By Audrey J. Ross
Artwork and Writing by Audrey J. Ross October 2017
There are shadows in the ocean depths that never truly sleep. They shift and slither, feeling their way along the cracks in the walls of their ancient caverns. They pick carefully over the discarded bones and remnants of pitiful beings who wandered too far down.
The shadows have not forgotten the scent of air or the taste of flesh. They have not forgotten the way thunder heralds their arrival as they breach the surface of the waves and eclipse the sun.
The shadows forget nothing. They simply wait for their moment to rise.
THE MEDIC The field was a bleak place, stained with blood from wars fought for so long they had lost their meaning. Bleaker still was the doctor’s tent, filled with gleaming instruments and a ferrous odor. His coat was once white, though it was hard to discern through the many stains. Three patients lay on the tables around him, though only one still breathed. They were held down by chains pulled tight around their ankles and wrists. The doctor had stripped away their broken armor and tattered uniforms, exposing a variety of wounds that bled and leaked over the edges of the table and dampened the grass below. What little clean blood he was able to extract was harvested by a series of tubes into tall glass jars. The doctor worked on his live patient as if in a trance. He cut and clamped and sewed tirelessly, mending blood vessels and cutting away the damaged tissue. He scarcely blinked, though fatigue tugged heavily on his eyelids. The deceased soldiers were already slit open. Their wounds were beyond his capabilities, and so he had let them scream into unconsciousness as they bled out under his watchful eye. They had parts to be harvested, and their deaths would give their comrade more life than they could ever know. The doctor had skills beyond that of a talented medic.
He held a special power over his patients’ threads of life. It was as if he was able to tug on that thread and redirect it with a mere thought. He knew instinctively where to cut and where to sew, which wounds needed cauterization and which limbs needed amputation. It was an ability he didn’t quite understand, but he didn’t need to. He kept his special talent hidden away. He was the most skilled medic in the field, bringing back dozens of soldiers from the brink of death. His methods were not of import. And so he worked in secret, turning away potential assistants and keeping long hours, often working by the muted glow of a lantern while the rest of the medics took their rest. When his patient was put back together, another would be waiting, and he would pull even more organs from his unwilling donors. He smiled to himself. This was his purpose, he knew. He found comfort in their screams and life in their suffering. Every patient was a new puzzle to unravel and reform into a new and superior being. The doctor could not yet hear the voice that guided his actions. He did not realize that his surgeries were being monitored by unseen eyes that monitored his progress. All the doctor knew was his tent and the bloodied grass within it. He knew his tools and the steadiness of his hands. It was all he needed, and until he was called upon for some higher purpose, he would let it consume him.
PERSEPHONE The flowers in her hair faded as the ground closed around her. The petals withered and turned to dust, the dried stems cracking and falling away into the abyss. The sunlight glow faded from her cheeks, replaced by a pallor radiant and terrifying. She was cold light in a dark place, warm skin turned to polished marble. She stained her lips with pomegranates, the juice as dark as blood and her kiss as sweet as honey. Her eyes were painted black as coal. They adorned her in black silks and crowned her with laurels and white poplar. She touched the ground below and the shades bowed at her passing. She stood on stone and sat on a throne of gems and metals, breathing deep the life of the dead. She was their Iron Queen, and they sung her praises on silent lips.
Eyeless faces Army boots trudged through unfamiliar brush. The soldier leaned on an improvised walking stick with his right hand. His left was bound in a sling. It had been over a day since being separated from his company, and an uneasy rest in a ditch had not left him well rested. The jungle was wet and hot, and he was thirsty and weak. He had lost sight of boot prints in the mud. He kept moving in a westward direction, checking his compass now and then to stay on course. That was where his unit was headed before the ambush, and with any luck, he would catch up with them soon. Twilight was fading beyond the dense canopy. His flashlight was ready on his belt. He had no extra batteries, and so it was nearly pitch black amongst the trees before he switched it on. He staggered back with a fright when the light shone on a pale face in a tree. His breathing calmed as he realized it was not an enemy, but a sculpted mask of sorts, lashed to a branch to stare down at intruders. It was an expressionless face, and that somehow made it all the more menacing.
He shone his light at the surrounding trees. There were more of the things, their empty, ghostly faces staring at him from all directions. He shivered in spite of the heat. The soldier pressed on, more faces in the trees appearing as he walked. They were high above him, and no matter how many times he looked over his shoulder, he found sightless eyes staring at him. His pace quickened, but the jungle was dark. His foot caught on a tangle of vines, and he stumbled, barely catching himself on his walking stick. When he lifted his head, he was face to face with a mask. It was white as bone, and though he would have sworn a moment ago that there was nothing directly in front of him, here it was, tied to a tree at eye level. He cursed under his breath and tore the thing down, stamping it into the dirt and leaves. It cracked beneath his boot. Leaves rustled around him, and he spun around. He could not pinpoint the sound. He gingerly laid his walking stick down and pulled a metal canister from a pouch at his waist. It might not do much, but if it bought him some time, he thought that would be good enough.
While he was trying to determine the direction of the noise, another sound became clear from the west. It was the shouts of soldiers. American soldiers. His company was close. The rattle of gunfire broke the eerie quiet of the jungle. He turned towards them. The mask that had been in his face was gone, and he felt the forest closing in around him. The heat must be getting to him, he knew. He took off running towards his company, their voices coming through more clearly as he stumbled through brush and brambles and slippery patches of mud, the masks watching from the trees all the way. He came to a staggering halt at the edge of a cliff, sending clods of grass downward. The voices ceased as suddenly as they had begun. There was no more gunfire. Instead, there was a heavy silence and an overwhelming stench of death. The soldier shone his light downwards. He was at the edge of a pit half an acre across, the remains of his company strewn across the bottom with a hundred other corpses. Not one had a face that had not been skinned down to the bone. Bile in the back of his throat, he turned around slowly. A mask stared at him with unseeing eyes that bored through his soul. It was no longer white,
but the sickly hue of decaying flesh. He recognized his commander as he forced himself to stare at it harder. He turned to look away only to find another face to its side. This time, it was a young Private. He was surrounded, the lifeless, eyeless faces of his comrades watching him expectedly. They hung in the air on misshapen shadows. He swore and began a prayer with a quivering voice. It was cut short by his screams.
RAPTURE The angels were not what we expected. They were terrible things, blinding and awful to behold. They stood—if that is indeed what these beings did—on taloned feet, like bird legs plated with shining platinum. They towered over our buildings and stirred the clouds as they stepped through our streets. Their wings were not a pair, but many, spinning on gleaming rings around a core of light and power. It was impossible to tell their hues, for they seemed to be all and none at once. Archaic runes not meant for human eyes flickered across the metal parts of their beings. Helms with no faces loomed high above us. They trumpeted an unearthly song that shattered glass and silenced the world around them. There was no other sound to be heard as buildings crumbled and the earth trembled before their might. The heavens drank in the souls rising on high. Corporeal things crumbled. The air was ash and dust. This we had foreseen; this was the way of things. But the angels were not what we expected.