It was pitch black, an empty void. The only indication that there was any end to it at all was the echoes bouncing back and forth against the walls with his first step.

The sound slowly grew in volume throughout the following minute. The man didn’t move a muscle for several seconds, while the sound amplified in volume. The echo across the walls faltered. With this, a soft humming sound shook the room, almost too low to hear it.

Jack moved his head around, reaching his hands out in the dark, with the booming quieting, he felt safe to continue figuring out where he was.

He reached towards the floor and moved his hand back and forth, feeling the grass prickle his fingers. It was damp, from a cool humid night. The blades of grass each echoed the sound of the smallest blades being unsheathed. Normally unheard, but now the sound jumped back and forth. At first the hair on Jack’s forearm stood like a scared kitten, his heart beat hastening, and the hum grew.

He carefully took his hand off the grass, but the blades soon after became real, the echoes ripping through his skin, leaving flecks of blood across his arm. He held his tongue, careful not to make a sound; to make things worse. But his heart had other plans. While it continued to beat the humming turned to a roar in the distance.

Petrified, he tried to keep still for as long as humanly possible, but the gentle roar became the voice of a lion crying out just before him.

Soon enough Jack yearned for the blades of sound to return, to rip through his skin, rather than remain in the room. As the storm grew so did his heart: he could feel every beat, perfectly in sync with the sound drumming against his chest. No longer silly little waves, but now a boulder, pushing him to the wall. With a loud thud he fell to the ground. His life flashed before his eyes even before his death, for he knew what came next.

The thud made its way across the room, shook the walls and returned to Jack while he cried in agony. He pulled at the grass with tears falling across his face. Shaking and writhing in pain, covered in a blanket of blood. His tears fell across his body, salt to a wound, he let out a final cry.

There was a silence, filled with anxiety for the next boom. And eventually it came, but no echo came with it. The walls fell to rubble, but Jack couldn’t get up. He lay in the grass kept warm by his own blood around his neck, waiting for the will to get up again.

“this is what I wanted…” she whispered.

Which was good, because I didn’t feel the same way.

My skin stretched tight, pulling into itself until it felt like the fractured blisters of the Sonoran desert.

I inhaled deeply, dust motes floating around in this filthy room drawn into my lungs, further desiccating what was left of this husk. Soul untethered and body adorned in what used to be someone else.

Blood stretched from the corner nearest me opposite the ratty, curtained window all the way up above the end of the bed frame, animating the stale beige adobe wall with a briefly vibrant shade of life.

The scabs were forming as I watched. Thickening. Quicker than I thought.

The ball of my right foot tapped incessantly on the floor, frenetic buttterfly twitches that the patterned tile drained out and muted.

“Yeah!” I rasped out suddenly. “Well, you…” I hacked a cough and trailed off into a muttered curse and pushed myself off of my knees without purpose.

My whole body felt empty…depleted. Useless. I couldn’t stand, I didn’t even want to look around.

I didn’t feel like screaming or ripping the curtains off their pole or begging for forgiveness.

But i did.

The sun was as bright as it was when I found this place earlier today and I instinctively turned away from the blinding glare, swearing loudly and almost falling over warding off the sun.

she whispered to me again and I looked up from the delicate, ornate petals coloring the tile at the grisly, mottled shapes lying on the bed and the cracked tiles.

The ropes on the sackcloth mattress cut maybe an hour ago, now. Three still reaching toward her outline, the last frayed end discarded on the floor.

Something. Where?

I only realized I was the one panting after double checking the hut for the source of the rabid gasps. This pueblo was an enormous clay oven, and the bodies I would not bury were fermenting as a profane, useless offering.

I pushed against the door, which didn’t open. I bumped into it and pulled down the anachronistic latch to let myself out into the piercing day. I held a hand to my brow, which let me squint at the surrounding area. Flat, cracked sand. Flat, cracked mud. Shallow, dry hills miles beyond where anybody could walk before succumbing to the baking heat and merciless overhead glare.

I stepped forward, sand burning through the sole of my boot, and she whispered to me.

I could hear her.