vortext

i finished my uni app! woo! and chilled with mark on easter sunday (thank you for omega man.. im still unsure if i loved or hated it).

heres a story i submitted. I'm going to try scripting it for a comic after re-writing it!

Void

The Void appeared seven days ago consuming Clapham. Nobody had emerged from it. No sounds came from inside, no light touched it. The black flesh like cloud swelled in wisps spiralling upwards towards dying stars. Electricity no longer oozed into the city. We slept, fitfully, in the cold dark. Many stood near its edge, weeping, praying, and silently hoping.

Periodically the thing thrashed drawing eyes, already half-watching, to stare at its surface until, finally, it rested again. I held my breath hoping for lost faces to emerge. Some, unable to bear it, dodged the skeleton police guard and walked into the void, they didn't scream, or call, or return. The void was swelling, its wispy tendrils curving their way further outwards, smoke thrashing for more concrete, for more flesh.

Carol is in there. I loved her; if she could have come out she would.

Some think it is God, they dress in black and watch it devour our city. Filling drains, seeping from gratings, making children and loved ones memories. They bow to it but their eyes are red rimmed and ashen. Some think it is a weapon and shout we should bomb it, but Carol is in there. Maybe it's Heaven. Maybe it's Hell.

I have no tears left; I am empty from sorrow, exhausted of hope, denied faith. I watched it consume my city, slowly leaking around the concrete moat of the M25, as I crunched my cereal each day. I watched those not missing panic and escape in droves, frantically packing their cars. Fuming cattle stampeding from the beast. I watched people revolt looting first for goods then later, as things worsened, supplies. Then the army arrived, shooting to kill. That restored British calm, they queued for salvation at gunpoint. I stayed here with the photos of her and our unborn Child. It has fingers that I dream lose their grip and disperse to smoke.

When the Void surrounded London and sealed those left inside from the scurrying ants of Government and charities I felt relief. I could not find it in me to walk into the veil, its texture hauntingly reminding me of Francis Bacons painting of a screaming pope, but I had not run. Carol was in there. They were in there.

Before the power outage I watched, on television, scientists feed cameras suspended on cranes into the void. We saw no live feed pictures from the camera, but watched it and its crane crack crumbling to ash and smoke before the eyes of the world. The Scientists operating the probe screaming one harmonious guttural note before dispersing like sand first blown, and then sucked by the void. Others tried since, but their attempts where not broadcast, and they too were absorbed. It seemed contact was enough, but then why did the void not clamber on streets clad in concrete to grasp its victims? Perhaps it could wait.

Recently at night It has began to call. The sound an orchestra of wind chimes filled with blood. The noise leaks upwards to the heavens. Maybe Carol escaped.

I cut my wrist the other day, the sensation was sharp, but I felt nothing other then warm blood on dull skin. I think it is devouring me, chewing who I am. It already has all I want. Smugly looming on the surrounding horizons of near tower blocks. Eating their concrete, churning them to brick spirals that lead up to stars; Mauled stairways for Gods dissention. In a week it will have surrounded my block. In a week this will end.

I water the flowers, still growing, breathing our decay and exhaling sweetness. They thrive on my windows and floors. I dragged most of them from an abandoned florist. I live in a flat that's now my very own blooming graveyard. Sometimes I wake underneath the leaves and petals and feel I may rise to stand in Valhalla, but I am no warrior. I've already surrendered everything.

They say a man called Howard Craft called the Void. He was a philosophy teacher who, bereaved and drunk after the death of his wife, staggered into Clapham high street clutching roses he'd picked by the thorns. His hands bleed as he collapsed to his knees and screamed what were to be his last words:

"You hear me God? Do you hear me Apollo, Space, Oblivion, Black? DO YOU HEAR ME VOID? You take us all, and make everything we are still, but you shouldn't have taken her. YOU WERE WRONG TO TAKE HER...But then you failed didn't you? You can't erase everything she was. She was a sound you can't dampen. A flame you can't extinguish. I HOLD NO VACUUM. She lives in me. I breathe her essence and smell her scent. Fuck you Blackness, Atoms, Suns, and Science. FUCK YOU WHATEVER YOUR GUISE. Your power is hollow. I defy you."

Far above Space, not Sky, thundered. Then two black tendrils struck downwards, appearing as plunging arrows, piercing his eyes and weaving his flesh until the gurgling of punctured lungs replaced his choking sobs. Craft died that day, in front of a street full of witnesses, and recorded by unblinking CTV cameras as the first person it murdered. He bled dust and spluttered ash. Seven days later the Void arrived.

Now I'm alone with the deep shadows of this empty tower block. Yesterday I found, breaking into number thirty, a rusty black berretta. It feels cold and solid unlike this nightmare. It tastes of blood-iron-metal in my mouth, its weight resting heavily on my teeth, scratching impatiently. I don't know if it will fire if I pull the trigger. Outside the tendrils are curling together, arching now hundreds of miles above me like vast silhouetted tangling trees, weaving a dome in the dusk and slowly closing off the stars. Sealing me in.

I've been too afraid to climb the last flight of stairs to the roof. I feel hidden here with the flowers breathing my stench, and smothering my sent; life to mask my own. On the roof I would be exposed, but I could see it. I could look for her. In here I cower below the windows. Scrabbling for food in the lower cupboards of kitchens. Sleeping when sunlight warms my face. I crawl and duck to avoid it, but I still feel it. If I close my eyes I might sleep, without the nightmares.

Creaking open my front door you can see through the glazed glass of the stairwell black tendrils feeling upwards like vast sea anemones. Other blocks and shapes float now too; cars, brick, and concrete drifting upwards. I crawl along the cold floor till I reach the darker hallway where I can stand and shuffle along to the next flat to search. I keep the heavy berretta with me now. I think she's happy about that. In most flats I find only photographs and mess with all the useful supplies taken during the evacuation. This morning I found a dead girl. She was facing out the window hung by a rope. Her skin was clammy when I brought her down, my back to the window, and lay her on the floor. I held her and cried. She resembled Carol, but felt cold. That's when I started the fire. I broke cupboard doors in the kitchen. I smashed glass and piled up picture frames with cloth, books, and chemicals. Chucking in anything that would burn. I lay strips that would connect the fire with the rest of the flat, and perhaps with the whole building. I grabbed an aerosol can and spraying it lit the gas with my only lighter. The paper ignited first under its flame, then the wood, I chucked my lighter into the fire. Then I set the curtains and carpet alight too. I watched the kitchen blaze basking in its warmth, listening to the cracks and pops of burning wood, amazed as flames crawled up the walls. She was warm in the blazes heat with the same sexy black hair and pale skin as Carol. She thanked me when I removed the rope, and as I undressed her. The fire was hot now as Carol and I made love for the last time. Its flames licking up the ceiling and bellowing smoke out the windows. I told her Crafts words as we dressed, then I left.

The fire quickly gained momentum. Smoke and heat filling the corridors. I watched from the stairwell as it spread, climbing steps as the heat became unbearable. Listening as bigger things cracked, crashed, and exploded. Then I reached the last step, my back pressed against the door exiting onto the roof. I bent and inhaled the Cold air gushing under it, smoke stinging my eyes, and ignored the increasing heat.

That's when I got here, half conscious, laid face down on the step. The heat is unbearable. It's suffocating me. I need to open the exit otherwise ill die here. I'm already dying here. I need to get out, maybe then I'll see her safe escaping in a helicopter or riding a shooting star. The void is out there waiting for me, it must feel the heat, but I have to look for her one more time. My limbs are numb. We would have called our child Joshua. The door is heavy. Its exit bar won't release. I need to push harder. One big push then I breath. One big push then we meet.

Staggering outside cold air meets me; first choking then filling my lungs with deep burning breaths. The ground is hard concrete. No backdraft, just smoke follows me. Its dusk and the sky is a deep blue. I can still see some stars between the tangling black tendrils. Everything is dissolving, drifting upwards, towards the sky. Bricks rising from breaking walls, rubbish, leaves, cars, all odd silhouettes drifting upwards. The city is quiet and black. The void is close now; its tendrils brush the tower block, recoiling from the flames, meters across and miles high. Its black flesh clouds the horizon sprawling over what were once buildings, sometimes releasing twisted broken towers, or swelling huge spiralling tendrils that form the trunks of the arch. Death is, to detached eyes, beautiful. Below me the building cracks and moans gushing smoke from its cracks and windows.

"Carol are you there?"

Yelling hurts my chest. Shuffling to the edge of the roof I could touch a tendril now if I reached out. I could dive in if I fell. Black spots streaming upwards cloud my vision. My body is dissolving like the bricks of the walls around me; what was once me is gliding up to touch stars. It tingles and I realise when Joshua dissolved it would not have hurt. I can't remember the last time I smiled. I'm breaking up more vigorously now. Static sound warms my ears. I'm a thousand miles up and still standing on the ground. Then I'm not standing anymore. I can see other faces merging with what was mine. Were altogether now, as nothing, travelling but already there. We're all void. What matters to void?