Into the Rift

Into the Rift

Just moments ago, the sounds of commerce could easily be heard against the soothing tunes of music overhead. Sorority girls giggled playfully as they relived the days events, matched by the sounds of children's laughter as families walked along the marble-tiled aisles. A bewildering array of shops and kiosks lined either side of those massive corridors, set high on the many levels that rose and fell along the many floors. Llyraven Point was a rather prestigious shopping center, as far as shopping centers went, catering to all manner of customers. It was a place that glimmered like gold, well furnished brass fixtures adorning its walls against the white-tiled floors, iron and steel set against dark lacquered wood.

Tujoma wandered along a scenic mezzanine just outside, head tilted leftwards as he looked across the vast city of New Haven. It was a city bathed in gold, the beauty of those massive skyscrapers and buildings something to behold. But something had changed during the course of the pandas walk, as the cascades of light around him began to darken. It was as though he had phased out of the reality he had known his whole life, only to wander into a different one altogether. At the back of his mind, he could feel as though something were amiss, but couldn't quite place it. It was as though a permeating gloom hung in the very atmosphere that enveloped him, but couldn't attribute such a notion to any particular cause. The absence of other people in plain sight was somewhat unsettling, as the entire area around the mall was generally well populated, even at this hour of the day.

Bracing his thick arms against a nearby railing, he looked out across the city in deep reflection on this fact. The city had largely taken on the look of a black silhouette against the orange glow of the setting sun, as if all of it's own light had mysteriously vanished in those passing moments. There were no lights of neon bright, or the dull monotonous shine of the street lamps. The panda was distracted from this fact, not quite noticing how much darker the city had become. He turned to continue on his fateful path, his jade green gaze falling to the cobblestone walkway below him.

The path ahead was blocked by a “riot bar,” a raised metallic barricade that had occasion to rise through select floors across the city in the event of a social disturbance. Its solid-steel surface stood stalwart against his approach, and remained tall enough that he couldn't possibly climb over it. Curious... There wasn't any manner of audible warning, or even the blare of a distant police siren. Was there actually a riot going on? By this point, he was feeling just a little weirded out, but couldn't be bothered to go back the way he had come. Why was he even trying to get into the mall at this point? Going back the way he'd come didn't feel right, for whatever reason, and he felt genuinely curious, if just a little more than uncomfortable. Ambivalence matched itself with indecisiveness, just before the panda would press forth.

He couldn't remember just what possessed him to enter the nearest service entrance of the mall, but felt strangely compelled beyond any logical reason. The flaking message on the rusted out surface of the door read; “Authorized Personnel Only Beyond This Point,” but Tujoma openly ignored such a message. A chubby paw grabbed hold of the heavy entry bar, the groan of metal grinding against metal easily heard as a creak echoed across the inner hall. “...Hello?” He eventually broke the silence, expecting to see one of the maintenance crew patrolling the service corridor. No one. Pin-up boards hung crookedly against the curiously aging walls in varying states of disrepair, very noticeable cracks and fractures set deep in the surfaces of granite and cement. Papers and food-wrappers littered the floor, file folders ripped apart and thrown asunder along with the other rubbish. All the while, there was the distant sound of murmurs and mumbling that could be heard as dull white noise, indicating the presence of people...somewhere. It sounded to have come from all directions, and yet no one appeared to be around him.

Along the leftmost side of the corridor, a small unassuming door stood, marked “Mall Entrance: Section D” by the rusted metal sign bolted to its surface. Tujoma made his way towards it with a quiet, sauntering walk, soon shoving past the heavy entryway.

Stepping into the mall, Tujoma was completely taken aback by the sights set before him. His jaw dropped as his eyes grew wide, straining against the darkness. The entirety of the mall was bathed in shadow, the sudden absence of light almost blinding. The first question raised was the possibility of a power outage, though as he began to wander into the halls, there appeared to be a few functioning lights glowing weakly in the darkness. His nose wrinkled at the smell of stale air in the pandas midst, as if decades of water damage had left its mark. The silence was deafening, the sudden absence of sound sending a chill down the pandas spine. It would appear as though the mall as a whole was left deserted, but there were signs of blatant vandalism and some manner of disturbance. Those hushed murmurs and frantic whispers that he had heard in the corridor were completely absent, and there did not appear to be -anyone- in sight. Though, the sight of movement out of the corner of the pandas eye was just a little more than disconcerting as his eyes darted leftwards.

Tujoma found himself far more preoccupied in thought as he became disenfranchised with this strange new world around him. The deeper he ventured into the mall, the more hollow he began to feel, as suppressed feelings of a more frantic nature rippled up along the reach of his spine. The mall as a whole appeared to be...dead, condemned. It was in a severe state of dilapidation, the signs of decay and ruin apparent. Those brass fixtures that had once shown bright in the color of gold had dulled considerably, now caked in greening layers of oxidation. The brilliant shine of iron and steel had since taken on a red and orange veneer with the rust that coated its surfaces. The floors of marble tile under his heavy foot falls were fractured and cracked, sharp ridges showing rather deep indentations in the floor. The many shops and kiosks that lined the aisles were more or less boarded up or destroyed, display glass shattered against miscellaneous debris littering the floors.

It was rather jarring, how much the mall had changed from the way things were, the way they used to be. Tujoma remembered the welcoming sights and sounds that those shops and kiosks had offered in the past, the entire stretch of the malls interior bathed in white light. And now, it was a derelict of a structure, barely supported by what was likely to be a crumbling foundation. He half expected the floor to collapse between heavy foot falls, the support beams of the lower levels giving way.

The state of disarray that much of the open area displayed drew pause as the panda continued to strain his eyes against that infinite darkness. There was a sign of a struggle, as eatery furniture lay strewn about, and the crackle of some form of audio in the darkness. And then he heard it. A most beauteously haunting melody that played through the darkness, curiously inviting. It drew him like a moth to a flame, motivated more out of curiosity than anything else. His eyes traced the brass surface of a curiously out-of-place gramophone that lay playing on a brick separator. It's brass and lacquered wood surface supported a pristine record on top bearing a red label, sound emanating audibly from the horn. Tujoma couldn't help but stare down incredulously, a look of surprise and awe marking his more subtle features. Being so close, his ears twitched as he listened to the melodic tune mid-song.

“...and then one day, you were gone. If only I could look upon your face, I'd tell you that I love you, in all loving grace... I would say 'Till death do we part,' as I still love you with all my heart..”

He found himself strangely enamored with the song as the melodic tune played on. Though, he did not notice that he was not truly alone in this ruined place. Foreign sets of eyes watched him ominously from within the ruined diner, just across the short stretch of the malls corridor.

Commentary:

Actually sat on this for a few days as I mulled over a good enough description to match the picture. It was completed around Saturday night. I'm honestly on the fence about it, as I imagined something a little deeper and more conveying of what I had in mind. Not one to waste time, I settled for what I could type up without taking too long with it. The picture is intentionally meant to be dark (quite literally,) but hopefully not too dark for you, the viewers.
As far as the picture itself goes, Tujo is a little distorted in form and figure. While his arms are generally pretty thick, and he has a sort of pear-shaped figure due to his ursine features, his head and neck feel a little too small compared his body. This was actually something I had been working on several months ago, but was lost in my digital portfolio as work and projects began to consume much of my attention. Picking it up now, I felt as though it were decent enough to see to completion.
This actually is slated to occur later in Tujomas story, in the comic of Genova Dei. It'll also be a sort of picture-series that will show a few scene transitions around Tujoma. Sort've has that Lovecraftian occult feel to it, or that of Silent Hill. We'll see where this goes.