[30 Years Ago]
Giggles of pure joy flowed through the lips of a young girl. She had just crossed the threshold into ten, which marked the age where she would physically experience one of her most relived dreams.
Donned in a cute flowery blouse, she skipped about playfully within the captive fingers of her parent, and her excitement influences a stimulus within them as they smile and laugh alongside with her. This was the standard picture of a happy family.
Everything was perfect and serene within the nuclear family. However, one thing seemed out of place within this image. A blood-red knitted cloth was tied across the young girl's face into a ribbon that acts as a blind obstructing her vision. Yet, like a fetish, this only serves to increase her pleasure.
Her daily life was mired in quotidian delight whenever her gaze settles on the holographic screen where she marvels at the square. Her eyes shone like speckles of stars whenever the subject of said location alludes. In every distinct program that played within the holograms, one thing they all shared and was always introduced was this location. Moreover, though it was portrayed differently in every play, it didn't diminish the fact that this location is a site where miraculous events bloom and nestle within.
Some programs presented it in the form of luscious green gardens with weddings of trees and fruits to pluck from; others displayed it as a buzzing shopping hub with technological establishments that defy all logic. Certain programs like her favorite show hyperbolized the location, portraying it as a battlefield meant for a standoff against fantasy-like creatures.
The result? All this flamed her desire to gaze upon its true visage with her own eyes. It became a honed motivation in her daily life in pursuit of a day where she could stand within the soil where miracles inhabit.
It's a world she must explore.
Coming to a stop, a jolt suddenly ran within her, and the young girl visibly shivered with anticipation. The time has come!
Her eagerness bloomed as chimes of raging traffic invaded her earring. Flying vehicles tooted their horns along the busy street submerged in chaotic indecipherable hub hub of thousands of humans. All this stimulated her, causing her to jump and laugh uncontrollably in joy. A manifestation of the scene already birthed in her mind with just this information.
She withheld a love-hate relationship with time. Every day she awakens, hoping the day could go faster or could just skip to her date of birth. She would usually stand before the calendar, where she employed a miniature picture of the square to countdown the remainder of days.
For this, she cherishes the night sky that signifies the end of a day. The end of today equates, the closer her dream magnetizes towards her. In fact, thoughts of the memetic square serve as a driving force that motivates her towards her daily accomplishment.
She waited.
*Boom*
Suddenly a loud thunder strike bellowed within the heavens. The clouds took black, and droplets of water began to wash down onto the city as if envious of the art it contained. The young girl jumped in freight, and her mood instantly turned sour at the sudden downpour, but it was only for a moment as she beamed once more.
A small rain won't prevent her from living her dream!
At some point, her parents had released her from the captivity of their finger but had yet to release the blinds obscuring her vision. She waited patiently for them to do so; however, time ticked by that felt almost like an eternity, and they made no such demand.
Like a heavy suitcase filled with excitement within her fingertips, she dropped the trill within it and asked: "Can I take it off now?"
"...."
Silence.
One.
Two.
Three. Who knows how long she waited? Growing impatient, she eagerly reiterated, "Mom! Dad! Can I take the blindfold off now?"
She still received no response.
Suddenly her brows creased. Odd, it had gotten quiet! Exceedingly quiet. The bustling noise of the city had vanished. The footsteps, the honks of cars, the articulate voice of the holographic billboards. Sounds and voices that once encompass the whole of the square had suddenly dissipated like a puff of smoke. All that remained now was the eerie thick pit-pat sounds of rain nourishing the earth.
"...Mom? Dad?" The girl cautiously cried once more in which she obtained no acknowledgment. Something was definitely wrong! The young girl felt it — an uncanny feeling of wrongness bloom within her. Yet With no further options available, she unconsciously smiles and slowly began unveiling her eyes within their captive state in preparation to bask in her dreams. Her heart thumping harder with each knot untied.
Her nerves grew agitated as her hand trembled like an amateur pick-pocketer. This isn't from fear but excitement.
Sincerely to her imaginations and those within the holographic television. Massive towers that stood erect towards the heavens existed with countless TV hologram attached to them like arrays of formation. The various colorful skyscrapers flashed with glittering vowels of lights illuminating the whole of the square like a disco ball. It was comparable to autumn leaves below the shade of golden rays.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Flying cars, indoor malls, hovering shops, hiatus traffic. Everything she had ever seen within the screen or imagined was present right before her eyes. However, her focus wasn't directed towards all these magnificent images instead drawn and glued towards the crowd in the surrounding. For what laid before her exceeded all her wildest dreams.
Thousands of people that once roamed the square with vigor and purpose now laid sprawled up on the floor. They were disfigured.
Their body riddled with hundreds of holes as if someone poked them with thousands of needles, Carving them like a beehive. And through these needles like orifices, blood, mixed with bits and pieces of internal organs stream forth like lava. But that wasn't the end.
Gradually, when the holes territory reached a joint where they could connect with one another, the needle size hole in that area expands, becoming wider and the flesh begins to sizzles, boiling like hot water that then began to visibly melt away into a substance as thick as honey — everything, starting from the flesh, the muscles, then the bones. Chunks of flesh fall off and splatter all over, dying the ground red with bodily fluids and organs. Melting away like old cheese in the sun.
The image was inherently bizarre and spine-chilling.
The most disturbing thing was that some didn't even realize that they were melting away layers by layers and simply continued marching forth on blind instinct. Several lumps of their flesh withered away, revealing a bloody skull; however, they continue forward a few meters before falling on the ground or bumping into one another, ceasing their mindless journey before dissolving into a paste that travels into the sewer.
Several of such people existed. Some had their fingers or arm fall off like goo. Another had his intestines gushing out like a volcano, others simply crashed heavily on the ground with the resounding impact of a cracked skull.
Bloody! Sinister!
For some reason, they couldn't scream or talk. Even if they become aware of their predicament, words of assistance couldn't leave their lips and only linger in their throat almost like a choke.
The girl stood stoic in a daze, absently staring at the ghastly scene transpiring before her.
Was she too shocked for word? Or was she lacking in an understanding of what ensues before her?
Her head noiselessly creaked to her side where her parents once stood. There, their grotesque limbs littered the ground as they slowly dissolve and break into pieces that washed away with the rain. She looked downwards, locking gazes with her mother, who still had an affectionate smile on a face. Her skin begins melts, deforming the smile into a nauseating ghastly grin.
Was this even her mother? She couldn't tell anymore. For all she knew, she could just be a nameless face orbiting the same street with forces of droplets acting as a force of gravity and magnet that substitute and exchange skin for skin.
Needles of heavy rain continue to fall, beating down heavily on the girl. She slowly raised her arm and examined it. Droplets of red liquid dined on skin painting her red. Her dark fluorescent hair took red. Her jade-like white skin became red also. Her colorful blouse has been dyed red as well. From head to toe, it was as if she had been dipped in blood. However, unlike the goo of humans littered around her, the red liquid had no effect on her.
She looked up towards the majestic square containing her. Maybe the erect visage of the towers would provide a form of salvation countering this horrific siege. Maybe the hovering vehicles would smuggle her away from this horror. Perhaps the corporal manifestations of her dream would accompany her during this dark period or jolt her awake from this gruesome nightmare.
Yet, those were merely wishful thinking.
Roads of glasses shatter into pieces as buildings that once kissed the clouds began crumbling and falling apart with foreboding destruction. Large billboards attached to them creaked and moaned like an ornery pipe and crashed into the ground below, shattering into a million pieces. Tiles of concrete below fractured and dissolve back to sand, burdening the streets with an uneven mess. Everything around her was crumbling apart!
Wherever the red liquid adjoined melted away into nothing, robbing everything of its beauty.
The world had already gone silent. The skies and land had been painted red. The dwellers had been mummified, and man's creation had been demolished and ruined. Nothing escaped the maw of the red rain.
A mangled hand crashed with her leg. The fingers were still twitching and turning as if trying to grab hold of something.
-Haha
Within the waring image of blood, a croaked whisper emerged. It sounded like the buzz of a fly grazing the ears. Intently tingling and reactionary.
As the buildings crashed into the soil kicking up dust, a shard of glass flew out, embedding itself deep in her skull.
-Haha
More and more objects struck the young girl no more than ten. Her bones and skin were still cultivating, so every projectile caused a severe injury. And though she escaped the contusion and mutilation of the bloody rain, she couldn't avoid the damage it inadvertently caused.
Several shards of glasses penetrated her body like a porcupine as she bled furiously from each wound.
-Hehehe
The whisper emerged again. This time in the form of a bird tweeting towards the retreating moon. A Sorrowful cry of a day's end.
Dream. The true visage of her dreams never secured itself within her existence. No, it had crumbled before her instead. The scene—vivid and demoralizing.
Her family never lived a day beyond her tenth birthday because on this special day. They dissolved into paste concocting with the people around them to form a thick goo within the belly of the rotten sewer.
On this day, chaos stalked the earth.
On this particular day, her dreams crumbled apart.
And on this day, an innocent girl no more than ten was introduced to a new form of horror, and in return, she understood death.
Her gaze traveled back to the madness that enclosed her. Crisis befell everything, either demolishing or liquefied. She limply fell on her back, greeting pieces of mangled flesh on the ground. Her gaze traveled to the dark clouds and the acute plague it provided.
The young girl's bloody face began to incoherently twitch, deforming in an unsculptured manner as a vile smile that didn't reach her ears appeared on her face. Her aligned well-groomed teeth mirrored blood, and she began laughing hysterically.
She had gone mad.
Several years later, a group would scale this land picking through the waste like hills of ants, oblivious to the fact that this unforgiving and barren land was once a place where rainbows of lights showered the skies like rain; vehicles grazed the air with untold destinations; weddings of flowers arrest the soil with nutrition of diets; the forgotten land within beds of the ocean, the artificial underground world within a world.
The skepticism within their eyes when one recites of the extravagance and prosperity the land one encompassed, the billions of people it once housed, the aerial ships above the dark galaxies and finally the foreign tone within their tongue when told of the land’s name.... New York!