Shine On
Once there, he thought that perhaps he would be blinded by so much intense bright air. Everything was a blur of shining light. No shadows anywhere. He couldn’t see the water or the hills beyond the Reservoir or the road that topped the dam. All was lost to white.
It was in opposition to everything that had happened since Draynor had awoken. At that point black had been the color shaking every thought from his mind. Now, it was a stark naked white that glared into his brain and tore his eyes with a heat that seemed neither natural nor good.
But in time, the light looked as if it had dropped a few levels, and now he could see the lake and the mountains and the road curving along the dam.
And, he could see all the bodies.
The star of light, now contracted just slightly, was hovering above the Reservoir like The Star of David. It was a small sun, complete with swirling blues and dark yellows at its center, enough to blind anyone yet somehow mesmerizing and beautiful. And it was the body giving off such a static hum. Draynor thought it sounded as if a thousand televisions and thousand radios had all been left at full volume on stations of pure static. It broke one’s mind so that no thoughts could penetrate. No thoughts except for the most odd, startling ones.
And below that light and that static hum was the lake, looking more silvery and bright than ever before. But the water was displaced and disfigured by its contents: hundreds of thousands of dead and decaying bodies. Filling the Reservoir’s entire mass were bodies and bodies and bodies. All dead. All rotting under the persistent heat of that hovering star.
Draynor looked down the step hill, the backside of the dam, the path into the water, and should have been horrified.
But he was not.
Instead, he felt euphoria. Warmth. Smooth, straight, good feelings.
Draynor looked at the bodies below and felt that something here was immensely right. Correct.
The bodies look cuddled and strong. Like an army of silent, unmoving soldiers.
And he recognized some of them. He saw his neighbor from two doors down, the checkout girl from the supermarket, and a teacher he’d had at the community college. He saw a friend he knew from work, a girl he passed every Sunday on his walk around the park, and the guy from the gas station down the block.
And they were all limp with death, grinning huge, overbearing grins.
Step after step Draynor took the path down to the water. He stopped only when both feet were dipped up to each ankle in the bloodied lake.
He paused and smiled. He smiled up at the big, bright star and down at the corpses lying strewn about. He smiled inwardly at himself and thought of nothing but butterflies and summer days. The smell of fresh cut grass and a chlorined pool. Baking cookies and a beautiful woman’s perfumed hair.
He stepped into the water until it covered his head.
Draynor drowned himself in the murky water, underneath the abnormal and unnatural heat of the shining light.
And his body floated to the top of the water and bumped into the pile of useless flesh.
Just another body on the pyre.
The static hum continued and the light shone on.
Let it shine.
Let it shine.
Let it shine.