Behind the Last Window

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. Medea’s heart skipped a beat as the blaring of the alarm began. Quickly her startled expression was replaced by a sly smile. A smile not unlike that of a fox who just tricked its prey into the snare that was its jaws.

Blast doors shut behind them, locking the couple in the room with nothing to do but watch the end of this world through the thick panes of the viewing window. Something they had each yearned for since their arrival on this planet. An achievement that would cement their marriage and rival the greatest of their race.

Panic ensued almost instantly. The humans ran across the streets and between the labyrinthian maze of buildings to their tiny homes and meek survival shelters. They fought amongst themselves for the last scraps of resources that clung to the empty shelves of stores like the morning dew on each blade of grass before the wind inevitably swept it away.

There was no love, no empathy, no unity. Their fellow man was now their enemy.

“Eight billion hungry ghosts clinging to their host like the parasite that they are. Hah!” Medea laughed, staring through the window to the outside world for the first time. The excitement gripped her entire being. An entertaining fight for life laid out before her. The culmination of her life’s work. “They are nothing but desperate creatures crawling in the dirt!”

“Their church bells ring in unison with the doomsday alarm as their prayers to false gods go unanswered. Their hope is a prison and their faith only further ensures their imprisonment. What a foolish species. They truly are unfit for this planet.” Jason responded, echoing the hatred of his soon to be wife.

“They are contaminated. A species born and bred on pure hatred. A hatred not only for themselves but for their future offspring. Bleeding this world dry just to live in luxury for a fraction of a lifetime. The universe will not miss them. I will rule without the tyrannical methods that humans so commonly use and I will show them what it means to live under the blessing of nature.”

“Do not forget that we will rule together my dear Medea.” Jason responded, searching her face for an answer that never came. Medea continued her observation of the outside world from the shadows of the room.

The room was small, barely enough space for the couple to stand comfortably. It was barren and bland. Every surface was covered in plain grey tiles. A blank space with one sole purpose. It was dark save for a thin strip of light that leaked through the window from the outside world.

A world of great vibrance and beauty. An ever-dynamic world that demanded the most out of its inhabitants, lest they risk their survival. This was not a simple world. Not a world so easily tamed. All have failed, and the future would be no different. That is what made it truly beautiful.

Jason stood in that sliver of light staring not at the outside world, but at Medea. He analyzed her movements and facial expressions. Had he offended her or did she simply not hear him. This was a regular confusion as Medea was often either pensive or silently hating. A difference between the two was rarely existent and Medea was not the only one with a silent rage.

“Have you ever stopped to talk to one of them? Have you ever heard their stories? Felt any emotion gush from their words other than fear and resentment?!” Jason questioned. His voice rose as emotions previously bubbling in the deepest depth of his stomach for decades surfaced and attached themselves to his vocal cords.

“And what good would that do for my research? I care not for their personal experiences and personalities. My job was to determine whether they were fit to live on this planet without destroying it, and they are not. Nature cannot be wasted like this. It is that simple.” Her shoulders remained relaxed and her gaze never wavered from the window. Each spill of blood drawn from the crawling humans prolonged the lifespan of her smile.

“They are not so dissimilar from us, my love. Our ancestors were much the same. What if they eventually evolved to our level? Would you deny that possibility? A joining of species?”

“What can you possibly be suggesting Jason? You think these creatures are worth saving? That they have some fraction of a chance to become like us? Do you forget who we are? We are superior and we are to be wed. That is the whole purpose of us being here. To prove that we are loyal enough to the overlords to be married. We give them another planet to add to their collection and in return we seal our place in the history books and secure our marriage.” Medea had broken her stare through the window for the first time since the human’s alarms began. Her eyes bore holes into his yet her demeanor remained tranquil.

“Don’t give me that histrionic shit! I am done pretending, Medea!” Jason’s fists were clenched and his eyes interlocked with hers. His veins popped as the rage that boiled beneath threatened to erupt. It was a war more vicious than the one about to wage in the outside world. “I know who you really are. I have always known. You don’t care about the marriage. You never did. You only chose me because I had the intelligence to make sure you succeeded. To make sure that you were recognized as one of the greats of our species. To make sure that you could reign on a throne over a civilization of idiotic humans that would bow to your every command just as you suckle at the teat of the overlords!”

“My dearest Jason, you know not what is coming out of your mouth. You pour thing, you have fallen victim to the human’s trademark manipulation. They must have whispered seeds of doubt and deception into your mind that have blossomed into these horrifically false accusations. The only ones here who do not wish to spend their future with you are the worthless humans. Return to your senses and watch the stars with me before they fall and decimate this feeble species.”

He paced around, staring at the floor with his hands on his head. Passing in and out of the sliver of light while Medea remained motionless and blank in the darkness. “You spew detestation upon the humans. Condemning their every action and moral and yet you embody the very same ones. If you are looking for a tyrant, a selfish, hypocritical, and arrogant creature unfit to bask in the glory of nature’s loving embrace, then look no further than the window. Stare deeply into it until you stare back at your own reflection for you are the very same as what you believe the humans to be.” Medea quivered at his last sentence but quickly regained her composure. “You do not know them at all. You have never even seen their world until today. All you do is judge them on their fear of the unknown and come to the conclusions that will get you what you want. Your experiments have done nothing but reveal your true nature. You are more of a monster than they will ever be.”

“Are you finished?”

His pacing and willful ignorance intensified. “You don’t understand why I went along and you never will because you will never know how it feels to love and be loved by someone completely. You are incapable of that emotion. I thought it was you but now I know that I was destined for another. I have found someone who is unlike you in every way. And when I am done here with you, we will rule together with kindness and integrity as is deserving of such a species as the humans.”

For the first time since the blaring of the alarms, there was no joy on Medea’s face. She lurched forward and wrapped her hook-like fingers around Jason’s neck. Ceasing his movement in the darkness and lifting him into the air. His futile attempts at garnering breath echoed off the blank walls.

“You think I did not know of this.” She paused, extending his torture. His fingernails tore into her nail beds and reached for her eyes but neither were successful in delaying the inevitable. “This adultery. This lechery. This betrayal. It will not go unpunished.”

The blast doors opened in a puff of smoke and that sly smile was revived as the true prey fell into Medea’s jaws. The smoke dissipated and a silhouetted figure was revealed. A young human woman hovered above the floor. All four of her limbs were chained independently to the walls, ceiling and floor, suspending her in the air.

Immediately Jason’s retaliation was revitalized. His limbs flailed and screams tore their way out of his constricted throat. The woman lifted her head and the love in her gaze gave him the power to utter one word through the pain. “Glauce.”

Her eyes alone poured emotions of longing and adoration, of sorrow and guilt. All of which Medea could not comprehend. She was truly beautiful and graceful even in her frozen state. She smiled but no words were ever parted her delicate lips.

Medea dropped Jason. He rushed to regain his breath but Medea already had him pinned prone to the floor with her knee on the verge of snapping his spine. One of her grotesque hands gripped his hair and yanked it back while the other used its skeletal fingers to pry his eyes open. He had no choice but to stare at his imprisoned beloved.

“Watch.”

A tile along the ceiling of the room that Glauce hung in crashed to the floor and a mechanical arm holding a syringe of clear liquid advanced toward her. It pierced her supple skin and injected its contents into her veins. She made no indication of feeling. Jason winced but Medea’s fingers kept his eyes permanently trained on her prey.

“Hope that your god will not fail you now.” She stated mockingly.

The clear liquid circulated throughout her entire body, coursing through her veins until her blood vessels glowed a bright orange. Her brilliance increased until it was as if they were staring at the dying sun. It felt like ages before she finally screamed.

Her blood vessels burst in a flagrant conflagration of flames and colors that engulfed her in a dress of fire. Her screams filled the spaces of dead silence between the blasts of the alarm until each ounce of her organic flesh disintegrated and fell to the ground as ash.

At her death the chains and the mechanical arm receded back into their dens before the blast doors closed, leaving the couple once again locked in the room with nothing to do but watch the end of this world through the thick panes of the viewing window. This time, however, no light leaked through the window.

Night had fallen, the room was scarcely lit by the starlight and silent save for the rhythmic beating of the alarm from the outside world like a heart pumping false hope throughout a dying creature.

Jason’s face was blank. As undisturbed as the tips of the tallest mountains. His eyes reflected no light. Medea had let him go. She stood once again beside the window with her hands interlocked behind her back, staring out at the panicking humans.

“I’ve tricked your sisters into killing your father in return for an eternal youth that has already passed. I’ve murdered our children and the one you secretly loved the most. You have nothing left. You are nothing.”

“You are right. I do have nothing.” Jason sat up to a kneeling position and snapped his fingers. Immediately the alarm ceased. “Everything I have ever shown you may have been false but at least I was able to confide my true feelings in another. At least I had someone that wanted me there with them. You will never have that.”

She turned to face him.

He continued, “You are rotten to the core. A creature desperate for validation who belongs in the dirt. There will never be a light for your black heart.”

She reached out and grabbed his throat, once again lifting him off the ground. He did not struggle.

“Is it hard to accept that it was all for nothing? To think for so long that it would all work out just for it to fail? To think that you were smart enough to win just to lose everything you have ever had?” Each of her words were bound with passion.

She choked him harder.

“Is it!”

Silence.

“Answer me!”

Both of her hands crushed his trachea and snapped the vessels in his neck. Sections of his spine crumbled under the pressure. His expression remained blank.

“Annihilate me.” He managed to whisper.

Jason’s body fell to the floor.

Medea dropped his head soon after looking into his dead eyes one last time and returned to the window. It was time.

The stars began descending from the sky. They were to be reborn as fallen gods. Worshipped by the humans with Medea as their leader.