Beauty

He emerged from the small opening made in the door's corroded metal. The ground was gritty and hard. Tiny, sharp fragments of stone prodded the tender flesh of palms and knees, not deeply enough to draw blood, but just deeply enough to radiate tingling discomfort from the points of penetration. He rose at the earliest opportunity and brushed the clinging shards away. They fell to the coarse earth in a cascading patter of musical clicks and clacks. He watched them land, not looking away from the gravelly earth until every last one had fallen.

He looked around. This room was much larger than the previous one. He decided the previous room was indeed a small one. The ceiling here was dark blue smudged with wisps of gray. A single round light was in the ceiling, brighter here than it had been in the previous room. He could not look directly at it for long before the flashes of color returned, this time speckled with dots of black.

He scanned to the left, then the right. The walls presumably met the floor a goodly distance away, but objects blocked the line of sight. They were different sizes but all roughly the same shape, rectangular. Many of them had black openings set at regular intervals on their outer surface. Few of them were perfectly rectangular. Many of them had parts missing, gaping wounds in their surfaces which revealed tubes of metal set in stony flesh. He did not know where the missing parts had gone.

He turned and looked behind, at the place which held the small room, which held the box, and saw another object similar to the others. It loomed overhead and cast a long shadow across the dark earth. The air moved once more, dragging chunks of stone in its wake, rasping and chittering along the broad, straight paths which lay between the ruined objects. He felt it push, felt it form a buffeting cocoon which tugged and whispered supplications of surrender to its force. He was not dragged along.

He still held the crude tool in one hand. It was heavy. He looked down at it and decided to keep it, for now. It could prove useful, if there were other doors to break. He could discard it later, if needed.

He decided to walk against the wind's push. Striving against the resistance felt somehow natural, proper, right. He walked for some time. Chips of stone moved in the air currents, biting and stinging. He could taste it, smell it, dry and gritty, The light burned overhead, sterile and unmoving. The shadows of the towering objects which flanked the path gave occasional respite from the light's glare. He noticed that smaller, squarer, objects lay nestled between the larger ones at times. He could see into these smaller ones through their openings. They, too, were made of cells, rooms within rooms.

The wind grew fiercer and it stirred more and more of the powdery ground in its wake. Stinging bits of rock danced in whorls, spinning skyward in a powerful vortex before losing their momentum and returning to earth. The fine dust hung suspended in the air and formed a haze which began to spread gradually. It crept in bilious clouds that dimmed the ever-present light from a pristine white to a murky red, and from there darker yet. It grew more difficult to breathe.

He decided to take shelter. He entered one of the small objects. It was empty and sterile. A thick layer of dust clung to every surface, perhaps flung inside by prior storms. He moved to the rearmost part of the room and hunkered down in the corner facing the walls. He curled up. The wind roared now, as if it were a living creature. Dust and sand and stone flew, and the blackness swallowed everything.

When it subsided, it seemed as though it never had been, but for the knee-deep mix of gravel and sand which filled the room. The light shone again, bright and white as before. He straightened and rose. A thick layer of sediment flowed and heaped, sending fresh clouds of fine dust puffing in all directions.

He waded through the deposit, taking long and loping strides to raise the feet enough for another step. He reached the exit and emerged into the light again, looking around. Banks of grit were piled along the sides of the objects, tall and broad slopes of brown and black that sluggishly shifted and stirred in the weakened breeze. The center of the path was clear of obstruction. He forged a way there, then turned and resumed walking.