Beyond Nothing

Chapter Five

I wake an indeterminable time later, my eyes heavy with sleep. I feel compelled to rise, and do so. The curtains are open, and I glance out into the street, but the sky is bright with fire and I quickly look away. My feet stick on the floorboards as I pad downstairs, the sound echoing in the deathly silence. The hallway seems to twist around me, spiralling out of control, and I stumble to stay upright.

The sitting room is filled with feathers, a sea of them, brown and white and red, sticking to the sofa, to the walls, to the ceiling. I rub one between my fingers, and it leaves a smear of watery blood. Wiping my hands on the fabric of the nightdress I'm wearing - when did I get changed? - I push open the door opposite.

It leads to a small kitchen, reminding me of the one at my home. A long wooden table is set against one wall, with four large chairs. One of them is slightly uneven, tilting on a splintered leg. The floor is of pale tiles, swept clean.

I walk to the centre of the room, looking around me. I blink, and when I open my eyes again, the room is dripping with egg. Clear whites hang from the light above, golden yolk pooling on the floor, slippery beneath my bare feet. At a sound from behind me, I turn, my feet crunching on sharp, thick shells.

Novo is standing in the doorway, silent now, and so still that he could be carved from stone. He stares straight at me, small eyes bright and flickering from side to side. I try to speak to him, to ask him what's going on, but my tongue sticks in my mouth. I gag, and at my movement, Novo begins to crumble.

His face falls apart, chunks of rock crashing to the floor. His body soon follows, the scaly plates that cover him falling away whole to smash apart against the tiles.

I spin on my heel, but before I can stop myself, I'm falling. I see my hands, instinctively stretched before me to save myself, but I go straight through the tiles. Darkness flashes across my vision, and then I'm back in the sitting room, but right inside this time, rather than standing in the doorway. I'm swimming in the feathers, choking on them, the coppery tang of blood filling my mouth when they brush against my lips. I wade to the doorway, and they fall from my body like water from a duck. I shed them behind me as I open the front door and walk into the street.

The sky is bright and strangely beautiful, glowing with fire. The houses are ablaze, all of them, flames flickering across the roofs and arching over the street, creating a tunnel of fire that stretches into the distance as far as I can see. It reaches for me, encasing me, and in a flash of dull pain, the flames are gone.

The sky still sparks and flickers, bathing the street in a hellish glow. Bodies lie twisted and broken around me, arms stretching towards me, eyes fixed on my face. Most seem hazy, the faces blurred, but several stand out to me in crisp detail. Kea, wings tangled and broken. Novo, the armour plates over his back torn away, hanging loose and bloody. A girl with long pale hair, spreading over and around her, tangled and dirty. A woman, dressed in a simple dress that I think used to be white, her hands curled into grasping claws.

I stumble backwards, and they follow me, moving in jerking stutters, an action so fundamentally wrong that a wave of freezing cold washes through me. The eyes are still fixed on me, blank and filmed.

A shadow races down the street, extinguishing the burning sky. I glance upward, and the crows dive, hundreds of them, as black as the darkest night. Gleaming, iridescent feathers surround me, and when they lift, the bodies are gone.

The sky is clear again, pale lilac, diamond stars glittering. One by one they fall, shattering on the street, and wherever they hit, the area disappears. In what seems like a second, the whole street is gone, the houses with it, the sky fading with the last star. I'm left, surrounded by darkness, not knowing if I'm standing or plummeting through the pitch black.