The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 2 🔻 Hollow

"I. Am. Not. Dead!"

I glowered at the two people who rescued me from the Dark. Webb and Vale guffawed at me in return, their arms full of their scavenged loot.

"Hear that, Webster?" said Vale as I followed them both through the thronged city street. People pushed and shoved past us, hurrying to unknown destinations. Others reached out from shanty hovels, asking for trades or begging for the lux—what I assumed were the glowing red gems—Webb and Vale carried. Vale ignored them all as she snickered at her friend. "It's as simple as that! Guess you and I have been alive all these years too!"

I balled my fists at my sides as I trudged after them like an angry child. "How can I be freaking dead?" I yelled over the buzz of a thousand conversations. "I don't even remember dying!" Finger quotes around dying.

Both scavengers froze in their tracks. They spun around to gawk at me. The whites of their wide eyes almost seemed to glow under the blood-red light of endless tangles of light strands suspended above us. There seemed to be no natural sunlight in After. No sun, moon, or stars occupied the black sky that devoured the tops of the looming decrepit skyscrapers. I tried my best not to look at that abyss, focusing only on Webb and Vale's confused faces.

One of Vale's dark brows rose. "You can't remember anything?" she questioned.

"I..." I bit my lip. No, I didn't remember dying. Actually...my memory began when I inexplicably woke up in the Dark. I didn't even know just how long I'd been lost out in that wasteland. Everything else was blackness—just a dark void in my head. "N-no. I can't."

Vale clucked her tongue. "Consider yourself lucky, then."

Webb winced at her.

I stood rooted to the ground, hugging myself while my vision blurred. Where were my memories? How did I even get here? Was I really dead?

Hands found my shoulders. My eyes followed Webb's gangly frame up to his face. He forced a wide grin. "So, anyway," he said, gesturing at the city of ghosts before me, still beaming. "This is After! As in the afterlife. Your new home for the rest of eternity!"

I balked at the rusted, filthy wreck of a city. Inside the wall that encircled it, After was a monochromatic metal monstrosity. The tall, creaking skyscrapers looked like they could collapse at any moment. Vast sections of their rusted siding had long since sloughed away, revealing their skeletal insides like they were the rotting corpses of giants. Between the shambling crowds of people and some animals, all wearing the same gaunt expressions, I caught glimpses of graffiti of varying crudeness covering every surface. Ahead on a grimy wall, someone scrawled WELCOME TO HELL in dripping paint. God, I wanted to throw up. And yet, no nausea ate away at my stomach—only that aching, hollow feeling pulsed within me. I felt caged inside this walled place, this prison. I did not want to spend the rest of eternity here.

"Webb! Vale!" called a voice from the shanty just ahead of us.

Webb and I followed Vale's flowing cloak toward the call. Even though Vale never looked back at us, I could tell her jaw was taut. She almost seemed as bothered as I was at my recent revelation. Red lights buzzed and flickered all around us, casting dizzying splashes of color across the crowded street. Somewhere, the pounding bass of music throbbed. People packed the streets; huddling around skeletons of cars, smashing into glass windows, brawling with each other under illuminated signs that advertised strip clubs and other unsavory businesses. Swimming through the crowd was a struggle. I almost wished I was back out in the Dark with the shadows, where at least it was quieter.

More and more ghosts shoved in between my companions and myself. Gritting my teeth and cursing my short stature, I shoved back, not willing to lose sight of Webb and Vale. The crowd opened up before me and I let out a yelp as I stumbled over a heavy weight in the street. I gasped at what appeared to be a dead body just lying there, barely avoiding getting trampled by the careless herds that went about their nocturnal business.