Utopia
by Kevin Bennett
The Wall was
alive, its texture mottled and warm; and as she
felt the firmness of muscle stretching infinitely
in either direction, her desire was eclipsed by
the terror that made her body tremble. A battle
raged inside as her hand slowly sank into The
Wall's fleshy indefiniteness.
Involuntarily,
her eyes searched the eternal partition. Bodies,
male and female, stuck from The Wall. Some
merely had forelimbs entrenched in the living
mire, as she did; others were barely recognizable
silhouettes stretched taut against the barrier's
ghastly crimson skin; vague outlines of people
once independent. Some had tried to escape, after
they'd been drawn bodily into The Wall's flesh.
Now their faces stretched horrifically frozen
from The Wall's insides as their minds were
slowly taken from them into the collective
barricade. Some had tried to leap The Wall, whose
height from a distance seemed surmountable, but
was thrice that of a man. They too were captured,
writhing in agony as The Wall drew them in.
"Stop!" Cried
a voice from behind her.
Eyes drunk
with terror, she stared back, found her voice
quavering: "I can't, mom—"
"Please!"
"I don't
want to touch this thing, dontcha' get it?."
"Then
what are you doing?"
"You don't
understand."
Her mother
sobbed, "but I do, child. I was there.
I've felt it. It pulled me, too; but I ran!
I escaped and matured—"
"Then why
can't you save me?"
"I—I
can't be taken again, Child."
She whimpered.
"M-mommy…"
Her father
appeared from over a hillside, stood breathlessly
next to her mother. He yelled: "Is it
too—no…it is." A hand went
to his forehead, he looked to his wife, then his
daughter, then: "I'm coming for you
sweetheart, keep fighting," and he was
sprinting for The Wall.
Her mother
screamed: "Walter, don't!"
But he wouldn't
be stopped.
The girl was
in up to her elbow, eyes losing their humanity,
the look of a bovine dullard creeping behind the
pupils. Walter struggled with her, sweating and
bellowing; but the harder he pulled, the faster
her arm sank into The Wall. Her eyes soon
lost their light as a leg and then part of her
torso was sucked into the flesh. Her free
arm began to beat at her father, trying to force
him away from her. Then Walter's wife was there,
and both parents pulled and strained, trying to
save their daughter from the hypnotic Wall.
In the process, Walter touched the glowing flesh,
and as his eyes looked on his wife, he gave up
the fight.
His wife
shrieked, fell to her knees, sobbed, pulled at
her husband, but was too weak and was soon
gripped by The Wall herself.
*************
Years later
the family emerged on the other side. They were
mindless, soulless, careless…essentially
dead, like everyone else whom The Wall had
immersed into itself.
|
