Fragments

Recovery – Day 2102

The Fog pushed away as I walked on.  William kept close to me.

“Don’t let it touch you,” I warned him, briskly making my way to Cat’s ultimate location.

“Why not?”

“It wants to get in.”

“Into me?”

“Into the Dome.”  A pause.

“What is it?”

“Now is not the time,” I told him.

We continued on in silence for a time.  Then the collapsed form of a girl was revealed by the retreating haze.

“Cat!” William cried, rushing to the body.

“No!” I shouted. “Don’t touch her!”

But I was too slow.  William dropped to his knees and tried to comfort the girl and, putting his hand on her shoulder, he froze.  After a second, he began to scream.  I hastily pulled him off.  As I waited for the boy to return to his senses, I looked over Cat’s body.

She was in a bad way.  Her clothes were torn and her skin was covered in scrapes and bruises.  But the thing that caught my attention most was her face.  Her eyes were open, but empty, and her features betrayed no expression.

“What happened?” William asked, shaken but largely recovered. “When I touched her, all of a sudden I was surrounded by darkness.  And there was this oppressive… emptiness.”

“She has been taken by the Fog.  What you saw is what’s left of her mind.”

“It was so lonel- wait, what?”

“This is but a husk, a shell of what she was.  The Fog took her and left us this.”

“Can we save her?”

“No.”

William looked up at me with a sudden fury.  “Why did this happen?!” he yelled. “And what is the goddamned Fog?!”

I hesitated a moment before answering.

“The Fog isn’t real, Will,” I said.

“What do you mean, the Fog isn’t real?” William narrowed his eyes. “I see it, and I know you do, too.  It’s as real as we are!”

“What we call the Fog is just what we see when we try to look beyond the edge of reality.”

A pause.

“What do you mean?”

“We’re alone, Will.  Everything outside the Dome is gone.”

“I don’t believe you.  I remember other places, before the Dome.  There’s more to the world than this!”

“Not anymore,” I said simply.  Will stared at me.

“Wait a second.  You said the Fog wants to get into the Dome.”

“I did.  It does.”

“But the Fog isn’t real.”

“It isn’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Remember how I said that the Fragments are pieces of a god?  That god is tired of holding up our world.”

“So, the Fog-“

“He’s trying to erase us.”