, just by its unwelcoming ocean mother, one glance was all it took and you know that it was cold.
All cold.
WELCOME TO PELICAN TOWN
POPULATION: 204
The mist that surrounds it. The cold, grey ambience.
The sounds of the sea crashing on the rocks and sand. The whispers in the wind, made by the forest on the other side of the highway, the trees, their leaves scratching and groaning.
Pelican Town did not seem welcoming at all.
“There’s still two miles left till we hit the town.” Marion rubs his nose from the cold.
“How did you even see that with all this fog?” Charlotte asked, indicating the sign. “I know I wouldn’t have seen it.”
Marion shrugs, “Maybe I just have better eyesight.”
“Maybe I’m just about to hit you right now, how about that?” Charlotte counters.
“You’re going to jail.” Her brother retorted, his focus away from the eerily-depressing sign.
“And you’re going back to the car. Now.” Charlotte lightly pushes Marion on the back.
The siblings, wary and hesitant. They carry out their plan.
They have nothing to lose anymore, was what they thought.
And when the town was in their sights, the streets beneath their wheels, the houses passing by their windows, Charlotte felt a chill crawl down her spine.
This evil chill.
Its legs are long like a spider’s.
Its demonic caresses kisses her back with its fingertips.
Marion must have felt it too.
He has to.
He had to know.
“Where is everyone?” Charlotte cranes her neck to look for signs of life.
The street was dead, and the world was a greyish-blue.
Barren of anyone awake and walking amongst the streets.
“Mjoarken Road, right?” Marion opens his window, sticking his neck out to look for any street signs that would take them to their new home.
And before the older sister could speak, Marion’s head was gone.
His body crumbles into shapes.
His blood, upside-down.
His fingernails blossom into a sickly green grass.
His organs, a triangle, upside-down, now then, a cube, and back to squirming.
A vast and noisy conversation clashes like thunder and screams.
The screams were similar to a cube, and then to a triangle.
Charlotte screamed.
And oh, how she screamed into the chorus of horror.
And as God watched the choir, the Earth rots into cancerous water; and She decays.
Life rings and vibrates.
It chimes like a bell.
Worship! Worship! Praise!
Colours made out of triangles and cubes.
Stars and pentagons.
Hexagons and circles.
And Awake!
Wake up, Charlotte.
Tell her.
