Doomsday Wonderland

It was a shaky night.

The dawn came silently without any sign. In the blink of an eye, the darkness vanished and the sky brightened up. By the time Lin Sanjiu regained her senses, she was still standing by the door with her palm hovering over the switch.

She stormed down the stairs and out of the house. Once she was outside, she saw that there were deep fissures running hither and thither on the street and road. Every fallen streetlight had broken into pieces and melted with the squashed vehicles into a huge pile of wasted metal. Slack-jawed, as she turned around to check her temporary abode, she realized that it, too, shared the same fate as the road and street, as there were cracks on the wall. However, the row of houses in front of her wasn’t as lucky as the house behind her. The earthquake had left the row of houses in ruins. There was nothing but a pile of rubble there now.

She peeled her eyes away and glanced across the area. It was tough for her to believe that this wasted land was once a residential area.

The road was empty and devoid of pedestrians. The mountain on the left was nowhere to be seen, and there was only a flatted land in her sight. Half of the road sank into darkness. It was as if something was blocking the sun.

Lin Sanjiu turned around as she allowed her gaze to travel out. Then, she found the mountain.

The mountain had crushed all the houses around it. It looked like a massive lump that appeared out of nowhere and shrouded everything around its perimeter in its huge shadow. Its foot was deeply rooted in the ground and its edge fused with the asphalt. It looked as if it had grown out of there and was always part of the town.

The town was quiet. There was nothing to be heard but the wild moans and whistles of the wind coming in from the distance. It felt like a dead town.

Slowly and cautiously, she walked a few steps forward and found that there were patches of blood, now black instead of red, underneath the ruin in front of her.

Lin Sanjiu quickly rushed forward, crouched down, and used her remaining strength to lift the half-destroyed beam up from the ground. She lowered her head; she was so shocked by the scene that greeted her eyes that she almost dropped the beam back onto the ground. She stared at the spot, disbelief filling her eyes.

There was a little of what she presumed to be the brains of a human, but she couldn’t be sure.

The bones were soaked in a pool of white goo, and there were strands of hair splayed in a puddle of blood and brain matter. She tried to look around, but she could not find the other body parts besides the brain, which was possibly squashed by the collapsed house.

She intuitively stood up and stepped back.

A mountain had invaded the town, laid waste to rows of houses, and killed possibly half of the population, but why did all the townspeople remain so quiet?

Lin Sanjiu’s brain was buzzing. She couldn’t figure out what was happening, and when she turned around, she almost freaked out.

The window on the opposite house was half-curtained. On the uncurtained side, there was a pair of spectacles floating amidst the deep darkness that stared straight at her. The pair of glasses was gleaming with a strange light, and Lin Sanjiu could neither see the wearer’s expression nor his full body, which was immersed entirely in the darkness.

“Rise and shine, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!”

The sudden broadcast made Lin Sanjiu jump. A layer of sweat oozed from her back as she listened. “It’s now 6 o’clock in the morning, and a brand new day has started. Under the guide of Mayor Orlean, today is another positive day full of vim and vigor!”

The voice of the broadcaster she heard from the radio last night came from the speakers that were installed on the poles along the road. Lin Sanjiu was certain that these poles did not exist last night, but things were volatile and highly susceptible to change in the dream. Hence, she thought it was a normal thing.

As if they had received some kind of order, every door to the houses on the street was pushed open from the inside and people came out one after another.

The bespectacled neighbor came out of his house as well. He was all spiffed up and had his briefcase ready by his side; however, he had been sitting silently behind the window as if he were waiting for the broadcast. He gazed numbly at Lin Sanjiu, turned around, and walked towards the mountain as if he was going to work.

Lin Sanjiu almost screamed.

Didn’t anybody see the mountain? Didn’t anybody realize a mountain had crushed part of the town and killed tons of people? Could it be that they were all blind or something?

Then, she realized she was wrong.

Every resident saw the mountain just fine. Since it blocked their way, residents that came out from behind the mountain turned en masse into a small path when they arrived at the foot of the mountain. Lin Sanjiu was started and looked fixedly at them. It was not long before she snapped out of her trance and followed their example.

They all trailed along a path into a street, none of them speaking. Whenever Lin Sanjiu raised her head and turned around, she would see the mountain behind her, standing silhouetted against the sun.

There weren’t any greens or trees on the mountain; its body rose and fell lightly as if it was breathing.

Lin Sanjiu had no idea why, but the amicable townspeople of Peanut Town suddenly changed their attitudes and became unresponsive. No one chatted along the way and nobody smiled at her. They did not even greet each other. Following the group of people, Lin Sanjiu turned left at the right corner and found that they’d made a circle and come to the other side of the mountain.

There was another group of people that had arrived at the base of the mountain much earlier than them. Lin Sanjiu wondered when they had arrived and what they were doing here. She turned her head around to see that there was a long stream of people behind her; their heads were small black dots in her sight as they all walked in this direction. The people in front of her were split into four lines. The lines kept growing longer and longer until they turned a corner and disappeared down the street.

Just as Lin Sanjiu was busy figuring out what was going on with the townspeople, a dull, almost imperceptible sound along with rhythmic gurgles came up from the mountain and slid into her ears.

Lin Sanjiu did not join the line but instead stood by the roadside and looked blankly at the mass of people at the foot of the mountain.

The first people on each line knelt before the mountain with their heads bowed low. The ones closest to her were a young couple. Both of them had jet-black hair, and similar to the other people at the forefront of the line, their bodies were curled up like frozen shrimps as they held their heads tightly against the mountain. The husband was mumbling something, but Lin Sanjiu couldn’t hear it. She walked closer and then felt the people’s eyes, dense and silent, fix on her.

Even as a veteran who had gone through countless battles, she still felt uncomfortable.

Be that as it may, she did not turn her head around. She continued to walk forward and stopped several steps away from the couple.

“After completing the routinized registration at the town hall,” the husband’s eyes were tightly shut and he stuck his head so close to the mountain, it was as if he was a humanoid lump that grew out from the mountain, “I went home at 9:45 pm. Josephine hadn’t come home yet, so I decided to switch the TV open and watch Mayor Orlean’s speech while waiting for her. After a while, she returned. The first sentence she said to me when she came into the house was ‘It’s too cold outside’, to which I replied, ‘I don’t think it’s that cold…’ At around 10:30 pm, I talked to Josephine again, ‘I’m sleepy, do you want to go to bed now?’…”

‘What the hell?’

Lin Sanjiu felt that she was witnessing something scary, but the scene before her eyes was too confusing that she couldn’t understand a thing that was happening.

The black-haired wife, who should be Josephine, began speaking after her husband finished his part.

“I stepped into my house at 10:00 pm sharp. I said ‘It’s too cold outside’ and Mudi replied, ‘I don’t think it’s that cold…’ This part and the conversation that took place at 10:30 pm are correct, but my husband forgot to report a detail. When I arrived home at 10:00 pm as I previously stated, he was sitting on the couch with the remote controller in his hand.”

Like her husband, her eyes were closed and she was mumbling to the mountain.

“I don’t know what happened to him, but he was behaving strangely last night. He was watching Mayor Orlean’s speech, and then he wanted to switch the channel!”

After she finished speaking, both of them fell into a silence.

Neither of them spoke, nor did they rise to their feet. The townsfolk behind them suddenly took a step back to keep a distance away from them.

Lin Sanjiu was all at sea. Then, she saw the mountain suddenly crack asunder, and a deep hole appeared on its body. Losing his only support, Mudi fell forward. He was enwrapped by two pieces of protruding parts that looked like lips and vanished into the hole. He did not even get a chance to scream.

“The first glorious patriot of the day has been born! She is the mistress of Oak Lane No. 128, Josephine Lull.”

A congratulatory voice rang out from the speaker and a great round of applause spread across the mass of folks.

Josephine remained frozen in her position. She looked surprised as a red blush crawled up her neck and to her cheeks. Nevertheless, her joy was short-lived. As a munching and gurgling noise rang out from the mountain, all color drained from her face and she looked visibly frightened.

Lin Sanjiu forced down the gastric juice that was throwing a tantrum inside her stomach. Her shirt was drenched with the sweat that oozed out profusely from her back and she shivered when an eddy of wind blew through. Her brain became fuzzy and her thoughts thoroughly derailed. She did not know what the mountain was or where the posthuman that dreamed of it was.

It was at this time that several police officers opposite the road realized her strange behavior.

“Hey, you!” A female officer that was in her mid-thirties yelled. “What are you doing there? Get in line!”

Lin Sanjiu took a deep breath and nodded at them. She dragged herself towards one line and queued up behind an older man. Only then did she feel their hawkish gazes move away from her.

The line advanced slowly. She followed the line for a while before suddenly realizing something. Time in the dream moved in a saltatory manner rather than by gradual transitions. That’s why so many things in Peanut Town could change in one night.

‘So what will happen next?’

Lin Sanjiu thought for a second, but nothing concrete came into mind.

‘If I could meet up with the posthuman who dreamed of this mountain, then…’

As she walked past a house, the voice of an impassioned speaker wafted from the TV to her ears. She turned her head around and, she saw a posthuman on the TV.