A Most Spectacular Rift

Chapter 2

Huncho woke with sunlight dribbling through the cabin curtains. He found Enzo outstretched in a bed nearby, the linen tight and the pillow of reeds, stiff. His position was fairly awkward and anfractuous, his arms splayed, legs corkscrewed. Though a tough boy, with the mishap of yesterday, no matter how iron his heart was encaged, would not induce a sound sleep. Enzo was the cabin master of yesterday's ring six, and would be today's ring one, but now, he was only left with Huncho, and vice versa.

Slowly, Huncho withdrew his sheets and at the same time, stifled a yawn.

He reached for a hemp shirt from a nearby wooden drawer that he fumbled to open, and stared at the many beds that lined the longhouse like white coffins. They were all empty, sheets drawn to the curb of the pillow, the wax candles drooling. They were all empty. And yet he still woke up. Why didn't he just sleep more? Just hide in his covers? The beds were all empty, barren, desolate. There were once heads and hair on those pillows, but only the smell of sweat lingered.

Where's Secor, Dawyn, Lior, Michael, Cassio, Abel?

Huncho didn't feel like doing anything, he really didn't, so he tucked his sheets back and furthered his sleep, the hemp shirt he just garnered laid over his grimy bed sheets. Body warm, and sweat perspiring down, Huncho still wished to sleep, to not think, to not do. His hair remained tangled, and dirty, the spots on his scalp berated with dandruff. He scratched at it, and it became itchier, and a bit painful, as his nail snared at something bulbous.

Huncho shook his head, and swung his sheets out, the warm sweat on his legs now cold as wind fluttered through a window.

"Blood, eyes, limbs, my god!" Huncho groaned as his clumsy impetus brought him forward. "Blood, eyes, limbs, it's true, they're dead. How did they - What killed ..."

Enzo was still snoring. The black man was, to say, an anomaly. There weren't black men in Sunnets. There were black men in Sammalia, but not Sunnets. People were of course repelled by the sight of him, but they wouldn't attack him, because sheep don't fight wolves.

"They're dead," Huncho cried, putting a hand on his throbbing head - it was warm! And it was not clear his head, it felt crammed and that there was stuffing in his ears, rolling round and round in there.

"They're gone. They're gone. They're gone." He was going mad. A shadow loomed over there. A window flutter shook thither.

Huncho threw himself out of his bed. It was cold not tucked under those sheets. Where were the others? Why were the beds empty? Why were they white? Shouldn't they be dirty, smeared, daubed? Why are they empty?

White coffins staring at him, glitching at him? Why? Why? He snagged at his hair, pulling. His vision glitched. Why was the window curtain swaying back and forth? The wind - it was seeping in. Seeping.

Was that Secor, smiling at him, his jaws hanging, a wide grin of dirty, sordid teeth like the streets here?

Dawyn, swinging his legs up and down on his bed, staring into the only book he had, a fairy tale?

Huncho sprung out onto the floor.

He paced towards the door. "They're ... gone." He opened it, no banged it open, elbowing his way through, as sunlight streamed through and blinded him. Huncho's heart was a rabbit caught in a snare, it was beating, and beating harshly. Why? He almost laughed. He contained the voices inside his head like daws pecking at his skull.

The light! He shook his head as he squinted his eyes more than once; his tongue was also dry, the curves around his lips foamy with this white disgusting matter.