Gang awoke and opened his eyes on a darkness that was not darkness. There was no light yet there were colors, colors that he had never seen, yet he already knew their names. He opened his mouth and called out each name with his new tongue, watching as his words flowed like smoke into the air. His new ears heard the words as no human ears ever could and Gang wept black tears of joy. He rose and turned towards the door. In spite of the darkness he could “see” everything in the room, though their forms remained unfamiliar to him. Something beside him stank of rot and disease, a mass of shivering shapes huddled inside it, stinking of fear. Another something, this one flat and putrid, sat in one corner, giving off waves of something wonderfully vile. The floor beneath him was filled with new sights, and each object vibrated, echoing its presence to him. He walked across the room, relishing the sensation of things crushing and squishing beneath his feet, towards what a quiet voice inside told him was a “door”.
[When Gang woke it was dark He was lying naked on the floor of a dirty room filled with refuse. He opened his mouth and stretched out his tongue. It writhed and undulated with tiny, wavering tentacles and pulsing growths. Black tears flowed down his face. He stood and peered around at the dark room. A rotting dresser leaned against one wall with a family of terrified rats hiding in the bottom drawer. In the corner was a putrid mattress, soaked through to the floor with years of blood and urine and spit and semen. The floor was littered with discarded food wrappers and shattered glass mixed with the occasional crushed needle or used condom. His eyes flickered like dying flames in the blackness. Gang walked across the trash-strewn floor, heedless of the myriad tiny, bloodless cuts etched into his feet. He approached the door and opened it.]
In the hall there was light like he had once known but it was changed as well. Gang saw new lights dancing in the old as if alive. A sound, both familiar and alien, emanated from above him in oscillating waves. He touched the source of the sound and a mass of tiny, shaking shadows streamed our across his hand and arm, jittering and gyrating briefly before falling and fading away. He smiled again and followed the echo of a new presence from somewhere below him.
[Gang walked out into the hall. Dim light struggled through one grimy window at the end. Above him a wasp's nest buzzed alarmingly to life. Gang reached up and touched it. A swarm erupted from inside and enveloped his arm. As each wasp stung him it fell to the floor in a cloud of crumbling ash. Gang smiled and walked on down the hall.]
Gang found himself in a larger space filled with more beautifully rotting shapes. Foul odors sang to him an overture of despair and decay. More colors and shapes flowed around him a dance he was slowly beginning to learn. Amidst it all, in a far corner of the room, he saw a slumped, glowing form. This was the presence he'd been drawn to. It was surrounded by wavering lines that flickered and pulsed like tendrils of guttering light. Gang approached it and knelt. The shape stirred at his presence and a sound drifted lazily up from it. Gang ran his fingers gently through the tendrils of light, feeling their tender weight, and cooed softly, a sound somewhere between a mother to her child and a snake to a mouse.
“It dreams,” he whispered.
Gang reached into the dream, not knowing how nor needing to know, and took hold of it. It twisted and squirmed eel-like in his grasp as he squeezed it tighter. Below him the shape let loose a sound that swirled around them in a funnel cloud of agonized terror. Gang squeezed tighter and the struggling dream split and spilled cool rivulets of consciousness between his fingers. The twitching form beneath him stiffened and shook and was still. The tendrils of light around it grew dark and fell slack but did not fade. Gang smiled and tasted the dark light with his new tongue. He had never tasted anything so sweet and knew that he never would again. At last he stood and walked towards a shimmering rectangle of brilliant light.
[Gang reached the bottom of the stairs and looked around at the large living room. It was crowded with dirty couches, threadbare chairs, and moldering mattresses. It reeked of every foul smell a human can produce. Across the room, slumped in a corner, sat a filth covered young woman, her head lolled to one side, with a thin stream of drool running from one corner of her mouth to the floor. An empty needle jutted out from one arm. Gang approached the woman and knelt down in front of her. The woman moaned and tried to pull away. Gang reached down and placed his hand on her forehead. For a moment nothing happened. Suddenly the woman began to scream. She convulsed violently. Blood and bile sputtered from her mouth in a grotesque spray and splattered against Gang's naked chest and stomach. He did not seem to notice. The woman's body gave one final spasm and stilled. Her vacant eyes stared up into Gang's and he smiled, flicking out the quivering mass of his tongue at her. Gang stood and walked to the front door of the house.]
What Gang found when he opened the door was beyond anything he could ever have imagined. A new world spread out before him. The old world he had always known had been remade and reborn through his new self. With his new skin he tasted the sunlight that flowed across his naked body. Voices drifted on the wind, a thousand voices, and he could hear each and every one perfectly. His new eyes burned in the light but he did not close them, for the pain was no longer pain, it was a symphony beneath his skin, a beautiful song plucked across the strings of his nerves. Every cell in his form screamed in joy and triumph and love for darkly shining world he had discovered. For the first time he saw the terrible beauty that had always dwelt beneath the world's ugly skin and finally he understood why they wanted it so badly.
[Gang emerged from the dilapidated house and stood on its porch. Sunlight fell across his dirty, naked body. Streams of blood and vomit glistened on his chest. Dark tears like crude oil dried on his cheeks. He spread out his arms and looked up at the sky in ecstasy. On the street, passersby quickened their pace and did not look up. Many of them began to weep like frightened children without knowing why.]
Gang opened his mouth and cried out in his horrific new voice. Somewhere, something stirred. Beneath the earth a thing long silent rattled its chains and called back to him. Gang smiled again and descended the steps. There was much to be done.
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