Slip : Part 10 : The Afterlight

If this keeps going, our arms, legs, and hips will all pop out of their sockets — we’re dead for sure, Aem thought.

He couldn’t speak. The spinning force was too strong — the rotation so violent it felt like they were being flung around inside a washing machine. Sunny had already lost consciousness.

As their bodies kept tumbling endlessly down the bottomless stairwell, Aem noticed something — for just a split second. The lights along the ceiling began to flicker rapidly. Faster. And faster — until his vision blurred completely. Then came a violent quake — as if the entire world itself was splitting apart — accompanied by a low, thunderous, impossible sound that didn’t belong to Earth.

A blinding flash of white light swallowed everything.

Aem squeezed his eyes shut.

This is it. We’re done for.

Then — WHAM! — their bodies slammed into something solid.

“Ughhh!!!” he cried out in pain.

Hot air rushed in, hitting their motionless bodies. Aem slowly opened his eyes.

He and Sunny were lying against a cracked wall. Before them was the staircase they had just fallen down — but now, it was nothing more than an old, crumbling concrete stairwell. The window panes beside it were shattered, letting in faint light through the jagged openings. Above them, only darkness — a dim, decaying space that could no longer be the fifth floor.

Aem wiped the blood running down his forehead. His vision spun, his mind reeling after falling through what felt like infinity.

Then — a gust of wind blew across his face.

He turned toward it.

An open space.

A ground-level lobby.

The first floor of the building.

“We did it!!! Sunny — Sunny! We made it out of the fifth floor!!!” Aem shouted with sheer joy.

He shook her shoulders hard. After a few moments, Sunny stirred — her eyelids fluttered open, her head spinning.

She blinked several times before realizing where they were. The sight of the lobby — the open air, the dim sunlight through the cracks — brought tears to her eyes. She sobbed uncontrollably, words spilling out incoherently.

Together, they helped each other stand. They walked through what should have been the ground floor — once filled with reception counters, desks, and guest sofas — but now, all that remained were broken, rotting furniture pieces covered in decades of dust, as if the building had been abandoned for years.

Staggering, stumbling, they finally reached the exit.

And when they stepped outside —

Their hearts, once soaring with hope, slowly sank.

The smiles that had just begun to form on their faces faded away — replaced by horror.

The world before them was veiled in a hazy mist of pale greenish-purple. Broken towers and ruins littered the landscape — piles of concrete debris stacked like tombs. Skyscrapers stood twisted and hollow, leaning at impossible angles, ready to collapse at any moment.

Some places were flattened — as though no structure had ever existed there at all.

An eerie howling filled the air — a deep, droning wail that came and went without direction.

The atmosphere was both scorching and chilling — hot winds carrying an unnatural cold.

And above it all —

The moon.

Massive. Monstrous.

So close it seemed to hang just beyond the clouds, its craters and scars visible in terrifying clarity — as though it hovered only a few hundred kilometers from Earth.

Thump… Thump… Thump… Thump…

A sound echoed from above.

Both Sunny and Aem looked up toward the top of the building — and froze.

Sunny’s eyes widened, her throat tightening as she swallowed hard.

There, high above, through the shattered windows — she saw herself.

Crying.

Beating the glass with her fists like a madwoman.

“We escaped from there,” Aem whispered.

Sunny turned to him, her voice trembling.

“...Yeah. But… what now?”

The two of them stood silently, staring out at the desolate, alien world before them.

After a long moment, they looked at each other — and somehow, without words, both already knew the question and the answer.

……The End.

Slip #1,  Slip #2 , Slip #3,  Slip #4,  Slip #5,  Slip #6,  Slip #7, Slip #8,  Slip #9