Write about a character who witnesses strange towers rise from the earth. What are these things? What is their purpose? Is there a way for this character to know? And, worst of all, is this character willing to approach the spires… or are they too afraid to step closer?
The towers were slender, milk colored structures slender as needle. They were windowless, but seemed to glow from within, illuminating their stick straight forms with an unearthly glow.
All of Nanjing was in an uproar, people screaming as the towers burst through stores, shattering power lines as the Earth belched them forth. Her mother, who Wen Ya had forgotten was with her, yanked on her arm, screaming. The words escaped Wen Ya, but she forced herself forward, running hard as the ground rattled beneath her feet.
Suddenly, the shaking stopped, leaving the Earth paused for the moment. Four towers stood out in the city, wide bases swallowing up the rubble near them. "Si," Wen Ya's mother whispered. She shook, violently, and crossed herself. "There are four. Four like death."
Death there was, all around them. People were screaming, the fallout of the towers now apparent. Wen Ya felt her stomach twist and she bent over, emptying her belly off the fish and rice she'd had at lunch. She wiped her mouth, spitting to clear her tongue of bile. Her mother was on her hands and knees, shaking and chanting the same word: si.
Something about the towers was magnetic, and despite her fear and sickness at the sights around her, Wen Ya found herself shifting closer, her body tripping forward past the carnage.
It was the closest, the last of the four to explode forth, that drew her. She could feel her heart pulse in time with its glow, body thrumming along with its inner workings. Soon, she found herself in front it, having cross the quarter mile of distance to its base.
The world faded to white nose, the screams of people a buzz in Wen Ya's ears. She felt as one with the structure: when she breathed, it tightened, and when she exhaled, it did too, the seamless material shuddering slightly as the building relaxed.
Slowly, Wen Ya lifted her hand, and pressed it to the base of the tower. In the distance, her mother cried out, calling to her, but Wen Ya pushed forward, and the tower sucked her in, body filling with the sensation of static as she disappeared.
