Post by Penny Royals on Feb 26, 2012 17:19:25 GMT -8
How it happened, exactly, you aren’t certain. All you know is that it happened. You remember being at a party, festively drinking, festively dancing, festively wearing festive costumes, and most of all festively drinking some more- and the next thing you know, you’re on your ass on a limestone floor, at least fifty miles from home, nursing a wicked headache and wondering to yourself, ‘What the bloody hell did I drink last night?!’ You give a small groan and sit up.
Of few things you are immediately certain: The first of which being your surroundings. You seem to be stranded inside a spacious room with little rooms within, many caged off. A stage is in the middle, and in front of you is a huge pillar with what looks like writing on it. Dust coats every surface you see, both making you cough and making the lighting extremely dim. The lights flicker every thirty seconds or so.
The second thing you realize is that you feel significantly… different. Your body looks as if it’s made out of sweating, boiling, porous clay, and your movements are short and choppy, rather than the fluidity you’ve known most of your life. It’s as if you’re viewing everything less-than vicariously through a television screen, watching a stop motion picture. Your clothes are completely different, rather than the robes of satin red and yellow, you wear simple pants, shirt, and vest of brown and black. In your pocket, you find a box of matches, and beside you, a crowbar. Both seem useful enough.
The third is what seems the most mundane to you- at first, that is. Speakers up ahead, playing a gentle, soft lullaby, one you recognize, but cannot name. It is, you decide, probably an ancient one that your mother used to sing to you as an infant, soothingly rolling back in to calm your nerves and relax each of your senses. This feeling, however, is torn apart as the lights flicker, and you hear a swift ‘click-click-click’ behind you, scuttling about until the light turns back on.
This causes you to hesitate at first, but then you realize that if you don’t move… whatever is making those sounds can and will kill you. You grab the crowbar, and head forwards in a sprint, kicking up a cloud of dust behind you.
Turning down a hall, you are forced to slow your pace to a crawl. The dust you’ve turned up is almost too much for you to bear. Trying your hardest to keep the dust from flooding your airways with your vest against your mouth and nose, you continue on down this passage. It seems, at first, no different from the last one. That is until you notice the shops and the artwork on their walls. While everything in the place looks much like how you look, the pictures within each shop looks like how you used to look- realistic in every sense of the world. That by itself was weird. They seem to contain the same people each time- a young, blonde girl, a tall, dark-haired woman, and a few beautifully stylized men without faces. Each painting pictured them in different times in life, different places, positions. The first few were simple enough- almost family pictures, with the two girls and then the men almost hidden in the frame. But as you walk on, they become increasingly... dark. Morbid. Graphic images of the woman dominating the girl, who looked to be in severe pain. Just from that you start to get cold shivers.
Flash.
click-click-click-click.
You quicken your pace again, continuing down the hallway. At some point the pictures change, instead showing a girl with brown hair, with no other recurring people. These seem happier… but you still don’t feel quite right with looking at them. After all, it’s as if you’re looking straight into a person’s personal life. Reality TV, without the glitz and the glamor.
Flash.
Click-click-click-click.
You begin to realize the lights are cutting out faster. You turn down another hallway. This one is more like how the rest of the place looks, and how you look now. The stores have yellow lights shining from behind and below the front counters, illuminating their products. It is here you realize that the place you are in seems to be some sort of… mall. You feel your stomach tighten even more than it has been, and emit a low, rumbling sound. You examine their wares.
At first glance, the confectionery within the counters doesn’t seem too bad. Mostly snack-looking things. You grab a rather plain-looking muffin, and bite down.
Flash.
Click-Click-click-click.
The lights come back on. You taste something... odd, to say the least, within your mouth. With cautious curiosity, you glance down at your muffin.
It’s dark brown, nearly black, as opposed to the lightly burnt yellow color it had been just moments before. Holes litter it; as if it were a sponge- and small, white bugs are crawling throughout it.
In utter horror, you spit out your contents and throw down the muffin, now desperately trying to find a way to get the disgusting taste from your mouth. You look around for a drink. The only things around in the once cheery food court are bottles, filled with a dark red liquid. While you concede it’s probably wine… you don’t want to try it, especially after this last little surprise. You wipe your tongue several times on your sleeve and scamper away.
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-click.
You come to rest for a few fleeting moments in a surprisingly bright room. As the light hits your eyes, you feel a small, stinging pain. Through tears you stumble forward, when all of a sudden you hit something that comes to about your waist. You lurch over the object, hitting the floor and laying flat on your back. You cover your eyes to prevent full blindness. Once the light’s dimmed to you, you open your eyes and remover your hands, getting onto your knees to assess your room.
It’s white. Plain white. Not a speck of dust to be found, as it seems. The only thing, besides you, that you can see in the room is a box in the middle of the room. That was what you’d tripped over.
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-Click.
The second the light comes back on, ear-splitting screams fill the room. Banshees! A Banshee cry, you think, that must be what this horrible noise is! The box is shaking horribly. Whatever is within definitely wants to get out. But what is it?… You don’t want to find out. Before it has a chance to tip over and its contents to fly about the room, you get out of there, escaping through the door at the further end of the room.
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-Click.
You realize that whatever’s following you is getting closer, their tapping getting louder. It almost sounds like… no, that’s a stupid thought. Whatever’s following you can’t be doing that. It’s just absurd.
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-Click.
Ridiculous or not, you aren’t risking the chance of learning whether or not a damn creature is really laughing at you.
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-Click.
You feel relieved when you find another hallway… that is, until you realize it’s caged up. What will you do? You don’t have much time, you couldn’t possibly-
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-Click.
No time to think now! You’ve already made up your mind with your one final chance. You grab the crowbar and begin tearing at the cage. At first you’re sure it’ll never open.
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-Click!
In one desperate swing, you’ve got it open! You free your crowbar and get inside the gate, slamming it shut, kicking a monster’s head back in the dark as they try to come after you, desperately hungry, desperately seeking. As the lights flash on like lightening, you get a perfect, singular glimpse of your aggressors before sudden, pitch darkness… their grotesqueness was impossible to describe. It was all you could do to hold back your vomit and trudge on down the new hall.
The lullaby had stopped. And now the sounds of the horrors behind you had stopped- their howling, their dirty talons gripping at the cage. All had ceased, leaving you alone with the darkness.
A soft, sudden whisper breaks the spell and makes you jump. A whisper so small that under any normal circumstances, you’d have scarcely heard it.
“It’s my fault…”
The bitter despair present in the voice makes you regret your fear. But as it keeps repeating, getting louder and louder, you wonder what’s going on.
You strike a match. It goes out.
Then another. This hardly lasts you five steps.
A third. It helps you narrowly avoid a small hole.
Four. A piece of masonry from above drops behind you.
Five. You’re starting to regret using these up so fast.
Six. You wonder if you should stop.
Seven. You can’t.
Eight. The darkness is worse than the freaks behind you.
Nine. Perhaps you should turn back.
Ten. But then you’d die…
Eleven. You’re almost out.
Twelve. The pack is finished.
What did you think they were going to help you with? As it turns out, they were utterly useless because you used them too fast. Now you must face the darkness alone.
Alone, and with a crowbar.
“I should have said goodbye…”
Not to mention the mad whispers from above, betting louder.
You soon run face-first into a wall. You realize you must turn, and so you do. To your utmost surprise and glee, there is a light ahead! A light far, far away! Overcome with emotion, you run towards it. It gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger... until you can almost touch it…
“I killed her.”
You fall into a room that had no steps but a small drop. The floor is dirt, the walls stone. A torch, almost fully burnt out, rests by the entrance, giving just enough light for you to look around.
The entrance disappears. A boulder moves across it. Where it came from, you aren’t certain. It stifles the whispers that have become screams, and leaves you in silence.
In the middle of the room, just inches from your forehead, there is a casket. Morbid curiosity takes a hold of you. You stand up, and lift up the lid.
The torch’s embers die.
The walls seem to close in on your very soul, trapping every part of you within.
The smell of rotting flesh fills the crepuscular room.
You are alone.
Alone.
With a crowbar.
With a pack of burnt out matches.
With the ashes of a torch.
And with a dead, decaying body that is all too familiar for your own tastes…
Of few things you are immediately certain: The first of which being your surroundings. You seem to be stranded inside a spacious room with little rooms within, many caged off. A stage is in the middle, and in front of you is a huge pillar with what looks like writing on it. Dust coats every surface you see, both making you cough and making the lighting extremely dim. The lights flicker every thirty seconds or so.
The second thing you realize is that you feel significantly… different. Your body looks as if it’s made out of sweating, boiling, porous clay, and your movements are short and choppy, rather than the fluidity you’ve known most of your life. It’s as if you’re viewing everything less-than vicariously through a television screen, watching a stop motion picture. Your clothes are completely different, rather than the robes of satin red and yellow, you wear simple pants, shirt, and vest of brown and black. In your pocket, you find a box of matches, and beside you, a crowbar. Both seem useful enough.
The third is what seems the most mundane to you- at first, that is. Speakers up ahead, playing a gentle, soft lullaby, one you recognize, but cannot name. It is, you decide, probably an ancient one that your mother used to sing to you as an infant, soothingly rolling back in to calm your nerves and relax each of your senses. This feeling, however, is torn apart as the lights flicker, and you hear a swift ‘click-click-click’ behind you, scuttling about until the light turns back on.
This causes you to hesitate at first, but then you realize that if you don’t move… whatever is making those sounds can and will kill you. You grab the crowbar, and head forwards in a sprint, kicking up a cloud of dust behind you.
Turning down a hall, you are forced to slow your pace to a crawl. The dust you’ve turned up is almost too much for you to bear. Trying your hardest to keep the dust from flooding your airways with your vest against your mouth and nose, you continue on down this passage. It seems, at first, no different from the last one. That is until you notice the shops and the artwork on their walls. While everything in the place looks much like how you look, the pictures within each shop looks like how you used to look- realistic in every sense of the world. That by itself was weird. They seem to contain the same people each time- a young, blonde girl, a tall, dark-haired woman, and a few beautifully stylized men without faces. Each painting pictured them in different times in life, different places, positions. The first few were simple enough- almost family pictures, with the two girls and then the men almost hidden in the frame. But as you walk on, they become increasingly... dark. Morbid. Graphic images of the woman dominating the girl, who looked to be in severe pain. Just from that you start to get cold shivers.
Flash.
click-click-click-click.
You quicken your pace again, continuing down the hallway. At some point the pictures change, instead showing a girl with brown hair, with no other recurring people. These seem happier… but you still don’t feel quite right with looking at them. After all, it’s as if you’re looking straight into a person’s personal life. Reality TV, without the glitz and the glamor.
Flash.
Click-click-click-click.
You begin to realize the lights are cutting out faster. You turn down another hallway. This one is more like how the rest of the place looks, and how you look now. The stores have yellow lights shining from behind and below the front counters, illuminating their products. It is here you realize that the place you are in seems to be some sort of… mall. You feel your stomach tighten even more than it has been, and emit a low, rumbling sound. You examine their wares.
At first glance, the confectionery within the counters doesn’t seem too bad. Mostly snack-looking things. You grab a rather plain-looking muffin, and bite down.
Flash.
Click-Click-click-click.
The lights come back on. You taste something... odd, to say the least, within your mouth. With cautious curiosity, you glance down at your muffin.
It’s dark brown, nearly black, as opposed to the lightly burnt yellow color it had been just moments before. Holes litter it; as if it were a sponge- and small, white bugs are crawling throughout it.
In utter horror, you spit out your contents and throw down the muffin, now desperately trying to find a way to get the disgusting taste from your mouth. You look around for a drink. The only things around in the once cheery food court are bottles, filled with a dark red liquid. While you concede it’s probably wine… you don’t want to try it, especially after this last little surprise. You wipe your tongue several times on your sleeve and scamper away.
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-click.
You come to rest for a few fleeting moments in a surprisingly bright room. As the light hits your eyes, you feel a small, stinging pain. Through tears you stumble forward, when all of a sudden you hit something that comes to about your waist. You lurch over the object, hitting the floor and laying flat on your back. You cover your eyes to prevent full blindness. Once the light’s dimmed to you, you open your eyes and remover your hands, getting onto your knees to assess your room.
It’s white. Plain white. Not a speck of dust to be found, as it seems. The only thing, besides you, that you can see in the room is a box in the middle of the room. That was what you’d tripped over.
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-Click.
The second the light comes back on, ear-splitting screams fill the room. Banshees! A Banshee cry, you think, that must be what this horrible noise is! The box is shaking horribly. Whatever is within definitely wants to get out. But what is it?… You don’t want to find out. Before it has a chance to tip over and its contents to fly about the room, you get out of there, escaping through the door at the further end of the room.
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-Click.
You realize that whatever’s following you is getting closer, their tapping getting louder. It almost sounds like… no, that’s a stupid thought. Whatever’s following you can’t be doing that. It’s just absurd.
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-Click.
Ridiculous or not, you aren’t risking the chance of learning whether or not a damn creature is really laughing at you.
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-Click.
You feel relieved when you find another hallway… that is, until you realize it’s caged up. What will you do? You don’t have much time, you couldn’t possibly-
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-Click.
No time to think now! You’ve already made up your mind with your one final chance. You grab the crowbar and begin tearing at the cage. At first you’re sure it’ll never open.
Flash.
Click-Click-Click-Click!
In one desperate swing, you’ve got it open! You free your crowbar and get inside the gate, slamming it shut, kicking a monster’s head back in the dark as they try to come after you, desperately hungry, desperately seeking. As the lights flash on like lightening, you get a perfect, singular glimpse of your aggressors before sudden, pitch darkness… their grotesqueness was impossible to describe. It was all you could do to hold back your vomit and trudge on down the new hall.
The lullaby had stopped. And now the sounds of the horrors behind you had stopped- their howling, their dirty talons gripping at the cage. All had ceased, leaving you alone with the darkness.
A soft, sudden whisper breaks the spell and makes you jump. A whisper so small that under any normal circumstances, you’d have scarcely heard it.
“It’s my fault…”
The bitter despair present in the voice makes you regret your fear. But as it keeps repeating, getting louder and louder, you wonder what’s going on.
You strike a match. It goes out.
Then another. This hardly lasts you five steps.
A third. It helps you narrowly avoid a small hole.
Four. A piece of masonry from above drops behind you.
Five. You’re starting to regret using these up so fast.
Six. You wonder if you should stop.
Seven. You can’t.
Eight. The darkness is worse than the freaks behind you.
Nine. Perhaps you should turn back.
Ten. But then you’d die…
Eleven. You’re almost out.
Twelve. The pack is finished.
What did you think they were going to help you with? As it turns out, they were utterly useless because you used them too fast. Now you must face the darkness alone.
Alone, and with a crowbar.
“I should have said goodbye…”
Not to mention the mad whispers from above, betting louder.
You soon run face-first into a wall. You realize you must turn, and so you do. To your utmost surprise and glee, there is a light ahead! A light far, far away! Overcome with emotion, you run towards it. It gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger... until you can almost touch it…
“I killed her.”
You fall into a room that had no steps but a small drop. The floor is dirt, the walls stone. A torch, almost fully burnt out, rests by the entrance, giving just enough light for you to look around.
The entrance disappears. A boulder moves across it. Where it came from, you aren’t certain. It stifles the whispers that have become screams, and leaves you in silence.
In the middle of the room, just inches from your forehead, there is a casket. Morbid curiosity takes a hold of you. You stand up, and lift up the lid.
The torch’s embers die.
The walls seem to close in on your very soul, trapping every part of you within.
The smell of rotting flesh fills the crepuscular room.
You are alone.
Alone.
With a crowbar.
With a pack of burnt out matches.
With the ashes of a torch.
And with a dead, decaying body that is all too familiar for your own tastes…
