A Life Transparent (11 page)

Guffin screamed. “
NO! ALEISTER, I’M SORRY! I’M SO SORR—
” The otherwise sluggish creature moved with sudden, ravenous speed, engulfing the screeching man into its blackened hole of a mouth. A sickening crunch of bone issued from the monster as its jaw closed, rejoining its head.

Donovan gasped, felt his stomach lurch. “Oh Christ.”

The albino thing turned and faced him. A dark, red ring circled its thin lips. George Guffin was no more.

Now it was only Donovan and the Yawning.

The Yawning towered over him, its giant, pale knuckles scraping the ground in slow arcs. It put Donovan in mind of the lummox often portrayed in the cartoons of his youth. Had it not been for the horror he’d just witnessed, he would have suspected the giant to be as playful as a dimwitted Labrador. The albino thing lurched forward, raised its elongated arm, and beckoned to him. Its quivering jaw relaxed as its mouth opened, and from it came that same low-pitched howl. It echoed in the empty air and carried across the gray, lifeless cityscape, inciting answers to its solitary call from other Yawning somewhere below.

The sound sent chills racing down his body, snapping him from his frozen state and urging his feet to move. On the far side of the rooftop, just beyond the creature, was an access door to the garage stairwell. The Yawning took a long stride toward him, and Donovan reacted without thought, bolting for the door. He charged forward, past the hulking beast, feeling its coarse flesh scrape his arm as he went by. The almost sticky sensation reminded him of rubber.

His mind raced.
This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. He—it just gobbled him up.

Donovan kept running. He knew that if he stopped, he would scrutinize and postulate, and now wasn’t the time. The last thing he wanted was to be consumed like the unfortunate George Guffin.

His footsteps marked muffled thuds across the darkened pavement. His previous exposures to the gray sight had been limited to glimpses of what lay beyond the world’s veil. Now, as he raced across the garage rooftop, Donovan realized just how empty everything actually was. He could see the faint droplets of rain falling all around him, but he could not feel their touch on his body. There was no breeze as he ran, no violent storm gusts, and the crash of thunder that should be overhead was absent. Lightning in this realm flashed a more brilliant shade of white, blanketing the landscape for an instant.

Donovan did not dare to stop and ponder the gray world’s intricacies. Instead, he ran as fast and as hard as his body allowed. His chest heaved, lungs ablaze with a fire that urged him forward. Every breath was combustion.

He looked back only once, and that was all the motivation he needed: the Yawning lumbered after him. Despite its sluggish pace, its long, scrawny legs carried it a great distance with each stride. When Donovan reached the door, the albino monstrosity was perhaps 300 feet away, a gap which narrowed with each lumbering step.

Donovan stumbled down the stairs, shoes slapping loudly against concrete in the empty space. He cleared the last four steps with a single leap, pausing long enough to get his bearings. The door opened above, and that long, guttural sob followed soon after, filling the stairwell with a vicious melancholy that horrified him.

He looked up. The Yawning glared down at him and uttered another moan.

“Damn.” He willed his legs to move again. They carried him out the door and into the street, where he expected to see two lanes full of gray, dull cars. To his surprise, there were none.

For the first time since the transition, Donovan saw the Monochrome in full clarity. It was an image of the regular world. bled of color and wiped of all texture. In this guise, the city at ground level appeared as a series of jutting structures composed of complex, planar geometry.

Another moan echoed from down the street. The second Yawning rounded the corner of what once was the courthouse. More appeared from behind an object Donovan recognized as the courthouse statue. Further on down the street, he saw three more emerge from another structure’s entrance.

He realized then, with heart-sinking certainty, that he might outrun them now, but his legs would give out sooner or later.

A door slammed open from behind. He turned just as the first Yawning shouldered itself through the opening.

He sprinted away from the garage and the courthouse, diverging from the path he and Guffin had taken to get there. It wasn’t until he’d crossed over a bridge that he realized he had not a clue as to his whereabouts. Without definition, all the city’s buildings looked the same, and Donovan had no reliable landmarks. The Yawning, for all he knew, were still hot on his trail, but hopefully he’d bought himself enough time to pause and think.

Okay. You can do this. For Donna. Think, Don. North side of the city. Courthouse, garage—

He turned back and faced the direction from which he’d come, tracing a mental map from where he was to the direction he hoped would lead back to the highway. The highway itself, he realized, probably wasn’t a great idea, though. He remembered his commutes earlier that week, during which the random bouts of gray sight revealed hundreds of the lurking, white monstrosities standing between rows of traffic.

If one spotted him, it would call out to its friends, and he’d soon have an entire population of them breathing down his neck.

George Guffin’s screaming face flashed before his eyes, and Donovan shook his head in disgust. For the first time since his flight from the garage, Donovan noticed he still held the man’s gun. He wondered if a bullet could take down one of those freaks, if a bullet would even be useful in this reality. Then he laughed at himself, a dry stuttering wheeze. He’d never fired a gun before tonight, and that had been an accident. All he had to go by was what he’d seen in movies. His brother was the real gun expert—

Michael Candle’s face popped into his head. He turned in the opposite direction, gambling that the street to his back was Poplar. If his mental compass was accurate, this street would take him right to Michael’s neighborhood. It seemed as good a destination as any other. Getting back to the real world was a mystery he’d have to solve when he arrived. Walking to his own home would take hours, and there was no telling how many of those things stalked the monochromatic streets.

Get moving, hoss.

Donovan jogged toward the street corner and froze when he heard the sob of a nearby Yawning. It turned the corner ahead of him and stopped alongside the adjacent building. It swayed, its jaw quivering, peering at him with two beady, black eyes.

Silence moved into the gap between them, broken only by the rapid thump-thump-thump of Donovan’s pounding heart. It sounded like a marching band warming up in his head. He wondered if the creature could hear it too.

The Yawning steadied its face and opened its mouth. Donovan feared what might come next. If it made a sound, the entire area would know he was there. He had only a moment to react, and in that precise instant, he decided he couldn’t risk another Yawning alarm.

He raised the gun and fired. The shot jarred him, filling his ears with a low ring. When his senses cleared, he saw the Yawning still stood. It held one clumsy hand to its chest, examining a wound that did not bleed. It looked over at Donovan, opened its mouth, and vented a deep, horrific growl. It was the sound of metal scraped against a chalkboard, inciting chills across the back of Donovan’s neck.

Good job, Don.
He was already running when the white thing took its first steps toward him. His legs felt like rubber as they carried him through an intersection he thought to be Poplar and Rose. There he paused just long enough to look back and watch the Yawning bellow one of its angry, communicative calls. A chorus of responses rose from deep within the labyrinthine city, heightening his terror and urging him to move.
Don’t stop
, his conscience told him,
don’t look back, just go! Go, go!

When he turned the corner, he found himself on another unfamiliar street. He cursed himself for staying away from the inner city for so many years. It was then he caught sight of the row of gray trees.

The city park.
He raced ahead, feet clattering across the pavement. The Yawning echoed from behind, but all he could hear was the frantic pacing of his heart.

•  •  •

Donovan found his bearings among the grove of trees. From there, he supposed, it would be only an hour before he reached Michael’s house. What he would do once he got there was a mystery to him, but he tried not to think about it.

The park covered most of a city block, making it almost impossible to get lost among the trees and pathways. In the Monochrome, however, everything was a mere shade lighter or darker than everything else. Donovan struggled with a landscape in which even the trees lacked distinction. Viewed against a backdrop of gray forms, the sameness was disorienting. It wasn’t until he found the fountain that he discovered his place within the grove. He leaned against a nearby tree, caught his breath, and stared at the fountain’s rim.

He and Donna had spent their third date here huddled on the grass, watching the water spout up in the fountain’s center.

It was Homecoming night, and most of their friends were in the stands, cheering for the football team as they clashed against their long-time rivals. The choice to visit the park was happenstance. Neither of them cared for sports, the movies were sold out, and they’d just left a small restaurant a few, short blocks away. They walked hand in hand. It was a clear night, and despite the crowds gathered for Homecoming, it was mostly silent. He remembered Donna’s concerns as they strolled through the park. She worried they would be mugged, or worse. He’d assured her that he would protect her no matter what.

No one troubled them that night. They sat together and watched as life moved on around them.

Donna put her head on his shoulder.

“I think I love you, Donnie Candle.”

He rested his head against hers and took her hand, threading their fingers together.

“I think you do,” he whispered. “That’s okay, because I think I love you, too.”

Donovan resisted the tears elicited by the tender memory. He pushed away from the tree and passed the fountain, following a walkway to the park’s plaza. A pair of vendor shacks, once decorated with menus and graffiti, stood out like two gray monoliths. He stopped beside the nearest one and rubbed his eyes.

How could he let this happen? He’d been careless with his own life, and now Donna might have to pay for it. He regretted not conceding to her wishes Monday night. All she wanted was to get away for the weekend. She was right—it wouldn’t break their bank account. He knew that. Even a full week away wouldn’t do them in. Years ago he would’ve agreed to it without a moment’s hesitation.

Donovan shivered. When had he grown so selfish and boring? Perhaps Aleister Dullington was right. He
was
saturated with mediocrity.

Chin up, hoss. This ain’t over yet.

It wasn’t. Donovan took a breath, making a silent vow to take Donna on a real vacation when they made it through this, whatever
this
was.

“Okay,” he said. His voice sounded tiny amidst the silence of the world. “Get a grip on yourself, Don. Keep moving. Kee—”

Movement stole his attention. It was nearby, a subtle scuttling putting him in mind of a seething multitude of insects.

Donovan raised the gun and peered around the corner of the shack toward the grove of trees. What he saw made a pit open in his stomach and all his insides fall into his feet.

The tiny, white things marched across the grass, a veritable army of them numbering in the thousands. They looked harmless while standing on the shoulders of others; now, as they advanced, he found their mass intimidating. There was more movement in his peripheral vision. A small wave of the little bastards crashed over the fountain, their pudgy bodies sprawling across the walkway. Their backward voices meshed into a constant, buzzing drone as they advanced.

He looked at the 9mm, then back at the swarming, white legion.

One of the things saw him. It screeched and pointed. The others cheered.

“I’m not seeing this.” His declaration fell deaf against their wall of reversed language. He tried to look away, but found he couldn’t take his eyes off them.

The throng of miniature albino soldiers marched onward. When they reached the plaza’s perimeter, Donovan turned and ran, managing only a few strides before he realized he was surrounded. The Lilliputian monsters streamed from all corners, over the grass, the benches, even on the limbs of trees. He was lost in the Monochrome wilderness, and had stumbled into a hive.

Donovan stepped back against the wall of the shack and raised the pistol.
I’m going to die here
, he thought.
They’re going to drag me down and tear me to pieces
.

The creatures stopped a few feet away. They chattered in unison, looking up at him from a sea of black, empty eyes.

“It is a shame Mr. Guffin could not follow instructions.”

The creatures fell silent as Aleister Dullington’s voice boomed overhead. Donovan felt the ground vibrate with each pronounced syllable. On the phone, Dullington was soft spoken, disarming. In the Monochrome, his voice thundered with authority, asserting one immutable fact: this was his kingdom, and here he was God.

Donovan turned, frantically searching for his enemy, but the voice came from everywhere. A mound rose in the center of the white swarm as the creatures piled upon one another, writhing like maggots on a corpse. When one climbed up to join the mass, a new feature sprouted from the whole. Extensions took shape as limbs; a stump became a hand, fingers seemingly carved out of the air by an unseen knife. The figure of a man slowly took shape out of the squirming mass. Two arms connected to a torso, the torso to a head, and the black eyes of the white creatures came together, forming a pair of bulbous, obsidian orbs.