I stumbled out into the world, not entirely sure of who I was or where I happened to be. All around me a grey sky loomed, filled with thousands of tall, spindly black towers topped by gigantic platforms. I wasn’t sure how I got to be where I was, and the details of the world that surrounded me were all new. I took a moment to assess my situation and to try to sort my thoughts, and I realized that I had no memory of anything beyond my past few seconds. Looking back I do not recall the form I had taken, save that it was one that was completely alien to me- composed entirely of strange limbs and other odds and ends that I could discern no use nor name for. Further, it must have been capable of flight, as that was my primary means of locomotion.

Hovering anxiously at the spot where I had just materialized, I decided that it would be best to explore my surroundings. Strangely intrigued by the sinister towers that seemed to populate the sky for miles, I flew to the top with a sound like a cross between billowing leather and splashing mud. The tower itself seemed to go on for miles, twisted up and contorted into bizarre, complicated shapes. Its cool black metal was covered with fine lines of crisscrossing red circuitry. Eventually, I made it to the top of the platform.

Instinctively I gasped in horror, letting out a low-pitched screech like an angrily played bass. Before me lay hundreds of hideously pale men and women, all lying face up a few feet off the surface of the platform, propped up by evil looking spikes that poked into their flesh, stretching it out from their bones in taut strips that looked a breath away from snapping. They were all completely bald and naked, though it was impossible to tell one gender from another. Not because they lacked genitalia, but because each person’s sex seemed increasingly vague and ephemeral; the longer I tried to focus on them the more the details boggled and hazed my mind like an optical illusion.

As unnerving as this was, their eyes were worse. They had constant, gaping, screaming stares, and as near as I could tell they had no actual eyelids. Further, a thick, clear pus dripped from their eyes at all times, streaking their face like gooey tears and gathering in thick, high piles below them. Occasionally their eyes would shift quickly to take in some new bit of data, and when they did this pus splashed out from them into the air and splattered whoever was near them.

These eyes focused on me now as I flew across the platform, and though they betrayed no emotion, I could tell from the rest of the people’s faces that they were in utter anguish. Their mouths twisted in distraught grimaces, and their postures atop their horrid perches seemed especially depressed. As far as I could tell, these perches were what sustained them and kept them alive- indeed, judging by their atrophied muscles and the layers of dust covering each of them, it would seem that none of them had ever had any actual physical stimulation in decades.

Hastening my flight across the platform so that I could escape this grim spectacle as soon as possible, I noticed something that had eluded my senses up until now. The air I was flying through was thick, and with a slight off-white hue, like nigh invisible oily smoke. Further, this smoke seemed to issue forth from the heads of the people below me, gathering from each of them into a great cloud. It was as if the people’s thoughts and ideas themselves were so great in magnitude and potency that they’d actually gotten to the point where they choked the air itself. This phenomenon grew especially troublesome when the people, seemingly angered by my brazen show of physical virtue in flying above them, turned these thoughts against me. The smog emanating from their heads became harsh and stinging, and I felt horrible pain all over my unfamiliar body. It sapped away my strength and my will, and I crashed violently onto the platform. I landed messily in a pile of the pus from their eyes, and skidded moistly forward and off the edge.

Tumbling to the ground, the second part of my journey was now upon me.

To Be Continued.