Liam

Sunday, April 24th, 2022 (33 days after the Shutdown)

Liam didn’t move away from the gun. Slowly raising his hands to show he meant no harm, he took a survey of the room.

Dozens of eyes were peeking at him from behind tables and chairs, huddled in groups with no weapon between them. Most of them were kids, maybe as young as freshmen in high school with the oldest one close to his own age. And the way they looked at him… they were beyond terrified.

No… they aren’t looking at me…

Stealing a glance at the gun-wielder, the emotion in his eyes took Liam aback. The man’s face was swathed in cloth but his eyes… peering through a gap in his mash were brimming red with burning hatred.

Ah…

BANG!

Liam crumpled to the floor.

***

He came up reeling in shock, his fingers furtively touching the side of his head to check for blood.

Who… am I alive?

Finally realizing there was nothing wrong with him, he cast a wary eye on the 13 torches flickering around the room.

“Ah… I finally fucked up,” Liam said dryly. “I’m in hell.”

He was in the crypt where the phantom had brought him in his last dream. Deep underneath the hall of artifacts the Creature had guarded, in an abandoned section was the prison of the shadow demon — the one with the glowing amber eyes that made the Creature’s presence seem so insignificant.

He was in the last place he wanted to be.

Dread started to settle in his chest but when he looked to the center of the circular cave where the demon’s monolith once stood, the weight lifted off him.

“Mom,” he whispered.

There she was, sitting in a rocking chair with a book in her hands and her long blond hair overwhelming the messy bun she kept it in.

“Mom,” he whispered a bit louder, scared that he might disturb the illusion.

She put down her book and gave him a knowing smile like there was some inside joke only she was privy to.

“Sit down beside me,” she said back in a hushed tone, patting her lap.

He took a step forward and his mother’s smile brightened. He took another and stopped.

His mother always avoided books whenever she could, saying that it made her feel old and stuffy. To have one now…

The moment he realized it was out of place the book’s title started to change. The letters started swimming on the page, transforming until he was looking at a runic language, rougher and more brusque than the one in the main hall above.

“What is this?” Liam hissed as his mother's body shimmered like a mirage.

“Impressive. I imagined you would’ve gotten all weepy for your mother.”

A boy with dark hair appeared in his mother’s place. Considering each other for a second, the boy smiled. “You’re not surprised at all are you?”

“Creature,” Liam blankly said.

“Creature?” the boy repeated as he fixed his tuxedo. “I don’t understand how your race wears these things. Very uncomfortable. No, I’m not the one you call Creature. I’m something… else.”

“...”

“That’s it? I would’ve imagined you had more questions considering you have a piece of metal in your head.”

Remembering the bullet shot at his temple, his posture relaxed. “So I am dead.”

The child tutted and rocked back in his chair. “Curious thing. You should be dead but by my grace, you’re still here in a state of Limbo. If you return now, I can’t promise it’ll stay that way.”

“You… the smoke creature from then,” Liam mused, certain of his appraisal. The setting, the exact location it sat in, it made too much sense to ignore. “... What do you want?”

The child stopped rocking and stared at Liam. “What do I want? Nothing you could not offer me.”

Standing up from the rocking chair, the room quickly grew forlorn and bleak.

“After all” — it said, its body beginning to twitch under its tuxedo until Liam was facing a mirror image of himself — “why would I steal from you? I share your thoughts, your hopes, your dreams…”

Walking around Liam, out of the corner of his eye he saw it wear another face that made him stiffen. His father’s face grinned at him, gore dripping down from where the beam had crushed it in the fire.

“Your regrets. What makes you tick and what makes you cry are all mine as mine are yours.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

His father’s face twitched and disappeared, replaced by another.

“We are one,” David said, his friend’s calming voice flowing out of the thing in front of him. “To reject me is incomprehensible. I am already within you, intertwined within your very being.”

It sat back down on the chair, taking the shape of the black-haired child once again, its eyes glowing like ignited coals.

“I swear to you that death, disease, or any blight of your race will not find you when you hold my favor. My sole warning. Those creatures you face, the ones that sent them will not stop at just the foot soldiers.”

A tightness started to clamp around Liam’s forehead, making his surroundings turn murky.

“I have prepared a gift you will receive upon your return,” it said, the book rematerializing in his hands. “To the son of Brismoke and Tenebris, shackled by guilt and fury.”

As Liam sank into the gloom, the child stiffly bowed. “All hail, the Monarch of Tomorrow.”

***

Nauseated from the acute pain in his temples, he opened his mouth to yawn when he started choking. Eyes watering as he devolved into violent spasms, a chunk of metal fell out of his mouth.

“Oh… oh fuck,” Liam muttered, his salvia dribbling across his face. T-This…

His eyes widened at the sight of the bullet.

How… how… t-the fuck is this possible?!

Strained breaths escaped his trembling lips.

That dream… I was in Hell because I was shot in the head and n-now… how? The gift it mentioned… if I’m alive because of it that means it exists. If that demon exists… that means the nightmares I’ve been having are based on real places. That museum… the Creature… they…

Stunned into silence by the revelation, Liam prodded at the bullet just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

Magic… magic exists in this world.

Over the last month, every time he’d thought he felt an unsettling presence monitoring him or the nightmares where the Creature fed him illusions of his parents dying dozens of times over… they — in whatever way — were real.

They weren’t products of trauma — though that might’ve been their gateway inside his head. Those places, the things he witnessed were real and were somewhere in the cosmos or another reality. And they were the ones responsible for the red sky and the Blackout.

Liam became aware of how insignificant he was. There was an ocean of other civilizations out there and here he was, an oblivious infant amongst them.

What did it call me? Monarch of Tomorrow? Like, I don’t even know what to do with that information.

His imagination raced with images of supernatural disasters and armies pouring from gates in the sky—

The smoke monsters outside… of course. They must be the army or at least the vanguard. There’s more of them somewhere out there… he concluded, looking around him. Wait, where is everybody?

The asshole that shot him and the cowering teenagers were nowhere to be seen.

They shot me and dipped… wow, dickheads. The monsters would’ve forced them to stay indoors so they must be somewhere here.

One step forward and he found out just exactly where. The brittle resistance that he’d become accustomed to because of all the rat corpses back at the K-Mart… he’d stepped on bones.

Scattered everywhere around the small banquet hall were withered corpses. Staring in shock at the mounds of hollow clothes, he understood what the demon meant by “gift”.

They were all dead.

Standing there with his head buzzing, Liam clutched his chest worried that his heart might stop.

You killed them all.

‘I saved your life,’ it immediately replied within his head like its pride was wounded. ‘This is the second time. Do you think accomplishing a feat like bringing someone back from the brink of death comes without a cost? Look at yourself! Look at how much their deaths have benefitted you before you throw around accusations. Your wounds are healed, your scars gone.’

… They were kids.

‘Death does not distinguish between its dealer. Those who wish to live would be wise to learn that lesson quickly.’

Kneeling next to the corpse of the gun-wielder, in the pale daylight sneaking through the vent, its skin was sapped of color. Noticing its skin flaking, Liam pulled at the gun and uncomfortably watched the hand disintegrate.

‘Good. Do not falter,’ it said to him. ‘You must erase the line between right and wrong. Live to survive.’

Fumbling with the gun, he managed to pull out the magazine.

It’s empty?

Turning back to where he entered from, the several cracks on the floor from where bullets had struck it.

How did you kill them? If he was emptying the magazine at something on the floor, he must’ve been terrified.

The demon chose to stay silent.

Why was he terrified, demon?

Liam’s head stung like it had been pricked.

‘Do you not insult me with the label of a lesser creature. I am no demon. What I am and what that man saw… you must be the one to find out those answers through your own strength. I came to oversee the success of the transition. Now that I have, you are on your own.’

What transition? You?

Again, there was silence.

What the hell even are you? If this is some endless joke of the Creature, at least tell me. What is happening on Earth? Who are the wailing monsters’ owners?

Nothing.

Gritting his teeth, Liam walked to the end of the banquet hall where there was nothing but some covered tables. If what the monster inside him said was true, the wailing “soldiers” he heard outside were the first of many.

As he moved to sit down, he felt a presence nearby.

“Y-You killed them,” a voice quaked from under the covers of a table.

Startled, Liam shuffled away from the table.

Frozen at an impasse when nothing came out, he reluctantly approached the table and lifted the cover.

What he saw was even more traumatizing than the room full of corpses.

A girl lay on the floor, her legs and left arm crumbling while the right twitched as her body shut down. Bile rose in the back of his throat as he watched her arduously turn her attention to him — her eyes unfocused because of her pain.

“Y-You killed a-all of my friends… y-you m-monster…”

Her pant legs deflated as her legs disappeared. Unable to watch any longer as the monster’s power ate away at her, he dropped the cover and retreated to the edge of the room.

What have I become?

“Kill me,” the girl’s voice pleaded.

Liam held his head between his knees, desperately trying to block out her voice.

“C-Coward…”