Page 53 - TheRedSon_PrintInterior_430pp_5.5x8.5_9-22-2019_v1

sight of a glassed-in penthouse, replete with a spacious
veranda. A large telescope sat affixed to its outermost rim.
The worlds that wheeled overhead were pale alternatives
to the sights I hoped to glimpse by aiming my magnified
gaze at the concrete forest around me. With any luck, lighted
windows might grant me further insight into the delightful
nightmares pretending to be an abandoned city. A lingering
curiosity concerning the quartet of women caused me to turn
the glass toward the east, the direction from which they’d
entered the city. Their original number diminished, I sought
out the remaining three, curious as to their contents.
As if chance had answered my unspoken wish, I caught
sight of something moving through the hallways of the
hospital I had previously visited. It was indeed one of
the women. She was strapped to a hospital gurney being
conducted down a poorly lit corridor. The gurney was
propelled by a creature that was largely imperceptible, as
I could only discern its presence by the effects it exercised
upon the shadows it touched—they seemed to adhere to the
invisible thing, clinging to it like tar, supplying only a minimal
suggestion of shape and size. From what I could make out,
it was a thing of nonsensical construction—an organism that
begrudged nothing to the traditional symmetries of earthen
biology, partaking its shape solely from purest chaos. The
unorthodox creature continued to push the gurney down the
hallway, occasionally plucking the clinging shadows from
the amorphous swelling that rose high and hideous from the
woman’s abdomen. From under her distended flesh, the dim
outline of a germinating nightmare was scarcely visible as a
mass of shifting shapes, twisting and flipping as if trying to
assemble itself, one inhuman limb at a time. Suddenly, the
head of the thing obtained a terrible definition as it pressed
hard against its cage of flesh. It seemed to turn its attention
toward the captured woman, leering into her panicked face.
The unborn creature projected its hungry glare beyond its
gilding of human skin, laying a cold glow across the dull
56 | Mark Anzalone