White and Other Tales of Ruin

The front end of the huge ship ploughed into the crowd, flames spreading like ripples on a sun-bleached pond. I thought I saw the girl again, wandering unconcerned through a meadow -

The window flipped back to black.

“Daddy,” Laura said, but then we were blinded with light, the sun shining off fields of ice and snow, huge wooden houses and hotels like boils on the mountainside, the faint black lines of ski lifts heading towards the summits, tiny black dots zigging and zagging down towards an evening’s rest and chat and drinking. And then the cloud of white behind then, following slowly at first but gathering momentum, sweeping the skiers down at two hundred miles per hour and crushing them into red splashes, crashing through buildings, burying everything, everything, and walking across the snows in the foreground without a care in the world was the little girl, and -

There’s always a survivor, someone said -

The scene changed instantly from one of light to dark, the sea at night. A huge swell moved mountains of water, and there were dozens of little boats out there, each of them crowded with thirty or forty men. In the distance oil burned on the water’s surface, but none of the men looked that way. They were staring looking at something else, a black shiny-skinned monster gliding through the swell, and then it coughed out fire and one of the boats exploded into splinters of wood and bone. Men screamed, gargled as they drowned, and the cannon fired again, wrecking another boat. There were men on the deck with machine guns, laughing as they shot the survivors in the water, one of them aiming for hands and shoulders so that the victim would be unable to swim, drowning slowly. The gun fired again, again, and each time a boat came apart, spilling men whole and in pieces into the sea for the bullets or the cold or the sharks to finish off.

The girl bobbed gently in the foreground, watching us. Her dress had spread out around her and she looked like a huge jelly-fish. Bullets splashed and I wanted to shout a warning, but somehow I knew it wasn’t required.

There’s always a survivor, the voice said again, and another nightmare scene manifested, and another, and another. Soon they were racing by like the frames of a film, indistinguishable singly but making up a moving image of pain, suffering and death as I had never before imagined possible, and -

There’s always a survivor.

Chele dropped down from a hatch in the ceiling. I could barely hold on, Laura was pressed back into the stinking, crackling remains of the corpse in the seat, but Chele seemed unconcerned at the acceleration. Her eyes had gone, and out of their sockets protruded thin, weak antennae. Her face was darkened around the eyes and nose where heavy bruises were forming, and along her hairline knobs were pushing through the skin, looking for all the world like horns forcing their way from her skull. One of them split the skin as she approached and she tilted her head as the antennae came through, perhaps picking up on some distant demonic discussion.

She reached for Laura.

I tried to lean forward but the motion of the coach pushed me back, pressed my loose skin and flesh against my bones until I thought that I’d be ripped away from my skeleton.

“Dad!” Laura hissed as Chele’s hand closed around the back of her neck. “Dad, thanks for coming for me. I love you Dad … thanks …”

I didn’t come for you, it was for me, I thought, but I wasn’t about to say it even if I could.

Chele’s hands were blackened, the solid armour of the demons, and her nails had grown long and taken on a metallic tint.

The coach accelerated some more and from the window I could see the hazy image of the little girl.

… always a survivor …

My vision darkened and senses receded. I saw Chele open her mouth to laugh as her other hand swung around, sharpened nails aiming for Laura’s exposed throat, and then I could see nothing.

I heard laughter. Chele’s cruel laughter punctuated by the clicks and clacks of her throat hardening and closing in, allowing her no more say in the matter of her fate than, in truth, any of us have.

When I awoke there was a dog licking my face.

I was lying in a gutter. A few people must have passed me by because there was money scattered by my feet. I sat up slowly, looked down at myself, checked for broken bones, finding an ache or cut on every square inch of skin I touched. I could hardly blame them for not stopping to help, because I should be dead. Little did they know I’d just been through Hell.

I recognised the street. I was lying on cobbles, I could smell Chinese food and as I sat there rubbing my head, the mutt still trying to lick my hand, two drunks burst from a door behind me and staggered along the pavement. They threw some slurred abuse my way but they were too pissed to do anything other than talk.

Laura.