Fallen City

Vegetable

Key Seven: Vegetable:

Fingers as skinny as bones hung so low to the ground. The hands looked just as breakable through the stretched leather-like skin. The laser lime green light didn't make it look any better. It didn't even look like it was floating in the jelly-like liquid. The hand with its equally bony arm just hung there. Allen felt his stomach turn as he figured that he wouldn't like where this could lead. Against his better judgment, he moved his eyes upwards to the owner of the hand. His discovery made his eyes grow wide.

Her eyes looked so hollow and dead. Wire held her mouth stitched shut in the jelly-like liquid. Every single bone could be seen through the skin, not just the ribcage, all of her bones. Tubes went into her chest, pumping God-knows-what into her frail, motionless body. Even her dark hair looked like tawny strings floating around in the jelly substance. Allen started to back away, trembling.

What the hell is this?, he thought. He backed all the way to another glass tank. Allen didn't become aware until the coldness touched his sore back. He turned around and went pale. Another skeleton-like body floated in more jelly-like substance. Only, this one looked like a child of six years old. Allen's eyes darted all around him. More and more bodies in jelly floated before him, closing in with their lifeless eyes. Road smirked to herself.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" she asked. Allen whipped his head towards her. He tried to form words with his mouth, but sound came out. His mistress patted him on the head.

"What is this place, you want to know?" she asked. Allen nodded at her like a needy little child. His mistress smirked.

"Well then," she said. "This is a graveyard." The angel looked at her as she shook her head.

"No..." he mouthed. Road nodded at him.

"That's right," she said. "We stuff the angels down here." Allen's lower lips trembled.

"Are they all..." he began to ask. His eyes kept coming back to those bodies in the tanks. Wings torn off just like him. The more he told his mind not to look, the more his eyes stared deep into their dead eyes. He kept seeing himself in those tanks in their eyes. If they could cry to him for help, they most certainly would. Not just him, anyone would listen. Allen could hear them crying out to him in his mind.

Save us!

Take us home!

Get us out here!

Save us!

Save us!

Allen sank down into a ball as he closed his eyes in an attempt to block out their cries for help. Road smiled as she took in his mental anguish from all of these bodies around him. No "living" angel could take staring at these "corpses" for so long.

"No," she said with a sweet, sickening smile. Allen paused and looked up at his mistress.

"What do you mean?" he asked with a trembling voice. Road gave him a little snicker.

"They are all still perfectly alive here," she replied. Allen's eyes grew big as he tried to form more words to ask what she meant. Road smirked as she already knew what he was going to say.

"That's right," she said. "As you already know, angels can't really die. Some of them are still willing to defy us, even in the condition that they are in. We just break them enough to become a vegetated state like they are now." She paused and caressed one of the glass tanks with her cold, grey hand.

"We just stuff them in these tanks and just leave them here," she summed up. "Such a waste, really. I don't see why we can't just put them out of their misery and be done with it."

"You can't!" he yelped. His mistress raised an eyebrow at him.

"And why is that?" she challenged him.

"They are still alive!" Allen cried. "I can feel it within me!" His mistress all but laughed at such a statement.

"Alive?" she asked. "No, no. They are just as good as dead in this place." She walked over to another tank. "Look at her. Take a good look at her!" Allen tried not to stare directly into the dark-haired angel's dead eyes. He stomach sloshed around as he tried to hold down a dry-heave. The bubbles in her gel surrounding did little to distract his attention from the tubes pumping away into her paper chest. Road pressed her hand onto the glass.

"Do you see?" she asked. "She's never going to wake up again. She and the others will remain in this state forever." Allen shook his head.

"No..." he murmured. "No, that can't be."

"Oh really?" Road asked. Then, she walked passed he to the elevator. Allen turned around in his confusion.

"Wait!" he cried. "Where are you going?" She didn't even look back at him.

"Think that they are still alive?" she asked. "Stay with them all night and then you'll see." It took a long moment for those words to sink in.

"Mistress, wait!" Allen cried as he tried to crawl over to stop her. Road wouldn't hear of it. She had already walked into the elevator and pressed the up button. The angel watched as the doors slid closed and the cab ascended into the tower, leaving him alone with all of these "bodies" in the laser green lights and jelly-like liquid.