The World Outside The Window
Fiction. Dalia wakes up in a strange place with a strange companion who wants to teach her something about the reality of life as a human being...
Please note - this parable contains descriptions of strong violence and lots of unpleasant stuff, including serious sexual assault. If you are easily disturbed or disgusted, this might not be for you…
The World Outside The Window
Dalia turned her face away and looked at the clock on the wall.
Granted, the situation was unusual, but even in such a situation, six back to back games of snakes and ladders was starting to feel usual. Very usual indeed.
The room was still dark and slightly chilly. The hands on the clock said it was about 3:15, but Dalia didn’t think that could be right. It felt like she had been here years.
It was certainly more than two hours? They must have talked for at least two hours before they even started playing snakes and ladders. And “talked” really was more like a mixture of Dalia crying, pleading, then eventually resorting to a stream of incessant questions. All of which had been answered with a question in return, a single word or some kind of cryptic response she did not understand.
Dalia was none the wiser really. None the wiser, but more anxious.
She looked back at the board and then at her “opponent.” She sighed loudly and shuffled her feet with anxiety.
The “lady” sat opposite her stared blankly at the board. Her face almost expressionless, other than perhaps a slight smile. She had a faint, musty smell about her. Like wet leaves that had sat under a carpet in the rain for months. But she didn’t look dirty at all. Her clothes, a simple white blouse and black trousers were immaculate. Her little flat office shoes, perfectly black and shiny, like she was going to the office for her first day. Her hair was long just beyond her shoulders and completely straight, swept back neatly behind her ears. She looked normal. Ordinary in fact. Except, she didn’t. There was something unusual about this lady Dalia couldn’t quite figure out.
And most unusual of all was the fact her hair seemed to change colour regularly. It was currently pure brilliant blonde, but just twenty seconds ago, Dalia was sure it was brown. And occasionally, very occasionally, her face looked different, as if it was alternating between three, very slightly different people.
Whatever “her” real hair colour was, whatever clothes “she” wore or whatever “she” really was, Dalia was glad she looked like this now rather than the thing that had first greeted her when she awoke in this room.
Dalia never wanted to see that again. There wasn’t anything in either English or Spanish she could use to describe what that looked like. She was only able to open her eyes and stop her screaming after it changed into the lady in front of her. Even then, it was nearly 10 minutes of shivering, crying and gasping for breath before she was able to calm down enough to speak. She had no idea what that was. But it was clear to her, it had changed shape and had become the lady she saw before her now.
She didn’t recognise this room she was in, partly because it was poorly lit by a single fluorescent light in the ceiling, but also because it was sort of “unknowable?” Like a picture from a dream? It was more a sensation than a thing she saw with her eyes and Dalia had thought for the longest time, she must be in some kind of dream. But it was like none she ever had before.
When she was able to speak, her first questions, of “where am I” and “who are you” brought little to no response from the lady she was with. But eventually after asking them several times over and over, the lady had just given her two responses.
Firstly, “you are with me” and secondly “I have many names.”
After this there were several rounds of “why am I here” and “how did I get here” which had lead to replies of “where else would you be”, “is this important to you” and a couple of “it’s a chance to have a conversation” responses.
“A conversation about what?” had no reply though and neither did “where are my family?” and “how did I get here?”
“I want to go back” was only met with “in time” and asking “am I dead?” was only answered by “you don’t understand what that means.”
There were questions the other way too though. The lady had asked Dalia, “why do you cry”, “what does it feel like to give birth” and “what does time mean to you” – all of which Dalia was too upset to answer and had ignored.
She had slowly began to think this wasn’t a dream and maybe was just some kind of sick and weird joke. Maybe a trick to scam her or kidnap her somehow.
She was in the field, next to the lake in one moment and then the next, she was here, laying on the floor, eyes closed. It had started to rain, she had turned and was heading back to the house to avoid getting wet. Then suddenly, she was here.
After she had calmed down and asked the first round of questions, she got frustrated and angry. She eventually stood up and tried to move towards the door – except, the room didn’t really appear to have one. Just grey, stone walls. At least, they felt like walls. They were more the “sensation” of walls than something Dalia could be certain of.
She screamed, ran up and down the length of the room but could not find her way out.
The lady stayed completely calm and quiet whilst this went on. Daila had banged her fists on the walls screaming, “let me out! let me out!” - but there was still no door. And when she tired of this, after 10 minutes or more, upon turning back round to look at the lady, a table and two chairs had appeared in the middle of the room. The lady sat cross legged in one of them.
She tried shouting at the lady to let her out next. It was unfair, she couldn’t just take someone hostage like this? She demanded to know why she was here. She demanded to know what had happened? But eventually after no answer she gave in to frustration and just sat in the corner and cried. Her head on her knees, hugging herself tightly, she cried until her eyes stung and she felt like she couldn’t cry any more.
It was only then that the lady spoke again, this time very softly and gently.
“Why don’t you come and sit here with me?”
Dalia had to admit, her voice was lovely. It was strangely calming. It reminded Dalia in some ways of her grandmothers voice. Even though the lady looked no more than perhaps 30 years old, her voice sounded older. Much older, like a wise, elderly grandma perhaps. She spoke English but her accent was strange. It sounded eastern European to Dalia but, she wasn’t sure that’s what it was. She had only met eastern European people through her work at the college in Bogotá, but that was a long time ago and she couldn’t quite remember.
But nevertheless the voice calmed Dalia. It calmed her deeply.
And if the first question had calmed Dalia then the lady telling her, “I would like to sit with you” made her positively relaxed, such that, by the time “I don’t want to hurt you” came, Dalia stood up, shuffled across the floor and sat in the chair opposite.
After a few more questions and non-answers, the lady asked if she’d like to play snakes and ladders and before Dalia got to answer, the board had appeared on the table in front of them. It wasn’t there one moment, then the next moment it was. It didn’t appear as such, it was just there.
Dalia considered it some kind of trick. A hoax. Not something she had time for now. She crossed her arms initially and refused to engage but after a few minutes of silence had eventually taken to rolling the dice and moving her piece.
The lady did the same, but she barely reacted when events happened in the game. When she landed on a snake in the first game for example, she merely moved her piece back and carried on without a word. Her face didn’t change at all. There was no celebration of a win, no surprise at a backwards move.
At the end of each game, the lady said the same thing. “This was a good game, lets play again.”
And time had passed.
And there were many more questions and non-answers.
And Dalia got increasingly confused and anxious.
She had ideas in her head. Strange ideas she had pushed down for the last twenty minutes or more. Strange ideas she had dismissed as impossible. But she couldn’t hold on to these ideas anymore. And failing getting out of here any other way, she decided she’d let them out.
The lady rolled a six and moved her piece to the final square on the board.
She looked up at Daila for a moment, her eyes bright, brilliant blue. “This was a good game, let's play again.”
Dalia nodded slightly and suddenly blurted out – “you aren’t human, are you?”
Her voice was firm such that it was a statement more than a question.
The lady put her piece back on the board and sat with a straight back. Her hair changed colour again, to red and then to grey. She seemed to smile more.
“you should say what you want to say” she replied, her voice low and soothing.
Dalia looked down at the floor.
“I think that...are you…” her voice trailed off and she shuffled her feet once more, crossing them and uncrossing them.
“you should say what you want to say” the lady said again, placing both her hands on her legs, her back perfectly and almost unnaturally straight, as if in some sort of advanced yoga class.
Dalia looked up from the floor directly at her and with a voice almost at a whisper said “are you...god?”
The lady didn’t answer immediately. There was a short pause as if she was thinking over her answer.
“If it helps you to call me this then you should” she said.
She then leant forward, collecting the pieces in her hand and moving them back to the start of the game board.
“I don’t know who you are. Tell me who you are” replied Dalia. “Please? Please can you tell me who you are?”
“I have many names” replied the lady, her smile fading and once again expressionless.
She rolled the dice. It was a 4.
It was the same answer yet again. Dalia decided to change her line of questioning.
“Please tell me your names” she said, more as a command now than a question.
The lady looked up from the board and directly at Dalia, her hand hovering her piece in mid air. Her face became totally expressionless, as if she was looking right through Dalia, her eyes blank as if focused on a place on the wall behind her.
And she spoke. Except, her mouth did not appear to move. It was the “sensation” of speaking Dalia got this time. But she heard the words clearly still.
“Your species know me as many”
The lady's voice was now strange, different. It was unlike anything Dalia had heard before. It sounded like someone was dragging sticks across a tree trunk. A clattering of wood against bark, only the sounds made words. Yet despite sounding so strange, Dalia understood almost everything she said.
“Kali, Chronos, Hauhet, Yama, Bangun Bangun, Nurtia, Namtar, I have been these and others”
She spoke more words, in a language Dalia didn’t quite understand before stopping and blinking several times.
The lady turned her head slightly at an angle to the left, her eyes closed for a moment and when they opened, her hair turned dark brown again. Then she straightened her head, looked back down at the board and placed her figure four squares ahead, tapping the piece on each square as she moved. She reached a ladder and moved her piece up to the next level.
Dalia suddenly had a rush of terror. She suddenly felt she knew what this “thing” was. It had already crossed her mind when she first opened her eyes, but once she saw the lady she pushed the thought away. However, now it was back and she could ignore it no more. She was overcome with fear.
Dalia closed her eyes for a moment and gasped, whispering quietly under stuttered breath in her native tongue.
“Dios mio, por favor! Por favor, no me lleves contigo ahora, por favor, por favor, Padre Nuestro, por favor”
Her hand clutched at her chest briefly and she gasped for breath.
The lady sat upright suddenly at Dalia’s words and once again looked directly at her intensely. It felt like her eyes burned holes into Dalia’s face.
“no soy el diablo” came the whispered, dragging voice again. “No soy el diablo. Soy oscuridad, entre, pero, no soy demonio, soy una otra…”
Dalia gasped air inwards. She let her hand fall from her chest, her eyes widened with fear.
“Then if you are not the devil, what are you?” she snapped back, her voice trembling slightly.
The lady smiled broadly, blinking slowly before looking back down at the board and pushing the die toward Dalia.
She also replied in English.
“I am of darkness but I am neither good nor evil. Those concepts do not apply to me. I am of the universe you know and of the universe beyond that which you know. I am of time and of space and of the things in between. I was here before it started and after it finished and in between when it was happening. “
She paused, as if choosing her words carefully.
“I help things to happen, so that it happens and so there is change and the change is ongoing and ongoing in change” she paused again, looked down at the board briefly and then up again at Dalia.
“And sometimes” she continued “I help they that are conscious, with knowledge of which is beyond that of consciousness and of knowing things which could be known when they are unknown.”
Her voice was soft and calming again. Her hair changed to a shade of very light blue with grey flecks at the tips.
“I don’t understand” said Dalia, a note of frustration now creeping into her voice. "What's going on? Why are you talking in riddles? How are you helping me?”
The lady sat straight again, she seemed to grow slightly taller and her face looked different, almost masculine for a moment.
“it is your turn to move” came the reply.
“Fine” Dalia picked up the die and rolled it on the board. It stopped on a 5. She moved her piece forward five spaces.
“Tell me how you are helping me? You took me away from my family, to this place?”
The lady picked up the die herself. “It is just…”
She paused as she rolled the die, a 3.
“temporary”
She moved her piece forward 3 spaces. It landed on a ladder, a long one, and she pushed her piece up two levels to the middle of the board. Her face became expressionless again.
“but why?” asked Dalia again
“why not?” replied the lady.
Dalia let out a small sigh, her frustration growing now further.
“thats not an answer” she blustered, “why am I here with you? I keep asking and you never tell me, it isn’t fair! How can you help me? I don’t believe in all this, nonsense, let me go!”
“The time for your species is so short” said the lady abruptly, “it makes sense you do not want to wait for anything at all. It is your turn to move”
She pushed the die forward again towards Dalia.
“No” snapped Dalia in return “I don’t want to play snakes and ladders!”
She leant forward in her chair.
“I want you to tell me what you are helping me with? This is fucking bullshit! Tell me what I’m doing here, I don’t underst...”
For the first time, the lady spoke over her, her voice louder now and much less soothing. Her hair changed colour to dark black and her eyes seemed to be an even brighter blue. Her face suddenly looked almost asian, high cheek bones, her ears shrinking in size and her eyes widening. But then suddenly, it changed again, her skin becoming much lighter, her eye brows thinning and her hair becoming slightly less straight.
“your own time is shorter Dalia, change will be for you in a shorter time than you can know - but it is important for change that you understand”
Dalia was caught somewhat off guard by this, but at the same time, it only bought her more frustration.
“what? How do you even know my name?”
The lady didn’t answer that. Instead she moved on.
“You need to understand more so that you can be corrected for the change to come. You need to be in order.”
“What change? What correction?” demanded Dalia, the frustration now totally boiling over, her voice raised. “..and what do I need to understand? Tell me! What the fuck is this, nonsense!?”
“it is your turn to move”
Dalia rolled her eyes and her head at the same time. “No. No more fucking snakes and ladders!” she shouted. “Answer my fucking questions!”
“it is your turn to move” was the only reply.
“are you listening to me?!” Dalia snapped back. “Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!!”
“it is your turn to move”
“ok fucking fine!” Dalia picked up the die and in a sudden burst of frustration threw it down onto the board. It bounced off the table and tumbled off onto the floor, tumbling over and over off somewhere to the side of the room.
“there… whatever” she snapped.
She sat back in the chair, crossing her arms around her.
The lady did not react. She merely looked down blankly at the board. Her hair stayed a dark black colour. Her smile faded, her hands on her lap, just looking at the board, motionless and frozen, almost like a mannequin.
Dalia sighed and looked to one side. Her eyes scanned the wall from top to bottom. She sighed again.
Time passed in silence. She was even more frustrated that this, thing, with her, didn’t react or acknowledge the situation. She felt like crying again.
“are you going to say something?” she asked.
But the lady did not move, nor speak.
“fuck” she signed loudly, getting to her feet and walking to the wall where she thought the die landed.
It was dark and she had to get down on her knees to check right against the wall. Her hands fumbled along the bottom of it, the floor feeling cold and slightly dusty, suddenly realising she might be getting dust on her pants. Her fingers fumbled around until they finally ran over a small firm object. She put her face a little closer and realised she’d found it.
“Finally...this stupid thing is.…” as Dalia stood up, something stopped her from speaking. Instead she made a short gasp of breath in.
A feeling. It was a sensation. It started in the pit of her stomach and moved upward. It was fear. Not the crushing, debilitating sort, but a sudden feeling of anxiety. A feeling of foreboding. It was the feeling she got when something unexpected and bad happened. But it wasn’t clear why and where this came from.
Finally she stood up straight slowly and looked upwards. There, at the top of the wall, just before the ceiling, was what looked like a window.
It was small, maybe only a meter across, like a window you’d find in a basement. But it had shutters across it. Metallic, ornate looking, decorated with what looked like wings from birds, carved into the material. She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t seen it before? Why had she spent so much time here, punching these walls and never seen it?
Maybe it wasn’t there? Maybe she just missed it or it was a tricky like the appear snakes and ladders board? Or maybe all of this really was a dream?
Whatever the case, the fact it was there represented a way out of the room. But this wasn’t what preoccupied Dalia’s mind. What preoccupied her mind was that sense of dread. Specifically, it was anxiety about that window. She wanted to reach it. To pull it open see what was behind. Yet at the same time, she had a terrible feeling that she didn’t want to see. It was the most unusual sense of duality she had ever felt.
She tried to jump to look at it more closely, but it was high enough that she couldn’t bring her eyes level with it.
She turned back to the lady at the table, who was now looking at her intently, still sat in the same position.
“what...whats this?” she asked.
“thats the window” came the flat reply.
“I can see that” said Dalia mockingly, “but how do we open it? I want to see..”
The lady's face turned a shade of grey very quickly. Her hair became an even blacker shade of black, beyond jet black, almost as if the night itself had hidden her hair and her eyes glowed blue even more intensely.
“your species finds it hard to be beyond the window or even look at what is outside the window Dalia” she said smoothly, “it’s much better we talk about it then you to try that”
“Talk about it” scoffed Dalia, “what the fuck? We’ve been talking and playing stupid games for two hours? What else is there to talk about?”
“Most of your species spends its life not wanting to look at what is outside the window. You construct things to keep you from it. Both physical and mental. Stories, ideas, buildings, medicine, technologies. You do everything you can to protect you from what is beyond it. You fear what is beyond it. Some of it you will never be able to understand, other parts, you just don’t want to.”
Daila now felt challenged.
“Well, that's surely a bunch of crap?” she said flatly. “What is out there, a street? A car park? What is it?”
The lady pursed her lips together for a moment, her eyes moved up and down and then became fixed again. Her voice became very slightly raspy again as she spoke further.
“If you really want to see you can, but it will not be easy for you. It is..” she paused again and looked down at the board, looking almost sad.
“The hard way”
Dalia blew air out of her mouth. “Well, whatever, I’m going to look.”
She grabbed the chair she had been sat on and carried it over, placing it carefully under the window, before standing up on it, bringing her head level with the shutters. She banged her hand against them looking for a way to make them open.
“Come on…stupid….this is stupid” she said, changing tactics to try and push her fingers under the edges and prise them open. But they were incredibly strong and closed so tightly, she couldn’t get them to budge.
She turned her head back at a painful angle to look down at the lady, who was now standing up next to the table. Her hands were clasped together tightly and she had a very serious expression on her face. She looked concerned, like a mother would for an injured child.
“How do you open this thing? I want to open it!” she said.
“Very well” replied the lady. “It is your choice, if it is the hard way you wanted.”
There was suddenly a metallic scraping noise and Dalia found she started to get more luck in pulling at the shutters. Slowly, piece by piece she was able to pull them back, far enough that they were open fully to the sides of the small window. She then shuffled forward on the chair, pressing her face up against the glass.
At first, all she could see was darkness, complete and total darkness and she was about to turn back to the lady to complain when suddenly she could make out a faint light in the distance.
The more she stared at the light, the closer it came and soon she could make out shapes. Swirls and patterns at first, then later colours and blurry lines. But slowly and surely it became clearer and clearer. Minutes seemingly passed until she could clearly make out the first images.
And immediately, Dalia regretted her choice.
What Dalia was presented with was everything she could describe as “evil” , “barbaric” and “terrible” all at once. It was an incoherent mass of misery, suffering, destruction and death.
Immediately, once she could see, a rain forest was engulfed in a fire, animals dying from smoke, trees falling and crushing their trembling, blackened bodies.
One tree fell down further than the others and crushed a man, who was simultaneously being stabbed repeatedly by another.
The second man was cackling with maniacal laughter and joy, blood splashing over his twisted and distorted face over and over until eventually he was drowning in it.
Dalia watched as he was pulled down, down and down, choking into a river of blood, his face twisting further and eventually becoming lifeless. Bullets suddenly pierced his body from above, at least half a dozen of them, as she saw another group of people stood above the river, shooting downwards at him with machine guns, the bullets slowing as they hit the blood river, becoming deadly spears to thrust into his lifeless body.
They didn’t stop shooting until a lion leapt from the tree line nearby and jumped on one of shooters, causing the rest to scatter. The lion roared loudly and the individual screamed a long piercing scream as its teeth crushed and smashed into them, Dalia hearing the crack of each bone and the gurgle of blood as the person was eaten alive.
More blood flowed from the jaws of the lion, dripping down, down and down, turning from red to black and becoming thicker and thicker until it was like a fine ash. A mixture of ash and dirt, flowing downwards, falling from the roof of a building. Dalia screamed as she realised what was happening.
It was the moment a bomb had landed on a school, the roof exploding and collapsing inwards. Inside, she saw the faces of the children as they died. There were at least a hundred of them, crushed, mangled, broken and burnt as the building folded inwards on itself. The sound of the explosion was other brief and loud before the smell of burnt flesh being unbearable. And as smoke cleared away, one who seemed to still be alive, a small boy, no older than 7, desperately tried to lift himself from under the body of his fallen teacher, only to realise he could not walk because his legs were severed and no longer attached to his body. He screamed uncontrollably, his face streaked with dirt, blood and tears, reaching one, tiny chubby hand outwards Dalia as if to ask for her help.
“No!” shouted Dalia. “Oh god no! No, please no…”
She desperately wanted to reach out to help him, but she could not. She could not reach beyond the glass of the window. All she could do was watch in horror as the mutilated boy, feebly tried to drag himself forward over the body of others.
A woman suddenly appeared in the background, rushing towards the child, climbing over the rubble and debris as she went. She held a large metallic hammer with two hands and upon reaching the child, with one swift movement brought it down over her head, smashing the childs skull, almost breaking it clean in two. The child no longer moved, but the woman kept bringing the hammer down again and again, pieces of brain and fragments of skull dripping from its head as she kept up her frenzied attack.
Dalia began sobbing uncontrollably. “No!” she screamed again. She wanted to close her eyes. To turn away. But she could not. She was frozen. And when she did manage to close her eye lids, she could still see everything. It did not end.
The murderous woman was soon interrupted by a crack of loud thunder and the approach of a storm. She looked up into the sky to see a tornado approaching in the distance. She quickly got to her knees and began licking at the remains of the dead child she had butchered, sucking pieces of brain into her mouth and chewing at it feverishly. She looked up at Dalia for a moment, her teeth sharpened, dripping with blood and saliva and their eyes met. All Dalia could see in her eyes were madness and hatred, pure and total hatred. Dalia felt the notion of wanting to be sick. But yet she was not.
“Why?!” she screamed “Stop! Why?! No!”
And in an instant, the tornado suddenly appeared closer and closer. A gigantic vortex of air began picking up and smashing the debris of the building. The cannibal woman tried to run but it was too late. The tornado picked her up like a rag doll. Up, up and up she went, spinning wildly, her body being smashed into other objects like cars, trees and bricks, over and over again until it broke apart into pieces.
The tornado raged onwards and onwards, approaching a city. Within it, millions of people who seemed totally unaware of it’s presence.
Daila screamed again. She wanted to warn them “No!! It’s coming!” she screamed. But they could not hear her.
The tornado ripped into the buildings, sending them flying like leaves from a tree. People fell to their deaths from open windows, others were crushed by falling buildings and flying cars. Thousands perished in brutal deaths in moments, their bodies ripped apart like they were nothing.
Suddenly Dalia realised, she could hear a siren. It was a loud, long, rising and then falling single tone. And she realised, this was no longer a tornado but the blast from a giant nuclear weapon. The mushroom cloud was high above in the sky. People in parks were torn apart by the blast wave. Others were burned so tremendously that they resembled nothing more than a lump of black coal. She saw some who jumped into a river to avoid the blast, only to be instantly boiled alive by the heat, screaming in terror as their flesh turned into a smooth syrup , eventually turning to steam and drifting away in a foul smelling mist.
Dalia’s tears and screaming were barely audible over that of the victims. Many of them whom thought they survived, now moaned like ghouls as they withered, their hair falling out, sores appearing on their mouths which then burst and choked them to death on a green and yellow puss. Within the space of seconds Dalia watched the individual, terrible death of millions of people. Each one in intense detail, seemingly taking hours, yet the whole event only taking a few seconds in totality.
“Señorita? Señorita?” she sobbed for the lady to help her.
“Please, no, por favor, señorita? Por que? Why? Why? Please, I don’t want to see more! Please, why do I only see evil?!”
She could hear the lady's voice, smooth, calm as before.
“It is not evil. It just is”
“No please! No please! I can’t see this, please please?! Please make it stop?”
And yet it did not.
The final victim of the bomb was a woman. Her name was Ira. Ira was pregnant. She gave birth just before she died of radiation sickness, whilst her new born baby, shrivelled and deformed suckled at her breasts.
But only just as Ira had died, a man opened the door to the hospital room she was in, and picked the baby up. He was tall with a long, grey pony tail, his face ashen and blank. And as the deformed, irradiated baby squawked and screamed, he held it by one leg, dangling in the air. And as its arms flailed about helplessly, the man took a rusty syringe from his pocket and stabbed it into the baby, injecting it with heroin. Dalia screamed as she watched the dirty brown liquid flow into the babies body, making it initially go limp and lifeless, before it suddenly seemed to come back to life. It’s legs and arms grew at an unbelievable rate, getting bigger and bigger and larger and larger, muscles appearing from no where on its back and chest. The man with the pony tail dropped the baby, screamed and ran, but it was only moments before the baby, now a gigantic deformed monster, was able to reach out and pull him back, instantly crushing him in his hands and casting his body to one side like a discarded newspaper.
“No!” screamed Dalia again, pleading incessantly for it to end, asking the lady again and again for it to stop.
“It is not evil” the lady repeated. “It just is.”
Dalia at this stage, wanted unconsciousness. She did not want to see more. In fact, she’d have taken death herself if it meant she could stop seeing this. Her sobs were incoherent. Pleas of both English and Spanish fell from her mouth. Unable to run, unable to close her eyes and unable to stop what was happening before her. She felt nothing but terror and fear and beyond this, hatred. Raw, uncontrollable hatred. She resorted to mumbling, over and over again.
“But there is good? There is good? But there is good? Hay bueno? Por favor, hay bueno?”
“There is not good. There is not evil.” she heard the lady say quietly. “There just is.”
The giant monster now turned a deep shade of red. It’s gigantic body a heaving mass of what looked like veins with grey and brown liquid flowing through them. It snorted and shuffled, a tiny baby head still on top of what was a body the size of a truck. It started to pull up bodys from the floor and consume them. First its own mother, then other bomb victims, shoveling them into its mouth one by one making disgusting nibbling and suckling noises. It kept doing this, over and over again until it had consumed everyone and everything thing left in the city. Then it moved to the next city, eating everyone there too, even those who were still alive. It grew larger and larger with each victim, eventually getting so big, it exploded in a gigantic ball of brown slime. It splashed momentarily across the window, blocking Daila’s view before it flowed away.
Once it had cleared all Dalia could see was what looked like a homeless camp. It reminded her of the shanty towns back in Colombia, only with more tents than buildings. In amongst the dirt, on the floor lay a woman. A man was on top of her, raping her violently. The woman struggled and screamed, her feet kicking and her hands desperately clawing at the mans face - but yet she could not stop him.
“No!” screamed Dalia again, Hay bueno, por favor…please help her!” she sobbed.
She saw, behind them, at the window of one building, three people watched on. And her heart stopped when she realised, she recognised their faces.
One man, Adan, her friend from work, one woman, Estella, her teacher from college and finally Luna, her own sister.
Dalia tried to slam her hands against the glass. “Please, por favor, please help her! Please help, please please” she pleaded with them over and over again.
But one by one, the figures at the window turned their backs and looked away. They had forsaken her. The woman meant nothing to them. She was unwanted. Unloved. Abandoned.
And it was at this moment Dalia realised the ultimate horror she was witnessing.
The woman being raped was not a stranger. The woman was her.
Dalia screamed louder than ever before, a long and piercing scream of terror as the man thrust himself into her again and again, his giant hands holding her down. One of them eventually pressed down on her face and crushed it into the floor, breaking her nose and jaw in the process. The other pulled violently at her hair, ripping out handfuls in chunks.
Suddenly with an almighty cry, the man ejaculated within her. But it was not normal. Instead, he was filling her vagina with flesh eating insects. They immediately began to chew and nibble at her insides, biting their way into her intestines and stomach. Dalia felt everything this version of herself felt and it was the most unbelievable pain she could ever have imagined. The insects consumed her slowly from the inside out, piece by piece.
Just at the moment she thought she would die from the pain, it stopped. Totally.
And in that moment, Dalia’s visions of death and evil were replaced. She saw everything. Everything. The insects, the people, the trees, the buildings, the oxygen, the water, the stars.
She saw the universe in it’s entirety at every level.
And she could hear the lady's voice in her head once more The raspy, branch-music voice, breathless and whispery.
“There is no good and there is no evil. There only is and there only was and of that which was and is there is only change between. What you understand as the universe is only that which changes and will change forever.”
And as she heard this, Dalia saw the insects, not as insects but as atoms. Carbon atoms in one part of them turned to gas and were inhaled by a passing bird. The atoms were in the birds lungs as it fell from the sky and decomposed into the earth. The carbon atoms were taken by plants and other insects who in turn moved on to be consumed by other things. Each atom became part of a new thing, which in turn released those atoms back to become something else.
And the deaths of all the things she witnessed were not deaths. They were merely atoms being moved to different places and different states by an infinite machine.
And suddenly above it all, Dalia could see, almost to infinity. It was terrifying and she couldn’t understand it. But she saw it all the same.
And of perhaps of all the terrors she had seen outside the window, this in some ways was the worst.
It was not violent and evil to her, but it made her realise, NOTHING mattered. Not even herself.
She realised in a moment how totally insignificant and unimportant she was. The things she had worried about day to day were trivial. The fights, the arguments, the politics, the games. None of it mattered. She was nothing more than anything else, a collection of atoms that would become something else.The entirety of the human species. Nothing mattered.
All of the things she labelled as hate and suffering and good and kind, didn’t matter. The machine didn’t judge or care. It didn’t even have rules that she could understand. It was just change. That’s all it was. There was just change.
“Please, señorita” she sobbed one more time “please, it’s enough, please”
And at once, Dalia found herself lying back on the floor of the room, staring up at the ceiling.
She immediately turned on her side, putting her arms around her legs, burying her head into her knees and cried quietly.
She never wanted to move again. It was too much.
It seemed an eternity before the lady spoke.
“You understand”
“I do” Dalia gasped quietly, unable to properly catch her breath. She looked up for one moment, her eyes red, streaming tears down her face.
The lady smiled slightly again, her hair becoming bright blonde once more. She looked astonishingly beautiful to Dalia all of a sudden.
“This is why your species try to stay this side of the window” the lady said quietly, “why you strive so hard to protect yourselves and distract yourselves from it . The distraction is that you term “good” and most of what is beyond the window you term bad. But it is not so. It just is and all of it is change.”
“I had to see it” said Daila, “it is important that I know it.”
And in her intense sadness she was suddenly overcome with the most unusual sense of gratitude.
For, even though everything Dalia had seen was incredibly traumatic, she felt somehow enlightened? Like she had been allowed to see a truth that she had always been aware of, yet somehow didn’t really know. And with this knowledge, she felt empowered. As if knowing it would make her life different.
“Thankyou señorita” she whispered. She sniffed and snuffled against her knees, rocking herself gently on her side.
The lady sat back down on her chair, expressionless but this time sat back, lounging comfortably rather than straight.
“Would you like to play snakes and ladders before you go home Dalia?”
“Yes please” Dalia replied. “I would like that very much.”