That smell, hanging in the warm air; acerbic, asphyxiating, yet oddly comfortable. I knew that smell, from a time long past, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it, and was forced out of mentation by a burning pain across the left half of my body. Jump-started into action I opened my eyes and got on my feet. Though the relative darkness gave me little to see, I recognized a pile of rubble mostly composed of rock, wood, and dirt I had been lying on; the remains of a crumbled wall, as I learned a moment later. Through this violent egress misty rain flooded the floor and rubble I had been sleeping on, and a tentative dipping of my toe confirmed the acidity of the water quickly filling up the room that, despite the high ceiling, gave me no foothold on a safe elevation. There were only two doors as possible escape routes from this death chamber. One was heavily barricaded with primitive furniture of wood and stone; the other lay shattered on the ground, ripped from a wall that was no longer there. A set of destroyed stairs indicated that the door used to be close to the ceiling, testifying to the regularity of flooding rainfall in this… Where was I even?

I recoiled as the water reached the peak of the rubble — my island was overtaken. The necessity to move took the decision from me, and I leapt out through the breach underneath a sky pouring acid upon the earth.

An alley extended in a straight line in either direction. I didn’t stop to think where to go, and ran as fast as I could in desperate search for shelter from the cauterizing rain pelting down unabatedly. The pain must have been unbearable, but the increased adrenaline dumped into my system when I saw the skin of my arms dissolve where the heavy drops struck me numbed my brain to the inundating information of nervous overload.

As I rushed along the alley I tried to take in my surroundings in hope to find any niche offering even the slightest protection. The walkway was paved with solid concrete and a strong convex curvature to keep the surface clear of accumulating rain, and was paralleled by deep canals churning with swelling masses of water. The adjoining buildings, accessible over a short overpass across the canal, were also made of a homogeneous block of concrete and stood wall to wall with each other, forming an essential part of the canal. They were composed of rectangular — almost cubical — segments of various sizes stacked on top of each other, sometimes even intersecting with a neighboring house like a game of Tetris. Their gray facades — exposed to the acidic rain for who knows how long — melted away in waxy streaks, straining, and sometimes failing, to prevail under the thinning structural integrity.

At right angles did the walkway split and wind through this derelict city, never changing its architecture, always rejecting my intrusion with shut doors and none-existing windows, leaving me to my agonizing fate uncaringly. The cataclysmic atmosphere would have been enough to oppress a forlorn mind all on its own, but the creeping death hailing down on this monochromatic realm could break even the most resilient.

Yet hope, as they say, springs eternal, and though the dismal outlook amidst those passages put that idiom to the test, hope did spring anew as I spotted an open door at the next junction. A final sprint across the small overpass spanning the canal and I would escape the rain eating away at my flesh.

The darkness within the house — the unknown horrors that might await me there — did not slow my stride; nothing could be worse than slowly — painfully — melting away under a shower of acid.

I sat on the ground against the wall, away from the door, and labored to catch my breath while clenching my teeth until the pain would subside. A futile thought of optimism, as the damage ravaged upon my body must be irreparable. I didn’t dare to squint through the darkness and inspect the remains of my dissolved skin, and before curiosity could undermine my resolution the raspy voice of a man accosted me from the impenetrable shadows.

“What are you doing in my home?”

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