Anihilation

A cosmic-horror story about self-destruction, survival, and the things that refuse to die.

I was never very good at very many things in my life. To tell the truth, I always tried to prove myself somehow. I can’t say exactly to whom. To myself? Yeah, maybe, though that answer seems hopelessly simplistic in the face of the dilemma I find myself in now. The hunting rifle weighed on my lap as the last rays of sun painted everything around me gold. I’m not going to last much longer with my leg like this. When they say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re dying, is this what they mean?

From the top of the tower, I had a strategic, privileged view of the surrounding area. Not that it was much good. The distortion could turn the safest place violent, and vice versa. With my free hand, I reached for the pack of cigarettes in the pocket of what was left of Carlos. Not much more than a torso and one arm. Years ago, that sight would have terrified me, but it was the least disturbing thing I’d witnessed lately.

I lit the cigarette with the expected difficulty of someone who can only use one hand. I couldn’t take my finger off the rifle’s trigger. At any moment, one of those damned things could come through the tower door and that would be it—I’d be like my friend Carlos in a matter of seconds. I took a deep drag, and the smoke brought more memories back.

I remembered the trophies I had at home. Trophies. Every time I’d ever been awarded something, I’m sure it was out of pity or compassion. That’s just how it is. It makes no sense to me that anyone would award me anything, after all I was never more than mediocre at most of the things I tried to do. Quite a few people made sure to remind me of that. “Best player on the soccer field.” “Outstanding judo student.” “Gold Medal Programmer.” Illusions I made a point of leaving behind the second I got them. They were certificates of pity. You’re so bad we gave you this as consolation. Does that not make sense to you? Well, it does to me. That’s why I quit judo, never played soccer again, and developed a panic around programming. What do I do today? Well, not today, right? There isn’t much left of what you probably know as humanity.

I heard there’s still a refugee settlement somewhere in the interior of Minas Gerais—isn’t that right, Carlos? If he could, he’d answer me. I think. Carlos was never much of a talker, but after the distortion, he was the only one I had to talk to. I took another drag from the cigarette, rolling it between the knuckles of my hand. The last thing I did before everything ended was work as a mediocre sound technician. Until I got fired and gave myself completely over to bottles of whiskey. An expensive habit I couldn’t afford to keep. That was how I started losing everything. But they came before I could finish the job.

A loud, muffled, warped metallic noise reverberated through the tower’s steel frame. Long and intermittent, it reminded me of some kind of profaned whale song, or something like that. I don’t know. I was never very good at biology. I dragged on the cigarette again, knowing I didn’t have much time left now. It was funny to think I was too drunk to notice the sound they made in the first wave. The sound that wiped out eighty percent of the world’s population. A sound technician unable to notice a disturbing blast like that. What a joke.

Now I could hear it. Loud and clear. It’s frightening to think they needed little more than a few seconds to annihilate most of us. Even now, I don’t really understand it. To tell the truth, I don’t think any human ever will. Maybe it’s one of those things no one is meant to understand. Besides, what would be the point? It’s not like it would change everything that happened.

The orange sky gradually gave way to a purplish hue. I tried to brace myself on my good leg to stand, but I gave up right away. Yeah. I guess this is how things are going to end for me. Three years after the distortion, alone in a tower with half a corpse, smoking a cigarette. I’d give anything for a bottle of whiskey right now, but Carlos and I drank it the night before, when we thought we’d be safe in this abandoned military base. I guess it was abandoned for a reason, right? I don’t know.

The colors of the dying day broke apart into a distorted prism outside the glass. Colors that shouldn’t have been there, green and blue, spilled into the tower. I knew it was an effect of the distortion, but it was the first time I’d seen it so close. Outside, a flying lizard-fish crossed the sky toward lilac trees growing in spirals. I didn’t know the name of any of those things. Then again, as far as I knew, I could name them myself; there weren’t many scientists left to do it, and I might be the first, and only, person to see them.

Another warped metallic roar sounded, and the prism became nothing but a strong white light, rippling through the night like an aurora borealis in the wrong color. The cigarette was gone. I can’t imagine anyone surviving this chaos. In the first weeks, there were decomposing things everywhere. Plants, insects, animals, people. All of it warped, broken, tainted somehow. It was a terrifying sight. I didn’t even have time to warn my parents. I was the only one left.

I gave up trying to stand and dragged myself to the steel door of the tower cabin, bringing the hunting rifle with me. The curiosity, the urge to open the door, was strong, but I knew I’d regret it. It wasn’t as though that thing would protect me from the distortion. No. Nothing could, but for some reason I’d survived, relatively unscathed, until now. I stretched my free arm toward the handle and slowly opened the door, leaving no more than a crack. I set the barrel in the opening, braced it on my knee, and brought my right eye to the scope. The white prismatic light reflected off the metallic surfaces of the ground plants and gave me a reasonably good view of the area. There didn’t seem to be anything out there, but I knew the distortion was very good at playing tricks.

I still had four bullets in the rifle. If it hadn’t been for that damned carnivorous monkey-turtle, I’d still have two full magazines. Fourteen more shots. I thought that would be enough. Enough for what? No idea. That thing took one of Carlos’s legs and an arm before it went down. And when I say took, I mean both limbs attached themselves to that abomination.

I can’t remember exactly when I stopped taking my medication. I think it was shortly after I got fired. Or was it before? I don’t know. I can’t remember. All of it seems to have happened several lifetimes ago. Maybe it did. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m imagining all this and living through one of my hallucination episodes.

The first time I heard I had to take medication if I wanted to fit in, I didn’t really understand what that meant. I was twelve. I thought it was normal. You take medicine to get better, right? It was only when I took an entire bottle during one of my episodes, while I was destroying everything in my room, that I finally understood what it meant. I was a broken person. I didn’t take it to get better; I took it because I’d never get better. That was how I felt.

Then the distortion came and broke everything. Broke everyone. Destroyed everything everyone knew. I have to admit the first thing I did was panic, and only after vomiting about five hundred times as I passed more bodies than I could count did I finally pull myself together and decide to go home. I already knew what I’d find, but I wasn’t prepared to see what was left of my family like that. I couldn’t grab anything to run away with. I just ran and never came back. I didn’t even take my medication. I think, in a way, everything I’ve done since that day has been running. As far away from them and everything else as possible.

I found Carlos in an abandoned house. He’d painted every room with charcoal and was eating the bark of strange trees growing in the backyard. He didn’t say much, but the pictures in the house showed him with a very sweet-looking older woman. All I found of her was a shawl. He was drawing a rabbit with a huge stinger when I found him, delirious and alone. Then again, I can’t say for sure it was a delusion; I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d run into one of those things out there.

I can’t say whether the distortion left him a little disturbed or whether he was already that way. Maybe it only made him worse. Or better? I don’t know. I dragged him out of the house, we looted some stores, and ran as far from the cities as we could. Why? Well, aside from Carlos, all I found were violent people or completely distorted humans.

Distorted. That’s the word, isn’t it? A bipedal creature crawled out of the forest toward the tower, glowing ghostlike beneath the prism’s light. Bones pushed out through skin grotesquely shrunk tight, shaping its internal organs. The creature left a trail of slime and let out a disgusting grunt as it moved slowly. One eye socket was empty, while from the other extended some kind of mollusk. I followed the bastard’s movement with the rifle sight as best I could, shaking and breathing hard. All I could do was pray it couldn’t climb stairs. But if it couldn’t, something else could. Or the distortion would simply twist the tower until it reached ground level, just because that was what it did.

To tell the truth, I didn’t have such a bad life. My job paid enough for me to buy a few things; I had a fiancé, and I hadn’t had an episode in years, probably because I kept taking my medication. But at some point, before the distortion, I decided to end all of it. The truth is, I was always thinking about ending everything.

The disgusting thing stopped moving outside and was staring at the edge of the forest with an air of curiosity. I don’t know what that means, but I had a bad feeling. End everything... And there it was, that thought circling my mind again, like a parasite. A thin, high whistle came from outside, sending two dozen scaly birds flying from the treetops. Two seconds later, a huge tentacle came out from the forest’s edge, dragging the creature into the guts of the darkness. All I could hear was the sound of flesh and bones being ground up.

End everything. It wasn’t a bad idea. I leaned my back against the tower’s metal wall and pressed the rifle barrel to my mouth, my finger resting on the trigger. Dying like that was probably more dignified than being torn apart by whatever was outside. Somehow, it was a comforting thought: choosing when and how to leave.

Before all this happened, I always wondered whether people thought about suicide as often as I did. It wasn’t exactly that I kept feeding it, but the thought simply came. Sometimes it just passed, like the colors in the distortion’s prism. Other times it lingered, like the white aurora outside, leaving me nauseated and with a headache. And sometimes I was the one pulling the trigger, setting off that chain of thoughts. But I never actually tried. I can’t explain why.

I could hear something heavy dragging itself through the forest while the whistle grew louder and shriller. The distortion’s metallic sound grew louder too. Deeper. That demonic whale song. Damn it. I put the rifle barrel back into the gap in the door and looked through the scope again. Three pairs of white tentacles jutted out from the forest’s edge. I could see an immense black mass dragging itself through the trees. What the hell was that?

Almost none of us kill ourselves, and almost all of us destroy ourselves. I was no different. At some point I decided drinking too much after work was a good idea. At some point I decided smoking in secret was a good idea. At some point I decided that stopping seeing my fiancé was the right thing to do, and I’d rub up against other guys at clubs, drinking and smoking.

I don’t think he ever knew, but things started falling apart a few weeks before the distortion. That was when I started breaking things around the house again. Destroying things, stuffing myself with medication. Missing work because I slept too long, drugged by an overdose. It didn’t take long for me to get fired. It was my fault, but thinking about it now, it wasn’t a decision. It was a... let’s say... impulse. I guess that’s it. It’s not like I’m absolving myself of responsibility. I was responsible for all the things I said before, but somehow it feels as if someone made that decision for me and I just did it.

I learned to drink from my father. After twelve years of marriage, he started coming home drunk and breaking things. I don’t remember how old I was. I’d lock myself in my room and just listen to everything being smashed outside. My mother’s screams mixed with mine, and I shook beside my sister. I don’t know when he started turning that rage from objects onto my mother. Maybe it was from the beginning. I can’t remember. The last straw was when she ended up in the hospital. My father was arrested, and I never heard from him again. Maybe he died in prison. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Why am I thinking about this now? Oh right, self-destruction. Maybe I learned it from my father. Or was it from my mother, a few years later, when she stuffed herself with sweets while crying on the couch? I have no idea.

I almost threw up when the thing came out of the forest. Through the rifle scope, I could see the immense white mass, like a giant intestine, excreting black fluids in every direction. The smell of rotting meat reached my nostrils, and I retched immediately. The thing held the skeletal corpse it had dragged earlier against its body—if it was even possible to call that a body—a wrinkled, slimy surface covered in glands and thousands of tiny threads of flesh twisting back and forth, with starfish tube feet. The abomination was digesting that body outside. The sight was revolting.

Then another metallic blast, another shift in the prism’s colors, another profaned whale song, another hum that made my brain constrict. The creature let out what sounded like a cry of pain, and its entire structure twisted before my eyes, like a hallucination. Then the corpse was no longer a corpse and it was no longer being digested; it had been incorporated into the upper part of the anomaly. The tentacled creature now had a torso, limbs, and a head, and a disgusting body that moved toward me. The mollusk violently thrust out from the eye socket in my direction.

Whatever that thing had been before, now it was something else. I readied the rifle to fire, but realized I had no idea where that thing’s vital organs were. Or whether it had vital organs. To be honest, the abomination looked more like a handful of organs, the entire body of a bizarre creature turned inside out.

I pulled the bolt to chamber a round and fired at the head of the attached corpse, right into the mollusk’s eye socket. It was too far away to hear the impact, but through the scope I saw the “slug” writhe and spray that same black substance onto the ground and a cluster of metallic plants. I noticed they immediately turned black and dull. By then I had no idea whether that was the result of the distortion itself or a complex hierarchical chain of ecosystem adaptations. I don’t understand any of it. I fired a second time.

The severed tentacle fell to the ground, dissolving immediately into the earth. Huge vines burst from the ground almost at once, crawling toward the tower and winding around the metal. Wonderful—I had managed to make things worse. Come to think of it, we all die someday, right? I remember a teacher telling me—and well, it stuck in my mind because her voice was so dramatic—that we were made to live forever, but because of some genetic flaw we age and die. It’s almost as though self-destruction is biologically coded, programmed inside us. Inside every cell.

I fired a third time when the vines reached the door, giving off a stench of decay. The abomination crawled toward the base of the tower; the bullet went through the attached corpse’s head, splattering brains across the ground. They writhed like worms and burrowed into the earth. It was as if everything around me was, irredeemably, alive.

I had only one bullet left when the arms of the attached body began hauling the intestinal body up the stairs. The putrid stench reached my throat, and this time I couldn’t keep from vomiting. I dragged my body and the rifle to the wall opposite the door, now that I no longer had a line of sight for another shot, and waited for things to go wrong, just as I had my whole life.

To be honest, I’d lost hope of ever being happy many years before. The distortion only came to make sure there would be nothing left I could save from everything I’d destroyed. I don’t know what happened to my fiancé. He probably died in the first wave of distortion like most normal people. Sometimes I feel a little guilty knowing he’s gone without ever knowing what I did wrong, but maybe it was better that way. It was definitely better that way.

Come to think of it, they were the lucky ones. They didn’t have to spend all this time in hell with these things. I think I would have preferred not to survive. But none of that mattered now. The metal stairs creaked beneath the weight of the grotesque thing dragging itself up to digest me alive. One bullet. I could end my suffering or risk one more shot. The other three hadn’t worked so far.

What was left of Carlos was beside me to remind me what nature could do to us now, even if it didn’t seem natural at all. Only the lower half of his face remained, with a macabre smile on it. It was with that same smile that he asked me, “Who are they, and what do you think they want?” I never answered. Of course, most people blamed the events on aliens or something like that. I don’t ask myself those questions. I don’t care. Until now, I’ve only tried to survive.

It’s funny to think someone broken like me survived this long. Sometimes I wonder whether I didn’t die in the first distortion precisely because I’m broken. Precisely because my brain is different from everyone else’s. I wonder whether I survived because something inside me seeks destruction more often than in others. Looking at what was left of Carlos, I’d bet on it. I remember him telling me he swallowed all kinds of crap, then stuck his finger down his throat to bring it back up, and hated himself more and more for it. To control those impulses, he scribbled all over the house with chalk or charcoal. Institutionalized twice.

The white, slimy mass reached the top just as I threw up again. The thing was even more repulsive up close. It was like looking inside a stomach being devoured by worms in an advanced state of decay. Parts of the creature’s body fell to the floor and fused with the tower’s metal. I aimed the gun at it. I’d made it this far; I wasn’t going to give up now, despite wanting to put an end to all of it. After all, if I killed that thing, what would become of me afterward? Humanity was over. It would only be a matter of time before I died too. But something screamed in my head: “SURVIVE.”

The thing advanced as I fired the fourth shot. The bullet passed through the slimy, inverted mass that looked like a tangle of tubular structures made of flesh. A black hole appeared where the projectile pierced the organic tissue. The creature stopped moving, and a silver stain began to emerge from that point, slowly spreading toward the body. Then came another muffled metallic sound like a warped whale song, followed by the diffusion of colors from different bands of the spectrum. The mass in front of me twisted around its own axis, and its surface became completely silver. The entire mass gathered into a single point, becoming a sphere, and suddenly tentacles thrust out from its surface toward me.

The pain was excruciating. I felt more than half a dozen organs being pierced as blood spurted out. I didn’t have the strength to scream. I knew this was the end I’d waited for so long. But I didn’t want to die. Not like this. Not now. What had I survived all of that for? For a while, I convinced myself there was a reason. I convinced myself that somehow I’d been chosen. For a while, I convinced myself my illness had given me the strength to endure all of it for some reason.

But now it all seemed ridiculous. I would die pathetically like everyone else, in an endless cycle of meaningless insignificance. I looked down, and the scarlet liquid was turning silver as the sphere dragged itself across the floor toward me. I was being assimilated by the distortion, just as it had done to everything.

“Who are they, and what do you think they want?” Carlos’s stupid question returned to my mind, and now the sphere covered my entire body with metallic liquid up to my neck. I didn’t know the answer, but I answered what everyone must think. The kind of thing you see in movies and shows about aliens. Our annihilation. The metal covered my mouth and went down my throat as I suffocated. I could no longer feel my torso or limbs.

Annihilation. Isn’t it the same as destruction? We all destroy ourselves, and maybe that thing was nature answering our request. The metal now covered my nostrils and ears and pierced my eyes. The pain was unbelievable. My brain was about to shut down. They say that’s what happens when we feel unbearable suffering.

That was what I’d felt my whole life. I think that was why I destroyed myself: to see if the pain would stop. To see if my brain would shut down and I’d simply stop feeling. It’s not that I didn’t want to live—I understand now. I just didn’t want to live with that pain. I think that’s why I survived the first distortion. That thing assimilated the healthy brains that wanted to live. Mine wasn’t sure it did. That’s it. I don’t know whether these thoughts are mine. The metal reached my head and pierced my skull. Maybe these are intrusive thoughts from this unknown life-form.

Yeah, I think that’s it. The thing didn’t understand my brain. Now I see. I’m already completely covered in the metallic, slimy liquid. I know I’m being incorporated, assimilated, digested, and dissolved, and soon I’ll be nothing more than an echo on the tower wall, the residual wave of a life-form.

I didn’t want to die, but at least I knew the pain would stop now. Before everything went dark, I understood. “Who are they, and what do you think they want?” I called that thing annihilation, and all it wanted was to stop the pain it felt by destroying everything it assimilated. In the end, all it wanted was to survive. Like us. That was when everything went black and my brain shut down.

Hours later, we opened our eyes.

This story was originally published in Portuguese (BR) in April, 2018 on Wattpad and was inspired by both the movie and book Annihilation.