The world I woke up in looked different than the one in which I had fallen unconscious. To my left I saw Leo lying on a wooden floor, his left arm spotted with bright red eyeballs, drawn into his skin by ... I don't know what.
Sitting up, my face felt so heavy I had to close my eyes and open my mouth.
When my eyes opened, I found myself staring at a winding stairwell. Strange, I thought. My heart raced, painfully beating in my temples, in my neck. What was it that brought me here? Did that meteor, that light, kill us? Was this really Leo Garnier lying motionless on the floor beside me? Was he an impostor or a figment of my imagination?
Lamps lit the room, revealing a discomforting shade of blue that painted the walls. The sound of footsteps came down from the staircase bordered by detailed tapestries of monsters battling, bloodied, limbs chopped off, evil in their design.
I wanted to ask who was there if this was the afterlife. I wanted to wake Leo, so I wasn't alone. If I was dead, this new reality made me want to cry out in despair. It was too dark and lonely for me to bear. From the base of my neck to the top of my head, my skin stung and I felt deformed. Misshapen, somehow.
Tears began to stream down my face. They fell red on the backs of my hands, which clutched my knees, knuckles white, strained. I attempted to speak, moving my tongue to the roof of my mouth, yet no sound came out.
The footsteps paused before any man across the room made an appearance. Yet, I sensed a dreadful presence here with us. Something terrible, as monstrous as the abominations on the tapestries.
A groan came from Leo's still body. The markings on his left arm seemed to bleed out onto the floor, forming a puddle. It made me wonder if my tears were reddened by blood.
Was this hell? Had I failed to do right?
"Sa ... Samira?" Leo croaked out, attempting to raise himself off the floor. His massive body seemed to weigh on his shaking elbows, and his left arm didn't seem to work correctly. I watched a look of horror fall over his face when he spotted the strange markings on his left arm. He lifted his head to meet my gaze. "Your eyes!"
I rubbed at them, trying to wipe away the wetness. My chest ached at the thought of being terrifying enough to scare a large man like him.
But touching my face at all made it burn fiercely. Why?
"Did you draw on your face?"
"No, of course not." I furrowed my eyebrows at him. "Does it look like I did?"
Leo's eyes flickered down to his left arm. Getting onto his knees and facing me, he pointed at the markings on his arm and then at my face. "They're the same." A sharp exhale left his mouth. "I don't understand any of this."
"Me, neither." I wrapped my arms around myself, wanting to curl up and hide. I could feel that the fabric of my hijab had loosened around my neck. I tightened it, insecure at being exposed. "This must be a bad dream."
The footsteps proceeded down the stairs. Leo and I pressed our sides against each other, awaiting what could have been our deaths, for all we knew.
Then we saw it: the Devil himself ... or something, someone, that matched the malicious figure.
Standing at least seven feet tall, its two stalk legs and four arms glittered with hard spikes against the oil lamps. Obsidian armor covered its whole body, from its pointed boots to its diamond-shaped skull. Its exoskeleton, barely revealed through the joints of its armor, looked red from where I sat, but when it took a few long steps toward us, that skin-like shell appeared more orange.
And its face ... I wanted to puke. It had a man's mouth, only accompanied by pincers. Was this monster a crab? His nose looked flat, and his eyes ... Six yellow eyes ... stared at us on the floor.
When it spoke, the room quaked, and the oil lights one by one flickered out while it spoke: "Your head ... is my ... head ..." He groaned as if he had six voices in one, all overlapping each other. One arm waved at me in a languorous motion. To Leo, he waved another arm and continued with, "Your arm ... is my ... arm ..."
Gesturing to us at the same time, he declared, two faint lights remaining, "I am more ... than you ... are."
We couldn't see anymore, and I couldn't breathe either.
But a scream escaped both Leo and me when the overpowering force from before yanked us backward against what felt like metal bars. My teeth would have chattered from the bars' iciness, but all of this happened too fast, and I was silenced by the sensation of my back breaking open, my insides being sucked out like a strawberry milkshake through a straw.
All went white until blackness interrupted my sight, and I felt a soft wind caress me.