Love, Death and Robots. Volumes 2 & 3

I cautiously parted the grass with my fingers, and looked in the direction of the sound, and coming through the grass were a number of men, all of them peculiarly bald, the moonlight reflecting off their heads like mirrors. The grass whipped open as they came and closed back behind them. For a brief moment I felt relieved, as they must be other passengers or train employees sent to look for me, and would direct me to back to the train. It would be an embarrassing moment, but in the end, all would be well.

And then I realized something. I hadn’t been actually absorbing what I was seeing. They were human shaped alright, but... they had no faces. There was a head, and there were spots where the usual items should be—nose, eyes, mouth—but those spots were indentions. The moonlight gathered on those shiny, white faces, and reflected back out. They were the lights in the grass and they were why the lights moved, because they moved. There were other lights beyond them, way out, and I drew the conclusion that there were many of these human-shaped things, out in the grass, close and far away, moving toward me, and moving away, thick as aphids. They had a jerky movement about them, as if they were squirming on a griddle. They pushed through the grass and fanned out wide, and some of them had sticks, and they began to beat the grass before them. I might add that as they did, the grass, like a living thing whipped away from their strikes and opened wide and closed up behind them. They were coming ever nearer to where I was. I could see they were of all different shapes and sizes and attire. Some of them wore very old clothes, and there were others who were dressed in rags, and even a couple who were completely devoid of clothes, and sexless, smooth all over, as if anything that distinguished their sex or their humanity had been ironed out. Still, I could tell now, by the general shape of the bodies, that some of them may have been women, and certainly some of the smaller ones were children. I even saw moving among them a shiny white body in the shape of a dog.

In the same way I had felt it unwise to call out to them, I now felt it unwise to wait where I was. I knew they knew I was in the grass, and that they were looking for me.

I broke and ran. I was spotted, because behind me, from those faces without mouths, there somehow rose up a cry. A kind of squeal, like something being slowly ground down beneath a boot heel.

I heard them as they rushed through the grass after me. I could hear their feet thundering against the ground. It was as if a small heard of buffalo were in pursuit. I charged through the grass blindly. Once I glanced back over my shoulder and saw their numbers were larger than I first thought. Their shapes broke out of the grass, left and right and close and wide. The grass was full of them, and their faces glowed as if inside their thin flesh were lit lanterns.

Finally, there was a place where the grass was missing and there was only earth. It was a relief from the cloying grass, but it was a relief that passed swiftly, for now I was fully exposed. Moving rapidly toward me from the front were more of those moon-lit things. I turned, and saw behind me the others were very near. They began to run all out toward me, they were also closing in from my right.

There was but one way for me to go, to the left, and wide, back into the grass. I did just that. I ran as hard as I could run. The grass sloped up slightly, and I fought to climb the hill; the hill that I had lost such a short time ago. It had reappeared, or rather I had stumbled up on it.

My feet kept slipping as I climbed up it. I glanced down, and there in that weird light I could see that my boots were sliding in what looked to be rotting piles of fat-glazed bones; the earth was slick with them.

I could hear the things closing behind me, making that sound that a face without a mouth should be unable to make; that horrid screech. It was deafening.

I was almost at the peak of the hill. I could see the grass swaying up there. I could hear it whispering in the wind between the screeches of those pursuing me, and just as I made the top of the hill and poked my head through the grass and saw the train, I was grabbed.

Here is a peculiar thing that from time to time I remember, and shiver when I do, but those hands that had hold of my legs were cold as arctic air. I could feel them through my clothes, they were so cold. I tried to kick loose but wasn’t having any luck. I had fallen when they grabbed me, and I was clutching at the grass at the top of the hill. It was pulling through my hands and fingers, and the edges were sharp; they cut into me like razors. I could feel the warm blood running through my fingers, but still I hung to that grass.