The Passion House

VIII

Shards of broken glass start flying everywhere and people run around in panic. I hear people shouting, screaming for help. Some are crying and are begging for their lives to be saved.

Ting~

I wince at the ringing in my ears as I look around after the incident. I figure out that I am down, with my back on the floor. I sit down and meters in front of me lies a crying Stacey where Yohanne is reaching out to her to woo her. My first instinct tells me to stand up and go to the fallen chandelier.

Harris.

I take a step.

Mom.

People are in panic, some are crying, some are grieving. It is such a mess that people are actually running around and they do not know what they should do.

Harris might be there.

My vision adjusts to the mess. As my view of the chandelier gets clearer, I see the unknowing bodies of dead people lying under it. Imagine, an almost 7 foot tall and around 10 meters wide in diameter crystal chandelier falling on a crowd of people dancing? That’s...

My knees begin to shake and my heartbeat gets louder and louder. I look at the faces of those who are now dead. Their eyes are soullessly open while their mouths are agape. I cover my mouth as tears start to fall onto my face again. A movement takes my attention, I look at this man on the right, a stranger and he’s breathing heavily as he rotates his head to look for people. We lock eyes.

“Run,” He mouths to me. “Run.”

I gasp from the chills I feel. I am about to reach to him and ask for help when I feel a pair of hands hug me from behind as it lifts me from the ground and carry me like a sack to somewhere.

“Bring me down!” I hit the perpetrator. “Someone needs help over there. Someone is still alive!” I feel so powerless as the person who carries me goes towards a bunch of crying people. “We can still save him.”

I say in desperation. I feel my throat getting hoarse. Slowly, my arms weaken and I can only hang behind him feeling defeated. The man takes me somewhere away from the fallen chandelier.

“I think, that pitch-black matter destroys everything it gets to touch. Also, there are too many people at the door now. I don’t think we can make it out on time,” a man in his late 20s approaches the guy who has been carrying me.

“The stampede has made more casualties than the actual incident. There are dead bodies on the floor and on the staircase from being suffocated and stepped on. We still do not know if there are going to be a lot more people who will die as the black matter still gets bigger. The chandelier is turning black, too. It seems like it affects everything it gets on to,” an unfamiliar woman informs the person who is carrying me.

“How is Stacey?”

“The broken glass on her right leg is still bleeding. It might affect the way she will walk. We need to go to the clinic to help her remove the shard,” I hear Yohanne reply.

Wait.. what? What happened to Stacey?”

“PUT ME DOWN!” I pat the guy’s back and he immediately puts me down on my feet. “Steven?”

It has been Steven who has been carrying me. Honestly, I am a bit disappointed. I honestly thought that he has been Harris but I have been wrong all along.

Where is Harris? Did he die, too?

I turn to Stacey and I find her leaning on Yohanne while her right leg is bleeding. It looks so haunting that this beautiful woman in a pink dress is now half-covered in blood. It seems like Yohanne already did her first aid but the big shard of glass (Around 6 inches long and 3 inches wide) that is piercing through her skin is still present.

“Oh my god!” I tell her in surprise. I turn to Yohanne too and she now has tiny cuts on her face and while her eyeglasses are broken. She seems to be wearing it still because she can’t see anything without it. I touch her cheek, this pretty pale face will definitely get a scar. “Let’s get out from here, okay? We’ll find a way to wake up.” I tell the two ladies while crying. 

Yohhanne also reaches out to my torso and that's how I figure that I have been hurt, and I am scraped, too. That I am bleeding there, too. I don't feel any pain though. But it hurts me, seeing us like this. I hope and I will make sure that we can still wake up from this nightmare. The mirror, right, we have to get to the mirror.

“THE DOOR WON’T BUDGE!” We hear a shout from the terrace on the third floor. More people shouted and starts to run around thinking that it is the end of their lives. The black matter is still getting bigger and bigger, the one on the ceiling has already reached the walls, the one on the chandelier has already spread on the floor. It turns everything it touches into black like it is eating everything it gets to put its hands on.

“No, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I’m going to wake up, We will leave this place,” I hear a woman whispering beside the unnamed woman earlier. She’s shaking and her lips are pale. She looks like she is undergoing some delusions and will pass out any moment now. “Ye, we can leave this place and I- and we- we will never go back here again.” She continued chanting for herself.

I face Steven, “By the way, where is Melvin?”

“He just went to the DJ booth to get something,” Steven tells me with worry evident in his voice. His feet can’t stop tapping on the ground, too.

“Okay, guys, there is a door here that leads to the staircases to the rooftop,” I remember. I look around and figure out that we are quite lucky because the spot where we are standing is just a few meters away from the entrance of the hallway towards that door. That path is on the left side of where we currently are. “It’s that way.” I pointed it out. “We have to get out of this place before we can properly create a plan as our time is running out from here. I have seen this at the casino before and I can say that this black matter doesn’t consume the entire hotel at once. We will be safer there for some time.”

“Sure, let’s go,” the unnamed woman agrees with me.

“Sounds like a plan,” the man gives me a thumbs up.

The shivering woman, Stacey, and Yohanne smile at me in agreement.

“Let’s not leave Melvin,” Steven reminds me.

“Of course, the moment he starts running towards us, we will signal him to follow us inside that hallway,” I assure Steven. “Anyway, Steve, thank you for what you did to me earlier.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t want any of my friends hurt.” He tells me.

“I’m pretty scared for Harris,” Stacey says.

“I’m sure he’ll find a way to keep himself safe, Stace,” what Yohanne has said honestly calms me and Stacey. Yeah, he should be safe. I hope he is safe.

If I did lose my mom, I hope I will not lose him, too.

“Melvin is coming!” Steven tells us. He signals Melvin to enter the pathway I have been referring to. Melvin gives an OK sign and we start running inside the hallway, going to that door where Harris and I have been to earlier. Steven takes her sister to a piggyback carry so we will not slow down from running.

When we get to the door, Yohanne immediately opens it and we get to go inside. We leave it like that so Melvin can enter when he arrives. We turn around and see that Melvin is almost near the pathway entrance.

“Faster, Melvin, Faster!” I hear Steven call to him.

“You’re doing great, Melvin!” I also shout, “You’re almost there! We’re waiting for you!”

I can feel the adrenaline inside of me as we call four our comrade trying his best to run and reach us. Melvin is almost at the opening of the hallway when an unexpected thing happens.

A loud bang can be heard from the bar.

And a huge party speaker falls on Melvin as I hear a loud cry beside me, “NOOOOOO!”

It is from Steven.

And the unnamed man we are with closes the door in front of us after Steven attempts to go while Yohanne and the other girls grip on his hands so they can stop him from running to the man he loves, Melvin, who is now dead.