Translucent (18 page)

The next days
were
among the worst for Karena in all of her lives, which was quite a feat considering how terrible many of her days had been.
There was essentially nothing for her to do, and so she wasted away lying on the bed, occasionally eating and drinking. Saving her rations so that she would have enough for later was the last thing on her mind, along with
upgrading the cottage’s defenses, finding more food, and basically anything that would ensure her survival. She didn’t care anymore.

She knew that it wouldn’t be
long before he came for her too. Shawn was gone, and so that was all the proof she needed. She was surprised, of course, that he had been taken into the forest rather than killed right away, but she supposed it didn’t really matter. She knew that he’d be dead by now.

Karena might as well have already been dead.

For some reason, the sting of losing Shawn wasn’t the greatest feeling she felt. In fact, she hardly felt
the sting at all. She just felt an inexplicable sense of not caring, about Shawn or ab
out herself or about anything. It was already over. Her story was over, and she accepted it wholeheartedly, taking to just lying on her bed and wallowing away.

The days dragged on for what seemed like ages, even though it seemed like Karena should have been used to days dragging on from all her experiences. But it had never been anything like this. There had always been Shawn, and thus there had always been just a smidge of hope. Now there was no Shawn, and no hope.

And so it went on like this for who know
s
how long until Karena ran out of food and water. There was nothing in the forest, she’d already looked, though only half-heartedly. There was nothing left in either of the bags.
There was nothing left for her.

Eventually Karena fell into a state where it was hard for her to determine
whether she was dead or alive. She thought she was there, but she couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t be sure of anything except that she was going to be taken by the Sandman eventually, even if she truly was already dead.

Finally, after ages and ages of her agony, he came.

She wasn’t sure if she came during day or night. Her eyes were so bleary that it was nearly impossible for her to see anything, merely vague outlines against other vague
outlines
.
She didn’t know if it was from her lack of nutrition or even from something that the Sandman had done to her.
All she knew was that she could scarcely see anything clearly.

But when the Sandman came, it was
of course
obvious that it was him. After all, she could see the general shape of a person, and what other person would be coming here, especially since there weren’t really any other people be
sides him? There was only
one
of
him
, at least as far as she could see, and he came into her room and stood beside her. Karena expected him to grab her and drag her away, but he did not such thing. He just stood there, silently, and Karena realized that he was trying to increase her anxiety for what was to happen, something he seemed to want to do a lot.
It was his primary goal in existence, after all. She was sure of that by now.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” she murmured weakly.
“I’m not going to give in. How could I get any more anxious, anyway?”

“You will come with me,” the Sandman said.

“Ah, finally,” said Karena. She found it strange that he was speaking, but she was too weak to think about it. “Go on then, drag me away.”

“You will come with me.”

“Oh, I get it. You want me to walk, do you? All right then, fine, although I must say I’m not likely to make it very far.”
Karena was surprised that her weak
voice had such a cheerful and somewhat mocking tone. She already knew she was dead, so there was really no reason to be scared of him anymore.

Karena
moved her legs off the side of the bed and tried to shift the weight of her body from the bed to her legs in a feeble attempt to stand up, something she hadn’t done in days. She failed collapsing back into the bed. Her stomach lurched from hunger at the sudden jolt, and it felt as if it were about to cave in, leaving a ho
le in the middle of her stomach. Trying to ignore the pain and summoning up all the energy and willpower left within her, which was not very much at all, Karena tried again. This time, she managed to raise herself out of her sitting position, but she lost control and nearly fell over forwards. However, she managed to move herself forward so that she could hug the wall and use it to assist her in balancing.
Shakily, she inched her way towards the door, crouched over and
,
keeping o
n arm on the wall to assist her, made her way across the room.
It wasn’t by any means an easy task.

She reached the doorway and turned around to the Sandman who was still standing there as if she hadn’t gotten up and was still lying in bed. “Well, aren’
t you going to show me the way?” she said. She’d meant to be somewhat loud, but it came out as more of a whisper. “Or were you planning on standing there all day motionless?”

The Sandman turned around, expressionless, as always. “You will come with me.”

“Yes, I know that. So why don’t you go ahead of me so that I can actually come with you?”

The Sandman said nothing as he walked forward and out the door. Karena slowly followed behind as they went out of the cottage, through the clearing, and into the woods.
She had some difficulty getting through the clearing, and found herself having to crawl part of the way, but once she made it into the forest she was able to stand upright again, both because there were many trees to help her and because she was beginning to get used to walking
again
.

She’d thought initially that it would be hard to keep up with the Sandman, but she soon found that it turned out to be rather easy, since he walked at an exceedingly slow pace. She wasn’t sure why he would do this, when he could easily just teleport there and take her with
him if she wished. She supposed it was just to drag it out longer, just like everything in her life had been dragged on longer. It was ridiculous, frankly, but she didn’t complain, most
ly because she was too weak to.

They walked through the woods for a very long time, and it seemed like they weren’t getting anywhere. There was nothing to mark how far they had gone, just endless trees that constantly grew up around them. There was nothing to mark the passing of time either, because after what seemed like the time where it should change to day, dawn didn’t make the slightest sign of breaking. There wasn’t even the most infinitesimal change of color in the sky, jus the ever-pre
sent darkness and the slim moon, casting eerie shadows throughout the forest.

Karena knew that she wouldn’t be able to go on for much longer in the condition she was in. She was sta
r
ving, and even worse, she hadn’t had any water for days.
Her throat felt like it was going to explode if she didn’t get water soon. There was hardly any saliva left in her throat, and the saliva that there was she sl
oshed around in her pasty mouth. Karena tried drinking it, but found that it provided no sustenance whatsoever and only seemed to make the feeling worse.

After an eternity and a day, they came into a large clearing in the forest.
Karena’s eyes were still bleary, but they were clearing slightly, and so she was able to see some of the things in the moonlit expanse of ground that lay before her.
It appeared to be abandoned, but not in the way everything else in the world was abandoned. It was abandoned in the way the cottage had been, for a long time. Except instead of a quaint little cottage before her, there was intertwining steel, metal, and concrete. They rose up high so that it was obvious that they had once been buildings, though of what city Karena had no idea. She had never really left the city she’d lived in he
r whole life before, and so this whole area was new to her.

They walked forward into a large concrete square that was broken and cracked in several places to the extent that it was no longer one straight platform but was rather many smaller platforms smashed together in an ugly fashion.
She stumble
d
across it, struggling to keep her balance on the extremely uneven ground. The Sandman, on the other hand, had no trouble, merely walking as if he were on flat ground. Looking closer, Karena saw that when the ground dipped down, he kept walking in the air, and when the ground tilted up, he walked right through it as if it wasn’t even there.
It seemed he was merely
rubbing in how easy everything was for him.

They reached what appeared to be a sort of main street, which was equally destroyed and terrible for walking.
A few minutes into this, however, the Sandman suddenly stopped abruptly, and Karena nearly crashed into him, something she definitely didn’t want to happen. She backed away and saw that
he was staring straight ahead inhumanly
, his eyes blank and his hands ramrod beside his body.

“Hello?” Karena asked. For some reason, the walk had somewhat revived her strength to the extent that she could talk
more comfortably than before. “Why’d you just stop all of a sudden?”

The Sandman didn’t answer, and he didn’t need to. Because all around them suddenly materialized hundreds and hundreds of Sandmen, all identical, and all of them holding the hourglasses. The Sandman that had been guiding her stepped back into the c
rowd that now surrounded Karena, and in seconds she realized what was happening
. Now, in this strange setting
, they were
finally decided to kill her. This was where it would all end.

They were all identical in every way. They were almost entirely bones, with a few areas on their bodies where one could see a cluster of veins or muscles. The hourglass was clenched in their right hands, and they all stood with their backs perfectly straight and with equally inscrutable faces. They were everywhere, entirely surrounding her, in the street and in buildings
, and on the roofs of the structures
. They went as far as the eye could see, a huge cr
owd spreading into the distance, all the way into the forest at the edge of the clearing of buildings.

They stretched in a line, and Karena realized that there must have been thousands of them. It was then that she realized that they were
all
here, all the Sandmen that had taken over the people. That would be what, 7 billion identical copies of the Sandman, all right here in this abandoned area. All right here because of her. And after all, why wouldn’t they be? She was the only reason the Sandman had taken over everyone in the first place.

“All right, go ahead,” Karena said. “I’m ready. Actually I’ve been ready for quite a long time, so please just finish me off.”

The Sandmen stood there, staring into the distance.

“Oh, come on! I’m sick of you just standing there like you always do, holding your stupid hourglasses. Seriously, if you’re going to kill me, just kill me!”

“We are not going to kill you,” said all the Sandmen at once. Since they were all the same person anyway, this wasn’t a very difficult task.
As if anything was a difficult task for him.

Karena rolled her eyes.
“Well, what are you going to do then? Build up my anxiety even more? Keep me prisoner until I go crazy?”

“Our master will finish you off.”

“Oh, I see,” Karena said. “Who even is your master anyway? I thought you all were the same person.”

“Our master is the one of us who controls all the others. We are all him.”

“Then what makes him your
master anyway if you’re all him?
”

“Because he controls all of us.”

“You already said that. Can you just show me your master already?”

“You must wait.”

“I’ve been waiting for a long time, ok! I want to know what this is all about. You killed Shawn and now you’re going to kill me.”

“We did not kill him.”

Karena heart began to race. They didn’t kill him. They’d dragged him away, but they hadn’t killed him. Karena hadn’t even considered that to be an option.
Could it be true? Was he not dead after all? Was there a motive for her to keep on living?
“Where is he?” she asked. “What have you done to him?”

The Sandmen made no reply, but instead began moving apart from each other in an area directly in front of Karena,
forming a
path through them. Karena knew what this meant. Not knowing where the sudden burst of strength came from,
she burst forward, running into the passage formed by the Sandmen. Shawn was going to be through there, and they were actually going to let her see him. Thrilled with ecstasy from this new turn of events, she found herself not even having to
even
force her starved body to run, being able to run just from the excitement of being able to see Shawn again.

There was a clearing up ahead, and Karena hoped against hopes that this was where Shawn was. When she reached the clearing, she saw that it was about the same size as the one she’d been in before, with
about the same amount of space on the inside, except in the center of this clearing there was a rock, and on that rock was
the one person who had given her hope throughout her entire experience in her many lives. Shawn.