Her Red City (WattyAwards2013 entry- new version)

Her Red City-Chapter One, 'Many Steps'. Part 4

At first it seemed I was imagining them, but soon the flashes of red I spotted on the horizon rose higher and higher, morphing into a city as I drew closer- a terrible, magnificent, crashing city.  Gothic cathedrals and skyscrapers and castle turrets all clawed their way to the sky; their windows reflected the sunlight and flashed like wicked, toothy grins. I started to run towards the sprawling metropolis, breath whistling through my teeth and air past my ears. This was it, right? Where I was meant to be?

It didn’t take so long to cover ground once I knew where I was going, and I soon neared a wall surrounding the city, which continued into the distance. It seemed to be made of undulating folds of red, translucent glass, and, panting, I tried to peer though it with squinted eyes, seeing only blocks of dark building and the outlines of a few moving figures. Once I’d caught my breath (it was truly remarkable, I thought, that I could still breathe with such an intruder in my lungs) I looked left and right, and, seeing no entrance, held out to touch the substance in front of me, under which continued my pebble trail. At first it held fast as I’d expected, then seemed to give way, feeling to my fingers like wine to the mouth, and I found that I could put my hand through...I held in a breath and stepped in. It felt like walking through a veil, and was over in seconds. I tripped out onto a cobbled street, with all manner of strange creatures, though none looked dead. A flash of blue caught my eye, and I saw that to my right was an entrance not unlike the way down to the Underground in London, with a blue flickering sign above the steps reading “New Arrivals, This Way For Cleansing”. People around me had begun to act like the faceless creature at the gate, so I hurried down the stairs, leaving the whispers behind me. I did not have to go far before I came to an ordinary-looking red door, and upon turning the handle I found that it had been left unlocked.

I had come to a small room with an almost overwhelming medicinal smell, an operating table, a shelf with numerous suspicious-looking bottles and a metal cupboard. In the corner of the room sat another faceless creature, a female-looking one, sat on a stool reading a magazine. She had turned the page twice before I coughed to catch her attention, and when I had she stood up, letting the magazine drop to the floor, and bowed. Not knowing what else to do, I curtsied back, and she laughed noiselessly. I blushed, and she gestured gracefully for me to climb onto the operating table. I did so as she rummaged in the metal cupboard and pulled out a metal box. She then arranged the contents in a line, nodded at them and turned back to me with a needle filled with a silvery white substance. With one hand, she gestured with her thumb: yes or no? Curiosity got the better of me and I declined the substance. She set it back on the table, pulled on a pair of plastic gloves, and began the procedure.