The Box

Warpsichord is a love story, but with robots, zombies, monsters and dark rooms at every turn.



....one of the Anterooms was dressed in darkness. If there had been a door it would have closed behind me i suppose, but in its absence the air thickened and my ears popped against the pressure.

I slid on my knees nervous of the darkness and began to crawl forward. Until i hit a barrier.

It was a struggle to pull myself to my feet and as i grasped at the monolith before me a layer became soft and like fabric. It peeled like skin and released leaving me crumpled again on my knees.

The flesh removed i could begin to see the edges on the structure, glimmers from an unknown light source. My eyes were straining to see, burning in the effort so the light may have emitted from them.

To touch, it felt solid. Hard and immovable metal, still as bone. But visually it appeared to be moving. Undulating. It rose and fell slowly like the shallow breath of a recent sleep. I felt a strange comfort in our symmetry.

Now on my feet; the box came navel high and its relief top shifted slightly under my touch.

I opened the lid with a palmful of blood and placed my wet hands inside.

There within were millions of taught strings. I ran my hands across them, harplike, to find that they were irregular and unparallel. Some thick and metallic, others seemingly made of tightly rolled paper. There was a halo trailing after my wandering strumming fingers, a hum, but blunt and sharp simultaneously. Almost silent but piercing in the surrounding vacuum.

The hum grew into a rumble. The rumble to a roar, and as my bones began to shatter and my skin tore back, the blackness morphed to sickening colour.....