Magenta Sunshine

“They came down from the walls in the middle of the night,” Sunshine’s mother’s breath was growing cold as her hand trembled daintily in her daughter’s. “These horrible, disgusting creatures that smelled like old blood…”

“Mom, you don’t have to talk about--”

“You have to know what happened.”

Sunshine bowed her head in respect and nodded. Her mother continued, “I saw them take your cousin, the one who would’ve been two years older than you, right after he was born. I was at Aunt Denise’s house babysitting and all of a sudden I had the worst migraine I’d ever encountered,” she shook her head and closed her eyes as her breaths became more shallow and short. “I dropped to my knees in pain, but I saw it. I saw a gigantic pulsating blob of semi-transparent flesh..red, and bloody, and veiny...It was crawling down the wall…”

Sunshine’s eyes began to widen in horror as she listened to her mother’s story. She knew it had to be true, though. Her mother’s mind had been quick even through every day of illness, so Sunshine knew this story was told from a dead woman’s honest lips. The death bed becomes the confession booth.

“And...the baby was on the floor in the living room, and I couldn’t tell that it was coming for him until I had already fallen onto my hands and closed my eyes. But...I fought the pain for that little baby,” Sunshine’s mother began to cry painful tears, her dry and cracked lips stretching in sorrow as Sunshine held back tears of her own. “And I tried to get to him but it just...it took him! It covered him and he was...gone!” She cried hysterically now and struggled to sniffle through her violent congestion. “I...I passed out from the pain of the migraine. When I woke up that abomination was gone. The baby was gone. I realized how heavy the atmosphere had been when that thing was there like it was squeezing me itself without even touching me! My migraine was completely gone but my nose was bleeding and there was a ringing in my head that was driving me insane...then my sister came home…” She began to breathe slowly again, perhaps because of Sunshine’s powerful grip on her hand calming her.

“Mom…” Sunshine tried to stop this horrid story.

“No, Sunny!” Her mother snipped, struggling to lift her head even slightly. “You need to know what I saw!”

“It’s horrible!”

“Horrible things are everywhere, Sunny!” Her mother struggled to sit up as Sunshine put her arm over her to keep her down. “And I’m sorry we never let you know it! We wanted to raise a happy child, Sunny, you don’t understand! So listen, now! Don’t you want to know what happened to force us underground?”

“I don’t think about those things!” Sunshine shouted at her mother for the first time in her life. “This has always been my life, I’ve never wanted anything else! You’re asking me to go to a different world! I don’t want to go up there, mom, I wanna stay down here with you!”

“There is no more me!” Sunshine’s mother began to sob again as she gave up on sitting up to scold her now teenage daughter. She settled and closed her eyes to compose herself as her tears fell, struggling to breathe through the excitement. She continued, “My sister came home. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. I was sitting on the couch holding the baby’s hospital blanket in my hand with no recollection of how I got there. She immediately started asking me where Shawn, your cousin, was. I was honest with her right away...I never lied to my sister. I told her...that I lost him,” she held back tears, exhausted from the energy crying took from her. “I said, ‘Sis, I lost him. I got a bad migraine, passed out, and when I woke up...he was gone.’ That sounds crazy no matter what, and I knew that. She lost her mind...as any mom would. She’d never yelled at me like this before in our entire lives. She started screaming, cursing at me, accusing me of things like selling him or dropping him...and I just cried. I just stood there and cried. I knew I couldn’t tell her, ‘a giant moving mass of flesh took him away.’ So...she filed a missing person’s report and I told the police the same thing I told my sister. They asked me if I took any drugs. Denise called your Dad. The police took me in for further questioning that same night, I think...everything went faster because Shawn was a missing newborn. The lawyer came and got me out of the whole mess, but that part isn’t the point,” Sunny’s mother made pleading eye contact with Sunny now.

“What’s important is what happened to us after that thing took Shawn. When I got home from the police station, your father asked me where I’d gotten the heart-shaped locket around my neck. It was the first I’d noticed of it. It wasn’t a necklace Denise or myself owned. I’d never seen it in my life, but it was around my neck and I had no idea when or how it got there.”

“Wait...the magic necklace? The one you used to wear all the time? You always said that necklace had magic powers or something when I was a kid.” Sunny almost smiled thinking of it.

“Yes, that one, Sunny. I remember feeling guilty for not noticing it. I realized that I didn’t want to take it off, not even for a second. I felt...like I was its mother. I felt a loving and nurturing connection with this mysterious necklace. I didn’t even question where it came from anymore once I realized it was there.

“As time passed I realized I’d been losing time...ending up going the entire day just to realize I had no recollection of any of it. And...missing children cases were skyrocketing with each month...as were reports of people seeing the same monster I saw,”

The color drained from Sunshine’s face as she continued to listen to her mother’s grotesque tale. “It was all over the news. People saw those things taking children from homes, They were all just...gone. It felt like the more we talked about it, the more the news reported on it, and the more violent and bold those things became. They started taking children from playgrounds in broad daylight and all nearby adults would be paralyzed by migraines. They moved faster and became larger in size, like, big enough to take entire fields of children at once. We knew it was a sign of the end-times...It couldn’t have been anything else. People started preparing for the rapture...but…” Her eyes began to almost close as she grew tired. “But...at the height of it, I was already pregnant with you.

“That’s when your father was able to get us this bunker we had you in. It was a part of an entire community underground, each pod occupied by a couple that was expecting a baby.”

“There were other families down here?”

“There were until the things came here too. Once the babies were born, they were taken away just like above ground.”

You’ll notice that you’re still here, love. They never came for you a single time, even when the rest of the community lost their children to those things. So...we stayed down here and vowed to never go back up. Last time I spoke to another person I was told that those monsters became the size of cities...and they began destroying cities, too.”

“Mom,” Sunshine’s brain couldn’t comprehend most of what she’d been told. “Why didn’t they come for me?”

Sunshine’s mother swallowed as her eyes began to quiver with tears, her voice reduced to a pained whisper as she struggled to stay awake. “Because...you came out of that locket, Sunny.”

“What are you talking about?” Sunshine’s lip raised in disgust as she immediately backed away from her mother.

“The night that you were born here in the bunker, you didn’t come out of me. You were literally born from the inside of that locket. It was around my neck and it opened on its own and...you...you crawled out of it. A fetus…”

Sunshine continued to back away from her mother in horror. “Why would you say something so disgusting?!” She cried as tears began to drench her cheeks.

“I’ve never lied to you, love,” Sunshine’s mother reached out to her daughter weakly as her eyes began to close. “I’ve never lied to you!”

“You just never told me these things!”

“I’m telling you now!” Sunny’s mother began to cough ferociously after cracking her voice struggling to shout and Sunny ran back to her side to aid her. She began rustling through empty first aid kits at her mother’s bedside, knowing she’d find nothing.

“I’m so sorry for my flaws as a mother…” Sunny’s mother whispered as she began to let her body’s weight keep her down. “Maybe I should have told you sooner, maybe I should have never told you any of this at all. But...we’ve run out of rations in our own bunker, Sunny, when we moved here we were supposed to be delivered more bi-weekly...but...you have to venture out. You have to see who or what is up there so that you can survive.”

Sunny’s tears fell rapidly now as she continued to listen. Suddenly, Sunny’s mother began to cough again as she took shrieking breaths. “Mom! You’re alright, mom!” Sunny began to cry as she frantically tried to pat her mother’s back, sitting her brittle, skinny body up on the sweat-drenched cot. “I’m right here, mom!”

Sunny’s mother struggled to point her finger toward an old wooden chest on the other side of the bunker. “I’ll go, mom,” Sunny told her mother as she watched her body start to relax as she coughed. “I’ll go!”

She let her mother lay back down as the coughing slowed and her eyes closed, her heartbeat slowing already. “I love you, Mom.” As her mother’s jaw became slack Sunshine lowered her ear to hear her whispering. “Take...the...locket…” As Sunny nodded at her mother who’d been struggling to go on for months, her mother took her last breaths.

Sunny wasted no time. She opened the wooden chest and retrieved the locket before opening the bunker doors to climb the old ladder to the near surface.

With the locket around her neck, Sunny arrived at the feet of a tall looming figure, waiting for her in the desert she found herself in. The figure seemed to be communicating with Sunny in some way...through her thoughts. “You have finally arrived,” The figure’s words came to Sunny’s mind in waves that felt like strong magnets. Sunny’s body felt heavy in the presence of this pillar of a figure, as if the atmosphere was becoming oppressive by will of this being. “It is just you and I now.”

Sunny shook as her body was pulled toward the ground as she tried to walk toward the figure that seemed to be getting farther away, yet closer, as she walked toward it. “Why?” She questioned in her own mind instinctively.

“You are The Only Child. Mine.”

“You...you’re my mother?” Sunny questioned, feeling her body adapt to the oppression around her and beginning to stand. But as she adapted to the atmosphere the appearance of it became warped, the sky and air turning everything an electric magenta tone. Sunny began walking forward toward the indistinguishable figure, realizing that she heard no life around her. Only the wind.

She felt a warmness wash over her as she listened to the entity in her mind speak, “It is just you and I now. As intended.”