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After the deluge all I could remember were those last moments, and the hands.

The hands reaching out from the multitudes falling, grasping, hurtling into the other place, the void.

They opened that first portal despite all the warnings. Curiosity didn’t just kill the cat. I was just out of range, so I didn’t join them, thought the hands reaching were relentless. And I didn’t know in that moment if they reached out to have me pull them back, or to pull me though with them. Perhaps misery shared is a misery halved. Or maybe panic is thoughtless, and hands have no real intelligence or story to tell. They are just desperation, nothing more.

So few of us escaped them, the voids, for they thought they opened one, but it led to many, many doors, all over the world. This reality, this matrix if you will, split apart as easily as an over-ripe peach. And after it claimed so many, it closed the doors like mouths sated in the feed. But we never know if they will open again, if the hungry universes will again seek their due. And so we wait.

And I am haunted, very day, and even more at night when I try to sleep, by the hands. Reaching for me, always, reaching for the end. And all the horror I believe that would entail.

(c ) Helen M Valentina 2018