Felix pulled himself from his cerulean pool, chlorine-soaked toes wriggling in the leafy turf. As he toweled off, he tilted his head skyward and soaked in the toasty heat. He’d strode the plains of Tanzania, picked his way through the dense and dewy Amazon, even basked on the rosy beaches of Bermuda, but no paradise was quite as serene. In the silence, the warm buzz alone flowed through his body like a Buddhist mantra.
Finally, it’s the vacation that lasts forever.
Pulling on a Ralph Lauren polo, Felix strolled into his private bar and popped the cork on the vintage whiskey waiting patiently upon the countertop. The little cabana was furnished to the nines, rows of antique liquor decorating the booth beside a casual sitting area framed in mounted seashells. A neon sign, pink electric light burning “Malibu” above the bar stools where little bobbing girls in grassy skirts played their ukuleles, completed the tropical condo atmosphere. Clinking bottles invaded Felix’s imagination, the lounge pounding with laughter and conversation as he played host for his lively, sun kissed company. An itchy eagerness tickled the goosebumps on his arms as he watched the scene play out in his head, sucking golden spirits from his shot glass and grinning suavely at his hazy companions.
Like a rock through a tranquil pond, a grisly shriek pierced Felix’s brain fog, shuddering some drops from his glass and interrupting the fantasy. A cold sweat ran down his neck as his eyes peered out from under the veranda and hunted for the source of the impossible sound. Nothing had changed; the decorative rocks and patio tiling the perimeter of the pool were barren and stark, and the verdant spindles crowning the water-side tree trunks hadn’t fluttered an inch.
Felix set his drink on the dark iron lawn furniture and stilled his hands. He was the only doll of this perfect dollhouse; no trick of the booze would change that.
Still framed in the fiery glow of the cabana, Felix snagged a metal chair and steadied his frantic mind with more idle fantasy. Across the little table sat a heart-shaped face, long amber hair curled in circlets over her hunched shoulders. The light of the phone colored her image in robin’s egg plasma. When she wasn’t rifling through his wallet for the platinum card, she was thumbing her device, snapping selfies and flaunting her golden prize. Felix flipped through the photobook of his mind scouring for the day they’d met, but the film was burnt, and the negatives were overexposed. In the end, she was like everyone else: flimsy and cardboard. With a vacant sigh, he scattered her from the chair like a gust of ashy particles.
A bolt of searing pain bit the skin of his wrist, sending him toppling from the seat in a startled heap on the turf. He howled in agony and confusion; his hand had only grazed the table for a moment, and why was it so hot? Gasping, he scrambled like a dog to the poolside and plunged his hand into the cool, pristine water. After some deep breaths, he gingerly lifted his arm and crossed his eyes at the unbroken flesh.
Chest beating harder against the stone rim, Felix slapped his face with waves of drink from the bath. He knuckled his eyes vigorously through the sting of chemicals. Bracing himself as they creaked open, he was relieved to behold his own face alone in the reflective ripples. Despite the troubled surface, his complexion was statuesque, grounding him in his own firm eternity. Whatever delusions were creeping over his shoulder, he still had his Roman features to momentarily charm himself back to reality.
He lay vaguely like this, mesmerized by the mirror, for a time that passed silently and without recognition. Like a word that loses meaning the more you speak it, his face gradually lost its gestalt integrity, his eyes, mouth, and chin crumbling away like puzzle pieces and allowing others to resurface. His left iris faded hazel, the pit of skin surrounding it staining red with raw tears. His teeth and lips dripped away, dispelled by a contorting cavity that gaped in spiteful anguish. His stubble evaporated, and his jawline narrowed like that of a bony, emaciated child. The familiar images sang to him in siren’s minor as he inched steadily over the edge and touched noses with the twisting, tortured memory.
The claws were crushing his windpipe before he could make contact. Felix writhed and tore at the desiccated arm emerging from the pool’s surface, but its grip was frigid steel. In his fingers came sloughs of the monster’s skin, its overgrown nails drawing trickles of wet blood from his neck. His eyes bulged like the porcupine in his heaving lungs as he wriggled and pulsed. Though the attack came from below, his flailing limbs gained no purchase upon the slick pool patio.
Stormy spasms of nausea shook his body as the world faded in and out. Tensing up every last drop of strength, Felix pounded the ferocious appendage and clung tightly to a single thread of consciousness. A bloody earthquake rumbled in his head, the buzz tripling like a tsunami on all sides. The cacophony screeched its apex, and the bone finally cracked in half under Felix’s strained assault, releasing him in gasps from the vicious vice grip.
Wheezing through his sandpaper throat, he wrangled free of the stiff fingers and leapt dizzily from the pool. He stumbled and swayed with the sickly tilting of his vision, falling against the trellised arch beside the cabana and showering its lavender orchids with burning vomit. The din, now a booming, crackling static, chased away his thoughts like a woodpecker drilling through his ears, churning his stomach with its razor-sharp pitch. Just when he felt his blood couldn’t run any colder, a spastic splashing shocked his reluctant gaze backwards once again.
A tangled weed of hair flung in frenzies above the surface as the vengeful phantom ripped through the water and clawed the stone, anxious to yank herself from the bath with her one working arm. Felix blinked furiously and kneaded his face, desperate to vanquish the creature from his feverish delirium, but her convulsions intensified with the ringing reverberations in his temple. Like a maimed fish, she finally hurled herself onto dry land, dragging her fractured forearm behind her as she hefted to her feet.
Felix splintered and creaked, loose screws clanging in the corners of his mind as the boards of his reality swung loose and danced in the chaotic tempest. The wind whistled one coherent command through the splitting slats.
Run.
He tripped over himself, cowering from the demon and bolting for the peaceful mountains beckoning to him in the distance.
Wall.
His body met brick, stunting his escape.
Mural.
Wall. Floor. Ceiling.
His gaze danced like an insect across the painted clouds above him and flitted to the plastic, load-bearing trees.
Shelter. Underground.
Façade.
The cabana, the faux structure of shingles and stage wood, set the scene and glowed the shambling specter in her own, scuzzy spotlight. With a rotting grin, she began to speak.
“It looks so real.” Her speech, wet and guttural, infiltrated his brain from every direction. “I guess you’d expect that for 18 million dollars. It kept the radiation out, but we will never leave..”
The room behind her was suddenly packed, projections of the past limping forward in a messy legion, features drowned in waves of melted skin, flesh blackened in sores and blisters. They were merely mannequins now, but Felix recognized the sullen spirits of his friends and family. Like a hive, they murmured in unison.
Why did you close the door on us, Felix? Why did you lock us out?
The voices pleaded louder and louder, echoing in vibrations through the floor and ceiling as the dead marched onward towards their manic murderer. Their sorrow radiated, their rage nuclear.
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? droned incessantly. Spits of fire curled the wallpaper, flames licking the sides of the cabana and charring the turf in a bristling blaze.
Why? Why? Why? Why? Wh-
Hungry hands surged for their victim as he jittered and trembled, extracting howls of pain when their branding iron fingers clutched his skin. He kicked his legs helplessly as they raked him over the scorching grass and held him over the burning pool.
Excuses flooded his mind.
There isn’t enough food.
You’d all go crazy in here.
We’re not sure where the bomb is landing anyway.
But the echoes died in the collapsing chamber of his mind, the truth a hidden room no longer obscured by sprawling hallways and gilded pillars.
None of you deserve my perfect sanctuary.
The fire lit a fuse in Felix’s eyes as his face contorted into fleshy wrinkles of hatred and scorn. Confusion melted, a white-hot ball of metal fury steaming in its wake. Viewing the transformation, the girl with the broken arm leaned in, her rancid breath like decaying fruit scrunching his nose.
“This part never gets old.”
The churning pool of flames bellowed, growling like the stomach of an underworldly beast. Felix gave one final burst of violent energy, but the shackles of his fate were eternally binding. When brought before the river, he threw his head back and shrieked, swallowing the inferno as it likewise devoured him.
“Finally, it’s the vacation that lasts forever.”
[Inspired by this Forbes article: Bizarre Underground Bomb Shelter Mansion Listed In Las Vegas For $18 Million (forbes.com)]
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