Rebecca Gransden - Sea of Glass

The star halted above the table, its light fluctuating in intensity. Waves of glowing mists exuded from its flickering centre, flowing outwards in nebulous flowerings. Each guest paused, forgetting Kattar, and turned to stare at the light, their faces enraptured with dawning terror. The star pulsated sending a shockwave through its swirling golden plasma surround. Hysteria swept the room, broken people crawled from their seats, every hand and effort directed away from the morphing star, scrabbling weakly along the floor, staggering on wasted legs, using each other as a means to clamber, stepping on bone and sinew, crushing their acquaintances in the rush to flee.

A crack from deep within the light resounded over the room, and every person froze. From inside the light came a gloop, primordial and physical. Of the body. It grew and poured from an unknown space, into the air to multiply and take shape. The atmosphere near it distorted like a heat haze, the spectral material appearing to use the tension it created by interacting with this warping air to forge itself into being. A vicious snap of energy and a figure was discernible, floating in a stately bob above the tabletop. It wailed as it pulled itself into the room, from its veil, its stomping ground beyond the rules, into the cage of existence, a binding torture. Kattar felt its bottomless anger, its resentment, its violence and chaotic lust.

The man with the voice stood up, breaking the submission to the vision. “It’s him,” he cried from his hole, “Come to deliver us! Wayfarer here at last.”

Down the row, the woman, halfway on the table, half dragged away from her disintegrating legs, clutched at her breasts. “You wanted this!” She raised her wilted arm and pointed a trembling finger at the voice. “You tricked the boy. Now none of us have a chance. Bastard. You’ve no right. No right!”

“Shut up Agatha,” the voice snapped back, “Someone had to end this damn show.”

“But you’ve interrupted his walk,” she said, and gasped, “We will never be forgiven. You’ve set something in motion. There’s no going back, for any of us. It’s begun.”

The figure above the table, Mr Wayfarer in summoning, contorted with the pangs of birth, dressed in a dirty sackcloth shroud littered with tatty holes, through which there were glimpses of a filthy hair shirt, writhing with shiny lice and bulging ticks. A low thrum pulsed the room and the air shuddered. Kattar tried to blink it away but it increased its frequency, his vision blurring, the sight of Wayfarer and the soul bedraggled guests wandering in his gaze. Flies in a writhing mist entered from the adjacent hallway, the bug zappers dead, releasing them to swarm. Buzzing over the guests in a torrent, soon the room seethed with the attraction to rot. Lucidity infrequent, he stumbled backwards, to the remembered location of the door in gold. The warm light of its direction streamed into his eyesight. Behind him a scream erupted, only to fade as if ripped asunder, and then replaced by another and another, each exalting the next. He felt his bowels move, his gut react to the stink of stale blood and old flesh. Reaching, part blind, disorientated, the shine of gold became his guide, and he sunk towards it, the cool metal a saviour to the touch. He tried the door and it opened.

Arush of air, mistral, pushed him through the gold. Backstage again. This time high on some cobbled together stairs that hung beneath him and spiralled down. Every step downwards deflated him, forced into retreat, sent the wrong way, the EXIT a diminishing prospect. He took the twisty descent, swallowing the backward move, resolving to accept the detour. Nothing but a setback. Was it because he released the bolt? Too late.

The haphazard placing of the splintering planks had been rectified in his absence. At first he considered that he’d entered another theatre entirely, the areas so ordered and spotless. Then he approached the power box, with its familiar markings and worn stickers, and his return was confirmed. He rounded the partition from backstage to centre, a spotlight trained on one of the chairs in the middle of an audience row out in front of him. The chair was empty.

After-hours, when everyone has seen their play, and the deadening night whisks them along their streets, scooted by the hands they’ve invented to cradle the tired body, that body facing its day, a construction scaffolded with tenuous delusion and truth burning so bright its near impossible. Back to their shaky safe places, where the acts transfigure in dream. You talk in your sleep.

And I hear you.

Sunlight flooded the floor, the city out in expanse before him, through every pane, the glass so clear the light penetrated untouched to splay its rays across the office carpet.

The floor was empty but for a strange device placed at its centre, away from the edge, turned towards the view. An iron lung, gently hissing its mechanics.

Kattar walked through the sunshine, the warmth enough to have compelled him to weep if he’d been alone. As he approached the man who was held inside the cylinder he despaired of ever leaving the tower. The place had exhausted him and he’d only climbed halfway up.

“Please, don’t be alarmed,” the man in the iron lung said, “this is only a temporary measure. What brings you here today? I’ve lost track of my itinerary. Do we have an appointment prior arranged? I have to warn you that I may not be able to fulfil my side of things today. As you can see, I’m not my usual self.” The man winked, his lupine grey-blue eyes surprisingly healthy and examining Kattar vigorously.

Kattar, face blank, breathed shallow. “I’m looking for the exit,” he said, mumbling his words, every syllable an effort.

The drum tinkled with tiny depth charges, deep sea echoes pumping breath, inflating the bladder. “Do you even know who I am?” the man in the iron lung said, “Or why you are here? You don’t look very well.”

Bit rich, Kattar thought. Muteness reigned.

“I’m the chairman.”

Of course you are.

“Now, what’s your biznez?”

Kattar fumbled with the passcard, which at some unremembered point he’d pushed deep into his pocket. “There was an explosion. Outside the building.”

“Yeah, I know. Saw the smoke. No trace of it now. Clear skies. You seen that blue? Take a gander over there. I’d look up if I were you, not down, my friend.”

The city was juggernaut. Kattar went to the glass wall—a section away from direct sunlight, rays left to stream into the room from another side. From shade the sun smothered the skyscrapers in a vomity poultice. Septic diamond spires making sweet romance with joss paper. Oxymoronic foundations liquidising self-actualised boardrooms before a visit to the haberdasher. Slam the brakes. White heat window scales radiating blisters and hackneyed tycoons. Penthouse. Is next to godliness. The very middle view here, Kattar felt dizzy.

“Beautiful day.” The chairman talked from behind him. Kattar didn’t turn, kept looking out, let him talk. “I feel like saying something relatable, but words fail me.” He laughed, a hacking titter which turned into a cough and then a desperate struggle for breath. Kattar stared out over the city, to beyond its outskirts, the unformed reaches, to yards under open white skies, the horizon line a brutal wish and only real for those tightroping along it. The chairman normalised his breathing, sniffing, swallowing. “You’re an innocent. I can see that straight away,” he said, “One of the perks of my position. I’m the only one who has the ability to do that. You’ve witnessed something. What have you seen that’s got you down, son? Was it the explosion?”