by J. D. Stone

Created on: August 15, 2008   Last Updated: September 16, 2008

Sweat burns my eyes as I heave into the gushing water. My stomach burns with a fresh bout of pain, bringing me to my knees. The ripe stench of death wafted up to my nostrils from the black water. Oh, god, would it never stop? Translucent claws reach from my shirtsleeves, seeking support. I wrap blistered fingers around the dirty grate. I turn my head, limp braids, once charcoal, now white, fall into my eyes. "Got to keep running" I whisper. My legs, twitching in the last throes of pain, are scorched by the chasing heat. Fire, heat, isn't there anything else?

"If there is I don' know bout it." The feeble voice with the skeletal face stared back at me from a window of dead, vacant eyes. Pale skin, facial hair burnt from its adolescent innocence, is lost beside the porcelain audience. My face is now a charred mocha brown, and floats, haunting the silent tourist gift shop. I shudder, my death a foregone conclusion. Cockroaches scurry across North Franklin Street, as eager as I am to outrun the looming darkness. "You bout done there?" He dances on his feet, an unasked plea.

The sound of hoof beats fills my ears. Both I and Jim, I'll call him Jim, everyone needs a name but not everyone has time to hear it. Both I and Jim peer over our shoulders, our feet skid along the gravel strewn pavement as we surge forward. I cry out as I crash to the ground, rough timbers outside Burger king skinning my knees. A rough hand grabs my shoulder and yanks me to my feet. "Move! It's comin'!"

I shake my head, bringing myself out of my reverie. Sweat breaks my skin beneath a blackened sky. I shudder with a chill as heat pierces the tender skin between my shoulder blades, stabbing at my lungs. I run on, my feet echoing on the grates of the bridge across the glen stream. My nameless companion runs close behind. His own shallow breaths match my own. The shadow of the Glen looms over me. It draws my eye up to the stone bridge far above the stream of writhing water. A child, long dead, lays draped over the stone wall, her pale skeletal features peering forever into a swirling miasma of blackness. As I watch she vanishes into the maw of engineered black locusts, one scream ringing from her lips. My own screams fill my ears. Still alive. Now she's dead.

It's come before. Through Willard, the panicked corpses clinging to the fences of the correctional facility, frozen until blackness claimed them. Through Ovid, skeletal children scattered on the mammoth front lawn of the once welcoming faade of

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