Isis
Celestial

Hot. 

Yellow. 

Desert. 

Fear. 

Why, this tower? What the heck is so fascinating about this tall, imposing, anonymous, monolithic structure? Why was it built? By whom? How, when... What is it doing in the middle of these desolate lands?

Magnetism.

Why did you decide to go inside? What do you hope to find? It's just any old building. Strange, but abject in its normalcy. You don't want to, yet you're forced to want. But why don't you want to? And why must you be forced to want? You don't know. I don't know. And you keep walking. Everywhere there's an unnatural silence, a piercing haze, an arid fog that takes away the λογος, if there were any. You don't know, but you must. You must.

There it is, finally. The tower. There it is, up high. The antenna. And the vibrations it emits, can you feel them...? You can. How? You don't know, but you perceive them, passing right through you, infecting you, releasing an invisible plague, contaminating the surrounding territory, yellow with drought. You can't understand, but you know that's where you need to go. Just outside the entrance, you see it. It's a pager. But what...? Once again, you don't know. And, once again, an impulse pushes you to take it and send an SOS. But, an SOS... to enter a radio tower? Yes. You don't know, but, yes.

An abrupt rustle, a swirl of wind scattering sweat all around. And it's the beginning of the end: a sandstorm, sudden, lethal. Surrounding you, choking you, oppressing you. You have iron bands squeezing your face, rusty lashes cutting off your breath and tearing you away from life, a whirling cyclone lifting you, slamming you against the wall, picking you up again to finish you off. Then, it stops. Everything seems to pause, in an esoteric limbo. You could count the grains of sand, suspended in the air, so small and so deadly. And meanwhile, distant sounds, piercing echoes, and again, and again, vibrations, while you hold the pager tightly to you, without knowing why, and onward still, and...

First floor.

You’re inside. The outside no longer belongs to you.

Here, inside, everything is dark, silent. There's a musty smell. But something changes. The atmosphere becomes heavier, more oppressive. Who's there, for God's sake, who’s there? You're not alone but, for once, who else is there besides you? You can't see, you can't hear, you can't speak. What is all this unease, for a radio tower in the middle of a desert? But you can sense something is not quite right. What on earth were you thinking entering here?

Something glimmers, down there! Where down there? In the hallway, in the room? It's too dark, you can't tell. But the glimmer remains, becoming stronger, blinding. Then it implodes. Everything becomes dark again for a moment. Finally, the explosion.

An oxyhydric blast of dreadful power saturates the environment with oxygen, while the violence of the detonation impacts your skin, your nerves, your heart, which pounds madly. What happened? You’re hurled, powerless, against the stones and there you remain, bloodless. Everything burns, everything is red, yellow, orange, yellow, red, everything is a crazy kaleidoscope of colors, everything is hot and infernal. What happened?

You regain consciousness. Everything seems to have apparently ceased. Everything seems to have reassembled itself, somehow, by some intervention. You climb the stairs.

Second floor.

Oh God, this room is lit up like daylight! What are all those electrical cables, twisting, wrapping, contorting with each other? What’s that pulsating globe of light moving on the floor? What are all these computers going into default?

Without warning, the cataclysm.

A blinding, insanely angry electrical discharge, which starts from the ceiling to crash onto the floor, and sizzles from the floor to pierce through the roof's strict arrangements, with an apocalyptic noise and an industrial, magma-like undertow, invading the entire room with its electrolytic power.

What are you doing there?

Terrified even before entering, without knowing why. And now, clutching the pager, you send another desperate message into the air. Who do you think will receive it, who do you wish would take it? Meanwhile, you leave that monstrous place and climb the stairs.

Third floor.

You barely set foot into the long corridor, when a crescendo of creaks and a long, powerful and terrifyingly close thunder announce their appearance. You look up and see them. Cracks.

The previous thunder had its effects: like in the worst horror movie, the ceiling is splitting in multiple places and is dropping its ruinous content on you. And then you hear it again, the antenna, and its malevolent influence, like a pantagruelian arrival: it almost seems like it's making the stones fall on command...

You run.

Yours is a desperate race, a matter of life or death, along a never-ending crevice, while behind you hell is breaking loose, a rocky bacchanal crashing with sinister roar, in an unknown and hidden tide. It almost seems like the thuds of the debris have the heaviness of Neurosis, and for a moment you even think of Tool's instrumental contortions, but then you tell yourself that you're going crazy and you increase your speed. Perverse, electronic and suffocating dance. Blinded by fear, you pick up the pager again and, with your heart in your throat, you send yet another request for help. You want out. This tower is cursed, so why did you enter?

Up, up the stairs. Always stairs, more stairs, but how many are there...? The only sounds now are the tapping of your boots and the sick "tupa-tupa" of the extrasystoles that, maddened, open, then close, and then open, and close, and...

A misstep, and you fall down, into nothingness.

Fourth floor.

The fall hurt you badly, but, hypnotized by an unknown urge, you decided to move forward, rather than go back and rush headlong into the desert, dripping with adrenaline, dust, and blood. You want to reach the antenna but don’t know why. Once more.

Blackout.

The flickering lights in the lobby, in unison, interrupt their bluish shadow. And it’s dark, dark recondite. Everywhere you turn, there are whispers, oscillations, rustlings. You stay still, there, in the haze of horror, kneeling on the ground, paralyzed by the fear of something that frightens but you don’t know what it is. Yet, it frightens.

You can’t explain how, but you have fear that the subtle psychological psychedelia you’re surrendering to is nothing but the calm before the storm. There’s something unhealthy, verminous in this tower, something alien, aseptic, brutal, icy. It was always there. But, damn it, what is it?

Then you see it.

A little window overlooking the universe out there, studded with stars and swollen with saltiness. And you know there, a little higher up, is the antenna. Is it an antenna the reason you went all the way to a radio tower amidst the brush, defying all sorts of dangers and, several times, your own life? Maybe.

But you don’t have time to decide anymore.

As in the most tragic conclusion of the worst ετιμασια, the tower begins to vibrate. At first gently, like a cradle rocking to protect and soothe its childish contents, then stronger and stronger, until it becomes a real earthquake. The tower is sinking into its own metallic quagmire, crumpling in a flurry of dissonances and various noises, tilting fearfully.

You realize in a moment that your life ends here, and it will forever be extinguished under the rubble of a cursed building.

But you know, unconsciously, that the proclamations of the construction will extinguish with you.

So, with a smile, for the last time, you take out the pager and send a message to no one. This time you write something: "End Transmission".

With a deafening roar, lost in the sidereal void of an unknown environment, the belligerent austerity of the spire falls apart.

But at least, before dying, you managed to see the sky one last time.