(This is a continuation of my dreamstory. Part 1)

~~
He opened the door. Cigarettes. Syrup. Urine. Burnt hair. The poker and blackjack tables were all upturned, chips scattered everywhere Oh my god! I should get some.. No. Keep focused. What is going on here? Where is everyone? Carefully picking his way though the debris, he reaches the door to the slot machine floor.

He slowly pushed the door open, and on first glimpse of the casino floor and the acrid stench of burnt hair and flesh reached his nose, he vomited. Cigarettes. Syrup. Death. Vomit.

As he regained what was left of his senses, he looked into the room. Through the smoke, he could see the slot machines on the floor, still flashing and beeping and buzzing. Their cheerfulness violently contrasting the apocalyptic seen in front of him. Bodies, hundreds of them, heaped upon the tables where the slots used to be.

Still smoking, sizzling, these were hardly recognizable as humans. Burnt and mangled, the demons played Mister Potato Head with them. Ripping limb from trunk, and reattaching with reckless abandon: arms, eyes, ears, noses. A human mosaic. A Picasso in flesh. Cigarettes. Smoke. Vomit.

Clambering over the chirping slots, he made for the front door. Terrified, speechless. He was going to leave his fellow gamblers to the same fate as these tortured souls. I have to get out of here. What IS this? What ARE THOSE? The sounds stopped. The lights shut off. A siren wails from no where, increasing in volume and pitch, like those sirens on public emergency broadcasts.

He falls. Shit. Shit shit shit. His ears splitting, he looks around him, trying to find an exit. In the dim light entering the glass front doors, he sees them. The bodies. Grotesque marionettes: dancing, flying, flailing this way and that. Mouths agape, sirens wailing in unison. Both a terrible and oddly beautiful sight. Or, it could have been in another time, another place. A unholy choir, singing of death.

But right now, he was too scared to realize his bowels evacuated. Too scared to realize his ankle was broken, and he wasn’t going to be running anywhere. Too scared to realize the bodies stopped screaming, and it was now just his own screams filling the room. But the others in the lounge weren’t. They heard the sirens, just as they now hear his screams. I thought he was looking for help? What’s going on out there? Cigarettes. Syrup. Urine.

Two of the puppets close in on him, grab his arm. Pull. Popping as his shoulders dislocate, and more screaming. He rises into the air, and stares into the fluorescing upside down eyes of the puppet before him. That child’s voice again–Laughing. Giggling. Almost innocent.–escapes the crooked mouth, and tells him “Don’t worry, mister. This is going to be fun!”

And with that, a bright light fills the room, engulfing him in flame, smells of sulfur and death. His screaming crescendos and then. Full Stop. His body no different than the bodies of the hundreds lying below. Twisted and surreal. Fire. Sulfur. Cigarettes. Syrup.

“See?” Giggle. “Fun!”

~~

And so ends part 2. Part 3 will come soon.