"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."
- Edgar Allan Poe
I wanted to scream.
But no matter how much I strained my lungs, only a strangled keen escaped my throat. No matter how fast I tried to run, it was as if some thick miasma slowed my movements like I was stuck in a dream. Or...like I was trapped in a nightmare.
Because monsters were hunting me.
I couldn't see them, for either I had gone blind, or the world had been plunged into heavy, pulsating darkness, but I could hear them hissing and shuffling behind me on long, spindly, and numerous legs. I could feel them when they reached with mangled hands and clutched at my clothes and hair as I ran.
"Help me!" I wailed, grasping at more of that darkness ahead of me. My voice didn't carry far. The echoes of my pleas lingered in the air like flies in a web, barely a breath away from my face. My foot caught on something I couldn't see. With a gasp, I fell into what felt like sand.
I expected my breath to quicken when hissing surrounded me and clawed feet of unseen creatures kicked up the sand. I expected my heart to race. I expected my blood to turn to ice.
But none of those things happened. I felt nothing but a sick emptiness inside me.
Something else's breath beat down on my face. I swore I heard the slow, wet sound of toothy jaws parting.
And then there came a light.
A red beam cut through the dark, illuminating everything in my immediate vicinity.
I wished it hadn't.
I clapped my hands over my mouth to stifle the urge to spill my guts onto the ground at what I saw. The humanoid face before me drew back its lips in a squeal of pain. It snapped milky white eyes shut against the light that scorched its black flesh. The monster recoiled from me and returned to the darkness with its many pairs of spider-like limbs. The other creatures lingered with muscles tensed beneath sagging skin, braced to pounce.
Before they could, a glowing blade sliced through their limbs. Fluid like ink sprayed from severed appendages and splashed over me.
The maimed creatures screamed and fled from the red light's reach. When the shrieking silenced and the severed arms on the ground stopped twitching, a masked figure shrouded in a billowing, ratty cloak moved to stand beside me. Still wielding the flashlight that kept the monsters at bay, the person brushed her cloak aside and sheathed her blood-stained katana. At least, I thought it was a katana, but its blade flared red hot like nothing I'd ever seen before. The wind kicked up flecks of black sand, making them fly like swarming gnats in the beam of light the cloaked girl now pointed at me.
"Are you going to keep lying there until the shadows come back, or are you going to come with me?" she said with a British lilt. "This torch won't keep them away for long."
Her voice came out loud and clear despite the dark leather mask that covered her face. The only discernible features of it were the frowning mouth made from crude white stitches and the two red lenses that glared down at me.
"I...Wha—?" was all I could utter, my throat inexplicably dry.
The girl huffed and made what I assumed was a rolling-eyes gesture behind her mask. She snatched my hand and hauled me to my feet. Then, without pause, she took off running as if pitch darkness didn't engulf us.
"Keep up!" she called over her shoulder while the wind shrilled around us. "My bike isn't too far away!"
I squinted against the flying sand that pelted my face. I couldn't see a trace of any kind of bike ahead of us, and there was no telling just where the hell we even were.
More hissing followed us.
"Whatever you do—" the other girl began.
I twisted my head around to peer behind us.
"—don't look back!" she finished.
Shit.
The shadows pursued us. It was hard to tell how many there were, for they all blended into the dark—into each other. They were almost on top of us.
One of them leaped through the air.
I let out another strangled scream as a weight crashed into my back, bowling me over. I lost my grip on the masked girl's hand. Her light disappeared.
Talons cut into my arm. I felt no pain, only a pins-and-needles tingling in my bicep and the sensation of coldness leaking out from beneath my skin. The suffocating weight continued to press into me, forcing me deeper into the charcoal-colored sand. The monster's breath wafted against my ear as it sighed.
With a snarl, I elbowed the creature in its face, throwing it and all of its flailing limbs off of me. Freed from its weight, I heaved in lungfuls of air. No matter how much I gasped, the air filling my lungs brought no relief. I ignored the tingling in my arm and tried to scramble away.
The monster landed on me again and tore into my flesh with its claws. I couldn't see or feel my wounds; I just felt...life seep out of me like a viscous fluid. This was a nightmare. It had to be.
I needed to wake up.
I clawed back. I bit. But it was useless trying to pry this thing off of me. When jagged teeth sank into my neck, I shut my eyes. Not that it made a difference.
I needed to wake up.
My fingers dug into the sand, searching for a place to hide, or some escape, or just something.
I needed to—
A sudden heat filled my core, and a blinding flash seared through my eyelids. While the shadow screamed and bailed, I forced my eyes open. Beneath my fingertips in the sand was a small void of pure, white light that was far brighter than that masked girl's red flashlight. Bathed in its glow, I craned my head forward. That hollowness in my chest receded more and more the closer my face got to the void. I couldn't tear my eyes away from it, or ignore its beckoning call. My lifeless heart kick-started in my chest. I'd found it. The end of this nightmare. My escape.
I reached into the light.
"No!" that familiar voice screamed. Hands grabbed my shoulders and tossed me aside.
I landed in a splatter of sand and watched as the masked girl kicked dust over the void, smothering its light until all that remained was the red glow of her flashlight.
"You'll thank me later," she said to me when I rose to confront her. I realized then how much taller she was than me. "For now, just get on the bike!"
She pointed behind me. I brushed my long jet-black hair aside to see a parked behemoth of a motorcycle through the swarming sand in the air. Fixed to the bike was a trailer laden with metal debris and strange, glowing red gems that lit up the dark. Another masked figure waved from the trailer.
When more hissing arose nearby, the cloaked girl ushered me forward until I clambered into the trailer and settled amongst the cargo of rusted detritus and crystals. The girl turned her back to the darkness and mounted the bike. With a rev of an engine, we sped into the night.
I swiveled around to watch more shadows get absorbed by the dark in our wake. The person beside me aimed another flashlight at any lingering monsters like it was a laser. The last pursuing shadow bared its teeth at us in frustration before giving up its chase. I looked where we headed, but saw nothing illuminated in the motorcycle's red headlamp. Save for the sand we kicked up, there was no trace of a discernible landscape whatsoever. I could only trust that the girl knew where we were going.
I sat back and shivered while cold air continued to spill from my body. I touched my seeping throat and arm, feeling for any blood. I couldn't determine the state of myself in the darkness, so my imagination painted a morbid picture for me. Was I dying? Was this what death felt like?
It didn't hurt.
"Hey," the masked figure beside me said over the rumble of the motorcycle's engine. A line of haphazard white stitches beneath his glowing lenses was shaped in a smile. Yet, I didn't find that particularly comforting at the moment. "You'll be fine. It'll just take you a bit to heal up. I'm Webb, by the way. Nice to stumble into you." He pointed at our driver with a thumb. "And that's Vale."
The most noticeable feature of him I could see was that he was pretty lanky, with his skinny legs sprawled so casually across the trailer bed. I spied the hilt of a sword strapped to his back. Was its blade red, too?
My hand left my neck. That cold sensation gradually dissipated, and my shivering eased.
"I'm Sk—" My voice caught in my throat. I swallowed and tried again. "Skye. Thank you, Webb, and, uh...Vale." I continued to paw at my body in the darkness. I was certain that monster had sliced me nearly to ribbons a few moments ago, but I didn't feel any blood. Even the shadows' blood that had doused me seemed to have vanished. "Thank you both. What were those creatures? What's happening to me? And where are we?"
Webb's red lenses flashed as he shrugged. "Shadows. They're monsters that live out here in the Dark. No one knows where they come from, but they make mine and Vale's job way harder than it has to be. It's not like it isn't tough enough going scavenging out here by luxlight. Saw you deck one of 'em in the face, though. That was awesome." He laughed behind his mask.
I furrowed my brows while my sluggish brain struggled to make sense of anything. Scavenging? Lux? ...The Dark?
A light dawned on the horizon.
Please let that be the sun! I thought, eager to wake from this nightmare.
Now able to pinpoint where the black land met black sky, I could tell how freaking fast we sped across the dunes of some vast desert. The horizon grew brighter, and I realized that, no, that wasn't the sun we raced toward. I narrowed my eyes at the enormous silhouettes of towering skyscrapers—all aglow with crimson—peeking over a giant wall that spanned the entire horizon.
Webb removed his mask. A guy in his older teens or younger twenties grinned at me, his wavy light blond hair whipping in his face as the wall before us grew larger and taller, nearly filling the whole sky. He gestured with his head toward the city. "As for where we are..." he said.
Vale brought the bike and the trailer to a sliding stop at the foot of a colossal wall constructed of scrap metal. Even with the light of the ruby crystals embedded into the wall's corrugated surface, it was hard to fathom just how monstrously huge it was. It had to be at least a hundred stories tall. A single huge, sprawling word painted across its expanse greeted the three of us.
"After," I read aloud.
A resounding, explosive thud filled the surrounding wasteland, producing a shock wave of flying dust as huge chains from the top of the wall rattled and pulled taut. A massive gate lifted open in front of us like the maw of an old, abandoned mechanical creature, ready to swallow us whole. The gems and scrap I sat amongst vibrated and clattered together as the gate rose. This dream kept getting weirder. I wondered if I was going to wake up soon. I had to, right? Any second now...
Then everything was still and silent. More red light spilled over us from within the city and cast our shadows backward into the desert. I chanced a glance at myself, afraid of what I would see. I uttered a little gasp when my suspicions were confirmed.
Not a single scratch marred my pale skin.
"I'm healed?" I whispered to myself. I rubbed my arm, searching for any sign of injury. There wasn't a single fleck of blood anywhere. "But that shadow thing...! It cut me! I thought I was going to die! How am I healed?"
Footsteps crunched in the sand beside the trailer. I looked up into Vale's red lenses.
Slowly, Vale pulled her frowning mask from her face. She appeared about my age—eighteen, and her dark skin looked so flawless in the artificial brightness. She swept her waist-length box braids back over her shoulder. Unlike Webb, Vale didn't smile. "Well, I've got good news and bad news, new blood," she said to me, her expression grim. "The good news is that no shadows should get you again in the city of After."
Webb fidgeted. He stared past me out into the desert we escaped from, as if avoiding eye contact.
Vale, however, met my eyes with eyes devoid of any emotion. "The bad news is that you've already died," she told me. She gestured into the gateway of After before us. "Welcome to the afterlife."
Now would you pray before you twist the knife?
Yeah, would you take my hand and take a life?
I'm too damn young to give up on the night
I'm used to the darkness, I'm used to the darkness
I'm just a man, I'm only flesh and bone
I can't blame it back on everything I've done
And now there's no-one else left to love
I'm used to the darkness, I'm used to the darkness