When she woke up, it was still dark. A terrible cold seeped into the marrow of her bones.
Confused, she looked around. Where is this? Why am I lying under a car?
She carefully crawled out. With a sharper movement of her head, she felt a sharp blow in her brain, as if someone had given her a battery shock—bzzzt.
For a moment, she forgot why she was lying there at all, until she saw the gnawed bones in a puddle of dried blood a short distance away.
The stress returned. But this time it was different. It was underscored by that chemical mania.
A side effect of the overdose.
She walked along the walls further into the city.
The main street resembled a set from a horror movie someone had forgotten to clean up. Buildings had smashed windows that stared into the darkness like blind eyes. Others were chaotically painted over—spirals, circles, jagged smiles—as if a mad child had attempted graffiti with a can of paint.
Worst of all were the plants. Through cracks in the sidewalk and granite paving grew strangely twisted, black bushes with long thorns. They looked like barbed wire made by nature.
Old shop signs bore faded posters from the year before.
Ema was dehydrated; her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she wanted to vomit. She felt sick, yet at the same time, she felt the corners of her mouth twitching upward.
I'm going crazy, she thought, and the thought seemed funny to her. I really am going crazy.
Her legs carried her, at times on their own. She headed upward, toward the city's landmark—the large yellow-and-white church on the square.
Ema had never believed in God. In the Czech Republic, she wasn't raised to; she was a pragmatist. But now, as she stumbled through the ruin, the thought occurred to her.
She stopped in the middle of the street, clasped her hands in prayer, and raised her eyes to the dark sky.
"Good God, who art in heaven," she began aloud, her voice cracking, "your crazy little sheep doesn't know what to do anymore. Help... or finish me off."
At the end of the sentence, she snorted and chuckled. It sounded almost like that croaking laughter.
She reached the square. It was empty; the moon illuminated the wreckage of benches and a fountain full of trash.
She sat on the curb. Her head was spinning.
She tried to remember how lively it used to be here. Wasn't there a pastry shop over there?
She got up and walked to the building on the corner. She went up the stairs. The glass doors and the display case were smashed.
She entered.
For a second, a recording of children's laughter and the clinking of spoons rang in her head. A hallucination.
Broken plates lay on the floor, shards mixing with a brown substance—remains of cakes long since devoured by mold.
Ema walked to the counter. Miraculously, in one jar that had remained closed, she found a few wrapped, long-life caramels.
She lunged for them hungrily. She sat on the only undamaged chair, unwrapped one with shaking fingers, and shoved it into her mouth.
A distinct, chemical sweetness flooded her mouth. The sugar gave her energy. And with it came a natural, relaxed smile.
"Yum," she mumbled into the silence.
Just then, she noticed she wasn't alone.
In the corner, in the shadow by the wall, sat a person. He had a hat pulled down over his forehead and wasn't moving.
"Hello?" Ema tried playfully. "Did you come for a cream puff too?"
She approached him and carefully lifted his hat.
The man was dead. Desiccated to the bone. But his face... the skin was pulled back, lips cracked, revealing yellow teeth in a smile so wide his cheekbones had cracked.
Ema froze. Terror struck her. She wanted to scream.
Instead, what tore from her throat was: "HAHAHA!"
It was loud, genuine laughter.
She immediately grabbed her mouth with both hands. Her eyes were wide with horror, but her diaphragm jerked with laughter. Her stomach turned, and she vomited onto her shoes, bending forward, spitting the sweet caramel into the dust.
In the distance, she heard running. Sssss...
Wheezing.
The laughter passed.
She started to run. Glass crunched under her feet—crunch, crunch, crunch—sounding like gunshots in the silence of the night.
She ran through the remains of the display window and hid behind rusty dumpsters in a side alley.
Her heart pounded. Anxiety returned in full force, but it alternated with a compulsive feeling to laugh heartily again. It's here. I'm one of them.
Someone grabbed her from behind.
A firm hand covered her mouth. Another pressed her against the wall.
"Shhhh," came a sound at her ear.
The man holding her pointed with his free hand to the scene before them, to the street she had run from.
The sound of breaking glass could be heard in the pastry shop. Someone was running there.
Several figures ran past their hiding place. Wheezing, staggering. One of them's legs gave way, and she fell.
The others didn't stop to help her. They immediately threw themselves on her and began tearing her to pieces alive. The sounds of tearing flesh mingled with that terrifying croaking.
Ema tore her gaze from the massacre and looked at the man holding her.
In the gloom of the night, she saw his sharp silhouette. He wore a long dark coat, a white shirt underneath that shone in the filth. He had disheveled, prematurely gray hair.
But his eyes...
His gaze was cold, hard as steel, but completely, perfectly sane.
In this city full of mad smiles, he was the only one not smiling. His face was a serious mask of concentration.
He was the only person who didn't seem like a lunatic.
The man stared intently into her eyes. His gaze was like a deep, freezing well forcing her to calm down.
What she saw in his face meant only one word to her: Safety.
He nodded at her, the question clear: Do you understand? Will you be quiet?
Ema nodded.
With a cold, almost mechanical gaze, the man checked the situation in the alley. The figures were busy eating their own kind. He motioned for her to follow him.
He let go of her and set off. He moved silently, like a shadow.
When they reached the end of the alley, where the path crossed another narrow street, the man put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her into the shadow. He put a finger to his lips.
They waited. For long seconds, nothing happened.
Then several people walked past the intersection. They were naked, thin, their skin gray. Occasionally, one of them laughed—the sound was like crushing gravel.
When they disappeared, the man raised his hand.
He counted down on his fingers. Three. Two. One.
He nodded.
They ran across the street. They were fast. Scarcely had they slipped into the next shadow when Ema heard more running behind them. It was a matter of seconds.
Their journey through the city was chaos. Everywhere was disorder, overturned cars, barricades no one defended. The man led her with the certainty of someone who knew every hole, every escape exit. It looked as if he had a sixth sense (or someone whispering to him, but Ema saw only him).
Finally, he led her to the rear wing of an old building near the church. He pointed to a basement window near the ground that was broken.
They climbed inside. The smell of dampness and mold hit her nose.
The man immediately covered the window with several layers of heavy, dark fabric so not a single ray of light would escape. Only then did he strike a match and light a small kerosene lamp. The flame, turned down to the minimum, cast long shadows around the cellar.
Ema slumped to the cold floor. She leaned her back against the wall and hugged her knees. She was tired, dirty, disheveled. She felt like a beaten dog.
The man squatted down next to her. He pulled out a small flashlight and shone it into her eyes. He examined her pupils, then palpated her face to see if she was injured. His touches were professional, quick.
Ema raised a hand and touched his face. It was warm. Alive.
There was silence for a while. They just looked at each other in the gloom of the cellar.
The man stood up, took a blanket from one of the crates, and threw it over her. Then he started searching through supplies.
"I'm Ema," she said, her voice breaking. "Thank you... thank you."
The man stopped. He turned around. In his gaze was mistrust, but also curiosity.
"Viktor," he said curtly.
He handed her a bottle of soda. Ema drank greedily.
Viktor sat opposite her, leaning against a crate. "What are you looking for in this city, Ema? It's not exactly a tourist-friendly location."
Ema wiped her mouth. "I... I come from here. I lived here... I think."
Viktor's eyes narrowed. "Lived? You returned?"
"I didn't know!" Tears burst forth from Ema. Her voice trembled with hysteria. "For me... for me, this place didn't exist. Nowhere. In maps, in my head... just darkness."
She dug her fingers into the blanket.
"The last year... I didn't want to live anymore. I was empty. I didn't remember anything—neither who I am, nor where I'm from. I just survived from day to day, swallowing pills so I wouldn't feel the hole inside me."
She looked at Viktor with a desperate gaze.
"And then the nightmares started. They were so vivid... calling me. I felt I had to come back here. That it was the only way not to go crazy. That I'd find answers here."
Her voice broke into a whisper.
"But now... now I remember. The laughter. The blood. And I... I don't understand what's happening at all. Why is everyone laughing so much..."
She fell silent.
The silence in the cellar grew heavy.
And then it happened.
The corners of Ema's mouth began to slowly stretch. She didn't want it. She tried to stop it, biting her lip, but the muscles wouldn't obey.
"Hehe..." escaped her.
The sneer stretched across her entire face. Her head began to pound.
"Hahaha..."
She dug her fingernails into her thigh, so hard that blood appeared. She wanted to drown out the laughter with pain. But she couldn't. She was laughing, tears streaming down her cheeks, an expression of pure despair in her eyes, but her mouth was laughing.