Viktor didn't hesitate. He sprang toward her, ignoring her thrashing body.
He grabbed her face roughly with both palms, his fingers digging into her skin, and fixed her head so she couldn't look away.
"Look at me," he commanded. That voice wasn't a request; it was an order that resonated in her very bones, deep and dark as the bottom of a well.
Ema was still writhing in spasms of laughter, tears streaming down her cheeks, but Viktor didn't let go. He forced her to look up. And the moment her darting eyes met his, the world stopped.
Viktor's eyes weren't just windows to the soul. They were two black tunnels that began to pull everything in. Ema froze as if an icy needle had been driven through her spine. She felt that gaze soaking into her—not on the surface, but deep inside, to the very source of the madness.
It was a physical sensation of suction. She felt the hot, sticky hysteria vanishing from her brain, from her chest, from every nerve. Viktor wasn't pushing it out; he was drinking it. Siphoning the energy, the fear, and the uncontrollable laughter, like a syringe drawing poison from a wound.
Her pupils began to dilate unnaturally until they swallowed almost the entire iris. Blackness flooded her vision. The tremors shaking her body turned into a corpse-like stillness. Her muscles went limp, as if someone had cut her strings. Her breathing slowed until it almost ceased. For a few seconds, life literally drained out of her—she was just an empty vessel being cleansed by Viktor's gaze. It was terrifying, cold, and absolute.
He switched her off.
The laughter broke into a quiet exhalation, and then there was silence.
Viktor let go. The connection severed.
Ema staggered, her knees giving way. Her eyes contracted back to normal, colors returned. She gasped for air, greedily and spasmodically, as if she had just surfaced from icy water right before drowning. Her chest rose and fell sharply as consciousness of reality returned to her.
Viktor stood over her, perfectly calm, as if nothing had happened. "We don't have much time," he said quietly but urgently. "Were you here when it started?"
Ema, still shaken and feeling a hollowness in her head, only nodded weakly.
Flashback:The living room. Darkness, only the TV is on. Ema, younger, with a wet rag on her head—a migraine. That small crossbreed dog lies on her lap. She is stroking it.Blue lights flash outside. Beacons. Sirens.They go to look in the hallway. Police officers in masks are leading the neighbor from the top floor. Handcuffs cut into his wrists.The neighbor is laughing. It is an inhuman roar. "We're all going to die! Every last one of us! It's a joke! The whole world is a joke!"One of the policemen chuckles. Ema's father beside her laughs too. Even Ema feels a tickling deep in her stomach. She finds it... funny.
"I was here," Ema said in the present and took a drink of soda. "Everything in the city was crazy, but what happened at our home... that was the most intense." Viktor grew alert. "Do you remember where you lived?" "I think so." Viktor stood up. "Then let's go." He checked the window. Then he looked at her. "I have to bind your mouth. If it hits you again outside, we're dead." Ema nodded resignedly.
The journey to the villa was a nightmare. The square was quiet, but the side streets were alive. Viktor led her with the certainty of a predator. Every movement was calculated. Ema, with a gag in her mouth, clung to him like a tick.
Finally, they stood at a spot from where they could see the villa. It was a large brick house, four stories, perhaps once beautiful. Now it looked like a tumor. The vegetation here had mutated to the extreme. Thorny bushes weren't just in the garden. They were hugging the house. They grew through the windows, wrapped around the chimneys, pulsing with a slow, disgusting rhythm.
Viktor grabbed her hand. It was hot. They crept along the gravel driveway. The closer they got, the worse it became. Ema's ears began to hum. The bushes on the roof moved toward them. And then it came. Under the gag, a spasm began to tear its way out. Laughter. Hmmmmph! Ema began to laugh so hard that the fabric cutting into the corners of her mouth rubbed the skin raw. She was choking on her own laughter. Wheezing sounded from the surrounding streets. They heard her. Viktor cursed. With one motion, he tore the gag off so she wouldn't suffocate, but in doing so, he released that mad sound into the night. "HAHAHA!"
"Fuck," Viktor swore through gritted teeth as his gaze shot into the darkness behind them.
Without warning, in one fluid motion, he threw Ema over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She didn't even have time to yelp as he started running with her toward the slightly ajar front door. She felt his hard shoulder under her ribs, and every impact of his heavy boots on the pavement knocked the wind out of her.
He burst into the hallway, but instead of dropping her, he slid her to the ground with surprising care. He leaned her against the cold wall as if handling an unexploded bomb.
"Shhh," he hissed, his face just centimeters from hers. "Stay here. Don't even move. And be quiet. Do you understand? Completely quiet."
He didn't wait for an answer. He straightened up and stepped back into the doorway. He grabbed the handle of the heavy front door and began to close it with surgical precision. He didn't allow the hinges to creak. Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, he closed the massive wing until the lock clicked with a soft, almost inaudible sound.
Ema was left alone in the gloom of the hallway.
Viktor remained outside, his back to the door, facing the oncoming storm. He reached under his long dark coat. There was a quiet metallic rustle of leather against steel, and a weapon glinted in his hand. It wasn't a knife, but a short, black-and-white sword with a blade that looked like it could sever even a shadow. He gripped it firmly, crouched slightly, and stepped into the darkness.
Instantly, silence fell. An absolute, unnatural silence. While the wind raged outside, and the sounds of the collapsing city and chaos echoed, here inside the villa reigned a calm that pressed on the eardrums. Sounds from outside reached here only as a distant, muffled rumble under water. The air stood still, motionless, and it smelled of old plaster and something sweet that resembled rotting fruit.
The only light fell here through dusty glass blocks on the mezzanine; the glass bricks refracted the moonlight into distorted, greenish patterns that looked like maps of diseased skin on the walls.
That hysterical, spasmodic laughter that had kept Ema on her feet outside began to recede quickly. It drained out of her, and creeping into its place was a cold, sticky terror.
I'm home, flashed through her head. The entrance to her apartment was on the right. Those doors behind which she had spent her childhood. She had to look if there was still safety there. Slowly, with trembling knees, she stood up. She stepped carefully into the gloom.
Then she felt a touch on her leg. It wasn't anything gentle. It was heavy, warm, and wet. A giant rat ran across her bare instep. It wasn't an ordinary mouse, but a monster the size of a cat, its skin covered in scabs and bald patches glistening in the gloom. She felt its claws scratch against her skin; she felt the muscular, disgusting movement of its tail.
"AAAAHH!"
The scream tore from her before she could cover her mouth. It was an instinctual, animalistic yelp of terror that broke the grave silence of the villa like a starting pistol.
It was a mistake. A fatal mistake.
The house, which had seemed dead, instantly came alive—and not with the kind of life she would have wished for. A terrifying racket began to echo from the upper floors. CRASH.THUD.SNAP.
It sounded as if someone—or something—up there was frantically overturning heavy oak wardrobes and smashing tables. Added to the sound of destruction was the frenzied stomping of many bare feet. It wasn't the walk of one person; it sounded like a herd of stampeding bodies. The ceiling above Ema's head shook, plaster began to fall from the joints between the tiles, and someone started rhythmically, dully banging against the walls, as if wanting to dig through the masonry down to her.
And then it came. The door to the ground-floor apartment—the one she had looked up to with hope just a moment ago—flew open with a deafening crash. Hinges screamed, wood cracked, and splinters flew into the air like shrapnel.
From the dark opening of the apartment, a figure staggered—or rather fell—into the hallway. It was a woman. She was wearing a once-white nightgown that now hung in tatters and was soaked in dark, dried, and fresh blood. Her movements were jerky, unnatural, like a puppet guided by severed strings.