Rapture

Evil

"Get up." A girl's sharp command infiltrates my dreams of darkness of fire. I try to open my eyes, but the flames grow to devour me, and my body pours with sweat.

Then a slap. One cheek stings from the impact of her palm while the other hits the dry earth. I look up to see the dark-eyed twin above me. The new sun shines above her, red and purple rays making my heart flutter with fear, giving me haunting images of violence upon touching my eyes.

Skin tearing. Blood splashing. Bones breaking out from in. Guts spilling like giant worms. Screams that stretch from hell to heaven. Eyeballs bulging out with disbelief at pain and brutality before they're ripped out, dangling on bloodied strings of nerves.

Another slap. Then two hands grabbing my face hard and fingertips prying my eyelids open.

"The new sun..." I mumble, unable to stop seeing - now tooth by tooth being plucked out from the root, holes in the gums bleeding until it overflows from the mouth and suffocates the throat. "The new sun is evil."

Two more slaps cut the images with blanks of white. "Don't you dare speak about my sister this way, bitch."

She's sitting tall on my chest, sneering down at me. I finally get a relief as her shadow is cast over me.

"Your sister?" I ask, then the memories flash back to me. I see the boy in the darkness again. The man he became. The things that he's done.

It wasn't a nightmare. The queen and king were killed. There's a new sun in the sky.

"My sister isn't evil. She cleanses the evil from your corrupted world." The girl stares at me with disdain. Looking into the endless pit of black her eyes give me odd peace. A space of darkness safe from the terrible light that now reveals the world.

She gets up from me, pulling my hair as she does - forcing me up to my feet. To stand up has never been more challenging. My body pulses with weakness, and heat. A desperation bigger than I ever knew before.

But a desperation for what?

"Walk." She pushes my back, and I stumble forward. The earth around us in barren. There is no sign of the forest. Only mountain ridge far in the yonder, snow-capped peaks gleaming with the eerie twilight.

"Where are we going?" I ask, and get to see the dark-eyed twin smile for the second time, the first being when the queen was murdered on top of her.

"Endpoint."