The Clocktower

It was midnight in the middle of the day.
The clouds had swallowed up a blue sky and had in return spat out a pithy black husk that germinated, polluting whatever once was cheerful with a dark semblance and a musky, cloying smell

One of rot.

I turned my eyes heavenward, shocked into silence as the disease spread its way, muddying the once beautiful sky.
Everyone seemed to pause, a pause that seemed to have only been rehearsed, heard only through hushed whispers as everyone decided when to make their final move. They stopped.

Grandfather stopped.

Irina did not stop.

I did not stop.

The sleek and sensual steel of the clock tower had lost its sheen. Its metal plating no longer played with the sunlight, it absorbed the black disease, turning it into a void, an object that acted as a vessel for the darkness.

It had transmuted its way to sky, and then had bled onto the ground.

A lone figure perched, sickeningly bent, its spine contorted into a way that no human form would naturally allow.

I could feel Irina’s sharp nails digging into my flesh like a frightened bird clutching onto its perch, and my arm was equally as thin.

Her fear was something I did not want to ingest. Fear worked like a malignant cancer, eating up your blood and bones and cells and turning you weak, weak as could be. Fear had Irina from her Awakening.

My lavender eyes remained fixed on the figure, Irina’s were demurely staring at the cobblestones of the Old City, which was now a renowned shopping district.

I disentangled myself from her grasp and moved forward, towards the tower, farther than grandfather’s lambent eye, and my sister’s frightened claws.

I am enraptured. With my sight, gained through a genetic gamble, I can see the man’s eyes perfectly. They are a muddy brown, almost black, like the sky today.

He sees me staring. He sees that everyone else is frozen and I am moving. He sees that I am trying to say hello. He sees that I am trying to cry out to him.

I no longer see.

I hear a sickening splat, I feel the blood spray me. The man has fallen only a few feet from me.
In the shadow of the clock tower, he lies motionless, limbs splayed at odd angles, a strange smile playing on his lips, made all the more deranged by his crushed skull.

He has stained the cobblestones and eddies of blood pool and flow into the cracks.

I hear my name being called shrilly, angrily, from behind me. Grandfather is all concern when he meets my gaze.

Moments later, I hear snapping sounds, skin reforming, a breath being drawn, life again.
And everyone goes on with their day.
Not caring about the girl with the bloody dress.
Or the man who is being taken away in the white van.

Grandfather grabs my hand and yanks me away. He knows better than to chastise me in public.

Irina is crying and shaking. I feel nothing. People stare at me funny. Lilac eyes, sickly palor, strangely perfect proportions, and now I’m bloody.
Perhaps they’re afraid.
I hope they are.
I lick my lip. It tastes of copper.