By Simon Drax
November 3, 2009
* * *
“Come on.”
Trista went first. She vanished before Billy Wolfgang’s eyes, a shadow slipping through a mirror. Billy drew a desperate breath, held it, then stepped through the shimmering electric blue sheet of the Numi portal…
Billy’s skin melted. His skull evaporated. He screamed, but there was no sound; he had no mouth.
Billy fell and fell. Down the roaring mouth of a vortex, a shaft of wind and zooming circles, rushing at him mercilessly, faster and faster. Billy was assaulted by sounds, shrieks, voices. So many voices. Pleading, begging. For salvation. Not dead they cried, not dead, not dead, NOT YET!
And Billy suddenly realized that countless desperate hands grasped at him. Dozens. Hundreds. They all wanted what Billy had…
Life.
Alive, gasped a woman with an ugly gunshot wound in her temple, dribble of blood, charred bone. Not dead, moaned a man with a noose around his neck and pants at his ankles and a curious contraption assembled about his privates, Accident, the man explained, I didn’t, I didn’t mean to, while a trio of pale girls with needles and tubes dangling from their arms chorused as one, Too hiiiiigh…
Trista’s voice, loud in Billy’s ear: “Should have warned you…”
Billy found his phantom tongue, made it work. “What the HELL—?!”
“No, not Hell. Close, though! Ha! Oh, poor little William Wolfgang…”
Trista, the bitch! Billy raged and pushed at the phantom claws that clung to him. Was Trista laughing? Did she think this was funny?
Trista said, “This is the Shift Eldritch, Billy. The lair between life and death. These people… they are confused. They are the dying, the recent dead. They cannot harm you, boy.”
“Well they’re FREAKING ME THE FUCK OUT!”
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