I found a maintenance ladder and a hatch. Locked. From outside. To be expected. Jumped down and without giving up checked other venues. Eventually found a crumpled passage towards freedom. Some of the ceiling behind that was caved in, air dusty. Since I didn’t drop dead immediately it probably wasn’t a bioweapon of any kind.

Started looting random piles of clothing strewn around. Boots, cargo pants, shirt, jacket of many pockets, contents of purses. The usual stuff. Walked room by room. Stuffed bags and pouches full of money and jewellery.

If not for the occasional collapse or automated alerts, it would have been dead silent. Not terribly daunting. Scavenging in the surrounding towns under threat of monsters was way worse.

Picked up a load of keys and key cards, as the floors were locked from one to the next until reaching a place where stairs abruptly ended. There was an open sky. Still fair bit of way to reach ground level, though. The giant sea creature lightly scraped the top floors off.

I sighed and clambered through the rubble swept to the sides. Tired, beat and all dirty, hoisted myself up the last peak. There were buildings! Debris all around, but great many still stood tall all over one side of horizon. An oddly familiar sight, but all the cities looked alike, right?

Not at all. That crime against architecture was undoubtedly one of a kind. No two buildings would collapse the same way. Which meant I was home! Not an impossible coincidence, we were somewhere in the vicinity already. Joy!

I would have never suspected soldiers have been bringing unholy beasts so near the population, within city limits. A bit hypocritical, but nobody ever asked me for opinion on such matters. Thus far they had done stellar job keeping them contained anyhow.

Getting closer towards residential district I observed the stillness of destruction. Nobody cried. Nobody was riffling through the collapsed structures. Nobody even came to gawk at the hole in place of our strongest and bravest.

No, this can’t be right. The eerie serenity felt horrible. The stronghold of humanity was never supposed to be this inert, for it was the peace of graveyard.

Everyone can’t possibly be gone.

Dropped my bags of goodies and ran.

We lived away from the law. That translated into location physically furthest away from enforcers. They’re fine. They will be okay. My lungs burned. I sprinted as though chased even though I barely started, but I could not pace myself. It’s far from here. They would be alright. Had to be. Please. I just want to go home.

I shouted, screamed for literally anybody to show up on the way but nobody peeked out in the dark windows. There was no rampant fire, no more sights of destruction. Everything was intact. Even the clothes I’d occasionally stumble upon. Not a drop of blood. Everyone was just gone.

“Anyone!” I screamed hysterically, after succumbing on my fours to catch a few seconds of reprieve. Then I ran again. I could barely see through white spots in my vision by the time I reached home.

“Ruby?” I fell through the front door. Silence was still sickening. Without stopping, I checked every room on the ground floor and then flew up the stairs. Methodically opened and closed. Nothing.

“Amber?” I called out and got an idea – she could be at work. It was middle of the very, very cold day.

I ran out into the deserted street again. Her workplace was pristine and open. Piles of clothes lain all around. My face flooded with hot tears for I recognised one of the piles. That was Amber’s best attire. She never wore it anywhere else. The heartbreak was palpable, but monsters have given me too good of health for my ticker to just stop.

I wailed.

This was all my fault! And it wasn’t even survivor’s guilt. I put this in motion. My actions. I shouldn’t have gone back. Not the first time, nor the second. If I was captured literally anywhere else, some other city of strangers would have been razed and I would not have cared. We all could be happily existing separately and I wouldn’t be endangering everyone I care about with my every action.

Tears dried up and I sat listless for hours, hugging the bright yellow sweater that smelled of bread.

At some point I registered an invasive waft of smoke and waited for the fire to take me. A burner or two had to have been left unattended, after all. Nothing had happened. Perhaps someone was trying to get warm in this surprisingly chilly air? Or get attention of survivors? Maybe one of mine.

I forced myself to stand up. Swung the door wide open, stepped out and stared at the smoke billowing right into my face. I waited to burn up alive some more, but no such luck. Wind blew it all away momentarily.

There was a burning mound of trash in front of the shop. Someone was definitely alive to be running around and lighting these. Weird, but that was on them. I walked right to it and warmed my freezing fingers. Whoever made a bonfire in the middle of the street would come back. Might as well be sitting here.

So I sat and stared into fire long enough to start seeing faces in it. Then hear voices. Wonder what the dead were saying? I listened more carefully.

“Hello, how are you?” barely audible crackling had whispered. Such therapeutic, caring breakdown.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I sighed, wanting to go on diatribe about all the happy looting I was about to do, but it was just me and there was no hiding from myself. Reclined on one hand and muttered, “I had a rough day.” The description felt a little inadequate, but I didn’t look into the understatement further. Nothing would suffice.

“Corpulent Oleaginous Formation… ruins everybody’s days,” utterly quiet whooshing kept spewing seemingly unconnected words and I thought divine grace has finally bestowed a seizure upon my tired ass, but no. Voices in my head merely turned out to be spitefully outspoken.

“Yeah! Sleazy, slippery bastard,” I added with vehemence. Perhaps venting would do me good, because anything else was too terrible to consider. Perhaps in a little while. “Keeps getting in my face as he sees fit, fucks everything up and then fucks off.” I fell quiet. Wind could have been talking and I wouldn’t have known – I’ve drifted far too deep inside myself again. The vast nothingness there was astounding. I exhaled and words escaped, “What am I supposed to do now?”

There was just one thing to do, really. I wasn’t sticking around through any following misery and cold just to find something that could topple this natural disaster. And somehow the longer I lived the worse things I’ve come eye to eye with got, so I had little doubt - worse things were fast approaching.

“Do you want to play play play play,” faint voice asked me.

Play? “Uh. Yeah,” I could do with something little less grim. “Sure. And what are we doing?” It was silly to ask this of nobody but the voices suggested it first. At this point I was no longer worried about my sanity.

“Ammo,” it whispered repeatedly, enticingly.

I snickered, because of course my inner voice would be as grim as the rest of myself. “Yeah, that would be nice, but in a flash of short-sightedness I’ve dropped the guns somewhere. We will need to figure out an alternative,” I explained apologetically, but pulled out the loaded clips of my many pockets and looked around as though weapons would magically appear among the litter. No such luck.

Oh, well. Had no use for these anyway. Chucked the magazine into the open blaze. Wisps licked the blocky lump greedily, it glittered and then fireworks started popping off one by one. Flame and smoke zestfully shot up. Sparks kicked around, red charcoal broke up into parts and flew around just like the explosive lead.

“Ahh! Pretty. With chance of instant death. This was a great idea,” I threw in another one, but the flames completely avoided the black oblong this time around.

“You humans die way too easily,” sparks hissed out.

“You humans?” I stared at the bonfire accusingly. The fucker lied to me - unsurprisingly - but here I thought I was bonding with my unwellness manifested. Disappointing. Also unfair. No matter what happened to me, I always got to experience it all fully lucid. The lady down the street would start talking to utility poles at the drop of a hat. I envied the bitch. Even more so now that she was peacefully gone.

Though, perhaps, not all that peacefully. She’d could be screaming at towering teeth for all eternity. The others…

I swallowed the anger. Instead of going into a meltdown over all the monsters and kicking these twinkling coals up the stairs and down the river, I pulled out a scavenged packet of cigarettes and lit one up by putting my face directly into harm’s way. I let the heat caress my face and singe the hair. Scratching at it just didn’t seem sufficient anymore. Straightened up and inhaled the temporary bliss.

“You can’t tell me what to do, because that’s exactly what the great oily floater does and we both just agreed he seriously lacks any class.”

I examined the pile of gleaming junk more carefully, trying to find a creature inside. It was quite an underwhelming sight. Or was it an invisible monster, completely unrelated to the bonfire? Just something floating in the air unseen. Shrugging, reached into the hearth. I intended to yank a flaming stick out and give some loving to the stubbornly abandoned clip myself, but it did not budge. Neither did the next one.

I tightened the grip. With both hands on blackened material I got flashback of the last time I did this. Urge to kick out all these twinkling sparkles to hell returned with vengeance, but instead I just held on as it seared my palms with a sizzle. Physical pain was trivial. Preferable. I could throw myself onto this pyre. This would all be over after minutes of screaming.

“Nobody nobody nobody else left left to play,” several sparkles flew out petulantly.

“Yeah. That sucks,” I agreed weakly. I too could have used someone to horse around with about now. Instead, I was sitting smack dab in the middle of ghost town either talking to myself or a monster. “None of this would have happened if not for me,” I confided.

“How vain of you, you, uuuu,” the wind whistled.

The statement was true. It was uncharacteristically self-centred of me. And yet… “I’ve brought him here.”

“That thing has hasss… been here been here lo-ong before the settlement,” crackling informed me and moved on, “How, how can you, can you be part of two beings?”

“Am not,” I let go of the logs to stop the nosy fiend from examining my seared hands any further, if that was how it did it. The hands shook. I did not look at the raw (medium?) tissue beneath, just pulled away the cigarette away with wooden screaming fingers.

“They must be, they must be in the process, process of tearing one another apart,” flames hissed barely audibly. “What a grandiose event.”

“Uh… Yeah, you’ve just missed it and it was solidly underwhelming.”

It hissed and hissed and I could not decipher it, so marked that as cussing right up the point I started to comprehend some of the words again. Agitated fire was funny.

“The tea would be lovely, thank you,” it was far too easy to mishear the whispers and I capitalised on it. Frankly, the only reason I heard it at all was because my face was getting a tan and we were sitting in a mausoleum of asphalt and brick. Nothing rustled anywhere. I could hear my heartbeat and parched lungs wheeze. The quiet wasn’t unlike the one in the containment unit and frankly all of this could just be a hallucination.

Please god, make that be true. I haven’t asked you for anything in twenty years. Make this terrible dream go away. It doesn’t even matter which dungeon I wake up in. I’ll take anything instead of this.

It came as a surprise to nobody, but my prayers remained unanswered.

“No eyes please, that is the opposite of lovely,” I quipped. I had almost grasped what the whispers were saying, but that didn’t mean I wanted to deal with it. Sighed after a while and inhaled some more smoke. The one wafting off the trash heap could also be contributing to the all too welcome light-headedness.

It called the snail in epithets of seeing, hearing, feeling. It was some kind of a mobile observatory, if you will. A sensory monster. And it was still alive. For little while.

“You called them both great?” I cut the incessant, repeating whispers off. The fire fiend made the clash seem like the event of century. If so, then maybe snail stood a chance. However from the lackadaisical defensive response back at the base I wasn’t holding my breath.

“Yes,” a hiss descended like overwhelming madness.

“Is that indicative of size, power, age, status?”

“Yes,” fire hissed aggressively again. It wasn’t helpful.

“Are you great too?” I asked to make sure it didn’t fall asleep.

“No,” flames exhaled and plummeted. “My people are akin to yours, yours, yours, people are…”

I stared deeply and concluded, “I fail to see the semblance.”

“Small, many.”

A lot of little flamelings. Now that was something to be terrified of. Especially because that this one likely enjoyed a casual bombardment. Biological weapons wouldn’t work on them either.

And those two supermassive monsters will clash because one took a bite of another – presumably. I was not anybody’s body part. Anger simmered in me.

Perhaps it was too vain of me to blame my scrawny ass for this. It was him. He killed everybody. Everybody. Those who tolerated me and even those that didn’t know I existed. One who helped me was about to pay full price for that too. It wasn’t fair. It was outrageous! Especially because the twisted-eared bastard promised he’d be the one to look out for me. He failed. He should be the one he’s demolishing.

The flames whooshed, but I was drowning in my own rekindled seething misery and wasn’t paying attention. The hands hurt. Making a fist was out of question.

“How can I reach this guy?” I pressed the blistered leftie onto the embers again and bit my lip to contain scream. Maybe some of this mess could even be rectified if I lost the restored arm?

Wisps swayed and seemed confused. “You’re a terrible mouth,” they crackled eventually.

I bit back, “You’re nothing great either. So?”

“It had another one out,” flames hissed at me as though I should know that better.

This was terrific news which cast a small thread of hope. The other option would have been finding an entrance to their world and… what, exactly? Chucking several cans of nerve gas down the hatch? A nuke? As if humans haven’t already tried that. And that wouldn’t serve me at all. I wanted a precision strike. I doubted I could convince this firecracker to delve back into monster dimension and run an errand. Against some legendary monster.

But I’d still need some aid. “When you said nobody is left to play with, you meant the city guard?”

Flames shot up and unexpected heat scorched my face. Yea! It whooshed, settling down slowly.

“Would you show me where I can find that other mouth?”

“Will you play. You, play.”

“Hell, I’m trying. You’re the one having qualms,” I muttered leering at the mag which moved way out of the fire’s way, but smirked. At least this part was shaping up to be easy.