Era of Madness

Last dream

Two horribly mutilated bodies entered Tyler's sight, a man's and a woman's. Blood was flowing from their wounds on the ground, creating a puddle that kept getting larger, until it reached the tip of Tyler's old damaged shoes.

Around him, it was both as if the world was spinning, and at the same time wasn't moving.

"Nothing happened, nothing happened!"

"Mom? Dad? This can't be real, right?"

"What happened? Nothing. What?"

"Wake up. Come on, get up! It can't be over just like this!"

"Dead. Dead. Haha, of course it ended up like this, haha!"

.

.

"Gah!" Tyler screamed as he woke up...

... in a mistless Ghost London!? Was it... New London before its destruction?

No, it wasn't. Looking closely, it wasn't the same. Even if the global structure of the city was the same, he spotted a few differences everywhere he looked at. And most of all, there wasn't any modern technology designed to ease the inhabitants' life. It almost looked like it was some prototype for New London. A prototype, or...

"Welcome to the original London" Saginus greeted. "More precisely, the original London from the twenty-first century. Isn't the view lovely? Look, there's the original Big Ben"

He pointed his finger and Tyler looked in this direction. Indeed, it was undoutably the original version of the famous clock tower. He might have appreciated this rare occasion to admire such a monument of the past if it wasn't for the latter events. Now, when he looked at it, all he could think about was how many zombies could be stacked in there.

Looking back at his own position, he saw that both him and Saginus were sat at a small table at an outdoor coffee. With each a cup of coffee in front of them, with a jug of milk in the middle.

"Oh, sorry, I almost forgot what you just went through" Saginus scoffed, before executing a coarse imitation of a zombie. "By the way, are you going to add milk to your coffee?"

"No" Tyler replied on a dry tone.

"Good, I always thought milk in coffee was disgusting anyway"

Saginus threw the jug away. It landed right on the head of a woman crossing the road with a stroller. The woman, hit on the back of the head, fell down. The arriving driver, that had expected her to have finished crossing the road at the moment he reached her, didn't manage to stop in time and, with an infamous cracking noise, he drove over the woman's head and the stroller with the baby in it.

Even if Tyler knew it was only a dream, he was still horrified:

"What's your damn problem?" he shouted at Saginus.

"Huh? I don't have any problem beside the fact I was feeling a bit petty" Saginus replied, shrugging.

"I see, so you really are a Silence cult's scum, uh?"

Saginus acted as if he was outraged:

"How stereotype of you to assume that every evil person Blessed by the Silent One is part of the Silent cult... oh, wait, it's actually pretty logical, nevermind" he laughed.

"So you're an apostle?" Tyler asked while wondering what would happen if he killed Saginus in the dream.

Likely nothing, but it'd still be satisfying.

"Almost" the long-haired man replied. "Oh, but it reminds me, I never officially presented myself"

He stood up from his chair and executed a mocking bow: