The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 2 🔻 Hollow

"I. Am. Not. Dead!"

I glowered at the two people who rescued me from the Dark. Webb and Vale just laughed at me in return, their arms full of their scavenged loot.

"Hear that, Webster?" said Vale as I trudged after them both through the thronged city street. People shoved past us, hurrying to unknown destinations. Others reached out from hovels, asking for trades or begging for the lux—what I assumed were the glowing red gems—the pair carried. Vale ignored them all as she snickered at her friend. "It's as simple as that! Guess you and I have been alive all these years, too!"

"How can I be freaking dead?" I yelled over the buzz of a thousand conversations. "I don't even remember dying!" Finger quotes around dying.

Both scavengers went stiff. They spun around to gawk at me. The whites of their wide eyes bright under the endless tangles of blood-red light strands suspended above us. There seemed to be no natural sunlight in After. No sun, moon, or stars hung in the black sky that swallowed the tops of the looming decrepit skyscrapers. I avoided looking at that abyss, focusing only on Webb and Vale's confused faces.

One of Vale's brows rose. "You can't remember anything?"

"I..." I bit my lip. No, I didn't remember dying. Actually...my memory began when I inexplicably woke up in the Dark. I couldn't even say just how long I'd been lost out in that wasteland. "No. I can't."

Vale clucked her tongue. "Consider yourself lucky, then."

Webb winced at her.

I stood rooted to the ground, hugging myself while my vision blurred. Where were my memories? How did I get here? Was I really dead?

Hands found my shoulders. My eyes followed Webb's gangly frame up to his face, where he sported a wide grin. "So, anyway," he said, nodding at the city of ghosts before me. "This is After! As in the afterlife. Your new home for the rest of eternity!"

I balked at the rusted, filthy wreck of a city. Inside the wall that encircled it, After was a monochromatic metal monstrosity. The creaking skyscrapers looked like they could collapse at any moment. Vast sections of their siding had long since sloughed away, revealing their skeletal insides like they were the rotting corpses of giants. Between the shambling crowds, all wearing the same gaunt expressions, I caught glimpses of graffiti of varying crudeness covering every surface. Ahead on a grimy wall, some soul had painted WELCOME TO HELL in dripping letters.

I wanted to throw up.

Yet, no nausea ate away at my stomach—only that aching, hollow feeling seethed inside me. I did not want to spend the rest of eternity here.

"Webb! Vale!" hailed a voice from the shanty ahead of us.

Webb and I followed Vale's flowing cloak toward the call. Bulbs buzzed and flickered all around us, casting dizzying splashes of color across the street. Somewhere, the pounding bass of music throbbed. People packed the streets; huddling around skeletons of cars, smashing into windows, brawling with each other under illuminated signs that advertised strip clubs and other unsavory businesses.

Swimming through the crowd was a struggle. More and more ghosts shoved in between my companions and me. Gritting my teeth and cursing my short stature, I shoved back, not willing to lose sight of Webb and Vale. I let out a yelp when I stumbled over a heavy weight in the street. I reeled inwardly at what appeared to be a dead body just lying there, barely avoiding getting trampled by the careless herds that went about their nocturnal business.

Even more corpses littered the ground ahead of me.

No one else seemed concerned about the lifeless bodies they all skirted. I stood there, numb with shock.