A warm morning incandescence bathes the shanties as they shiver in the wind. You awaken to the tin roof shuddering, the locking screws threatening to abandon their post. From the shadows of the unlit shack you crawl.
Everything seems as it should until you confirm the shocking malposition of the ship masts in the distance. Something prickles your back; you should leave this place. So you do. The world buffets you with damp gales as it shakes the water from itself.
You cannot remember your last escape though you remember the day you arrived. There is a floating shipyard somewhere on the horizon, you need only know where. And for a vantage point, there is a mountain, black as obsidian in the center of the island.
So your feet—unperturbed by the volcanic rock—carry you up the steep slope. In your panic and rush, you fail to consider your wounded hand. Something festers within.
Steam boils up like the breath of the earth itself. The jagged rocks claw at your legs but never satisfy themselves with bodily harm. This seems familiar as if you've climbed this face a hundred times. But before you conjure any details, you reach the scorched summit.
The sun whips at you and even your own shadow curls underneath you. The ball of molten steel in the sky throws its heat—the weight of its own endless and tortuous combustion—atop you. You can barely stand; you only see with both trembling hands over your brow. But that is enough. For amongst the glare off the undulating expanse in the distance, you spot the speck of the shipyard. With knees that will not steady, and a mind all but stripped of purpose, you begin your descent.
YOU ARE READING
The Second Stage
HororA world unseen dies over and over. It shrieks at a pitch that you cannot hear. It rots with a stench that you will never quite know. It isn't a place meant for you and I, it is merely a bank for the dead and dying; a vault of visceral agony. I...
