Charlie Anders - All the Birds in the Sky

The footing became uneven, piled with jagged shapes. Like shells or fragments of metal. Torn discarded computer parts, or flint-sharp stones. Every step became more jabby and stabby than the last, even through the soles of Patricia’s decent mary janes.

“Take off your shoes and throw them away,” Carmen said, “or your feet will be cut to pieces.”

Patricia hesitated a moment, but every step was like treading on knives. So she slipped her shoes off, one and then the other, and tossed them aside. She heard the sound of teeth devouring her shoes, chewing and grinding. As soon as she was barefoot, she felt as though she were walking on a well-kept lawn. She still could not see at all, nor were there any scents. But as she strode forward she heard a low siren wail, like a baby’s cry slowed to half speed. Patricia started heading toward that sound, which seemed more plaintive and pathetic the closer she got, but Carmen grabbed her arm and said, “Ignore it.”

Carmen steered Patricia in a different direction, so they came near to the source of the deep caterwauling but passed by it. Soon Patricia felt her feet sinking into the “ground” a little more with each step, so that she felt the grass or whatever it was around her ankles as her feet squished into something like soil.

A few steps later, Patricia was walking into the loose sod up to her mid-calves. She smelled something sweet, like a hundred flowers in a single bouquet mixed with a fresh bag of cane sugar from her old bakery job. The kind of sweetness that’s comforting and nauseating and appetizing all at once. It grew stronger, every step forward Patricia took, and meanwhile the racket underfoot was swallowing her calves whole each time she stepped down.

“That’s it,” Carmen said from nearby. “Just let it happen. Keep walking forward. I have an errand. I’ll catch up with you soon.”

Patricia started to protest, but she could tell she was alone in the dark with the rich sugary aroma and the terrain that was gobbling her up, inch by inch.

She wanted to turn and run back the way she’d come. But she could tell that wouldn’t work — this was one of those things where you either kept moving forward or got lost forever in the dark. She didn’t even think it was a test, as such — just a weird ritual, or a passageway on the way to something else. A spell so vast, so intricate, it was a realm.

Patricia took another step, and this time she was buried up to her mid-thighs and the “grass,” or whatever it was, was scratchy and awful. The sweetness was getting intoxicating, like an incense with something narcotic mixed in.

She walked forward and downward, letting the potpourri consume her waist, then her belly, then her torso and shoulders. At last she was in it up to her neck, and her head was swimming from the perfumey sugary air. Instinct made Patricia want to take a deep breath before her next step, but Patricia trusted Carmen, as much as she trusted anyone anymore. She swung her foot forward and found nothing under it, other than loose crud.

Patricia took the last step, her head disappearing into the sharp fragrant rocks or broken glass or whatever, that scraped her face on the way down.

Rich-smelling bones and scraps buried her alive. Her feet touched a floor or the ground, and then it tilted, went sideways. She realized she was in a container that was being tipped. She opened her eyes, which she didn’t realize she’d closed, and she saw the inside of a Dumpster, full of lovely and rotten food, which was being emptied into a truck. Someone saw her squirming in the midst of all the garbage and gave a shout.

She spilled out of the truck, and the garbage collectors and the restaurant manager and a woman in a smart pink trench coat stared at her: a girl covered in restaurant waste, which no longer smelled sweet at all. She didn’t know if this was real or what city she was in, and her clothes were ruined and she was still barefoot and she couldn’t bear to look at her own grimy feet. They were all yelling but she couldn’t understand anything they were saying. She took off running, out of the secluded backstreet behind the restaurant and onto a bigger street where everybody stared at her.

She had only one thought: I have to get away from people.

Everything was too bright and tinged sort of blue-gray, like it was dusk and noon at the same time. She looked up to see where the sun was, but the whole sky was too bright to look at, and it stung her retinas.

This wasn’t the first time Patricia had been dropped in a strange town where she knew no one and had no money and did not speak the language. Even being shoeless and covered with stinking garbage was no great extra challenge — and yet she felt panic steal her breath. She was trapped, there were too many people wherever she went, they were all looking at her, faces looming and bulging, and some of them were trying to talk to her. Just breathing the same air as other humans made her feel like needles were being drilled into her skin. The idea of even touching another person’s skin made her retch — if anybody would even want to touch her, as filthy as she was.

The city — whatever city this was — pressed in on her. People came out of dome-covered wooden doorways, climbed through broken shop windows, rose up out of cars, and descended from high buses, pinning her down. Wherever she looked, faces and hands. Big staring eyes and grasping fingers, mouths gaping and making guttural roaring noises. Awful creatures. Patricia ran.

She kept running, down a main thoroughfare, onto a street, into the path of a speeding trolley that nearly killed her, into a square full of people in casual shirts and cargo pants, through an open-air market, past a shopping center, through the outdoor seating area of a café. The city went on and on. There was no way out. She needed to get out of the city, but she could see no signs.

Pick one direction, pick one direction and run, stay clear of the monsters with their grabby limbs and attempts to communicate, stay free, and get the hell out of this city. Get clear.

She ran, choking, until she came to a pier. The water stretched out, white against the blinding blue air. She didn’t even hesitate — she ran forward, past the groping pink limbs and snapping mouths clustered on the pier. The grotesque creatures barked at her and stared with their stone eyes. She was shriveling in the sun. She would never make it to the water before she melted, or they caught her.

One red-faced ogre swung his hairy arm and nearly snared her, but she ducked and fell and that gave her the momentum to pull herself up, sprint, and throw herself face-first into the ocean.

Patricia surfaced, gasping and wheezing, and looked up into the face of Carmen Edelstein, floating in the water nearby. She splashed around for a second, then got her bearings. She was in the middle of the ocean, and it was freezing. There was no dock, no pier, no city anywhere nearby. Nothing but waves, as far as she could see. And then she smelled something bilious and she got a glimpse of a dark hunched-over shape poking out of the water. Seadonia. It was like she’d just descended from the cloud to the ocean near Seadonia and all the rest had been a hallucination. But she knew it wasn’t that simple.

“So that was the Unraveling,” Patricia said, treading water. The waves went over her face for a moment.

“What did you think?” Carmen didn’t seem to need to paddle to stay afloat.

“It was horrible.” Patricia was still panting. “I wanted to get away from people at any cost. I couldn’t even recognize anyone else as being the same species as me.”

“It’s not unlike colony collapse disorder, but for humans. And yes, it’s horrifying, but it could be the only way to restore some balance and prevent a worse outcome. We’re all hoping it doesn’t come to that.”