Cyclone

In the morning, the sun rose auburn and burnt itself alive. Val opened her eyes against the heat. The bedding was a set of claws against her dragging body, pulling it forward and in.

A blackness served as filter over her waking day. Always.

Dust rose from the crumbling curb where the bus pulled in, spraying rocks into the space above. The air was hot with voices and words fell off pointed tongues. They did not see each other. Pinpoints populated the bus. From the center of the space, they parted as she entered the metallic monster. Their words fell grim, into nothing. She saw nothing of them.

Doors swung shut. A long metallic drone filled from the emptiness of the bus's interior. In her black space, dots appeared. Many, sorting themselves out.

What remained at the root was all she could see. Swarming, shifting. They did not remain still. On the day of heat and smog, they’d have been less than human to. They pushed to the edge of the monster. The whispers reduced for a moment, then rose in roar again.

The point stationed in her center diminished and grew. It was dying in the absence of…

Something was off.

She could never fully know what exactly was off until it hit her, after. A consequence of blindness that had created a sludge to carry around. It never peeled off too far. When a finality hit her, it did so stark and without question.

Now, a twisted thing lurked right at the pit of her being.

The center points pulled at one another. An empty pool formed around the center of the bus.

The bus hit the side of the curb. Red dust spread into the air and prickled at the edge of the window. A piercing cry broke through a thickness that had settled. A woman clutched her baby, and the owner could have been either. Long nails to the eye and the scream silenced.

The bus rotated over itself and onto the ground. As it spun, its inside remained static. Then they were back again. An occurrence in reverse.

It was caught on a repeat loop, tripping over itself. Val was consumed by the motion of it. All centers remained static.

This was the finality.

Eyes widened. Lights flickered, undecided. The chain overhead swayed roller coaster arcs.

A darkness overtook the bus. Rust and moss flicked off the railing edge. An addition to the whirlwind. Fingers as branches clutched for a safety that never came. They were extensions of wiry mailmen. Val looked around. Details of reality were coming undone.

The glass cracked and with that sound, there was the whip crack of the bus’ impact with the curb again, forming a link. Val entered the bus. The fall of the bus broke the hold at her center. Whatever had been creeping fit into place. All at once.

The bus hit the curb.

The moss fell off the railing. The woman and her scream. A baby was clutched. A fingernail close to the eye, only the baby did not scream.

There was something there. Humanity spilled as details cracked. All was coming undone with the churn of the bus. She listened and did not see. It was adding up.

The moss flicked off.

Then again.

The bus hit a curb. The people shifted. The woman screamed and grabbed her baby. The man with his teeth. Dots grew dim at centers, weakening with each revolution.

Words became a sequence. It did not matter and was lost to the spinning chasm. It faded in and out of view, the inches of which Val caught by ear.

A locket stood between the white pearls of the string man. The locket was brittle and of a heart. Crunched, between the flatness of his teeth. He tore himself away from the railing and let his body flail around the bus. Val dodged a set of near-miss arms. She did not scream.

Gripping, then back again. The bus hit the side of the curb. Dust flew. The baby cried. The mother’s nails pierced the side of his head. He screamed no more. The bus driver was without a central rumble. The passengers carried their core, spinning and winding.

The man with his white teeth, where he crunched the golden metal between them.

The signs of strain on his arm gave way for the chaos of a flying body. Val ducked beneath it. She did not scream. It was caught within her, spinning in that central tangle common to all. Most. Not all…

The bus hit the curb. Heads knocked along the glass. Shards expelled from the side. The world outside became flat. The mist of dirt and fog settled to a blank white. A shining orb of sun poked through cloud.

Then, everything froze.

Stuck in place and gripping onto themselves, it faded into the sequence that followed from the crash. The bus hit the side of the curb. The dust rose in the air. The bus driver did not move. Motionless, he was nothing. The loop was caught in his center. A revolution of the wheel. He was the cause. His white fingers gripping skeleton-tight. His teeth where nothing. His eyes were no more.

Val dodged him just enough.

A fog consumed the space outside. The sun was a finger poking through. A new entrance.

Then, the curb.

Val didn’t understand. There was nowhere to go. They were caught within it — no exit. There was solely the repetition and the twisting in the guts of the passengers were fading. There should have been somewhere to run. The curb again. The dust.

“I’m successful.” A spine broke the t-shirt in two. Bones jutted as shards, spikes rising in all directions. An eye took the place of a sunken cheek bone. An eyebrow curled into a snake. Two eyes glared red and nothing in its middle. The man-thing’s face was twisting into new forms, morphing itself as it went.

“Look at me.” His words were a flat line. They were formed with no meaning. “Look at me now!”

The monster disappeared and the bus hit the side of the curb. Dust particles exploded into the air up above, mixing and disappearing. Whirls formed before it did. The passengers screamed. The baby was loudest. Claws gripped the side of his face and his screaming ceased. The twisting beam of red at his center went out. The bus driver spun his wheel. His fingers were unapologetic bones. His fingernails were cut short - blunt, to as little of what they could be. Val understood solely their shapes.

The locket choking the edge of the man’s neck crunched between his teeth. Five obscurities remained as evidence on the railing after his release. His body flew through the air. The fog was clean in the window outside.

Val dodged it by solely an inch. It scraped her neck and she began to bleed. She didn’t understand. She was beginning to understand. The space had moved for her. The pieces were coming undone. They were falling into no place.

“I’m successful.” A spine broke the t-shirt in two. Bones jutted as shards, spikes rising in all directions. An eye took the place of a sunken cheek bone. An eyebrow curled into a snake. Two eyes glared red and nothing in its middle. The man-thing’s face was twisting into new forms, morphing itself as it went.

“Look at me.” His words were a flat line. They were formed with no meaning. “Look at me now!”

The monster disappeared and the bus hit the side of the curb. Dust particles exploded into the air up above, mixing and disappearing. Whirls formed before it did. The passengers screamed. The baby was loudest. Claws gripped the side of his face and his screaming ceased. The twisting beam of light at his center went out. It had been red and fuming. The bus driver spun his wheel. His fingers were unapologetic bones. His fingernails were cut short - blunt, to as little of what they could be. Val saw solely their shapes.

The heart-shaped locket choking the edge of the man’s neck crunched between his teeth. Five obscurities remained as evidence on the railing after his release. His body flew through the air. The fog was clean in the window outside.

Val dodged it by solely an inch. It scraped her neck and she began to bleed. She didn’t understand. She was beginning to understand. The space had moved for her. The pieces were coming undone. They were falling into the center of the driver.

“Take me whole!” a woman cried. She had a twist pulsing and contorting terribly. It raged in her center.

Her same fingernails tore the skin of the baby.

She disappeared into the crowd at the back of the bus. It was a single story ordeal. A two-story block of steps broke the exterior from the forward. The crowd consumed her and then the light went out. The fog froze and the sun broke through. A dagger in the distance.

Subsumed, there was no sign of her.

Val watched alone, blind to all but the knot at the center. There and then back into non-existence.

The dust rose from the ground as the bus twisted onto its side. It curled and toppled over. The man with knuckle-white claws turned the steering wheel into infinite spirals. He did not stop. The baby screamed and fingernails pierced through the outer layer of his skull. The man with the narrow jaw crunched the locket. Removed from the crowd, he became a chaos of his own. Into the air and Val all but dodged him. The blood drawn from her neck now had hardened into a scar.

She was not blind entirely.

“Hello, fellow!” said a man with a suit too large for him and shoes that took two spaces. His eyebrow hair fell over floppy eyelids. “Meet me in my yard for a treat!”

He consumed three roots.

She was not blind, but the world spun around her in a whirlwind she could only understand after. “After” never came. The sun stood black.

The fog stopped and took its turn as a frozen abyss — replacement of sky.

The flames were reducing by one, with each crunch of the man’s teeth. Every flick of dust. Each iteration brought new pain. She did not look him in the eye, for fear that they would look back. They did not look back. The bus driver couldn’t. His wheel made another rotation. She saw no way out. She had to get out.

The bus hit the side of the curb. This time, there was metal. Dust spurred from the ground. She had no means of getting out. There was none. There must be one. The crash had gotten into motion in the first place. There had to be a way out. The tangles contorted, spinning worlds in the centers of every stranger. Val looked and could not see.

“You have my cake. I want to eat it too,” the child screamed before his scream.

The candy-painted nail jammed into the side of his forehead. The mother grinned. It struck Val, piercing. The details were coming together now. The crunch of the locket, to the release of the hand from the pole. The body flew into the air. It hit the window before the fog took over the iridescent brown-blue. The sky opened. It was a portal to a new world. From here, all inverted.

Black.