Manabe’s lips twisted. I think it was the first time I saw him smile, if smile it was. Perhaps he meant it as a wry grin, but all I saw was a sneer, disdain for his wife.
“If they were here we’d be eaten by now,” he said, smiling more broadly than before.
“Stop it!” she cried, terrified.
Sayoko had been walking toward the Womb, and now stopped to take a remote controller from her handbag, pointing it at the dome. No doubt built to Manabe’s specifications, it was a rounded, triangular shape covered with round buttons. She pressed one, and a black hole appeared in the face of the Womb, irising open rapidly to create a circular doorway big enough to walk through.
“We can get the baggage later. First we have to get Kanako to safety,” said Manabe, prodding her toward the circular doorway.
“Not alone!” she wailed, shaking her head violently.
“Izumo, go with her and carry her bags, then,” he ordered.
“There’s a switch on the right just inside for the lights,” added my wife, and I nodded thanks as I picked up one of the huge clothing cases Kanako had brought and began walking toward the Womb. Kanako, relief clear on her face, came with me, and as my wife had said, there was a light switch just inside. The lights snapped on, blinding, white. and illuminating the side of the Womb, tiny glyphs and symbols cut into every inch of the walls.
“What is all this weird stuff?” shrieked Kanako, eyes flying.
“I had them specially carved into the walls to make sure They can’t come in from another dimension,” said Manabe. “Walls, ceilings, even the floor are covered with runes, Naacal and Pnath script. And the sigils and seals they fear have been carven here and there as needed, too. Our magical defenses are perfect!”
“Isn’t that right, Izumo. ” he began, turning back to Sayoko, and suddenly stopped, speechless, transfixed by the thing that had snuck up behind her.
I saw it, too. So did Kanako. Only Sayoko didn’t see it.
She saw the horror in our eyes, and even as her own face began to twist, the white thing leapt on her, hammering her to the ground, atop her. Her handbag and the remote fell from her outstretched hand, and as she reached for them instinctively the white thing leaned over, teeth still showing their human origins chewing into the back of her neck, stripping off skin and flesh. Her screams snapped me out of it, and I dropped the bag to run to her rescue.
Except that Kanako grabbed hold of my arm, hard, shouting at me: “Stop! No! It’ll eat you too!” “Let me go! It’ll kill her!”
But she didn’t. She wrapped her arms around me, holding me, leaving me no way out but to strike her down. I drew back my fist to punch her away when suddenly Manabe moved.
I thought he was running to save her. But he. Manabe was a man without a single shred of humanity in him. My wife was still alive, even with that white monster sitting on her back, shredding her neck. Her hand was still reaching toward the remote, twitching. And Manabe, instead of turning to her, snatched up the remote controller, leaping back to the safety of the Womb. He punched a button on the remote as soon as he was inside, and the shutter began to iris shut; like watching my wife through a camera.
“Sayoko!”
And the shutter irised tighter in front of my eyes. My wife, being eaten alive by that damned white thing squatting astride her: the image pierced my eyes, my heart, my sanity. I could see other white shapes rising from the darkness, my wife lifting her bloody face, looking up at me. Trying to say something, and vanishing under a vast rush of grunting, squealing, hungry flesh.
And the shutter closed, searing my wife’s end into my soul.
The three of us — me, Manabe, and his wife — descended into the Womb. My wife’s design was perfect, with not a single angle anywhere. Chairs and tables stood perpendicular to the floor, but surfaces flowed seamlessly together, as if they had grown from it. Floors and table legs of such were of course rounded, no corners anywhere. Lights and furniture were circular, but so were cutting boards and knives and forks and even the screens of the TV and the computer. Everything was circular or curved, everything. It was monomaniacal.
“They come in through the angles,” repeated Manabe again and again. “They can invade anything through the angles, but not here! They can’t get inside the Womb!”
Kanako and I already knew it far too well. the radio, the TV, the Internet all told us how bomb shelters, even secret military bases, has been effortlessly invaded, their human occupants torn to bloody shreds. Usually it was tentacles, like a squid or a jellyfish, seeping in through an angle, but sometimes there were reports of the white beasts, or speaking mold, or huge mobile plants with human eyes.
“It’s all over,” laughed Kanako, laughter breaking into jagged shards.
We lived on in the shelter, no angles and no knowledge of when it all might end. We continued to receive reports from the outside world for three days, then suddenly the TV stations went off the air. The Internet continued until the fourth day, but that night the remaining few blogs and boards began displaying meaningless strings of consonants, or rows upon rows of unreadable characters, until dying completely on the fifth day.
On the sixth day Kanako began acting strangely. During meals or while drinking coffee she would wait until Manabe was looking elsewhere, and flash desperate glances in my direction. Her expressions were not wholly sane, but were packed with pheromones by the abnormality of our situation. I ignored her, shutting myself in my room, and painted. Driven by hopelessness, I felt that only by painting could I retain even a shred of my sanity.
On the seventh day, Kanako slipped into my room as I painted.
“Help me, Tatsuya. Hold me. I can’t bear it any more!”
She wrapped her arm around me from behind, naked, and when I turned to face her began kissing me with wild abandon. The sight of Sayoko being devoured by those white creatures flashed through my heart, and I shook my head, trying to push her away. Kanako thrust her tongue into my mouth, soft, sweet, a faint scent of perfume. the latch of my sanity slipped, and as I eagerly sought her tongue with my own, my arms tightened around her. We fell to the floor, and found solace in each other until the night. It was not love, nothing so beautiful, it was hungry sex, two people seeking refuge in the flesh, trying to escape inescapable terror. We spasmed in climax, brought each other back again and again with our mouths and our hands, losing ourselves in each other in timeless repetition, a mindless drive to forget the terror that seized us.
And as the sun rose again we returned to our senses, whispering together. What did we need? How could we escape the hopelessness, the terror? We reached a conclusion, sealed it with another brief bout, and broke apart. She returned to her room, and I to the shower.
At dinner, Kanako came wearing one of her favorite outfits, and a neutral expression.
The dining room was of course circular, as was the table. The chairs, the plates, even the steaks and the vegetables in the salad were round, free of angles.
She had a white scarf round her neck, matching her white suit, and she had made herself up as she hadn’t for days, chic and beautiful. Manabe, as always, was in his ratty jacket and slacks, glittering eyes peering from his pale face, looking like a successful businessman on his day off.
I wore my old black turtleneck sweater, a cheap jacket and jeans. Not nearly the sort of dress appropriate for a dinner invitation.
After pouring us all glasses of red wine, Kanako asked what we should toast.