A dark cusp intoning storms songs fills the skies above the the city of ruins; it''s bloodthirsty paints the belows with shades of a cruelty filled violet, lighting cries from the resident evils fighting to last. With none of faulty ones being alive, that gray depression shall be forever brooding over it''s hate while clawing at the veiled beyond wishing for their return. Ethereal it''s in it''s waiting, damned shall it be when day for it''s promised retribution is to come.


    The furious thunder strikes are alternating to the sending-shivers of the earth whose''s corrupted seed is giving birth to that which it emulates very well life without being able to capture it''s true worth, it''s a wicked fruit.


    Outside of the grayish city of ruins an overwhelming variety of colors straight from an artist''s palette pours over the wheat fields, dripping drops of gold on the tips of the gems, and over the monolithic forests, which arrogantly gird themselves to the sky, the noble shades of jade envelop the thick foliage. Even further away, on the horizon, the high peaks of the mountains burn with the opulence of sapphire and tips of red embarrassment appear in the face of the sky that for shame its depths were shaken by with unnatural groans.


    In the eye of that cyclone of colors, where gray reigns supreme over arid soil, on a desolate street a breath of wind pushes and caresses the fragile paper of a newspaper whose words, though faded, are recognizable in an approximate English that, unlike the simple language we know, seems to have changed to unite alien meanings and understandings in a language of rare complexity.


    A bony hand plucks the worn piece of paper from the yoke of the elements to make a casing out of it to contain what appears to be a piece of bloody flesh mixed to a yellow pus and rust stains.


    The owner of that bony hand, by appearance, is a young man who cannot be more than thirty years old even by the harshest estimates, but with a naturally lean and slender figure tapered into an athletic body adept at the one art best suited to escape, estimates of his age can drop dramatically. With a body like his, the boy does not seem fit to survive in this place; his presence here is entirely out of place, to say the least, and yet he is a survivor, the last one still standing.


    The boy''s thin arms press the smelly package against his chest and enclose it in a solid grip that demonstrates a profound indifference to the unpleasant odor that envelops his figure as a consequence.


    As it emerges from the expression vaguely hidden by layers of dirt encrusted with sweat, the boy could even prefer death to the possibility of losing that putrescent piece of flesh. But it doesn''t seem to be from hunger, he hasn''t been forced to push himself to that point yet. With evident force, however, revenge radiates from his heart with grit and passion fused together in a broth of madness that is a taste decidedly necessary for those living in this desolation to which the gods have turned their backs.


    Inevitably, the dirty touch of the dark gray of desperation envelops his figure, but that pure emotional sea that dwells in the heart at the center of his cadaverous thoracic can keep it at bay.


    The boy ran with his body pressed against the walls of the desolate dwellings, thus assuming the looks of a man of dust. Evidently he stops at nothing to ensure his own salvation; even death is no longer an enemy he guards against. In reality, the boy only had many numbers in his head, lines that connect in circles and runes weaving a web of geometric colors. Which is nothing more than a spell in progress that he could cast at times if, tragically, it was deemed necessary.


    The boy was not even a mage, even a thousand years of non-stop study would not be enough to be considered adequate for such a title. However, if to cast spells you had to be a magr there would be no magic in this world.


    In his case, the boy is forcing the problem using his life force as a pledge in exchange for a miracle.


    He will probably be consumed by his own sleight of hand even before he can see it at work. But dying wouldn''t be such a bad idea; the alternative is always worse around here.


    The mere air you breathe here is enough to choke the life out of a man unfortunate enough to happen to be around here in no time at all.


    However, the ruthlessness with which the young man''s lungs open to inhale this filthy mustard-colored air doesn''t seem to shy at the toxicity that lies within. He seems sure as hell that it won''t kill him, and he certainly has his reasons.


    The anti-pathogen mask he wears may be one of the reasons he bases his faith, not the only one also.


    As he ran, the boy was careful to avoid those spots in the ground where gray, organic roots with rust-colored veins jut out and branch out in a vast network that greedily envelops all of the surroundings.


    The boy has learned the hard way to not underestimate those roots. In fact, while it may have been decades since anyone has last set foot in these dark alleys, the damned have yet to stop reaching out in search of new prey.


    Who knows, perhaps a man lucky enough to avoid the embrace of death till now, having not so much luck left, will end up stumbling on one of them and then dying would indeed be a luxury, and a privilege.


    A light of a despicable purple injects a faint clarity into the dark and isolated alley when from the nefarious clouds a lightning bolt descends invested with the righteous wrath of the heavens. The blurry shadows that danced on the edges of the last residual rays emitted by the lightning are the only clue we have of the brutal end served to the charred carcass of the beast whose fate was sealed by the dictates of that thing that from above clings to the city like an octopus of lightning.


    The monstrous victim of that entity may have been consumed to the ashes, but alas, in these parts even shit has a value, much more those well-roasted remains.


    An unasked injection of fear puts the young man''s worn-out body back on track and, in a heroic display of strength, he crosses the last three streets that separated him from the house where the pounding heart in his chest will be put at rest and safety, perhaps.


    Nothing else unexpected occurred along the way but the night is still long and the monsters are increasingly hungry.


    So close to his own safe haven, the boy forces himself to endure a greedy moment of pause to let go of the stale breath that he had kept pressed inside his throat almost as if he feared that whatever was on his tail would follow him there, smelling the odorous trail of his bad breath.


    He has lived here for many months in this place where any form civilization is gone extinct, so the hygienic conditions to which he has adapted can hardly be called as such. Here his life has been a continuous collection of lows and lowers, a march side by side with madness and that little of sanity which is persistently surviving on the premise he is to get out of here.


    ''I did it,''


    The boy clenched his jaw until a dangerously painful creak reminded him that he is still alive, then he clench his hands tightly enough to make the bony knuckles white to suppress any futile sense of satisfaction he might have felt for being this close to his objective.


    Satisfaction is a feeling more than superfluous, it is lethal. That sharp blade has already reaped the only two other living souls that with him survived this torment. So the boy has sworn to himself to never allow himself to be distracted by moments of vain satisfaction.


    Here, in hell, survival is the recipe of the day.


    Today the dish you served has pleased the chef who, granting his approval, decided to save the knife.


    We can only be sure that the chef will be more and more demanding each time he knocks on your door, having sharpened a knife demanding to be used. Eventually there will come a time when the dish you have cooked will no longer be satisfactory due to the banality of your limited means, and then you will be done for.


    ''The corruption is so strong,'' a thought casually flashed through the boy''s head and in a fleeting flash of realization he pushed the smelly package away from him, his chest soaked with it.


    He''ll have to clean himself up, and very soon.


    He looked up at his wooden house, it''s a miracle it''s still standing but perhaps this is the work of someone very strong from that era of splendor the boy knows very little about, except that whoever made that time left some real shit behind.


    It makes him angry, and indifferent, all at the same time. This place doesn''t belong to him any more than the lump that was forced down his throat. The sooner he can leave here, the better it will be for him, so there''s little point in condemning those corpses to which rest was eternally denied.


    The ancient house of which he has made a refuge is located in a rather isolated and secluded place in this ruined city where everything seems to be cursedly connected to the main streets and the beings that infest them from the safe shadows of the roofs and the branches of the trees resistant to the fury of the storm-like entity.


    The exterior of the ancient house has been tempered by time, its wooden coloring makes it look like a strange fossil but its foundations remain solid against all odds.


    This place is so far from the main streets that the nearby Infestations have been asleep long enough to immortalize a pose of kindly waiting guard, which is the only reason why this house is considered to be safe.


    The Infestations are humanoid beings and the main culprits of the downfall of this world, but they are also the guardians that make of this house a safe haven.


    However, behind the stillness of their bodies, their decaying eyeballs peer at the damned prey that with its irruption has awakened them from their eternal slumber, reawakening in them that ancient hunger using the promise of its warm and juicy flesh as a catalyst.


    Their hatred is a crescendo fueled by the cruelty of the prey that insists on keeping away from their rigid jaws that, recently, have begun to cover themselves with curious jagged cracks that bode ill for the idle prey that, spoiled by a false sense of security, watches them for longer than is wise.


    Another crack appears on the face of one of them, right at the height of the strong jaw, which made the boy get the message: he rested for a moment too long, so much so that you could say he was playing with fate.


    Will he die now, or soon, which of the two?


    He has been dancing with his own death for a while longer than necessary, a very dangerous mistake for him to make. A grin appears on his face, the reason is that last thought.


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "Dance, eh.."


    He enjoys seeing how the corruption can spread inside his guts and insinuate itself into the thoughts swirling in his head! It also allows him to understand how fucked up he is and the low chances he has of making it if he doesn''t leave that godforsaken and nameless place ASAP.


    ''Maybe I''m already crazy, who knows..''


    It''s hard to understand if the corruption can add new thoughts to your head, it might only be obvious when the contact with the source of the corruption has been direct and the perversion of your ego becomes evident. But it also depends on how direct and how big and powerful the source of the corruption is because in the worst case your ego could be totally rewritten before you can become aware of it.


    It''s called demonization.


    Unfortunately, he''s more of a Masterchef and chips guy than a wrestling and beer guy, so he sincerely hopes he''ll be given the chance to choose but, he knows that monsters don''t care about the opinions of their prey, much less his, who is just a human who hasn''t yet ritually awakened.


    He bites his lip, holding back the laugh that would have inevitably encouraged those beings to free themselves even more from the chains with which time has anchored them to the earth beneath their feet.


    ''I''m so weak..''


    He has been transported to a place where his place in the food pyramid is not simply at the bottom, which if that were the case he would have at least a chance, any chance, to get by somehow, but his existence in this place is in all respects not contemplable, being at the level of a virus that is incapable of transiting into a bacterial state. Or rather, to be precise, he could is on par with a non-harmful virus. He is naturally inert, like oxygen he is destined to be inhaled.


    Yes, this is him, a consumable resource that was deposited in this place by who knows what.


    A sticky stench slaps him in the face as he passes through the dense network of centuries-old roots that surround the house weaving a thick web that promises death to those who pass without paying due attention.  The stench is what makes the house and its surroundings a safe place, but it is also the scent that intimates the inevitable awakening of the resident monstrosity.


    The Infestations will not remain forever immortalized in their gentle guard, not after having tasted the intoxicating sweetness that exudes from the pores of the intruder in their territory. But more than the Infestations themselves, which he could eliminate with ease given their physical condition, the boy fears the thing that pulls their strings which he has already witnessed the work, to his own dismay.


    The first and last time he watched the consequences unleash by stepping on the peripheral nerve endings of whatever operates these beings, his best friend died instantly, and the boy he had a crush on, but more likely an infatuation born from the tragic circumstances surrounding him, followed him into death a few minutes later.


    That was how he was left alone.


    The image is vividly etched in his mind, the speed at which that wooden-looking tentacle moved to penetrate the back of the blond''s head from side to side was not from a realm he will have access to any time soon.


    It was probably all his fault.


    That day they had gone to find another survivor, someone the two had agreed to carry out one of their plans. That man however was not a survivor, but a disgusting suicide.


    The boy still regrets that irritated comment that escaped him at the sight of the man''s dangling feet but, it must have been fear that spoke for him, so how can one blame him?


    Crawling along those dusty and toxic alleys as they had to learn to do in the footsteps of so many predecessors who came before them, fearing that at any moment a monster could be a few meters away from their position in a barely visible spot while it extends its sharp spikes waiting for them to take a step fatally too close to the position in which its loose form has planted itself.


    The boy and his two friends were not the first to have survived long enough in that place to leave a memory of themselves that, however faint, weighs on the footsteps of those who come after them.  Putting aside the couple who left this world before he joined it, and of whom the two friends have told him so much, a mysterious force has often and willingly guided them in the wake of the faded footprints left in the dust by so many other unfortunate souls.


    And not all of them belonged to the human race, or to the planet Earth.


    Some left farewell letters addressed to their loved ones, others still wrote of their regrets in this place or of their discoveries and conjectures. It is not known who was the first but many followed him and this passing down continued up to the boy, the last in a long trail of corpses that a cruel will wanted to feed to the abominations of this city.


    He too has a letter with his name written on it: Olivier.


    It is a sign that one cannot escape what is the natural happening of the inevitable.


    However, Olivier truly wants to escape all of this, like a about everyone else before him, really, but this is only his bet.


    At the time the general mood was low and the suicide of that stranger did nothing but add the last straw to the overflowing vase that was Olivier''s head.


    He insulted him, denigrated him, and hated him.


    He will never know which of the long list of insults broke something inside the blond, Frederick.


    Frederick however did not have much reaction, he simply looked at that corpse and cried falling to his knees, then hitting the bare ground with his fists hard, ignorant of what he would have found underneath if only he had moved with his hands the dusty cloak that hid it, an accomplice of the dark evil that inhabits the underworld of the ruined city.


    There was a reason why when they were forced to walk or run in the open on the streets they would keep a light step, but at first they did not know what it was and one of them immediately paid the price with his life, the second then gave away his life to a moment of weakness.


    It was the weakness that is revealed when a loved one suddenly dies right in front of you and you see the thing that killed him drag away from you your last source of warmth left in a cold and hostile world.


    That thirst for revenge that demands to be satiated at any cost and with the most absolute disregard for the consequences, Fabrizio kept it fed until his own macabre end.


    Olivier would have liked to feel the same impulse but the desire to live, no rather than to live it was a question of simply wanting to escape from this web of defeats prolonged over time by the will of the resentful king, he felt it more strongly then anything else.


    Thus he discovered the distinction that separates love from an infatuation born from difficulties.


    He pushed the front door, it opened without making a single creak, he had oiled it well, that bitch.


    In this city there is not a single lock that has survived the deleterious passage of time that with impetuosity has smoothed even the most iconic diamond tips that once would have made proud the damned souls that now infest the ruins of a city without a name.


    "Well, even if there was a single good lock left.." Oliver murmured, sure that the places where the locks have the strength to stand up to time are not at all made to be opened by a microbe like him.


    It is already impossible to survive in the suburbs, the ghetto, the place of no one, let alone where the strongest have shed their blood to delay the inevitable arrival of the end that, from what he understood, they deserved.


    He narrowed his eyes at the memory of the main streets, where simply the natural act of breathing can change you in your totality.


    But he came out of it healthy, probably.


    "I''m back." Olivier waves goodbye to the mementos of his two friends with a tired smile on his face, he seems to be able to see them if he just tries a bit harder


    Frederick was the blond, bespectacled Connecticut boy, Fabrizio the dark-haired Italian who just came out of a trendy gym. The first was the group''s furnace of ideas, the other the older brother who takes care of his younger brothers by slapping good sense into their crazy heads if and when the need arises. The two were the anchor that kept him with his feet on the ground, in fact, now that they are no longer here, Olivier is like a lonely ship at the mercy of the storms of his restless heart.


    He wants to face the storm, sink the waves, cross the veil and land beyond this night to which there''s seems to be no end in sight.


    ''Scary.''


    At this he shook his head, he had to take action.


    It is on a rotten wooden mat that rest an old bloody, beaten boot and a pair of eyeglasses with the right lens pierced by a pointed object.


    He didn''t suffer, he thought, staring at that wreck.


    The glasses were recovered by the daring Fabrizio, otherwise how would he have remained behind by being the athlete of the group. The idiot was injured while trying to save his beloved, only to be awakened by a strong numbness at his right leg, then to his left side.


    Olivier and Patrizio had each gone their own way, it was the beginning of a sequence of actions and arbitrary choices designed just for a situation like this. It wasn''t even the worst case, Frederick had thought of much more tragic scenarios than this. Frederick said, that they couldn''t think only of themselves, that they had to think of their successors.


    And of course, even before his successors, Frederick had thought of us. If Fabrizio was injured during an excursion outside, it would have been enough for the dark-haired man to follow one of the many plans prepared.


    But he didn''t.


    "If you had been here with me, everything would have been much simpler."


    The plot goes that, simply because they were exiled to this hell of no return, their bodies changed.


    Frederick had become a genius, his brilliant mind churning out ideas like a baker churning out bread, with mastery. According to him, "genius" wasn''t exactly a word the teachers used to describe him at school.


    Fabrizio, on the other hand, had become fast, so fast that he often repeated himself, saying each time that he resented the massive physique he had gained from going to the gym; it did nothing but make his movements awkward.


    Finally, there is Olivier who has developed a supernatural sense of intuition, bordering on clairvoyance.


    Over the past few weeks, Olivier has been working on the presumptuous plans that Frederick proposed to him in the dead of the night when neither of them could fall asleep without wondering if one of those abominations whose screams emulated the cries of infants was heading their way.


    A few times from afar he had seen one or two of those creatures grazing across the roofs of the strange. They looked like blind men but were hairless, covered as they were in a shell of black keratin. Their faces lacked noses or eyes, only a toothless mouth with which they tasted everything that passed by.


    They were the Heralds of Gluttony, the Oni on Horseback.


    "I fear that in the end you were right about it." Olivier said, seeing in the dirty image of his reflection in that cracked lens the look full of bitterness typical of the blond during his bad moments.


    "And you, anything to add?" He turned to the worn boot, but Fabrizio''s ghost did not appear. The disappointment seemed too great even for his ever-jovial nature.


    ''Frederick still speaks to me through my dreams, but you..''


    He had to move house in the two weeks after that tragic day, the place where he stays now is the second to last on a short list of safe havens.


    The names written on the other side of that list are to indicate the places where he will not find refuge, and it is very long.


    Time is now running out, the last grain left in the hourglass will play its last notes and the plots will run out.


    ''Fuck this place.''


    His intuition has never failed him, even if he has come close a few times.


    He bowed to the two mementos and then, exuding confidence from every pore, he made the same gesture to the two mementos of the predecessors of his two friends, in a final farewell.


    It may be a coincidence but none of the four left a letter with a message to pass on to their loved ones in case someone should make it.


    Frederick had no family or friends to send his well wishes to, and Fabrizio had a family but not the balls to tell his wife that he had fallen in love with a man in hell and would rather live here in this ruined, monster-infested city than go home and face the consequences of his feelings.


    ''Don''t worry, the memory of who you chose to be will perish in me.''


    He wouldn''t take those mementos with him, nor could he. There was only so much one could bring to the farewell, and they wouldn''t want him to put himself at risk for them. For everyone else, Olivier has decided to memorize the contents of their letters, which he will anonymously deliver to family and friends. He couldn''t do more than that, that''s for sure.


    He descended into the cellar where he would seal the ingredient before its intrinsic qualities had infused the surrounding environment enough to untie itself from the ingredient, generating a facsimile of the fatal miasma that continues to claim the lives of those unfortunate enough to appear on one of the main streets and not leave their vicinity before the mysterious force that protected them upon arrival left them at the mercy of the prevailing malevolence.


    Olivier, in his case, was unfortunate enough to happen upon the main streets but fortunate enough to have been brave enough to move from there before he was so compromised as to be reduced to a pile of animated flesh, then running into Frederick and Patrizio a few hours later.


    The contamination did not corrupt him by scarring his body, spirit and soul, but rather it awakened his gift prematurely, in a manner that can only be described as "explosive".


    He knew what he had to do in and how it would kill him if he didn''t move fast. He is alive today only because of his faithfulness to that intuition.


    The experience was no less traumatic, such was its impact that it overwhelmed him and left him without the slightest hint of a signal.


    Because of this his body manifested some of the qualities that this world''s inhabitants attained at the end of the first stage of their mystical growth, the precursor to immortality, the state of the revived.


    Olivier, however, did not become discover this until he was, well, dead.


    ''Positive thoughts, please..''


    "You like your new home, mmn." Olivier nodded satisfied at his work accomplished.


    It is a sealing container, a glass jar engraved on the sides and scribbled on the cap, and clearly it was not made by him or anyone like him, none of them would know what to do with those symbols and curious squiggles.


    But Olivier fixed it, or repaired it, anyway.


    And to brag a little, let''s say that, even if Olivier wouldn''t be able to reproduce it from scratch, in the last few weeks he has been very busy and has experienced success after success on that front, recreating a facsimile that however cannot contain the immensity of the sick essence that the monster parts constantly emanate.


    ''If Fabrizio were still alive..'' This thought occurred to him in spite of himself as he applied minimal adjustments to the symbols on the jar, basically repairing the damage caused by time, minimal adjustments that only serve to steal his attention.


    Fabrizio hated the mystical aspect of this world, he said it was a complete scam because it made you believe in magic and then ruined everything when it threw the raw and naked reality straight in your face.


    ''And reality sucks,'' he would have concluded as usual, gritting his teeth and spitting.


    Olivier didn''t know it then, or at least he didn''t know the whole story, but the two had witnessed with their own eyes what happens when the ritual that promises everyone a way out of here ends in a tragic failure.


    Even when he learned more, Olivier took it for granted that the two were both dead but the truth is that one of the two survived. Still, he was unable to leave cause he had become an unrecognizable monster.


    It was after that he took his own life and Frederick, Patrizio and Olivier found him just when he was about to get colder than this damned world was.


    Olivier didn''t know then, it was later that he managed to connect the dots when he went back to recover the reusable remains of that unfortunate man to us as a bait for a monster.


    To give away the truth buried by that past that remained unheard is the dead man''s jacket of which one of the buttons was missing, having become one of the two mementos that Frederick and Patrizio looked at with sincere admiration and so much more remorse.


    Let''s just say that Olivier has brought good out of evil, in fact a brief examination of the body was enough to bring out the reasons that justified the ritual to its tragic conclusion. However, it is also fair to say that such a little effort was enough precisely because of the simplicity of the mistake that was made, so Olivier has not gained anything clearly necessary. In fact, pushed to exaggerate so as not to make the same foolish mistake, Olivier has prepared himself to go through a completely new path of action and, if it were wrong, then he would suffer a defeat from which he would not recover.


    But in any case, why did they fail?


    ''Chance.''


    Bad luck struck and sank their fragile existences, that was all the mistake, in the vain hope that by sticking to the old logic they could have made it in any case. But no, this is a cursed world and you have to act expecting that everything can collapse on you.


    Their Grimoire must have warned them about it, as his did to him, but they decided to try their luck anyway.


    It didn''t go well for them.


    His mind wandered to the two mementos on the sideboard; he would never have suspected that he had known one of the two famous predecessors, even if this one was nothing more than a dangling body aggravated by the heavy stench of death, which remains unmistakable even in hell.


    Thinking about it, Frederick probably wanted to get out of here with all his might, or his reaction would not have been so uncontrolled, even if in his own small way he had probably done everything to stop himself from losing it. There surely was a reason why Patrizio never took a break from hunting for ingredients despite having confessed to him in private that he would be fine staying here in this land of nightmares if he had Frederick by his side.


    Frederick wished at his best they would all make it out of here.