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ironidemic · 4 years

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Deliverance

The corridor stretches on before and behind you, endless and dark. Pale blue light drifts from beneath several doorways, casting a shifting glow on the walls and floor, defining the space and giving it shape. Your pulse quickens, a racing tempo, hairs rising on your arms and neck in time. Cold sweat clings to your skin as dread creeps into the base of your stomach, worming itself through your insides to someplace deeper until it covers you, a fungus, a poison.

Run. Hide. Fight. The evolutionary decision that will determine survival. Imminent danger in pursuit. Adrenaline, a chemical concoction of liquid fear, coursing through your veins. Mind sharp, knees weak.

Something clatters against the tile floor from an unseen corridor off the main hall. You freeze like the dumb, large eyed prey of the forest. It takes every ounce of will not to fall into panic, not to break down then and there. Quickly, you dart behind one of the many doorways, pressing your back firmly on the other side of the cinderblock wall. Wet, grating breaths grow louder and increasingly clear. Your grip tightens around the handle of a kitchen knife, but your hands shake. Hot tears roll down your cheeks, and you bite your lip, trying not to breathe. You can see him in your mind, that tall, painfully thin creature with blood-red flesh stretched taut over a looming frame, that skeletal face, showing no emotion, just hollow cheeks, a wide gaping mouth, and deeply set eyes like a pair of watery black pits. He is coming. Closer, closer.

"It's time. Do you hear the dark?" he whispers, somewhere down the hall, repeating the phrase over and over in a shrill, raspy voice that seems far away but close, above, below, and all around you. He’s in your head now, hearing your thoughts. Time slows, and your blood grows cold. Shouldn't you have known better than to run?

Suddenly he is behind you, reaching out, cold skin wrapping around your legs. You swing frantically with the knife, but the tendrils of flesh only reform, tendons growing and warping to fill the gaps. His tongue reaches forward, its wet sliminess coiling around your right arm. You drop the knife in panic, attempting to pry yourself free as you are pulled closer and closer to his wide, opening jaws, but it’s no use as your hand quickly dissolves into the pink goo. With a final lunge he draws you inward, and you feel them over your eternity, sets of jagged teeth like cut glass tearing through skin and fat and muscle, ripping you apart, crushing and grinding bone. There is white hot pain as you are swallowed in mutilated bits, pain, and then nothing.

Fragments shatter and colors blur until nothing remains but an absence, a milky film of white light slowly fading into a blackened void, a total darkness.

The red man is ever present, a looming shadow on the edge of your conscience. Sometimes he kills you, burning you in a torrent of flames or tearing you to bits with sharpened steel; other times, he only toys with you. Delays it. Gives you the illusion of escape, of safety. But in the end there is always death. Then again it repeats--a thousand screams, a thousand last breaths--and the creature feeds, devouring the fear and suffering of its prey. You do not remember a time when he was not there, when you were not running and he was not behind you and two steps ahead. You do not have a name. You are nothing but a host, a victim, trapped in a cycle of endless torment. This is your fiery furnace, the wailing and grinding of teeth. There is no escape, only the unending pain, divided only by intermittent periods of icy darkness.

You feel yourself falling, falling, then crashing down, down into cold, tumultuous water. You struggle and finally break the surface, fighting against crashing waves to stay afloat. Your eyes sting from the salt, and the briny water fills your nose and mouth. There is no shore in sight, only moonlight reflecting on an infinite plane of dark water.

A wave crashes over your head, and you feel the tide pull you under. Something scaly and cold brushes against your leg and you flinch, recoiling at an electric charge climbing your nerves. Sharp teeth rip into your side and you scream, though only a dull sound travels through the abyss. Salt water fills the wound, sending a throbbing pain throughout your body. Blood stains the water a deep, carnal red and you know it’s him lurking below. Another bite tears into your right leg, and your gasp, your mouth filling with water. Your lungs scream for air but you can’t seem to orient yourself upwards, the pain sending your head spinning. Something grasps your foot, pulling you further under. You fight it but feel yourself rapidly growing weaker, starving for air and losing blood rapidly. Your vision is failing, crowded by black spots, and you feel yourself fading. Then once more there is cold darkness.

You are drifting through nothing, wondering what sins you could have committed to deserve this, a lifetime of agony. You pray for deliverance to any God merciful enough to listen, and you weep bitterly, giving into the futility of it all. Why do you struggle? Why do you fight against it? It is as if your efforts only cause more pain, but you can’t stop yourself from resisting, from rebelling against the hold of hopelessness. There must be some way to save yourself from this demon, from this hell in which you are trapped. And so it repeats.

You are in a crowd of people, packed shoulder to shoulder with hardly enough room to breath. All of them babble incoherently, filling the space with indiscernible noise. You look around, trying to gain some sense of the space, but something catches your eye. A woman’s eye has begun to droop down her cheek, her face like melted plastic. Startled, you take a step backwards, bumping into a weezing man, hands around his throat, his face a suffocated purplish hue. That’s when you realize they are all deformed, all suffering: a man with bleeding pits for eyes, a child with three arms clinging around his painfully narrow ribcage, a woman spitting and choking a gel-like, red substance. You can’t escape them; they are everywhere, and reeling, you spot the red man amongst them, drooling at the mouth.

“It’s time...” he whispers into your skull, his voice serpentine and flowing. “Do you hear it?”

You run as fast as you can, pushing past the people that seem to be pressing into you, closer and closer. Again, you see him, now in front of you, only paces away.

“Do you hear the dark?”

You cover your ears and scream, trying to drown him out. How can you fight something that doesn't obey the laws of physics, who has no weaknesses? Inhale, exhale. Underneath it is a soft pounding, something like a pulse, a heartbeat. You strain to make it out, making your way towards it. You need to find the source; somehow you know it.

Your follow the sound and it becomes louder, pounding in your ears. You hear the bodies begin to scream, writhing as if in pain. Among them, you can sense he is hiding. Red flashes across your field of vision, and something invisible cuts across your skin, leaving lacerations on your arms, your legs, your neck. It hurts, but you press forward through the crowd, clinging to the sound, the heartbeat, this feeble strand of hope. You fall down as the cuts become more severe and something pushes you backwards. You crawl weakly onward, fighting back. Finally you find the source, a small, blackened heart, shriveled and deformed, tethered as if growing from the ground. So it does have a heart.

The screams are deafening, the pain unbearable, the redness blinding. You reach out and grasp the heart, reaching inward to its core, finding the center. Suddenly, everything sinks inward, swallowing you like jaws, but you hold on, ripping the meat apart, pushing, fighting. Your fingers touch something smooth and cold, its soul, and finally you crush it, releasing a piercing cry, a final flash of red. Then there is nothing.

Once again there is darkness, but this time it is warmer, softer, inviting. Slowly, you begin to fade, letting go. You are nothing, but you are free.

#writing

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kat-hawke · 4 years

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Al'ksh syq iir awan?

(Few days following [Failed Bargains]) Content Warning: Horror, Blood, Self-harm, Death

It had been days but the events that unfolded back in the cave still haunted the recesses of Kat’s mind, slipping into thoughts while she worked. The one line repeating constantly in her mind. ‘Lilth ma paf'qi'ag sk'halahs.‘; You are a prisoner in your own body. Something she always said in half jest when someone would ask about the bracers she never removed. A fact she had come to terms with, or so she thought. Hearing it from the dark entity made it too much more of a reality. Could it have seen her for what she truly is?

Spending more nights alone, sequestered to her home, she repeatedly asked herself the question. It was a vicious cycle, to allow others in behind her walls before inevitably becoming distant and reconstructing the defenses they’d broken through. Repair the emotional armor to protect herself as much as them from pain.

Easy enough to distance Sarah, their paths crossing only so often. Claim work kept her busy, the blonde wouldn’t question it. Alyssa though, a bit trickier, having to carefully construct reasons as to why she’d need to be alone, breaking their habitual cycle of a spending a few nights together, skipping a training session every few weeks with solid excuses pertaining to her occupation.

Harder to explain was the crafted coin the red head gifted her, which laid in pieces upon the mahogany desk. What was a thoughtful gift used for purposes beyond it’s construction, barely to survive the strain of housing two parts of a soul. The token shattered under the pressure of returning the shard of her soul to the body.

That shard she’d cut away to protect the thread of another’s soul she carried with her. A bond that was left dormant for months, a bond that carried more weight than the Director was willing to admit. Her failed attempt to sever it once before only dug that hole deeper. Despite the pain, guilt, and fear that sun-kissed woman on the other side still held importance to her.

‘Ywaq gag fash ilith.’

Another dark whisper tugged at her thoughts of the women. She did her best to ignore it and clear the mind, refusing to give the darkness another foothold. Focusing instead on the ice cold water that poured from the shower faucet and raced across the scared flesh of her muscled figured. It mattered not how fast or strong she’d pushed herself to become, for it would never close the gap of mental weakness.

With a piercing screech a handle turned and water ceased. Bare feet stepping from the shallow basin to the tiled floor. Soft pads of wet feet echoing in the silence as she approached the mirror mounted above the porcelain sink. One of three reflective surfaces in the entire home.

Staring into her nude reflection the self-loathing stirred at the back of her mind. Eyes trailed from scar to scar, searching for answers where none existed. It was then something shifted in the reflection, catching her attention in a blink of an eye. A dark mass clung to the ceiling behind her, twitching and convulsing, a single orange orb focusing on the Director.

Fingers of the right hand flexed as an orb of Holy Light sparked to life. Spinning around her arm ready to launch the magical assault. Eyes widened to find the ceiling bar, as it should have been. Stark amber hues frantically darted from wall to call, corner to corner, searching for any sign of intrusion but came up short.

With a deep and steady breath the orb within her grasp died off, the body twisting to face the mirror once more, checking the same spot to find nothing. Hands planted on either side of the sinks edge, damp raven tresses cascaded around the face as her head tilt downward, focusing on the drain rather than her reflection.

Eyes clamped shut with an attempt to purge the mind, practiced breaths deep and slow, seconds between the intake and exhale. Lashes parted as lids peeled open, eyes quickly focusing on a single crimson droplet splatter against the pure white basin. Fingers moved to the growing warmth that rest just above the cheek, wiping beneath the eye. Blood painted tips of the digits, the thumb rolling over the congealed fluid in disbelief.

Quick up-righting her stance attention returned to the mirror, the sight nearly sent the Director toppling backwards, just barely catching herself with a hand planting against the towel bar. Despite the physical world around her remaining unchanged, the mirror told a different tale, like a window to a new reality.

Blood pooled at the lower lid like tears in her eyes, pouring with each blink down the cheeks. The room around her in the mirror was replaced with a creeping darkness, the walls coming to life with dark flesh that pulsated in synchronization with her growing heartbeat. Her tanned skin tone was replaced with an ash grey coloration, dark brambles protruding from the flesh.

Fear and panic took root at her core, like a sheet of ice growing across the surface of a lake. Glancing down at the hands the reality in the mirror began to unfold. Her fingers withered to the bones as flesh paled, void toned spurs pushed outward from the skin.

Her heartbeats pounded in the ears.

Hastily pushing from the wall she sought an exit. Brittle fingers painfully grasping the door knob, twisting to throw the wooden barrier open and flee to the main space of the cabin. Instead she was met with nothing but endless darkness, feet sliding to a halt, preventing what appeared to be an endless fall into oblivion.

Chest heaving with heavy pants as the sense of helplessness grew, she searched the darkness, looking for anything but finding only distant stars swallowed by the Void.

Stepping back the door slammed shut, spinning around in hopes of finding another escape. Instead she was met face to face with an eldritch creature that twitched and jerked, the entire head made of nothing but thousand toothed maws.

A scream released at the sudden sight, just as the horror descended upon her, the thousands of needle point teeth consuming her, pain searing before everything went dark.

A deep gasp filled the lungs with chilled air, sheets flew as the Director sprung up. Cold sweat clung to the skin, the damp black tank top sticking to the body as she moved. Hands lifted before her gaze, turning over rapidly as she inspected the surfaces. Fingers slipped over the leather bracers and up the arms, finding purchase at the shoulders as she stared at the foot of the bed.

Just another nightmare.

Wiping the sweat from the lips the palm rested at the base of the throat as she caught her breath. The tongue rolling over dried lips as she looked to the door, the desire for alcohol clawing at the mind. The addiction had to be sated.

Feet dove into the set of slippers as she stood from the bed, pulling the black robe over the body. Silently she transitioned from the bedroom to living space, a hastened path straight towards the liquor cabinet. Along the way a sparring glance was given to the broken coin that lay on the office desk.

A satisfying pop broke the silence as the stopper pulled from the crystal decanter. A clink following shortly as it briefly grazed the glass and amber liquor poured.

A chill ran down the spine as she felt a muscle at the back of the neck twitch.

‘Vwah oou kaaxth zz ywaq iiyoq Ag'xig fhssh I on'ma.’

The empty hand rubbed the top of the spine, the neck rolling as if something crawled between the flesh and bone.

‘Sk'shgn eqnizz hoq.’

The glass tipped upward and whiskey shot back, effortlessly flowing down the throat.

“Shut up.”

Pouring the second glass she felt another presence. Eyes drifted upward to the cabinet head before feet moved to spin her around. A human silhouette dark as the night lingered in the air, eyes of a deep amethyst tone bored into her. With a bone chilling cry it raced towards her position.

Fingers of the right hand twitched but nothing came, something or someone had sapped her magic. Thinking fast she reached for the only bottle of wine in the cabinet, pulling the cork to reveal the stiletto blade hidden inside. Pivoting on a leg the steel swung through the air, finding it’s mark in the concealed dark being which dissipated into shadowy smoke upon it’s demise.

With a heated snort she intended to return to the drink, watching the smoke at it faded away, though not completely. It moved, as if it lived, coiling in the air to the kitchen and converged into a humanoid form once more.

As it stood and stared insect like chattered began to overtake the silence. It was as if a locus swarm buzzed about in Kat’s head, making it difficult to focus. One after another the maddening chatters repeated in rounds, while the ominous figure multiplied like a cell, splitting in half over and over.

Fighting through the disorienting sounds she dove to the center of the room, a pair of short swords hidden along the underside of the table quickly claimed. Standing her ground a shadowy figure was dispatched, one after another. The assault was endless, for each one she cut down another three of four took it’s place. The chattering grew louder every second, she could feel the warm trail of blood beginning to flow from her ears.

Hopelessness grew in tandem with fatigue. Overwhelmed and running out of options, the cold dark fingers of the shadows began to grab. The blades swinging in defense, but the reactions slowed. It was over, but Kat refused to succumb to the sinister intentions of the Void.

Finding a second wind she pushed through the sea of dark beings, towards the rack at the door where her equipment hung. One blade plunged it the wall, skewering two silhouettes in one motion. Releasing the handle of the blade she reached for the holster hanging from the hook, fingers firmly wrapping around the grip to tug the six shot firearm free.

The searing touch of shadowy hands burned at her back as the outnumbering forces drug her down. Without an hesitation the safety popped off as the end of the barrel wedged under the jaw.

The weapon fired off and blood painted the ceiling above, the lifeless body collapsing on the floor. With nothing left to claim the silhouettes began to vanish, one at a time, like smoke rolling the breeze.

An empty bottle clattered against the floorboards as she awoke with a startled jolt in the living room chair. The whiskey glass breaking against the ground as it fell from her hands. Sweaty and panting she quickly looked around, everything seemed normal.

Nothing out of place, alcohol consumed. The broken coin still in pieces upon the desk.

With a soft thud she pressed back into the upholstered seat, fingers pinched beneath the eyes. Hesitant to open them, she was uncertain if this was real or another layer of a nightmare.

[ Mentions: @tirasiantrouper, @alyssa-ward, @shewolf-jacqueline ]

( [pt.I] [pt.II] [pt.III] [pt.IV] [pt.V] )

#ic #plotlines #Dark Secrets #pt.VI

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