The Humanarium.

Chapter 8: The Other Side.

I have it, a plan that will assure my health but for it to work I must start converting my home. I will order the construction materials directly.

Everything was a dark blur when he opened his eyes. He felt dazed, and when he tried to breathe in, he became aware of a great weight on his chest. He tried to move, but pain lanced through his body and he couldn't shift whatever was on top of him. Panicking, he shoved against the weight, barely managing to move it. Think, he told himself, but his thoughts eluded him.

Reaching out, he tried to determine what was pinning him down. He'd expected rock, but it was soft and sticky instead. He ran his hands over it and then screamed when he realised that the sticky strands running through his fingers were hair.

The world came into focus, and he found himself staring into the blank, lifeless eyes of a familiar and empty face. Tom? Teddy? He couldn't remember, but the face was that of the butcher's son, mangled and gashed on one side. He turned his head from its pale gaze to see bodies, dozens of them, surrounded and piled down on top of him.

He heaved them off him, clawed at them in desperation, dragged them aside, and then scrambled free of the limp arms, lifeless heads, and tangled legs.

He tripped over a sprawled leg sticking from the pile before regaining his footing and turned to look at the mound of death.

They were twisted together in death, arms and legs wrapped around each other, broken, helpless. Empty. Tom, Jorni, Chloe ... All the people he knew and loved from his childhood. His town. His home. They were all there before him. He knelt down by the mound of bodies and pulled Chloe to him, stroking her hair as the tears rolled down his cheeks. Why was she dead? He couldn't even remember why she'd been sent to quarry. What had her crime been? A joke? A simple joke about the Gods? And now she was lying there, her sightless eyes empty of everything that had once made them so alive. She was wearing the same as the rest, simple brown ceremonial robes reserved for those who pass from the world.

Letting the body slide from his hands, he looked down at himself and found the same robes covering his own aching body. Sudden flashes of an accident at the quarry ran through his mind. The memory of the dust in his throat as the tunnel collapsed ahead of him and Troy's incessant voice telling him to get out. Was he dead? He couldn't be. The people around him were, that was for certain. Looking away from the faces he knew, he finally noticed his surroundings.

He was in the Sight, actually beyond the barriers of the world and inside the realm of the Gods. The distances that separated everything around him confirmed it. Similar platforms could be seen around the edges of the vast space dotted seemingly at random, held up by struts or vertical surfaces similar to the cupboards in his kitchen. The metallic surface he was standing on seemed to be hovering midway in the realm, dropping off to nothing on all sides. Never in his life had his view been unobstructed by the black walls, except when he had stood right up against the Sight. Why was he out here? The question nagged at him. The only people who were lifted were unbelievers. But he had not been condemned and sent to be lifted; he'd been sent to the quarry. But that just left the dead. They were the only ones taken to the realm of the Gods.

But if he was in the Sight then so was the God. As soon as his mind conjured the thought, a deep rumbling sound of breathing confirmed it.

Shaking, he twisted around and just stood, dumbstruck, as the God walked towards him. It blocked everything from view, a vast wall of living flesh that was as big as his whole world. He was sure it would see him and swat him like some pesky insect. The vast bulk leaned over him and the rank odour of it was overwhelming. He looked up at the immense face and found it staring back down at him. The God raised its hand and Harl waited for the blow, waited for it to swipe him from existence, but it didn't come. Instead, the God reached right over him and paid no attention to his still form.