Shine On
When he came to, Draynor’s head hurt incredibly and there was sticky, dried blood matting his hair and darkening on the sidewalk.
He was stuck for anything.
Looking up from his prone position on the ground, Draynor saw that this was nothing imagined, every window and every door was covered in solid, hideous black, the sky looked cold but the air was hot, the sun and the moon were both out at once, and even though they both looked lighted, the sky was stormy darkness.
A short block away and Draynor was on the corner of Livington and Moss, a relatively major intersection of the city. And how odd it was to see not a single car, and not a single person.
The thoughts started to roll now: Why was he the only one out of his home? Hadn’t anyone else thought to break out? Hadn’t anyone else managed some type of escape? What would he do? Where would he go? What was going to happen?
The answers, even if they had come, would have been pointless. A single man, scared and confused, could do nothing except follow instincts and try to keep moving.
So he did.
He walked out towards the small chain of stores out on the north side of Livington, then he walked back towards Moss, checking all of the windows and door as he went.
And all were total, impenetrable darkness.
At one point, passing a low, half-window of a basement apartment Draynor swore that he heard the screaming of a man. So he paused, and bent down to the black, and listened.
There was screaming. Horrible, heart shifting, panicked screaming. Screeching. Crying. Bellowing. Sobbing. Mindless.
And it took over Draynor. Until now he had been avoiding the black covers, not wanted to feel the coldness and evil that pulsed through those seamed oddities. But hearing the pain of someone else, especially after seeing the streets so empty and deserted, Draynor could do nothing to stop himself.
He sank into the cold lawn at the foot of the window and began tearing at the blackness, making no more dent on the outside than he did on the inside of his own. Instead of shredding the black lid he was shredding his own fingernails. With every scrape he tore off more nail from each finger, until it was down to skin and he was leaving smears of blood all over the dark canvas. Draynor felt nothing but a need to find someone. To help. To stop this from being his burden alone.
Alone.
Eventually the screaming stopped, fading away gradually into quiet darkness. But replacing it in furious intensity was the screaming of Draynor, his own braying at the moon.
But Draynor didn’t notice that the screaming from inside had stopped. Silence. His fingers were chewed and bloody and sweat was streaming down his face mingling with rushing tears.
His own mumbled screams had overtaken the rescue effort. It was more about his own hopelessness than anything else.
Ear to the dark, cold, covering Draynor heard nothing more from beyond the black wall. It was stillness alone. And he looked down at his hands as the pain began to register. The fingers were nearly numb and the blood was beginning to clot both on his fingertips and on the back of his head.
The wheezing, scratchy throat he heard was his own. He groaned to clear it, but found his voice was gone, replaced by eerie attempts at speech.
On his knees, legs bent underneath him in the posture of child, Draynor felt utterly lost and alone. Questions rattled in his head amongst the static hum of the air.
The first questions were obvious and received no legitimate answer.
What was going on? What were these coverings on every orifice of every house? Who had done it? What had done it? How had it been done at all? What had happened to people who were on the street at the time of the lock-in? What about the sky, and the air, and the heat and the cold and the windless feeling but the rushing clouds?
What was happening?
But the questions that truly bore into his head were these:
Why was he out and no one else was? Was he somehow special in all this? Was he somehow different? How is it all related to his life, to him?
No answers.
No answers.
Imperceptibly, Draynor noticed what looked like a rising sun breaking the distance of the peaked roofs to the west. He turned his head and gazed, muted, at the bright light starring the surface of his vision.
But the light was not growing as if with a movable earth. It was stationary and brilliant.
And Draynor was drawn to it like a moth to the mirage of soapy water.