Two Lives

He walked among the ruins. Shadows danced among them. The building looked magnificent. They had been left untended for far too long. But he felt a power here. As strong as the one in the forests. As ancient as the forests. But it seemed malicious. The power emanated, a glow, a warning. He walked among the ruins.

The man that had been shot was dragged away in the cover of the night, people were questioned about what he had said, they had answered, in a trance. But none of them, it seemed, had said the right thing. Their town was razed to the ground in the cover of the night. No one found out. No one knew. No one cared.

He heard a scurrying, and a crash, shadows danced gleefully. He started. The mouse came around the corner. No, it was dragged around the corner, on the backs of the shadows. It was dead. He heaved a heavy sigh, almost turned back, but his feet kept propelling him forward.

The man was not dead, they revived him with a gasp under the confines of their hospital, wearing the one material that it seemed even the lodestone could not pierce through. Under heavy hazmat suits, they revived him, and the man woke with a loud gasp that bounced off the lodestone and all around. They began questioning him, the camera focused squarely on him, the man watching from the principal’s office, fingers interlocked, elbows on his desk.

He walked around, flashlight dancing on the walls, shadows dancing all around it. Outside, it began to rain. Rain pattered off the walls, clanging onto the steel pipes, forming rivulets everywhere. 

The principal watched as the man began to talk. His face changed many times. Curiosity, surprise, then disappointment as he realized the man who was once insane had somehow turned sane. Ironically, it seemed they had achieved what they pretended to the world they were here to do at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

Hūr found many rooms, each one with a bed, lined like a prison, steel railings on the bed, the windows blocked by steel, he looked out into the garden. The rain was heavy and thick now. He turned his flashlight and kept moving. He was on the second floor, he began to go back to the ground floor.

End it. The voice came interspersed with static, over the communications system. A scientist picked up a needle, and put it in the father of the man who would become Hūr Amran. The man passed away, for the last time. As soon as he was gone, an attendant, who had been standing nearby in a hazmat suit and had been scratching himself, and no one had noticed, was noticed. The scratching had become more incessant. He ripped off the suit. And began to grow more hair, his eyes were filled with a wildness. Inhuman.

Hūr walked around, light flashing. The floor had broken in one place and he skirted around it, before realizing, wait, there’s something below the ground floor!