Detective Mertens - Personal Audio Journal. Final Entry
Recorded privately. Not submitted for review.
“They’re here!” someone shouted. Bells began to ring throughout the island, causing the room to erupt into chaos as people scurried about carrying weapons.
Two hurried men with gray, bushy eyebrows unraveled the painting, but the woman with the wooden necklace stopped them.
“We’ll do it. It needs to sense us,” she said with certainty.
Even with footsteps thundering around us, we unrolled the canvas as if it were an artifact thousands of years old. Once it was stretched out, we pinned it to the wall. Without hesitation, the woman stepped into the painting.
“Don’t you want a weapon?” I asked.
She continued without answering.
I looked around at the frantic movements of the resistance, took a deep breath, and then stepped inside. Just like before, it hit me; my senses flared like sparks off a live wire. Colors danced in front of me.
When my senses finally settled, I looked around. Up ahead, the woman moved quickly through a meadow of unnatural neon grass. With every purposeful step, the blades parted and sealed shut behind her.
Above us, a warm breeze lifted pollen into a spiral. It hovered for a moment, as if it too sensed the urgency, then sped off toward a towering elm tree in the distance.
Within minutes, we were under the ancient elm. I looked up at the impressive branches as my companion pressed her palm to the cracked bark.
The elm responded: “Red shapes will show you the way.”
I stumbled back. “That thing just talked?”
She nodded but hurried forward. I wanted to listen to the elm again, or lie down beside the clouds that slept on the grass. But we had a mission. We had to keep moving.
Eventually, we reached a long vine-covered wall. Red shapes pulsed across its surface like cells in a living organism. The mysterious woman leaned in and whispered something I couldn’t hear. The shapes shifted, merging into a doorway.
She turned to me. “Beyond this door is the State’s broadcast headquarters,” she said. “All screens. All frequencies. Across every city in your world. Show them the painting.”
I hesitated. “What if—”
She touched her necklace. The wooden carvings shifted under her fingers. “Let me handle any resistance.”
I nodded then jumped at the crackling roar of fire. We both turned to witness the largest inferno I’d ever seen. Flames leapt like whipped horses, torching everything in their path.
“The State has taken the island. We will not have a way back,” she said, sadness flickering in her voice.
She stepped through the door. I followed. As soon as I entered, gunshots rang out.
Detective Mertens. Final entry.
Do not destroy transmission.
