The City That Slipped

City Hall

     The air was eerily still, he wasn't quite sure if wind was even a possibility in this... alternate reality. The only sound was that of the thunder caused by the purple lightning in the sky. He approached an alley that would work as a shortcut to the city hall. Whatever was waiting for him there, whatever was holding Tabitha, these breeders, he wanted to stop them fast. The alley was tight and claustrophobic, the walls on each side were composed of the metal buildings that made up the majority of the city. He saw a window that had been blown out a few meters ahead. He felt a spark of anxiety light inside and begin to boil as he approached the opened window.

     The room was dark beyond the threshold of the window, inside he could vaguely see papers scattered across the ground from a once occupied office desk. He could also hear something, like that of which from Tabitha's room but less frantic and less aware of his presence. The sound of something slithering, wandering about this abandoned office. David became mesmerized by the peculiar audio from the office. What was lurking in the shadows? He felt as if its large circular eyes were peering into him, its long proboscis dripping with desire. His spine chilled and he shook his attention away from the window and pushed on. He looked over his shoulder to check his back and saw a long fleshy tentacle-like finger slither back into the window. He gasped and tripped over his own feet and scurried behind a nearby dumpster.

     He got to his feet like an infant learning to walk as his legs trembled greatly and jump started his way out of the alley. He wasn't going to stay longer than he had to. As he passed each and every opened window he could feel the anxiety and hear the slithering which planted the image of the tentacle-like fingers reaching out for him each time. The end of the alley was shortly up ahead which would end directly next to the city hall. The travel from his house to city hall, which would normally be about a ten or fifteen minute walk, took him about an hour due to his being overly cautious in the twisted city streets. Yet there it stood, the checkpoint of his investigation, an obelisk to his journey. The golden lion that stood erect at the top of the entry archway to the Neoclassical style building. The front door was jammed opened by vast amounts of the auburn-colored ivy that seemed to come from every direction molested the throat of the city hall. David would have to find another way in, and he could only think of one other way. The basement storage door.

     In the distance he saw a man, he couldn't believe his eyes. He nearly jumped and ran towards him but realized that a single strand of the Auburn ivy raced towards him and hastily latched to his back. The man screamed in agony and dropped to his knees. From an adjacent alleyway lumbered one of the creatures from the tome with its tentacle-like fingers trailing behind. It pierced the man's chest with it's proboscis-like mouth and began to, what David assumed, to drink the man's blood. It then gripped the man tightly with those fingers and dragged him into the front door of the city hall. The man's screams of agony faded to nothing shortly after.

     The courtyard now seemed vacant outside of the peculiar ivy attacking the front door in overwhelming amounts so he decided to simply run to the back of the building and was met with no resistance. The basement door was like a garage door locked by an electric keypad that was, oddly, still in working order but he was without the code. The pad had four blank digital screens so he figured the code was, obviously, four digits long. A smaller screen had three slash marks and was labeled, "attempts." The keyboard had the numbers one through nine as well as the typical QWERTY keypad. Trying to think of a five digit code that would hold significance to the city was troubling. Was it the month and year they elected the new mayor? They held a private election so it wasn't in November like it normally would have been.

9 - 2 - 0 - 1 - 8

     He was met with a buzz that was an obvious negative on the code and one slash went away. So he thought to try the month and year that the city was founded

6 - 1 - 9 - 2 - 0

     He was met with the same familiar buzz of a negative response and one slash went away. This was his last chance so he looked closer at the keypad to see if there were any hints. On the keyboard he could see that some of the letters were more worn out than others. The letter b was all but gone and letters a, y, and t were quite worn out. He could feel a sinking feeling boil up from somewhere deep. Surely it wasn't what the evidence pointed to, but he had no other leads.

T - A- B - B - Y

     He heard a click and the door rose open. Why was that the code? What did Tabitha have to do with this? Or did she have anything to do with this? He felt as if he were going crazy, that none of what he had seen was real. He simply drank too much at the bar and he was now passed out, maybe the bartender went ahead and stabbed him as he refused to leave peacefully and he was actually just a soul wandering and trying to get out of this limbo or maybe he had transgressed one too many times and was in a ring of hell.

      He gulped the feelings down and pushed through the dimly lit basement. Peculiar colored candle flames illuminated the room in a gentle pink the base of the flame was an auburn red with the tip of the flame licking the pastel pink. The sight was beautiful and something to behold, he found himself staring for a moment until he gingerly lifted the candle, careful to not disturb the infant flame. The intact marble stairs on the opposite side of the basement, hidden behind clutters of open boxes that contained twisted imagery of past authorities, rose to a newfound white light like a stairway to a heavenly world. He pushed through the boxes to the stairs and worked his way to the top where David met a door with a powerful white light overflowing from the other side. He gripped the knob and turned it slowly. It wasn't locked and the door opened slowly and quietly. He was welcomed by a brightly lit and oddly clean lobby, the auburn-colored vines darted up the center staircase towards a set of double doors so he followed their path.

     The doors were already opened so he pushed them wider to reveal a long hallway that was immaculate outside of the auburn-colored sacks on each side of the hall where the ivy led to. The sacks resembled that of an egg and contained what looked like dormant humans half mixed with insects. One eye would be normal and desperate and the other stoic, round and abyssal black. He continued looking through each and every one half hoping to see Tabitha, just as closure. Up ahead he could see the inner chambers. In the center of the large room he saw it, like a leader on a throne and he then knew. The terrors he had seen, how could this be the center? Such pristine beauty and innocence.