inside it were pushing upwards with fury. Jacob was shouting something behind her, but she found herself frozen in place, staring at the unnatural flux of the solid surface.
When the glass broke, she was less than ten feet away, and the blast of it threw her backwards onto the hot smoothness. She stared up at the darkening sky for a moment, too stunned to feel any pain. The first of the stars were beginning to appear in the East, bright and beautiful this far from any light pollution. The Milky Way was just becoming visible against the darkening sky, glowing reverently over the dunes. Her hands and arms felt cool in the hot desert air, and as Mary lifted them to her face, she saw that thousands of tiny fragments of glass had embedded themselves in her skin, lacerating and puncturing her palms and arms like tiny blades. The blood ran freely down her forearms, dripping off of her elbows and onto the dark glass. She realized the lake was no longer moving – only small reverberations of vibrated along her back – echoes of the previous thrashing. Gingerly, she sat up and looked at the hole punched into the glass before her.
“Christ, Mary! Are you all right?” It was Jacob. He was running to her across the now-fractured lake of glass. Mary didn’t look at him. “The glass! It… it exploded from the inside!” He stopped beside her, breathing heavily. “Shit, your hands. Oh shit. Shitshitshit. Here let me…” He was babbling in a panic, but she ignored him, instead looking what had been a solid sheet of glass moments earlier.
“There’s…” she began, pointing at something in red twilight, slowly rising from the hole. She couldn’t make it out in the shadows, but she knew it was there.
“You’re in shock. We need to get you…” Jacob paused, and wrinkled his nose. Mary noticed it to – the smell of carrion. Rancid dead meat and the scavengers that feed on it. She thought of maggots chewing through hamburger, of deer rotting on the side of the road. “What is that…” he turned slowly to see the form rising from the shattered glass.
It was upon them both in a moment, moving almost too fast for the eye to see. It was nothing and everything at once, a crawling chaos of disorder, yet at the same time a defined being with a sense of method. An ordered madness, it moved with the desert breeze like a black flock of birds in the sky, shifting and reorganizing, but always coherent. She sensed nobility in its movements – a strength and power, almost like a lion moving through desert sun; a king moving with purposeful strides across the barren glass that had once been its prison.
It stood before them, roughly man-shaped, although it was in a state of perpetual change. It was sand whirling in the wind, or the twisting, dancing turbulence flowing from the tip of a cigarette – amorphous and yet distinct. Mary had the sudden and insane impression that she was watching a ballerina made of smoke, playing the role of a man. Its entire being was a mystery – an unsolvable enigma, or riddle; incomprehensible and baffling to a sane mind. A fierce light burned from the being’s eyes like the desert sun, hateful and hot, illuminating an impassive scowling mask which it wore for a face. Mary heard nothing but the wailing wind – the gibbering fear of Jacob, the shouting of Ahme, and even her own screams seemed to disappear in the cacophonous hurricane that radiated from the being.
The twin beams of light stabbed out from the face, moving to Jacob, who could only whimper and shield himself from their glare with his hands, his skin blistering under the ravaging heat. Then it struck, suddenly and without warning, swooping and swirling smoke knifing about his arms and legs, twisting and coiling about his torso and neck. Jacob struggled briefly, his mouth contorting into a rictus of pain and fear. A howl of agony escaped the pair, carried off into the depths of the desert. Mary heard it as it passed – muffled by the roar of the wind, tangled in the stinging sand and desert heat. She heard when the bones began to breaking as well. Somehow they carried better than any voice, crunching and splintering and snapping like dry branches under a boot.
Jacob contorted – his limbs bending unnaturally, twisting and elbowing in places they shouldn’t – until it was no longer clear Mary was looking at the remains of a man. Only the head, its face frozen in anguish, could testify as to the species of the victim. Mary scuttled away from the creature, her stomach knotting into tight fists inside her. The smoke thing rose again from the still-twitching corpse of Jacob, and Mary closed her eyes in terror, cowering on the black glass that had once been the thing’s prison. She felt the heat from the eyes fall upon her, and shivered in equal parts fear and pain, before she felt the gaze move from her. From a distance, she heard another scream. Ahme.
Mary opened her eyes, and crawled to the remains that were once Jacob. Impossibly, the eyes were still moving in their sockets, and the mouth still opened and closed like a fish gasping for air on a boat floor. The parts that could still move trembled in pain. A tear rolled down Mary’s face as her hands found the unbroken trachea and pressed. Apologies and terror streamed from her mouth in a last rite and for a moment, Jacob’s eyes shown in thankfulness. Then they were empty.
Mary sat and wept, the tears making dirty streaks of mud in the sand plastered to her face, and for a moment she was a child again, crying on the beach. Her father would come, she knew. He would come and it would be all right again. Just like it always had. But she felt that searing gaze fall upon her back again, and knew she was lost. The winds came again, screaming and hateful. Scorching and uncaring. Mary closed her eyes and prayed for the last time.
She dreamed of fire, streaming from the sky in a pillar, into the barren desert. She dreamed she was sinking into the burning sticky ground, as if it were quicksand. It flowed like a burning quicksilver, devouring her slowly, while that impossible tower of flame burned down from the heavens. Mary dreamed of imprisonment for centuries. She dreamed of death.
The thing that had once been Mary shuddered to its feet in the hot desert sun, and staggered eastwardly. It moved mechanically in the deep sand, heavily, its bulging stomach weighing it down. Desert birds around it cawed in jubilation at the unexpected bounty of bodies, but it paid them no heed. Its eyes were fixed on the crest of the next dune, and the horizon beyond that; on the domed city glittering in the desert like a jewel. What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
A message from the author:
Hope you enjoyed my short story, The Lake of Glass, as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you’re interested in reading more about it, or other pieces of my work, you can check out my blog at: poetmoreate.blogspot.com
Thanks!
Josh
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