3 May 2012
I just had time to see the pod engulfed in a stream of colour, before my vision cascaded into darkness.
I awoke to an unwelcome blaze of light radiating through the glass. I tried desperately to move out of its path as it singed my retinas, but a searing pain in my right arm blinded me further. Eventually I manoeuvred into the shade. I sat for a moment, contemplating the situation whilst trying unsuccessfully to calm my rapid breathing. The air felt dense as I gulped it down, like every mouthful was too much. My memory still danced with images of the multicoloured stream and I managed to muster a smile at the thought. Then I remembered my passenger.
I looked behind me, eyes searching over the pod’s dark and distorted interior. I reached out to tear away a sheet of fallen metal from my view and discovered a figure tangled in a web of seat restraints. He was slumped forward like a lifeless puppet, blood with an orange hue seeped from an open wound in his head and dripped onto the notepad now at his feet. He wasn’t moving. I looked away, closing my eyes forcefully in the attempt to rid them of the scar left by the light, or perhaps to hide from the guilt?
Movement from the side window caught my eye and I peered outside. Zooming far above the ground were hundreds of Stones in every direction, coughing out jet black smoke in their wakes. My mouth opened in awe. ‘They were real?’ A wide semi-grin stretched across my face, unaware that the Stones had begun to gather around the pod’s wreckage. Further up in the air was the hole in the sky. From this side it seemed to be pulling the curls of clouds inwards, wrenching them from this place to ours. The light that had blinded me shone dimly now through the mesh of clouds as they were tugged unwillingly away from their home. Just as I had done to my passenger, I thought, unable to bring myself to look back.
My mind was beginning to waver from the escalating pain in my arm. In an attempt to balance myself I stumbled on the debris, instinctively catching myself with the wrong arm. I lay motionless on the floor in utter agony for what felt like an eternity, when suddenly the interior of the pod flooded with screaming red and blue flashing light. I watched paralysed, darkness creeping in from all angles as several shadowy figures loomed closer and closer and closer...
Weathered Worlds: 6/10 • Opuss № I