Spare Parts

by Crack-Fic Casey

The Hurricane's Eye Blinked

The hurricane’s eye blinked.

If you were looking at it down from space, it would have been a momentary curiosity. Some clouds had pulled together and then moved back again. You’d have been more interested in the way it had frozen in place, had even stopped spinning. It held completely still over an apparently empty patch of ocean. Perhaps it had gotten stuck on something.

Someone in the eye of the storm would have been considerably more concerned. If you’d been there, on a fish boat or something, you would have been treated to sudden darkness as the clouds above you closed, and then a blinding light when they receded. Vertigo would grip you then, as the wind and waves that followed the cloud carried your boat dozens of feet in the air and then all the way back down into the now-still water. The slap

The impact would have thrown you from your feet. Perhaps, as you grabbed the railing and looked towards the depths, you would have seen something that shouldn’t be there.

Further from the eye, within the storm proper, you would have been in much less danger. And much more worried.

The storm had stopped; you wouldn’t have known about the blink but once it finished the storm stood stock-still and refused to budge. The ocean waves were still slapping back and forth, but even they were beginning to slow down now. The rain hadn’t just ceased falling; it hung in the air, heedless of gravity and all common sense. They would have gleamed like diamonds if there had been enough light, but underneath the thick, angry clouds they were just the thickest fog anyone could imagine.

When the waves finally stopped their sloshing about, you would have been struck by the haunting stillness. Just breathing felt like a disturbance, like you were taking something that didn’t belong to you anymore.

In fairness, you wouldn’t have been wrong.

---

Below the ocean, or that is to say below mankind's pitiful understanding of the ocean, lies the remains of an ancient city. It is full of contradictions; towers with entrances well above the ground floor, staircases that led nowhere, streets whose length depended on where you were standing. Straightforward impossibilities, that sort of thing. The simplest and indeed, most troubling feature were the lights that floated away from the city and towards the surface, rising to meet the storm.

They came from below the city.

---

If you were still in the eye of the storm, the second blink could have capsized your boat entirely. It took longer to open its eye when it was closed, just like you do when you're forced to wake up in the morning for a job or something equally appalling. When it was over, there was still a cloud floating overhead. It was a perfect circle, thick and dark with water, and it didn’t move like a cloud at all. It darted back and forth, like it had lost something important.

Like it was looking around.

If you were in space you would have understood immediately. The eye had its own pupil now, and it was looking at itself with newfound excitement.

If you were in the stormwall, a flash of light would have caught your attention. It was still quiet, the sort of quiet that you feel more than you hear, and the lights were the only thing moving now. They didn’t even disturb the water as they rose. They didn’t even have reflections. They glowed purple, but so brightly they looked white around the edges. Those edges were sharp and hard, like runes carved into an ancient temple. Floating wasn’t really accurate either, because it doesn’t communicate the sheer speed, the raw power in those lights. They dove, but upwards.

---

Below the impossible city there was a tomb, as there so often is in places man aren’t meant to be. It was filled with devices both technological and arcane, all surrounding an ancient sarcophagus that had been worn down by time. There were few details that anyone could make out, but there were two main points of interest.

The first were the broken chains that had once bound it shut. The second was the fact that it was empty. A third interesting point could be made of the lights, as the last ones flew up and away from its former grave.

---

If you were in the eye of the hurricane, you would die now

If you were near the hurricane, you would die now.

If you were managing to float in space, looking down on the one scrap of the universe that could support life, you’d see the clouds rearrange themselves. The hurricane brought the clouds in towards itself, giving itself a rough torso. The feathery arms that marked the edge of the old hurricanes spin thickened, turning into literal arms that began to push themselves up. Legs emerged as well, great thick trunks that could step on a whole city. Flashes of light, so bright that even your feeble eyesight could see them even from so high in the sky, burst from inside the thing's body. A head bigger than some countries looked up, and a horrific eye would peer out across space with the utmost malice. You’d wonder if it was looking at you.

---

On a plaque in front of the now-destroyed sarcophagus, there lay a plaque. In words seen by no man in a thousand years, it read “There is a great evil contained here. We have trapped it, at great cost to ourselves, as best as we could. It will free itself in time, but must have a body with which to work its great evil. This city will sink soon, but should someone reach this first, take heed. If any eye passes over its true form, it will belong to the creature, and it will take vengeance upon us all.

---

Author's Note:

I was too late to submit this writeoff entry (it was pretty last minute) but no sense letting it go to waste.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

Are you ever going to make any of these shorts into full-fledged stories?

[FanOfMostEverything]

Darn ambiguous prophecies. Though I suppose any self-respecting sinister force will have a wide margin for error in its inevitable profane resurrection.