The Monolith Chapter Fifteen

The room was bright, bright enough to give every one the same pounding headache as they entered the room, shielding their eyes. Already their minds were cracking, falling apart like eggs about to be cooked. They had just left behind two people in a room alive. They knew that either the room will eventually kill them or they will day along with time and time in the monolith isn't forgiving.

Somewhere in the whiteness that made the room, archways arose, thirty of them each labeled above with a single word. Snake. Flyer. Yellow. Water. The words were simple and unique. They were hard to see and at first they didn't make any sense to the remaining team. Then someone decided to just step through the first door and disappeared. The room sparked like a camera with it's flash on an abnormally bright setting.

Then another.

Jack took a step towards a door with the word Ghost above. He decided to take a chance on this door until a hand grabbed him. Mendy smiled behind him, "That one's mine." She showed him her arm. Like some kind of magic charcoal her arm lit up with a single word, Ghost. "I noticed it a few rooms back. There's something with the light here, almost like it's the opposite of a black light."

"A white light?" Jack shivered.

"I don't know but look at yours." The others huddled around, their faces were just blurs in the bright light. They exposed their arms as they pulled back their sleeves. "Marsh," Jack said reading his out loud.

"What's on the other side?" Jack knew it was Tegan's voice. "Only one way to find out," he responded.

Each person stepped into their corresponding door and their world changed.

"One wish." The sound echoed through each door and each mind and there further down in the shadows, away from the light that filled the room before the doors, back where everything seemed sane, sane enough for them to grasp, was the impossible, the insane perhaps, the ungraspable.

"Past the mustard," Mendy said holding a plastic bottle of mustard over a large quilt. Accompanying her were of a few the others, laughing, talking. They were happy, Jack, Mendy and Marina. Jack smiled as he looked in Marina's eyes. Then he turned to Mendy, where her tiredness that once lived on her brow was gone, her face was renewed here. He felt content with everything here and wish that he could stay her forever. Of course slowly the world spun, fire grew from the grass and then as if she was possessed, Mendy began to strangle Marina.

Tegan saw a stone wall, tearing through the sky like a monolith. "One Wish!" screamed through her head. And it screamed and screamed, until blood began to drip down her ears. It snaked down her neck and then over her arms. A drop fell, hitting the ground like a jet exploding into the ground. She could hear the screaming of her friends who were still alive in the monolith. Their faces appeared on the walls stretching it’s gray skin, screaming as their eyes seemed to be pulled open.

Tegan screamed too, her mind began to hurt. Her face felt like it had already exploded and her body seemed somehow missing, numb in a away she had never felt. She only felt the burning on her face. Her eyes pulsed, her lips felt like they were cut be millions of tiny knives. Her tongue swatted in the air touching the wounds on her lips, finding new spots that hurt more than the other spots. It all melted away in the scorching sun that peaked behind the monolith.

Raven stared into a sun. His eyes burned and when he remembered why he was there. Why he lied about his name and why he was still alive in this torture chamber, he snapped out and looked away. The sun did nothing but cook his mind like an egg.

Kaitlyn and Breenan held hands as they sat on the grassy knoll that over looked the picnic that was taking place. Up above, they yelled at the terrify scene that took place on the quilt until a noise disrupted them. They stared into the sky like baby birds about to be fed, searching for the sound. "One wish!" they said in unison and when Breenan fell over and tumbled down the hill, Kaitlyn was pulled out of the mesmerizing force from above. She began to cry.

Elizabeth had found Connie and Lexy staring up above, following the flat contours of the monolith. She shielded her hands as she approached them. She had then realized that her hands and nails were covered in dirt and hair. She fell to the floor, knees first. She covered her face with her hands and the dirt and hair began to cosume her face, then her head. Her now dirty, matted head hit the soft grass but then the sun took the opportunity to tear away at her back. The heat, the blood, "One wish!"

***

They were different at the end of the tunnel. Their minds warped, twisted as if they were put through a dream but didn't get any of the rest that dreaming could have offered. They stood around each other as if they were already dead. Jack, Tegan, Marina, Mendy, Kaitlyn, Elizabeth and Raven stood around a pile of corpses. Breenan was on the bottom; her dark brown hair covered her face. Connie and Lexy were on top of her, lying like rag dolls, their eyes looked frozen like cold stone.