We Got Demons! Apartment 239 Part III

Prologue: Meet Aisha

Aisha Melek never had a day of good luck, that is, until her hometown sunk into the Earth, taking her home and every member of her family into the abyss. After that, things began to look up for Aisha.

At the moment, as far as the world knows, she is the sole survivor of the Marble Springs Disaster. Word tore through social media. She worked in Dallas, driving the lonely, trash-strewn commute dotted with billboards alternating between depicting the horrors of abortion and faded pleas for information regarding missing persons from Marble Springs.

She approached the city limits to see a community on fire. Not literally, for the most part, but there were fires. But there were lights, floating orbs, phantasms with trailing tails of tattered death shrouds, and strange flying creatures. Screams and gunshots, laughter and shrieks, echoed from the city.

Aisha slammed on the breaks, and as she recounted numerous times, said aloud:

"What the fresh fuck is this?"

Then, all 42 square miles of Marble Springs, Texas, along with the 8 square miles of the recently annexed Nobility, TX, fell into the Earth. Now this, Aisha claimed, was literal.

The city buckled. The city seemed to rise in the air, readying to explode like an animated volcano. Instead, the skyline vanished. The entire city, every building, every park, the town lake, the creeks, the people, all of it, went into the hole.

Aisha lost her mother, her uncle, her Caucasian step-father who refused to pronounce her name correctly for the past 23 years, her home, and her pride and joy, her secret shame, a vast collection of meticulously restored pre-1960s kewpie dolls, which covered the walls of her master bedroom and engaged in a decades-long dead-eyed staring contest.

All gone.

Aisha put her car in park. It shuddered and idled quietly. Ambulances, police cars, fire departments, news vans, all drove around her and soon blocked her in. When she explained she lived there, and people realized she was an actual witness to the disaster, Aisha's luck began to change.

Documentaries. New specials. Podcasts. YouTube interviews. More podcasts. Panel appearances. Three Comic-con appearances. Most witnesses went into hiding. Some killed themselves, often in surprising ways. Who knew one could shoot themselves in the head three times? It happened to four separate survivors, including a man named Hugh, who's stories of boats and cars rising from the depths of a lake before the disaster captured the world's imagination.

But Aisha embraced it. She had to. When you live the American dream, crushed under debt and struggling to survive, praying to God you don't develop a cold or minor flu that could devastate your finances for the rest of your natural life, you know not to ignore opportunity.

She created a scale. Just the facts? $200. Slight emotion? $300. Really digging deep into the trauma and leaving her psyche a gaping wound, exposed to the wind and the world? $400.

Then, the invite of a lifetime.

Months of investigations, fact finding missions, committees, and expeditions into the remains of the city commenced. The city now appeared like a vast meteor crater, the collapsed rubble created lines that fell downward from the outer rim and into the center, where several of the tallest buildings were crushed together, fused as if exposed to a heat greater than multiple nuclear explosions.

No radiation, no bodies.

A major news organization desperate for people to give a shit about their reporting again, invited Aisha to tour a newly opened tunnel. The deepest into crater, this one they hoped would finally answer the question of what the hell happened to Marble Springs.

A walkway, switchbacking its way down the crater, took Aisha and the news team into the darkness. Despite the acrid scent wafting in the air, people assured them no toxic chemicals had been detected. The air was in fact cleaner than in most American cities, especially since the EPA debuted their new deregulation movement, Just RELAX, Guys, It's Fine (JRGIF).

The door of the elevator clanged shut, as the small metal cage vibrated and rattled its way into the Earth.

"We're six stories down at the moment," one of the crew yelled to Aisha over the drum and thud of the elevator motor.

"Have you found anyone?" Aisha asked.

"Nope," he shrugged.

One of the crew excavating the crater handed Aisha an LED hardhat, the only one not smeared with dirt and grime. She wished they'd handed her a jacket. The man nodded, watching Aisha hug herself.

"Been running operations like this a long time. It's cold underground, but not this cold. Some of the boys joke that hell froze over!"

He paused of a laugh. There wasn't one. There never was. He shrugged. Comedy is all about finding your audience, he told himself, reflecting on the lessons of his recent improv comedy courses.

The news crew filmed, their lights brighter than any of the beaming hardhats. Two of the mining crew members led Aisha through the tunnels, 2x4 boards framed the tunnel walls, strings of lights hung loosely on hooks.

"So, basically, we're trying to find the bottom, I guess? No amount of ground penetrating technology, drones, or tiny cameras on wires have delivered us anything. So, we gotta dig to figure out what happened," the man said.

"I saw what happened," Aisha said.

"I know. I've seen your interviews," he grinned expectantly. Aisha cleared her throat and looked away. He nodded. Find your audience, Doug told himself.

A voice called out, echoing down the tunnel.

They found something.

The cameraman rushed ahead of everywhere, pushing Aisha against the wall. Everyone jogged behind. Aisha dusted off her dress and swore vengeance.

At the end of the tunnel, where the digging stopped abruptly, a short man rushed past the equipment and machines. In his hand, something small.

Something glowing a faint blue.

He dropped the small capsule into Doug's hand.

"What is this?" Doug asked.

His crewmember shrugged. The cameraman moved in.

"It's hot," Doug said.

Had Aisha or any of the others survived to tell the tale, they would have said the capsule seemed to come alive. With a pop, the glass, or metal, none of them could exactly tell, shattered. Liquid poured out, pooling into Doug's hand. Reacting to the air, it ballooned and burst, and rivulets ran over Doug's hand. But instead of dripping to the ground, these rivulets swung back and attached themselves to Doug's legs like jellyfish tentacles. They flew out and into the camera lens, making their way into the cameraman's cranium, filling his skull and flowing down his throat. His gags were pure reflex, air being forced out by the streaming liquid. He died instantly.

Aisha ran. Survivors run. But eventually, for Aisha, for you, for me, for all of us, luck runs out. Death wins the day. The bodies of six people were drug by the tendrils into a pile, hissing and popping as they dissolved into a puddle.

From a great swirling pool of soft bones and bubbling bile, it rose.

It stumbled. Then, it thought.

It's good to be back.