White and Other Tales of Ruin

I felt around with my fingers, trying not to look because I didn’t want to see whatever damaged, dead thing lay inside the armour. I’d heard about genetic alterations, gene mutation … I’d heard about it far too much. I didn’t want to see it as well. My fingers scraped the smashed visor and I tugged free a loose piece of composite.

“You sound like you’ve seen?“ I began, but then the dead thing moved.

It hissed, expelling a stinking breath right up into my face. And I heard a voice, soft and persuasive, deep inside my head. This was much more personal than the voice that had introduced the horrific scenes. This was not only inside my head but inside me, reaching out from places I’d forgotten or tried to forget, sounding like my poor dead Janine and my dying Laura combined … and it was telling me to sit back down.

You don’t want to get up.

You don’t need to get up.

“Don’t listen to it,” the man in front said, and the injured thing at my feet growled a stinking threat up into my face, stinking and angry.

“How do you know — ” I began, but then I stamped back down on its face, feeling my boot heel striking something soft. Inside me, the soft voice grew harsh before fading away.

“What is it?” I hissed, starting to hack at the strap around my waist with the rough-edged plastic. My own blood spotted my trousers.

“Demon,” the man said.

I stopped for a second and glanced up, but even his hair was out of sight. “You’re just kidding me, right?” I started sawing at the strap instead of hacking, and the heavy threads began to pop apart. The thing at my feet moved, I stamped again, and the man gave me his answer.

“No. And yes, I suppose. And yes, I have been here before.”

The woman across the aisle snorted. “And the prize for the most ridiculously confusing answer goes to …”

“I won’t tell you my name,” he said.

“I don’t think she was expecting you to.” The threads were parting faster now, and I guessed I had maybe thirty seconds to go. Then all I had to do was exit the coach, dodge however many more soldiers, droids or demons there were, find Laura where she was strung up between trees, get her down and navigate my way out of Hell.

Easy.

I laughed manically as the strap popped free. Standing up, I saw the coach for what it really was. As wide as the coach on a train but much longer, so long that perspective stole the end from sight. And all the way along, chairs like my own sat at each window, with a narrow aisle in between.

I turned around and the same sight greeted me, except this time there were shocked faces watching me from each chair. I caught a few peoples’ stares, even though I tried not to. There was interest, anger and resentment in equal measures, and I realised that those who had no idea what had happened here must be blaming me for their tour being halted.

“How the hell do I get out of here?” I asked, stepping into the aisle and glancing over the chair at the man in front of me.

“Same way the demon got in,” the man said. And I wondered how he could talk at all.

I’d once seen the results of a speed-bike crash. The rider had been thrown against a wall and was a broken, shattered mess. Limbs askew. Shape changed. I never thought I’d see the same in someone living.

“Huh?” I uttered stupidly. I could not form words because what I saw stole them from me. He was so badly battered and misshapen that it must have hurt him to live.

“Up there,” he said, nodding back over my shoulder.

I turned and looked along the aisle, noticing a dark patch in the ceiling which could only have been a trapdoor. “Do you know the way?” I asked turning back.

His face did something that may have been a smile, and he shook his head. “I’ve been out there once before,” he said, “thinking I could change things, imagining I could help the hopeless. That’s how I got this.” He didn’t point to anything, but he didn’t need to. I could not make out where parts of him started and ended. Tears burned in my eyes and throat, but I guessed that he probably wouldn’t appreciate them at all.

“So up there is out?” I said. And I thought, out of where? Out of the coach and into the forest and barbed wire and Laura? Or out of Hell? Back into that waiting room perhaps, the stunning woman standing by the wall painting and pointing out intricate details of cruelty and pain I hadn’t noticed before.

“If you must go,” he said, “yes, up there.”

I looked at him and wanted to ask him how I could help. But he’d obviously come here for a reason, whether he’d found his way in by accident or not. I could only guess at what traumas he suffered day in, day out, to warrant a second visit to this awful place. He blinked slowly, one eye only closing halfway because of the knot of scar tissue on his eyelid, and I took it as a message. The strap was to stay around his waist. He wanted it that way. He’d always be confined now, however his condition had come about.

That’s how I got this, he’d said, talking of what was outside.