Rohan

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022 (The day of the Shutdown)

After a few moments of shock, Rohan’s brain started breaking down the situation.

He’d ditched his after-school club in favor of taking a nap in the school fields when he'd been roused by a cold gale. One moment he was being lulled to sleep by a soft breeze and the next his mouth was agape at the spectacle above him.

Why is the sky red?

His years of reading dystopian novels made him stupidly think of aliens, but he eliminated that possibility.

The red sky continued to grow darker.

His mind worked fast to find a logical explanation. The spectacle was striking, yet being a natural skeptic he was cautious about the unknown phenomena.

Surveying his surrounding environment and then the sky, without another thought he set out at a brisk pace.

Without the wind to rustle it, the uncut grass stood proud, each blade shooting up to the sky.

Yet for a single fleeting moment, he thought he saw the silhouette of a great serpent moving through the grass. Whatever it touched, the grass swayed. Transfixed by the illusion, he followed it as it coiled around the goalposts, weaving between the trees that bordered the field before finally circling him.

When he blinked again, the serpent had disappeared.

Where a few seconds ago he heard the laughter of children from the nearby elementary school or the chirping of birds, his world became devoid of those. He was in the center of a vacuum.

Furrowing his eyebrows, as he walked around he could feel the ground being crushed underfoot but the noise didn’t reach his ears. He tensed his hamstrings and jumped high, stomping as loud as he could when he landed.

Aside from the slight pain in his knees, he heard nothing, not even a muffled thud. Screaming until his throat was raw, he stood up carefully, waiting for the echoes. Again, he was met with silence.

Touching his ears to check and his fingers came away clean.

I’m not bleeding…

Focusing his attention on the sky, he pursued another idea.

What if the sky changing is like a flashbang? This could be me in a state of shock… yeah, that makes sense. Just gotta wait it out.

Accepting his theory, Rohan took a single step toward the school when a noise brought him to a halt.

It was a howl, like a gale of wind storming towards him.

On the far side of the field, the grass was torn to shreds as something rushed towards him like a wave. His sense of danger didn’t trigger until he saw the aluminum goalposts being cleanly sliced through.

Oh. OH SHIT!

Tripping over his feet in his panic to flee, his body felt heavy and sluggish as if it was fighting against him. Cursing himself, he forced his heels deeper into the earth and pushed forward.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Arms pumping beside him as he ran, he risked throwing a glimpse over his shoulder and saw the patch of grass he stood in seconds ago gutted by the wind.

Sod and clumps of dirt were thrown into the sky, and a moment later, its movement ceased. Ignoring the apparent safety, he continued to run as fast as his lethargic body let him until he was at least 100 meters away from the back entrance of the school.

Not daring to take his eyes off of it, Rohan sagged over with his hands on his knees. The short burst of activity had taken a lot out of him. Getting up, he eyed the wind warily. At the center of the soccer field, a small tornado had formed, with the grass, dirt, and aluminum scraps moving in a cyclical motion.

That was the most cardio I’ve done in years, he grimaced, holding his aching sides. But why did it stop—

Fwoosh!

A fire erupted beneath his right knee. His mind became clouded by an influx of pain but almost lucidly, he turned to look at the severed remains of his leg. Where the bottom half of his leg used to be, a goalpost has impaled the ground, its white paint flecked with specks of blood and loose skin.

Huh?

He stared uncomprehendingly at the metal post.

Somehow from the center of the football field 400 meters away, the goalpost had been shot with so much power his lower leg had been blown off.

Rohan’s body folded under him and his head slammed against the packed dirt of the schoolyard.

With his eyes watering from the pain, a droning filled his head until the pain climaxed and he let out a tortured wail. In the distance, the wind let out an inhumane shriek at the sight of its fallen prey.

Noting its approach, Rohan cried in alarm and desperately clawed at the earth to move forward. Yet the ground around him disintegrated at his touch until he found himself deeper and deeper in a hole.

He had unwittingly dug his own grave. No… nononono!

It was too late.

Sailing above the grass, the monster covered the distance between them in the blink of an eye and circled him like a vulture. Darkening till it was midnight black, he saw anguished faces appearing in the wind, distorting and twisting until the creature had cocooned him in a cyclone.

His throat clogged up as the ethereal faces continued to persist, their faces starting to glow and their features grew more detailed. Pale vapors that resembled arms clawed at him.

Overwhelmed, he helplessly stared as one arm reached closer than the rest. The cyclone sped up, dragging the creature back in.

All at once the faces around him opened their mouths and the sphere that formed around him struck him with the roar of thousands of souls. Slipping in and out of consciousness by the force it exerted, his eardrums burst and his body spasmed of its own accord.

Rohan felt the wind lift him out of the crevice and suspend him in the center of the tornado like a grim trophy.

It never subsided.

The gales of wind picked up pace until all he could hear were its whistles. It cut deep into his flesh like it was a torrent of blades, going deeper and deeper until he finally felt his extremities completely severed as the tornado squeezed in on him.

Faster the currents spun until he felt his lungs collapsing in on themselves. With a sickening pop, his eyes burst from the mounting pressure but he couldn’t even express any pain as he was raised higher up the column of air. The whistling of the wind had grown louder until he began to feel his blood being drawn out of his pores, sucked out by the power of the tornado.

When it felt like every fluid in his body had been removed, the wind vanished altogether and his shriveled remains were unceremoniously dropped into the ditch.

His eardrums were ruptured and his arms and legs had been cut off by the winds. All that was left of his emaciated torso was shreds of leathery skin pulled taut over his protruding ribcage.

Blind and deaf, he helplessly tried to move, to do anything but stay in his hole. Parts of him wanted to shriek and bawl, yell for someone to help him. However, whatever the winds had done to him had left him speechless, his tongue shriveled and his throat inoperable. The only thing it left intact was his mind, still able to process stimuli from his surrounding environment.

Wondering what his fate was to be, a wet and slimy creature suddenly plopped onto his stomach.

Rohan didn’t understand what it was until it started wriggling toward his mouth, the newborn snake’s corrosive touch liquifying his skin. Pain receptors lit up across his brain like Christmas lights, making him squeal.

Pausing as if it were studying his parchment-thin skin, it broke past his lips, coating them with amniotic fluid. A sharp pain like a needle came from the bottom of his throat. As the pain persisted, it finally dawned on him.

It was eating him from the inside.