Author: Anonymous

Date: October 24th, 4679

Subject: "Colg Barag"

Roughly a month has passed since the sky opened up and left the land in darkness. After the great earthquakes and the dying roars of the heavens above, an eerie silence has since set over the land. The light of my home star no longer shines past that black haze in the high atmosphere, no more light or heat, no more day or night. I sometimes wonder if the planet still revolves on its axis, or if that would even matter at all now. In truth, a lot of our worries were resolved since that fateful evening, it is almost liberating if not for the new issues that now press down on us. No need to worry about paying rent when territorial control is determined by strength, and I have been strong enough to control a stretch of land roughly a few miles radius around the place I retreated to when the looting began. 

It all happened so suddenly, I was merely sipping a cup of tea staring out at the sunset, not a care in the world. I recall closing my eyes for a moment, when it suddenly blinked out and left us in a night that should not have come so suddenly. Then came the shaking, the awful roaring from the bottom of the world as it convulsed and vibrated. Windows shattered, shelves were dumped, and bits of debris shot out like bullets. Despite adjacency to a large window, I was able to get under a nearby table fast enough to evade the worst of it, but a few bruises were inevitable as the ground rocked back and forth as though it were a ship at sea. This went on for a few minutes until it ran out of momentum and settled down, giving way to a deafening silence. A shrill bang would interrupt my moment of shock as I realized the building was coming down, and I darted down flights of stairs and out the door in the blink of an eye. However, I was unable to fully escape the collapse and debris struck me in the head, knocking the wind out of me.

I am unsure whether or not I was actually unconscious or simply unable to get up, as the inky blackness dissolved any meaningful difference between sleep and wake. I did eventually catch an orange light eventually, my time to get up. Before me, fires had broken out across the town. The sounds of shouting and banging indicated that the legal chains keeping people in check had been broke. I was not prepared to leave the city, but I was even less prepared to face anarchy, so I got up and left, using my mobile device as a flashlight to navigate the environment. I had no internet connection and no mobile data, no clue what was happening except that the police weren't there to help. From what I could see of my surroundings, different forms of concrete were piled up on opposite sides of me. Some buildings had fared better than others, but the ones that survived the shaking were already looted. Not sure why I wasn't robbed while blacked out, maybe people don't keep their personal belongings on their person. Occasionally I would find limbs sticking out of rubble, dust from fallen buildings making them more pale then they already were. I did not think about them much and to this day I fear the day I will have enough time on my hands to fully process what I had seen. 

When I finally reached the outskirts of town, my hands had grown numb from the cold and a thin layer of snow had begun to fall. The occasional snowfall was not unusual for September, but it was just previously warm enough to wear a T-shirt before everything went dark. I had partaken in some looting myself on the way out, stole a couple blankets from a house as well as some clothes to layer up with. I don't condone my behavior, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and I was pretty desperate. Dragging it all was a pain in the rear, so I pulled it all with a cart I found. Was I painting a target on my back? Yes. Could I have done better? Probably not. Didn't even have much of a plan except get away from people. 

I was coming across an old weather station down a dirt road when I first saw one of them. The sound of the brush shuffling got my attention, but then I made the mistake of shining light at the source of the sound. What an awful thing that was to do, for on top of my preexisting physical and spiritual woes, I had bore witness to thousands and thousands of fingers crawling and wriggling from thin air. It was almost as if they were emerging from holes in the air that led to places I could not dream of. It did not speak, nor did it sign, but I knew what it was telling me. It made me sick to my stomach, and the nausea swelled as the fingers began to extend. It was emerging in full, and I wanted no part of it, so I ran and did not look back.

I locked myself in the radio tower, barricaded the doors, and prayed to every deity I knew of for deliverance. But it had already answered. One by one, fingers began to emerge like worms until a great wall of them surrounded me. I did not know what to do, I had nothing to offer but my own fingers, and my own fingers I gave to it. The adrenaline blocked out what I assume would have been tremendous pain as I separated my segments and pushed them away with my foot. My last thoughts before the blood loss once more took my consciousness away was the smile down of a thousand eyes. 

The things I used to type this I had found on my hand when I woke up. They work just as though they were my native fingers, but they are not right. Nothing about them is right. But I need them to carry on, even if they are not pure. Occasionally I venture out beyond the tower into the cold, icy landscape beyond, though the temperature has plummeted too low for even my many layers. Besides, the tower's reactor has been sufficient at keeping me alive and heated even in the long night. In the first couple weeks, people would occasionally come by, but now there is only the same silence that had accompanied me from the beginning of this new phase in my life. I can't grasp the situation, but as long as I can keep myself alive, that is good enough.

Related

Related