Estranged [Completed]

Awakening

The man opened his eyes and blinked a couple of times as the grey ceiling took shape above him. He became aware of smoke crawling across its surface, consuming the stone sky until all that remained was a black cloud. He watched the smoke swirl and spin, nearly hypnotized by the undulating motion.

Am I alive? ...

He slowly rolled over and pushed himself up off the floor. The room was a disaster. Metal shelves lay askew, some resting on top of each other in a pile of twisted metal, none of them erect, their contents skewed about the floor around them: cans of vegetables, kitchen supplies, even a scattered first aid kit. A grotesque form, perhaps a body, lay burning atop a pile of boxes, the fire spreading to the other items in the room. To the right of the body – kneeling before it on her hands and knees— was Kalei.

Her face was contorted in pain, tears streamed silently from her eyes. He started to get up – he needed to say something to her – but he stopped himself. There was something moving on her neck, just visible above her black jacket. He thought it must have been a shadow, but then he realized her sleeve had caught fire, sending up dark smoke as it ate through the material at her elbow. Instead of putting it out, Kalei reached up and violently ripped the jacket from her body, tearing her arms from the sleeve and throwing the garment at the opposite wall.

She sat there in her tank top, fists clenched on her knees as she gasped for breath. Starting at her neck and spreading down to the rest of her body, he could see black figures dancing and writhing across her skin. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but they looked like... swirls. Lines twisted in on themselves until they formed a swirl at one end. And there were dozens, swimming across her body like so many tortured fish in a pond.

He was confused. None of this made any sense. He must be dreaming...

Kalei stood up and walked away from him, disappearing into the billowing smoke.

He watched the spot where she had vanished, losing himself again in the roiling clouds. He started to cough, then realized he needed to get out before the smoke suffocated him.

Perhaps I am alive.

He groped his way across the floor, up the stairs, and along the hall, the smoke blocking out most of the light from the ceiling bulbs. Eventually, he crawled out into the alley behind the restaurant and lay there, coughing and catching his breath. Then he heard screams from the street, followed by gunshots, shouts, and the sound of a car alarm. He scrambled to his feet and ran toward the commotion.

Out in the street, it was complete chaos. Several men in business suits were running as a group of men and women in tracksuits were chasing them down. Standing on a car, a woman with an assault rifle sprayed everything she could see with bullets. A child was hunkered down behind a newsstand. Behind a car, a teen was holding a bleeding knee and screaming at someone to stop.

So many people were dying and killing everywhere.

And in the middle of the madness, he saw Kalei calmly walk up behind the woman on the car and place a hand on her exposed ankle. The woman collapsed.

He blinked. Kalei was no longer beside the car. She was across the street, the joggers falling to the ground around her. He rubbed his eyes. There was no way – that's more than a hundred feet. He told himself it must have been a trick of the light. Smoke was billowing just as thickly out here, and only one streetlight still lit the road while its siblings were dark and damaged.

As the last jogger finished his fall to the ground, the sound of gunshots ripped through the air again, and he saw Kalei flinch as dozens of bullets ripped through her, flesh and gore exploding out the back of her body. Her clothes became shredded, the abandoned mail truck behind her covered in blood. He started to run forward, he wanted to cry out, but then a terrible pain ripped through his chest, bringing him to his knees. His breath labored, he forced his head up to see what had happened to Kalei, expecting to see her fall. But she stood tall. In the dim light of the lone lamp, he couldn't see a mark on her.

She faced her attackers, a half dozen young men and women who looked like they had just been let out of high school, and she fixed them with a cold stare as they continued to rain bullets into her lean form. The girl in the middle, a regular Barbie, began to shout incoherently. The men and women on either side seemed to be saying something in return, but he couldn't make out the words over the gunfire. And still Kalei stood there, oblivious to the bullets tearing through her.

Then, the street went quiet.

The man on the right began to curse and hit his gun, his friends continued to pull their triggers, but the guns only made empty clicks. 

Out of ammo. 

Kalei didn't react to the silence; she was like a grim statue, fixed to the pavement. The young woman in the middle blanched, the others stared at Kalei, their eyes growing wider with every passing second, until the group finally broke and ran.

A heavy hush fell over the street as the footsteps faded. All he could hear was the sound of the teenage boy's whimpering. Kalei stepped into an alley opposite of where he stood and was soon lost in the shadow.

Fenn pitched forward, horrified by what he had seen. 

That couldn't have been... Kalei... what happened? What are you?

His black-nailed hands reached up, trying to contain the tears that fell from his eyes.

He sat there for ages, trying to wrap his head around what he had seen, trying to understand the ripping pain he felt in his heart and in his body. After a while, his open palms closed into fists and he stood up and punched the brick wall. He felt pain shoot through his arm, and he thought he heard a knuckle crack, but the fresh, physical pain gave him a moment of clarity.

He decided he didn't care what Kalei had become. Estranged, Untouched, Monster, whatever she was; that was his wife.

He was going to find her, and discover what she had become.