The Aftermath

It happened almost too quickly to keep track of. A flash of white, and black, and green, a harrowing laugh that tore at my very sanity, and a crash as the wall exploded outward, showering the street below with debris, the sudden rush of night air into the room chilling my body even as that momentary glimpse of whatever hellish thing from the beyond this mortal realm we’d freed chilled my soul.

And then it was gone.

I ran to the gaping hole it had left in the wall, heedless of my nudity, to watch as what appeared to be some sort of giant sand-worm tore off through the night, rushing down the street and away from my building, the figure on its back still laughing maniacally as it rode the enormous beast out and away, into the city, to wreak whatever havoc it had planned upon an unsuspecting world, unbound, unchained, unstoppable. I had done this, we had done this. We’d done it unwittingly, to be sure, but we’d done it nonetheless, and whatever might happen next was on our heads, a horror we’d unleashed and that we’d have to live with the consequences of for however long we might have left.

I knew this, and this knowledge was the most frightening part of all.

Turning back from the wreckage, I saw her, covers pulled tight around her naked, trembling form, eyes wide with shock, face still gleaming with sweat, mouth opening and closing as though she were trying and failing to say something, to put words to what had happened, out of nowhere, to the two of us, cutting short what had until that moment been a delightful play date for the both of us.

“I stand corrected,” I told her with a nervous laugh, after a moment’s pause, trying my best to make light of what we’d witnessed, “Beetlejuice is not a good safeword…”