The air stunk like smoke and ozone. The shouts of the man with teeth like shattered glass seemed to fade faster than seemed possible.
‘Luis! Luis! Luis!’
And Job had a sensation of a warping, a distorting. Like viewing the sandy floor through water, all refracting, reaching your arm in and seeing it suddenly stretch. Himself, too, having a sensation like drowning, swimming, or passing through a great wall of water. Feeling the air rush aside and away, like all the world outside was being flooded. A great plug, somewhere, pulled, dragging all the water down into the depths and taking all the debris with it.
So suddenly he was flung on the other side, a new air filling his lungs, fluttering around him, and new lights, strange and ominous and orange down the corridor, warbling and moving. It all stunk like smoke and ozone. He felt the movement of gases, thin fingers trailing from himself, the floors, the walls.
Heat, burning heat. Ovenlike, caught in the walls and melting in, though air conditioners were howling mournfully. He passed by vents, felt the wet cool air over him and, the second he went onwards, it was that consuming, engulfing heat again.
Slowing down, now, stepping careful around the corner. And the orange light, seeming to rumble, moving slightly so it almost seemed sentient. Clogging up the faces of a line of windows, slithering out not so much in rays but in clouds. The thrumming, rattling of overworked air conditioners. A far away tapping of feet. And a distant flickering of fires.
It was sun heat. The King Sun. Whose Fires Are Smokeless. There was no other heat that felt so distinctly like it. A certain way in how it rolled over your skin, or the smell it made, sweaty and dusty. Photons scraping, all the junk and debris they’d brushed over in their great trip battering into you.
Job paused, gazed out the windows. He stood there, silent. Deja vu.
So the orange skyline was filled with great trails of smoke. Some, fat and black and rotund, swirling wide and dispersing far away. And some, white and thin and straight. Dark shapes piloted them, darting directly upwards into the sky. To Mars.
Long shadows were cast in that burning orange skyline. The trees were hunched and dried, creaking. Tearing gusts of wind ripped dead leaves from their branches and flung them, brutally, to the ground. The long forests were all orange and brown and yellow, melting together, the heavy shadows outlining it all. Job saw the frantic forms of infrastructure drones, spraying foamy streams of water.
Above it all the King Sun pulsated. A gleaming, burning, yawning halo in the horizon. The sky was all scorched out, stuffed. Like a maw, heavenly light, white at its centre, yellow, then all that orange. There it was. There it floated. Raging. There came the end of the world.
Onwards Job walked. He was in a strange, dreamlike mood. Once more, he felt an atomic thinness. Felt the quivering of molecules. Felt all the pasteboard masks that made up the universe were thin, in this place. That he was breaking through, would take one wrong step and break a hole in it and see the things on the other side.
In the next corridor was a corpse. Face first, the life simply dredged out of them, and they dropped, untouched, to the floor. Job knew he was dead the second he saw him. He recalled it, yes: ‘Yes, he’s dead. He’s been dead for a while.’
He tapped his back anyways, muttered to him:
‘Hey. Hey. Hey?’
He felt for a pulse, turned him around, carefully. Terror. Wretched terror scrawled on his face, carved in. Eyes wide and bloodshot. Mouth wide open. Ghastly. Screeching upwards at the ceiling. He looked like he should have been screaming, even then.
What was there to do? Who could he tell? It was all shattered apart. Fragmentary shards, and Job, too, was a fragmentary shard, swishing through a great confused field of broken things. Where was he? What was this?
They seemed to be sprouting like crops, in the next few rooms. More air conditioners rumbled. A single light flickered in its socket, fizzling to itself. There they all lay, four more, face first, or backwards. All fallen. All untouched.
Job felt a pressure on him. The shifting of air currents from far away. A creaking, cracking, a groaning, the building tearing itself inside out. He turned around, looked down the hallway he had just come. The orange light dimmed, slowly.
He ran.
The creaking, the cracking. And the stinks of smoke and ozone. Great clattering roaring footsteps behind him. The colours were hypnotising Job, like gazing at a cuttlefish’s skin. Deep black shadows criss-crossing the fiery dark orange, all sliding by and shifting on its own whims.
‘THROUGH NO FAULT OF YOUR OWN,’ sung a voice from between the air, a staccato sound, like bricks shifting in darkness.
‘YOUR SOUL HAS BECOME FORFEIT.’
The stomping footsteps, crashing, howling, roaring, tiny thunderstorms.
‘IT’S OKAY TO BE SCARED.’
The footsteps stopped. Another great shadow spread over the orange light around the corner. So Job froze, like a scared animal, blankly, dreamily watched a great hand slap into the ground. Then, still frozen, watched it reveal, finally, a great head. It filled the entire hallway. Truck-sized. A single eye was big enough to encompass all of Job. A normal, nobody’s face. With thin hair and white smooth skin. A round nose. A faint smile, slightly cracked lips. Teeth the size of Job’s torso. It was like a close up photograph. There was no way at all that it could have fit inside the spear launcher facilities.
Job fled.
Hot wind swirled and flew and he heard metal crunching and slamming as the thing reached in, batted at him, pressing that huge face, truck-sized, against the walls. The building screaming and bending, roaring in agony. Nothing was breaking, of course. Nothing was bending. Structurally speaking, it was as untouched as the day it was built.
So Job turned corners, swung down corridors that seemed to curve into themselves, bent and warped, arbitrarily moving, the nonsense movements of a worm.
He passed a room with wide doors, heavy and locked, and bars in their windows. And when he looked in, he saw, flinging odd shapes and shadows, toying with the deep lights, the launch controls. Slabby computers. Gaping vents. Lights blinking, illumining a dial, or a button. Clustered in all the mess, in a clump of shadows, gathering like liquid, he saw the engineers. Bent over, and swinging slowly, clasping their hands. Some, weeping. He saw the tears glistening in the strange light. He heard the singing, that gibberish speak, from beneath the door.
In their centre, Job saw that form, vaguely humanoid, glistening blackness. Blacker than black. Like how, when viewing a colour unable to be processed, the human mind perceives magenta, Job saw an emptiness, there, in the shape of a man. He stood over them as a monarch, or a priest. And Job saw Eveline Turn, too. She was weeping, too.
Around the corner came that crashing and grinding and Job continued to run. Job saw those shadows swinging beneath him, creeping closer. Saw the great log-thick shapes of those pumping arms, and the round shadow of that head.
Job, madly, desperately, hot blood and adrenaline cycling wildly through his head and body, spun around and CRACK CRACK tunnelled thick holes into the thing’s forehead, its elbow. But it kept crawling. And he blinked and looked again and those hadn’t ever been there in the first place.
‘Luis.’
And the corridor stretched and sprawled, with uncanny curves, sides flowing almost like liquid, now, and he kept running. He was dying. He was dying and he was dead. He took long, shaky steps. His body was coming apart.
‘Luis.’
There he was, like he had been in life. Like he had been in the good old days. He did not run alongside Job but, rather, seemed impressed on his vision. So he would look up and be gazing at his round face, faintly frowning, mouth puckered. The fat brown hair, that unwashed barely-an-adult look.
‘How could you forget it, Luis?’
‘I’m not Luis,’ Job breathed.
‘Job, sorry. The thing in your pocket. How could you forget about it?’ And that head tilt. And his lips sliding apart, slightly. Teeth, shattered like glass. ‘Christ, Job, you’re thick.’
He was right, of course. And Job felt, in his pocket–his pocket?–that slab of bark. A cross carved into it, yes. Like the story about Stingy Jack, who trapped the Devil up a tree. And all the crucifixes hanging off himself, dangling, some around his neck, or wobbling on chains out his pockets. Every one he could scrounge, every one he could buy.
So he stopped. Halted entirely, every limb, stuck to one another. He gazed, shocked, for a moment, down the hall. The feel of the bark in his hand came back to him. Its crevices, the grain, the edges of the wood. It was comfortable to hold. An old friend.
He spun around as all the walls shrieked and crashed and watched that great dragging arm, that colossal pale face, chin and forehead scraping against the floor and ceiling, skin stretching, rounding down towards him.
‘LUIS. LUIS.’
He held the bark up. It stopped, immediately. Face still blank, but frozen. Arm unmoving. Fingers clasping themselves. Job jabbed the bark at it, and, with a great moaning, groaning of metal, it backed away. Face blank. Mouth in that faint smile, Mona Lisa-like.
‘LUIS…’ said the thing.
And was cut off by the tunnelgun. Cracking like thunder, heat blooming in that already hot room, breaking the thing apart like soap bubbles, a liquid dispersing. Spurting stinks of brimstone and boiling blood, though it was bloodless, whatever it was, smooth flesh in and out, tearing apart like fabric. It was not dead, of course. Job knew that. The pressure still thrummed. Its face, ripped into pieces, remained blank.
And Job fled. The crosses on him rattled. He felt movement in his teeth, inertia in them, building up. He clutched the bark. Skin. Skin was all over him. Warm and soft, and the heat quivering over it. Tiny hairs about. He felt clumped up, but familiar. In something–piloting something–he had not been in for very long. It was not his.
The shadows tightened and curled, and slipped steadily closer to Job, choking out the lights. And soon Job was a single flailing figure in a great empty chasm.
And there was the Devil. That hole in the world, bereft of all wholesome things, in the shape of a man.
He clutched the bark hard as he could. And clenched his teeth. An exertion encircled him, crushing pressure, everywhere. His teeth rumbled and shook. It moved through him, small and sentient, like a weasel or a rat, rifling around inside him. But it found nothing in there.
So there was a sudden gushing of air, a swipe, like fingers snapping. His hand fell off, clutching the bark. Job felt numb. Even as he saw the warm blood leaking, felt it dribbling over his skin, vivid, languid. The crosses all tingled and rattled and fell off, clinking to the floor, suddenly eaten by the darkness.
And Job was lifted, by his neck, into the air. The hand felt like wet concrete, cool gravestone, something old and hard and faintly moist, untouched by light or wind in very long. He dangled. Gurgled. Felt unbelievably heavy. He heard it scratching against–metal. The metal of his neck. Metal skin, metal chassis. And no blood, but sparks, electrons, circuitry.
And you, again? Once more?
Job did not hear the voice but, rather, was aware of it. He pieced language, connected phrases together from the noises around–his own gurgling, the creaking, rattling, the air conditioners humming. The noise of his own metal skin bending.
And still… you don’t have it. Where’d you leave it?
So there was a silence, and Job felt all the blackness, all around him, staring at him at once.
No, no. You’re not Luis at all, are you?
Job gurgled.
What are you even doing here? In the blackness, he saw that figure’s head bending side to side. Shaking. Goodness.
He flung Job and all that atomic wind zoomed by, the molecules bumping, the watery wall splitting worlds apart, and Job felt, again, the scraping edges of those pasteboards behind the universe.
And when he landed, there was no stink of smoke or ozone. Cool dark air, smelling like dry leaves and dirt. And the light around the corner was dull, whitish, vaguely yellow. It ran down in rays. Job groaned.
Everywhere ached. His chest, caved inwards. His neck. His legs. His left arm, bereft of a hand, quietly, mournfully sparking.
‘Do you remember it, Luis?’
The man with teeth like shattered glass’ voice rang down the halls, into the room. Job felt like he was tied down. If he moved, he was sure his entire body would separate and fall apart, like a doll.
‘All those crosses hanging all over? The one on your forearm?’ the man with teeth like shattered glass came with great halting stomps. Job saw his shadow, then, wavering through the door.
‘You were the only smart one. Those idiots.’ The man with teeth like shattered glass slumped into the doorframe. Crumbling in on himself. Human soul, dripping from him. Stinking like a morning rainfall.
‘But you couldn’t protect the teeth, could you?’
He held out an arm, placed it on the doorframe, leant. His other arm hung limply on a shred of skin. It sparked. Glistening black liquid seeped over it.
‘Cause I remember, Luis. When he took our soul and it broke out right through our clenched teeth. Hurt like shit. And all the shards flew around like broke glass and fell all bloody onto the floor.’ He grinned. Job saw his teeth glimmer. ‘I still escaped. He didn’t get me. He’ll never get me. But you–you didn’t, huh?’
‘I’m Job,’ Job croaked. Swung aside, feeling everything flow away from him.
‘Sure thing,’ said the man with teeth like shattered glass. Shaking steadily side to side like a tree forced in a breeze, he stepped closer. Job watched, blankly.
The shadows were gathering.
He stomped, deliberately loud, for the effect. When he grinned his teeth glimmered under a light of their own. Like a silvery crescent moon, in those shadows, and the glistening dark mess seeping from his holes.
All the darkness clumped slowly into itself. Pooling like rainwater, quietly hissing.
The man with teeth like shattered glass stopped. Swaying, still smiling.
Luis… said the wind outside, said the rustling leaves, said the quiet indoor creakings of the building. And, once more, there stood the Devil, emptiness carved out in human shape.
There you are.
The man with teeth like shattered glass moved instantly. In a second, he had the bark out, backing steadily away. He was grinning no longer. Job couldn’t see his eyes, but he knew he was glaring at him. There was a sensation, in there, of a lack of air. Like being atop a mountain, or in an aeroplane. The Devil was still. Glaring. And the man with teeth like shattered glass, silent, holding his lips shut, backing, steadily, away.
‘You son of a bitch,’ he hissed, voice quavering. ‘You goddamn bastard. Luis!’
He lunged, suddenly, with the bark. The shadows quivered, slipped around, snakelike.
BANG
The bark exploded out of the man’s hands. Chunks flew. A cloud of dust twirled around his hands. Everyone was quiet and frozen. The bullet ricocheted, somewhere deeper in the building.
Just as quick, the shadows descended on him, flooding like water.
Job was in an abyss, once more.
Well, this has been a pain in the ass. Nevertheless: it’s been good doing business, you two.
Job opened his eyes to Eveline Turn standing over the sparking, melting mass that had been the man with teeth like shattered glass.
She was old, now. Battered and wrinkled. Thinned over time, hair stringy and faded, eyes vague. A narrow nose and a deep frown. The pistol looked far too large for her hand. She might have been made from sticks and elastic bands. She was on the verge of crumbling into dust. She was all familiar to Job, like an old photograph left in water, crumpled up.
‘What just happened?’ she asked.
Job shrugged.
‘Do you have any spare hands around?’ he asked.
Eveline Turn shrugged.
What was there to be said about Chief Engineer Eveline Turn?
She had done a lot. She had saved Earth, and presumably the Solar System, for one, from an apocalypse. She had also sacrificed a whole lot of innocent souls to Hell. She paid Job–rather, she paid Luis— well, Job recalled vaguely. He supposed, too, that she was technically responsible for his death.
Well. So it went.
Job did not hate her. He could not look at her in any way other than as an unfamiliar old woman, lost in the woods, clutching a gun, clutching a few final years. It was difficult to see murder on her. Cowardice, maybe.
‘Are you okay, all alone up here?’ he had asked, after a while.
‘I’ll be dead up here soon,’ she replied, glum and certain.
Job leant back against the wall and frowned at the ceiling. ‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘I’ll be fine. I’m meant to die up here.’
So she walked right back out, right back to her shack. When Job dragged himself out, finally, to walk back along the trail, he watched her shack once more. Rustling leaves brushing it. Tilting, sloughing down, ready to fall at any moment. It was clutching, though. Grasping at itself, all tiny hands holding on until their own wrists snapped, finally.
The leaves were plucking at the deep red rays of sunlight shivering through them. So set the sun. The clouds were pink. You could see all their rollings and crevices, their little ponds of empty sky, burbling fields, looking like a great upside down desert. All glowing orange and pink and purple but for the spear, still a black dot, glaring. He staggered, agonisingly, to the train station.
As he waited for the Halfways Company train to Mars to arrive, he tried thinking of a good eulogy for Earth. Witch-cursed earth, grasping at the air, even as the grave dirt piled around it. Grandmother Earth, who birthed and coddled humanity, rotting away and forgotten by the rest of the solar system.
All he could think of was this:
‘See you again.’
Meat Girls Dot Org 