"The Tower" Short Story

The ground beneath my feet is covered in blood. The air is filled with a smog so viscous I could swim in it if I had the right anatomy. Dark, oily pools of murk ring the edges of the slice of stone I find myself on, stretching on and on into the endlessly dark horizon. Through the murk of the sky, I can see giants reaching out of the liquid abyss, colossal corpses made of twisted stone and metal too abstract in form to discern their function. Above me, the unyielding grey roof of the endless cavern, and my sole hope. A tunnel, somehow perfectly clear even with the encroaching darkness, straight and narrow leading up into somewhere else. I tell myself it has to be somewhere better.

The island is flat, the stone it’s comprised of smoothed in some manner entirely alien to me. The rougher, darker stuff rings the lighter grey rock I walk on, the angry shapes threatening to pierce my feet like giant barbs if I step out of place. The island isn’t bare, though. Geometric pillars of some dark metal rise up in the middle, offering a loose framework for what my goal clearly stands as. There’s a machine nearby, easily twice my height and shaped like the top half of a giant, cyclopean skull, bound to the floor by countless pipes and steaming vents. There’s a pulsing, bleeding red growth extending from the back, the soft thrumming the only audible noise on the plateau. There’s a gap in the top of the skull, like a great hopper, with a soft grinding emanating from it. My only company, for the moment.

Soon enough, though, the island of placidity sees two new visitors. One rises up from the stone, leaving no marks as if simply grown from the smooth surface. It’s tall and thin, with a toothless mouth at the end, swaying softly in an absent breeze. A shape moves up the stalk of it, bulbous as it distends the taught grey skin to push out the mouth, a golden ball exiting the mouth soon after, and dropping to the floor. The second visitor is much more vocal. Soft chittering emits from it’s mouth full of blocky teeth as it squashes and stretches it’s red body to move around on four immobile stumps attached to the tube of flesh. It regards me with one of it’s black, beady eyes, before moving to the golden orb, the skin growing translucent and beating softly as a small, dark shape made itself known within. Soon after, though, the creature opened it’s jaws wide, far wider than its limited form should allow, and ate it whole. It’s entire body grew darker, the softly squelching meat seeming to harden and stiffen. The result of this, soon leapt from a growing pustule on it’s back, a small wad of flesh that, before my eyes, expanded into a full-sized creature.

I watched, curiously, as more golden orbs dropped from the stalk, the rotting creatures ravenously consuming them to multiply. Out of a morbid curiosity, though, I tried to pick one of them up, being as they were a little smaller than a house cat. It’s flesh, hardened and stiff to denote it’s seniority, yielded unpleasantly beneath my hands as it chattered it’s yellowing teeth idly. In one swift, disgusted motion, I moved towards the grand skull and threw the creature in. 

Immediately, a sharp grinding noise filled the air, the sound of flesh ripping and bones collapsing, a spray of gore blasting out of the eye socket of the skull, chunks of viscera thudding wetly on the stone. The growth on the back of the skull pulsed rapidly, a mechanical hum filling the air as it bulged, churned, then opened up to expel a chunk of the same dark metal as the scaffolding. I walked over to it, hefting the surprisingly light material in my hands before approaching the scaffolding. I looked up at the gaping hole in the ceiling, then at the creatures milling about. The decision was obvious.

The cut-off cries of the flesh lumps filled the choking air, followed by whirring, crunching and the disgusting sound of flesh tearing and mending over and over and over again. The chunks of metal that came out weren’t uniform. Their shapes were wild, barely able to fit together like a giant interlocking puzzle. But, I pressed on. Pieces just managing to tuck into others neatly, footholds for me to carry the lightweight chunks up and up and up. The construction was firm, the pieces managing to lock together enough to provide ample support. The machine seemed to know exactly what I needed and when, gifting me greater and greater heights. I climbed higher, up and down over and over again until my body moved entirely of its own accord. My arrival to the island was irrelevant, but my escape was assured.

Higher still, more crunching, more squeals cut short like pigs to slaughter. Countless gallons of blood spilled over the floor, and countless more lifeless hunks of metal carried into my tower. It was grand, spiralling upwards with perfect construction and balancing. The winds could be felt from the ever-climbing top, a feeling so alien it nearly caused me to fall from the height. The air was cool, invigorating. It pushed me forward even when the exhaustion in my limbs became as heavy as the tower itself. The livestock lived and died in droves, their insides painting the white stone a deep crimson, just for their children to tread over it, eat more, and then be pushed into the now constantly grinding machine.

I had doubled the height of the tower and made it halfway when issues began to set in. The wind was rapidly becoming a curse, the gentle swaying of the tower opening small fissures in the metal blocks. Yawning gaps that only seemed to stretch wider unless I took great care to push it back into place. The pit I was in tried to stop me, make me as the giants of failure wallowing in the endless nothing beyond the island, but I did not let them. A sense of anger filled me as I pushed new pieces in, a feeling of spite driving me forward, spite against the pit itself, the ground I walked on. Only the tower and the machine mattered, and only the tower and the machine would let me out.

The tower stretched on, the very ends of the stalactites above just coming into view, like the jagged teeth of some ancient beast. Crawling into the jaws or not, the island would not hold me forever. Time was irrelevant and unknowable, same as the bodies underfoot quite literally as I walked back and forth over and over again to fetch new walking carcasses, dragging their flailing forms and disgusting bodies into the grinder to make more pieces for one of the only things of any importance on the island. The fissures, though, yawned wider, the winds no-longer serving as an adequate source of my displeasure. The tower itself seemed to act in spite of me. I reminded it of who kept it upright every time I shoved chunks back into place, the swaying top ever spiteful to waste more and more of my time repairing. My own tools turning against me.

The grinder had broken at some point, the yawning maw folding inwards as the bone splintered. The pipes spewed more of the dark abyss onto the sullen stone, but that only spurred me on. Without any new influx of material, I cannibalised the tower itself. It had deemed itself above its own creator, so I granted its request. I let it spin higher and higher, tearing chunks from its own body to stack upon its own haemorrhaging form. It’s handiwork was shoddy, gaps forming where it couldn’t properly form adequate connections, but it was enough. I clawed my way up and up and up again, above the smog, above the wretches on the floor, above even the pit itself. A moment of sheer satisfaction struck me as I stood at the very top, one hand braced against the shaft upwards into my reward, the tunnel more than accommodating someone’s ascent. 

I don’t know what caused the tower to sway just that much more. The pieces balanced precariously only needed a slight imbalance for shoddy handiwork to come undone. The blocks fell in droves, great metal raindrops hammering into the darkness below, the leaking pipes long since eating any trace of the island. I fell as well, of course. The pit had found enough spite in itself to throw me down one last time. I didn’t fight it, as the smog filled my lungs again. How could I? Instead, I did what I could. I shut my eyes, letting the tower claim yet another.

And then there was nothing.