The Fate of Droplets (viii)

I had very little in the way of warning when I picked up the receiver the next night. Before I heard distinct words, a clanging hymn or prayer carried over the line. Behind that, were noises I do not care to describe, although even now they bring to mind an immense drain or vacancy, like pressure gathering in one's ears and pulling at the back of one's throat. Eventually, Henry said something over the cacophony.
“Lex, are you there?”
“What is wrong? It sounds terrible—“
“It came again, Lex. I knew but could do nothing.”
“Who? What?”
“Through, her, through Georgia.”
And he began shouting incomprehensibly into the room. The speaker clattered as it hit something. I strained to understand as I slipped on shoes. On the other end of the line, as I walked out the door, something foul and deep and guttural, noisome and fiendish bellowed. The menace was diluted by the phone, but I with my door open, it seemed to taunt me as a raced to Henry. My pulse pounded with primitive fear and dread. It sounds mad, but I felt that howl chase me from within my head, receding only as I breathlessly reached Henry's apartment. Some residents had fled the building and gawked above, seeing queer blue and yellow lights swirl and flash. The lights recalled images of space, of stars burning impossibly brilliant and hot; plasma and energy and nuclei dislodged from the normal laws.
The air in the stairwell was noxious and horrible, oppressive in its density. In it were the scents of ozone, freshly crackled into being by lightning, as well as the acrid odor of burning polymers, and something more indescribable, something that once overpowered me and I stopped, only steps from the door swung wide. I became ill and the colors, the space, the steps and walls swam around me; someone seemed to slither by, though it felt infinitely difficult in my psychedelic state; the colors only parted to welcome something in and then shed them again as easily. With the passing of the unknown figure, I recuperated some—though how I cannot say, even the later police could hardly breathe amidst the stink—and forced my way through the air that seemed aqueous or mercurial. At the portal—which the doorway had surely become—I stalled and felt something that had been loosened, become entirely unhinged in my mind.
The floor swam from side to side, as if all the floorboards and rug, even the shredded furniture and curtains, had transmuted into the desk ornament sloshing colored water back and forth. On my right—which slithered above me as much as to one side or another—the kitchen tiles and counters, the sink and refrigerator door were all riven and shattered; metal objects seemed magnetized together and forced into a crater in the wall, though many seemed to stand on end from the floor. In the main room, sundered tables lay against either wall, marked as if they had been twigs, split and tossed by monstrous, diabolic children. In the tabletops, on the floorboards, and upon the wall was the unmistakable hue of blood, but blended with various unknown substances, exhibiting the most horrific properties under these altered physical laws. I saw strange hieroglyphs and fluid scribbles shudder into and out of form, sometimes the macabre media blending and other times separating into clear red, black, blue, and waxy pearl colors. Some candles were overturned from the center of the floor and some scraps of rug and tapestry had caught fire, but the fire rolled about and glowed awfully, casting the light seen from outside. All of this I saw suddenly, as if through a wider lens of viewing and all in focus, in horrible, attentive detail.
Within the fire was something dark and deep. Though something deep and instinctual urged me out again, my hand reached out for it. Unbalanced and horribly fatigued, I fell, and thankful I am for that. I heard then the sucking sound and the laugh again. It originated—I felt from my shaken bones outward—from that depth within the plasma blaze in the center of the room. Against my face, blood splattered and seeped, though already I could sense the return of normal gravity, of the laws around which we have built our psyches as well as our cities. Something in the room blinked, as if something powerful and cosmic had swept its hand over to smooth the ruffles in the fabric. I could see the horrible walls: gibberish scrawled in deep scratches and dripping, malevolent blood and wax, but the former dribbled and the latter cooled as I once felt they always would.
A scraggly sob came to my ear and I pushed myself up. My limbs and mind were drained beyond any stamina of which I was familiar, but I was unharmed. Down the hallway, hiding within Henry's meditation room sad a broken and horrified Georgia. She had been made fragile and was obviously in both physical and psyhic pain. I came to her and fell next to her, holding her as lightly as I could. Beneath my hand, in her skin, I felt damage I am not trained to describe, though later she would be diagnosed with a shattered arm, a handful of broken ribs, and three broken fingers, as well as a concussion and many minor lacerations. All I could do, though, was hold her and push the fear down, swallow that horrible uncertainty of her involvement and the fate of Henry, who I had neither the energy nor the motivation to discover.