Part of the Mantle Continuity. 

Tags - Horror, Psychological, Sci-Fi. Post-Apocalyptic, Cyberpunk, Gore, Traumatising Content.

----

To Constantine, the most amazing thing in the world was to see something artificial imitate life.

Streaks of ashen gloss covered the room, gently pulsing and slowly expanding. The heavily manufactured scent of alcohol lingered in the air, emanating from the sterile puddles of slick white. In the corners of the room where the goo congealed, blank, white pillars slowly climbed towards the roof like odd rounded stalagmites. One of these pillars was especially tall, barely touching the roof, with branches splitting off from the main pillar, an imitation of a tree that looked as if it had been sculpted by clay. 

“Rapid growth, from a single droplet. Troubling, intriguing, promising. Two weeks of progress, 37 percent conversion. Subliminal communication is apparent, judging by the shape of the formations.”

He squatted beside the puddle, bespectacled eyes peering through a lensed scope at the chalky pools. An extra set of latex gloves dangled out of his coat, matching the pair he was wearing.

“Shall I torch this place before it reaches stage three classification?”

A hooded woman stood beside him, clutching a skeletal, metallic armament, liquid sloshing around in a canister attached to the base. A thin fleshy tail snaked out from the bottom of her coat, looking as if it had been stolen from another animal.

“I may want to keep observing this location in future, but I cannot let the Sightless spread any closer to the towns. Once it reaches 50 percent, we’ll burn this place down. Conducting experiments without carefully controlling all the variables… that would be poor scientific practice.”

He stood up, flattening the scope into a single thin tube before slotting it back into the pocket of his patchwork lab-coat.

Constantine looked back towards the experiment. He’d have to check the door later; make sure that it was sealed when they leave. It was an action that he forced himself to do consciously; passiveness leads to forgetfulness. Forgetfulness leads to mistakes.

He knew that it was a risk, a taboo working with the white plague. The rumours that circulated about him, the dangers of conducting it here of all places…

He could be subsumed. She could be subsumed. Nobody would ever realise until it would be too late for them and everyone in the town. One touch of the pillar, unprotected: that’s all it would take. Another town wiped off of the maps in the Quarantined Districts.

Still; it was a necessary risk. A risk that brings a queer, curving smile to his face.

Later, he’d return to his humble homestead alongside his assistant, everyone none the wiser.

“Montreal, let’s go. Seal the door behind us like usual.”

Like usual, she obliged with a curt nod. Several blonde hairs, speckled with streaks of silver-white, fell from her hooded forehead, fluttering down before landing unceremoniously amongst the dust on the floor.

The lingering scent of alcohol followed them as they left the ramshackle, white-covered room. A cologne proclaiming his profession as a syologist to the world. 

Constantine brought a hand up to his eyes, shielding them from the sun’s disapproving glare as the pair walked away from the re-sealed room,

For a moment, he swore he could see vague humanoid outlines in the edges of his vision before his eyes adjusted to the midsummer’s glow.

Before him again, was the familiar streaks of abandoned buildings and offices that littered the edges of the Exclusion Zone, hospitable only to the deranged and the inhuman. Broken windows, smashed doors, looted long ago. Tempting for those who didn’t have anywhere to stay during the night, but risky.

He scratched the pale, thin layer of scales that speckled his right arm. Being changed was an inevitability, but you’d be a fool, or desperate to risk staying this close to the main source of all the mutagen in the city. Of course, in the science of life there was always an outlier – the brave.

Figures moved in the corner of his vision again. Constantine hopped backwards, turning his head to his companion.

“Montreal, I think we’re-“

A pair of thick arms wrapped themselves around his mouth, smothering him with a soaked cloth.

His eyes fluttered and soon, he was unconscious.

He came to tied to a chair that had been hastily nailed to the ground. Once again, the pervasive scent of alcohol penetrated into his nose; still irritated from harsh application of chloroform.

Three figures stood before him, blurred and deformed from the lingering intoxication. Maroon and black costumes decorated their bodies like the bloodied skins of dead men, hiding their features.

“You’ve been poking your head into places you shouldn’t have, Doctor.”

Constantine’s head swayed, struggling to look around. Where… where was she?

He blinked and he blinked, yet he couldn’t seem to clear away the haze before his eyes. To his right, another blurry figure in grey and black, looking like another pillar amidst the white forest.

His eyes snapped open. White… forest.

“Finally awake, are we?” sneered the leftmost creature, a strange warbling screech that welled tears in the corner of his eyes.

Constantine struggled within his bindings, looking back and forth amidst the chair he was confined to. A white gloss pooled around the legs of the chair, ever-so-slowly climbing the rotten wood towards the seat.

“Wouldn’t want to struggle much, syologist.” said the rightmost monster, flexing his fingers. “You wouldn’t want to risk falling into the deep end.”

Sweat trickled down his forehead. Through the cracks of the ruined household, he could see the moon’s distant glow. How much time had passed?

He heard the dripping, the throbbing behind him like a heart of a foreign, faceless beast.  His breathing slowed, biting his lip.

“Go on, struggle. Maybe then you’d understand what you’re playing around with.”

The tallest figure clapped his hands, straightening the backs of his entourage.

“Re-lock the door behind us. We’ll sort this out later, when his mistake becomes clear for the people to see.”

One by one, they filed out of the building, slamming the door behind them. Constantine looked towards the pale figure of Montreal, who was illuminated by a ray of moonlight. Her chair had been neatly fastened to the ground with a pair of railway spikes, making her writhing fruitless.

“Montreal? Are you alright?”

She turned her speckled head around, bags under her eyes.

“As much as I can be. You got a plan, or what? We’ll get eaten at this rate.”

His eyes scanned the room, searching. Then, reflecting the lunar glow in the corner… he saw a shard of pointed glass, dangling from a long-broken lamp.

“I’ll cut my ropes and undo yours. We’ll think of a way out of here before then.”

He stared down at the unsightly, rusted nails that had spiked through the front legs of the chair into the ground below. If he could get those to break…

Constantine rocked back and forth on his chair, sending jarring creaks rebounding through the room. He gritted his teeth as he heard a crack, a splintering in the wood, feeling the encroaching white obelisk behind him pulse.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

“Come on… come on…”

With one final swing of his body weight, he jerked forward in his chair, sending sweat droplets flying to the wooden boards in front of him.

Crack! Snap!

For a moment, a gritted smile crossed his face until he looked down. The front legs of the chair were still intact, held in place by the shoddy carpentry.

The back legs of his chair gave out, the rotted wood splintering like his hopes. He found himself falling, falling backwards.

“Constantine!”

Her screams were drowned out by the unforgiving flow of white as his head and body were submerged in the gloss he had spent months studying.

At that moment, he couldn’t hear anything, see anything, smell anything, feel anything, or taste anything. When that moment passed, his senses returned to him, placing him into an endless expanse of white, virgin as snow yet searing like a vile acid.

He tried to kick and thrash, but his limbs were bogged down by the void, moving as if they were in quicksand. Wide-open eyes scanned the sea of pewter, yet with increasing dread, he realised that there was a complete absence of any discernible landmarks, as if his head hadn’t been moving at all. He couldn’t even see his own limbs, only feeling the currents they left as he struggled. No sound came from his gaping, gasping mouth as he struggled for non-existent air, though he could feel the fluid forcing its way down his throat.

All of a sudden, he felt a chillingly cold grip on his arm. It felt as if his limb was suddenly locked into place, bound by an unseen force.

Then, another, and another.

The unseen hands held him in place as his chest heaved, trying to break free from their grasp.

More futile, absences of screams escaped his lips, crying out for escape. Tears welled in his burning, itching eyes before evaporating into the abyss. Finally, he stilled, exhausted from his fruitless strain.

He choked down a gasp, as one of the hands loosened its grip. A moment passed, as more hands loosened from his body, leaving only the ones holding his limbs.

It was then, he felt something scraping into his flesh. Like a twisted sculptor, the unseen thing dug into his skin and clawed out globs of his arms and legs. His skin, flesh and bone became one, clay under the hands of the unseen artist. Yet, all he could feel was the dulled sense of loss as another fraction of himself was cut away, leaving an absence of nerves and a gap in his form.

Constantine was whittled away. With his limbs amputated from his form one by one, his silent writhing grew more futile until all that was left was his torso and head. Finally, the hands lifted his immobile form and placed him into a semisolid pile of tumorous lumps. He did not want to acknowledge the faint, familiar warmth that the clay-like pile retained, nor the subtle way he seemed to shake the mass as he attempted to writhe in his disabled form.

Yet, against his own will like a humanoid sponge, his body greedily sucked the substance through his pores.

Yet, the more he consumed of the substance, of his own discarded flesh, his body changed. The joints where his legs and arms had been liquefied and trickled down into the puddle he was immersed in. His torso sank further and further down into the warm pile, becoming as viscous as the very flesh it had reabsorbed.

Finally, as his head began to sank into his own, degenerated biomass, he felt the same cold grip clutch his softening skull. The hands clawed away his scalp, as if exposing his brain.

In his last moments of consciousness, Constantine felt fingers dig into his mind.

Kneading.

Twisting.

Reshaping.

Montreal sat there gaping, her head locked into one angle as grim horror established itself.

The upturned chair simply lay in the puddle of white, a sad wreck that doomed a man. It slowly sank down, the festering wood being eaten away by the gluttonous abomination that she had watched over for weeks. No trace of the man lingered, his coat and clothes consumed by that same white abyss.

A spluttered, squeaking gurgle escaped her lips as her world crumbled around her. Her brows furrowed as she stared down at the ground in bitter self-admonishment.

She was going to die. She was going to die. She was going to die. And for what?

It was likely, that she would be consumed by the thing that used to be her friend.

A sudden, groaning, splattering sound caused her to jerk her head upwards, eyes still full of angry tears.

She trembled in her seat as she saw a gelatinous figure crawl out of the puddle at the base of the pillar, opening and closing its melting, dripping jaws in a imitation of gasping for breath.

“Ghlk-khh…glk-khh..”

It dragged itself across the floor, leaving a thick, white viscous trail behind it.

Montreal closed her eyes, gritting her teeth in pained acceptance. At least they’d be together in the end.

The slick, dripping sounds grew closer and closer. Her breathing accelerated, instinctively leaning back and away from the approaching creature. The scent of alcohol, now mixed with a uncomfortably familiar odour grew closer and closer with dizzying intensity.

“..Mon-treal…”

Forcibly, she creaked one of her eyes open, daring to peer at the being before her.

The silicon-white being sat before her, half-formed and panting; confined to its own chalky puddle. Neither beast nor human, its half-formed features blurring together like a half-melted wax doll. Its gaping maw extended away from its smooth rounded head, dripping pearly beads of itself to the floor, centimetres away from Montreal’s chair.

She looked upon it, like a bound god before a starving peasant.

“Con…stantine?”

She echoed the creature’s voice, hollowed inside, a faint hope burned inside her. Her tear-reddened eyes stared down the being, beckoning it to come closer.

The creature coughed and hacked, expelling a small blob of itself onto one of the boards. As if clearing its throat, it rose up, forming a chest and waist, an imitation of humanity that looked as if it was sculpted from clay.

“It’s me, Montreal.”

The voice was slurred, wet. Each word was punctuated with a brief gap, as if trying to recollect the meaning of each word.

But it was him.

Constantine raised a hand, half-formed from the puddle beneath him and reached out towards the woman, who hissed in response.

“Don’t  touch me! You’re still infectious!”

He hesitantly lowered his hand, before continuing forwards regardless.

“You have to trust me.”

Her eyebrow twitched as Montreal slithered closer, reaching for the ropes that bound her. Yet, instead of untying it, he simply spread himself across her waist, a growing white stain that fizzled and popped.

She recoiled at the sensation of the slick biomass crawling across her body, seeping through her clothing.  Her pointed teeth ground against each other, her curved ears flicked back and forth.

Her eyes closed. What an ironic way to go out, subsumed by the person who saved you in the first place.

The ropes simply fell to the ground, splashing into the puddle of white that surrounded the chair. Droplets of Constantine’s biomass slid off of her form and dropped onto the floor, before inching towards his main body and being reabsorbed.

He crawled aside, and Montreal leapt forth from her prison to the dry, safe boards on the other side. She landed on all fours, her fingers scrabbling at the wooden boards as she skittered across to the other wall, before turning to look at the encroaching tide of white.

She panted, her chest heaving in and out as she brought a pink-tipped finger to the centre of her forehead. Constantine simply sat away from the main pool of the silvery substance, watching over his companion who stared at the artificial obelisks, catatonic.

“Montreal? Are you alright?”

The question sounded so juvenile now, she thought. Like a child asking a crying mother if she was okay.

“Y-eah. I’m fine.” She stammered. “But I still need to get out of here.”

In response, Constantine swung his arm, sending a glob of his biomass flying towards the door. It splattered like a colour-reversed Rorschach blot, then rapidly ate through the cobbled metal. The stench of alcohol and burning metal congealed in the air, sending Montreal into a coughing fit. In moments, the frame was bare, revealing the moonlit city ruins outside.

Constantine extended a viscous hand out towards the sitting woman, who stared at it blankly.

She hesitantly brought her hand forward, before slowly withdrawing it.

“Wait. I need to torch this place before we go.”

She reached under her shirt, prying her fleshy pouch open and retrieving a small box of matches. With a clawed thumb and finger, she fished out a single match, struck it against the side of the box and it burst into a glorious spark. In the corner of her eye, she watched Constantine sidle away into an isolated corner.

With a flick of her wrist, the match soared. It bounced once, before landing in the sea of white.

Then, like a grand funeral pyre, it rapidly combusted and grew into a grand pillar of flame, climbing the faux artificial trees and towards the ceiling. The pair retreated out from the bare doorframe, turning around to watch the blaze grow higher and higher.

With a loud crash, the ceiling gave way and the fire erupted from the roof, fuelled by the biomass that had gestated inside for the past two weeks. The fire could be seen in the far distance, an infinitesimal star amidst the broken city. The blazing roar of the flame distorted in Montreal’s round ear, a banshee’s wail that made her shiver despite the heat.

As they sat at a safe distance from the crackling blaze, Montreal turned to her changed companion, the bags under her eyes heavier than ever.

“We need to hide you. People won’t understand, they’ll try to kill you, burn you. We can’t go back home.”

Constantine turned to face her, and yet his blank, eyeless face seemed to radiate a strong expression of determination.

“We can’t hide forever. Plus, the men from before, they said they were going pin this on us. We need to tell someone what really happened.”

She reached out, as if to grab him by the shoulder, before retracting her arm once more. A curt frown crossed her face, the edges of her teeth gently nibbling on her lips.

“Then we’ll compromise. We play this off as an accident, a miracle that you survived with your mind intact. They don’t have to know what really happened here. You’d be a hero who saved this town from an undetected Sightless infestation! Then, I’ll find the people who did this to you.”

He shook his head, sending small droplets of himself to the pavement beside him.

“We don’t have to lie like that. But we don’t have to tell the whole truth either. We’ll find those people together.”

Once more, he extended a hand towards Montreal.

“Do you trust me?”

She sat there for a moment, listening to the drips of his white, glossy flesh. Then, she looked down at his hand, before reaching out with her own.

Their hands clasped into a firm handshake. Constantine’s grip was slick, with the consistency of semi-solidified honey. Montreal found her palms sinking slightly into his hand, before she let go and hastily pulled her arm back.

A strong scent of burning alcohol and wood lingered in the air, an unfamiliar twist to the scent that they had both been acclimated to. The bonfire that had used to be their secret livelihood continued burning in front of them, casting shadows onto the broken roads behind them. Bright flame seared straight into their souls, leaving a singed reminder for the weeks yet to come.