User:ParadoxTheory

My eyes open in an instant and I sit up. I'm on the floor of the main hallway leading from the front door. There to greet me is the ineffable smell of blood and drywall. A scent I knew all too well yet one that never failed to nauseate me. Grabbing at a nearby wall to help myself off the ground I quickly recede my hand after a sharp pain emanates from my fingers. Staring at them a knowing melancholy grew. My nails had been torn from their places and all that remianed were portions of flesh that bled onto the floor, contrasting violently against my pale skin. I scanned the hallway with my worn gray eyes and located the spot at which I had been clawing the previous night. A bare, paintless wall was covered in scarlet stains that ran for a few feet before starting anew. I was convinced that this had to have been the place, but it wasn't here. For hours I had torn into this section of the wall desperate for an escape. After every hour though my will and strength faded and in a depressed and tired state I fell to the floor and passed out. Age has proven to have made me weak, like my father I have passed beyond any perceivable boundary of life.

Standing up slowly as to not irritate my wounds further I felt the weakness that had intertwined with my legs. It was as if The House's atmosphere weighed down upon me like boulders that threatened to crush me if I so much as resisted. Breathing heavily I stumbled down the hall and entered the first door on my left, which led to the kitchen. After bandaging myself and downing some painkillers I set about making coffee in some vague attempt to calm myself and recollect my thoughts on the previous night. Just how long have I been here? It's felt like years to me but I'm not so sure time passes in this place. When I first attained consciousness within here, awakening in a bed of rags, I was terrified and without memory. Overtime this changed though. I'd experience visions, not in detail at first, but often they would be horrific.

When I was nearly at the age of seven I'd often take refuge in the surrounding forest. Father, after my mother's death, became angry all the time. He'd often fall into fits of rage, destroying anything that reminded him of her, including me. So when these moods plagued him I'd go into the woods and hide. While I hid I found that the trees would often talk and comfort me.

"Always" they'd say "Always you'll find safety here, child."

Embraced in their limbs I believed them. There was also a blind crow who wore a crimson ribbon. I named him Paul. He would come to me when my father had calmed.

"It's safe now young one," he'd whisper. "It's safe."

My thoughts dissipate as the boards above my head creak from the wind ushering in form outside. Though the source of the sound was apparent in the back of my mind there was a whisper of doubt that grew like a tumor. Fighting back the urge to ascend the stairs and affirm my suspicions I continued drinking my bitter coffee. As I had stated before, when I first awoke here I had no memories and no past. Slowly overtime I began perceiving flashbacks of a previous life. Connecting them at first proved to be fruitless unfortunately. They had seemed little more than irrelevant pictures frozen in time, unconnected and a waste of space. I had however been wrong on occasions such as that, and doubt had beset me. For a second I conceive the rain, noticing it pattering on the soul window in the room. This window - like all the windows within The House - is barred on the inside. I don't believe I remember the sun, if it isn't raining here the skies instead lay gray and dormant awaiting some sign to allow them to cry.

I remember when I was a child somewhere around the age of four sitting in my father's office in his church. It was the middle of June on a Tuesday, the building - besides myself and my father - was empty. He was reading his Bible as I sat in the corner and stared out a window into the surrounding fields, in the sun's glimmer they seemed endless. Randomly a thought occured to me and I asked my father.

"Papa" I said "Where do you take the naughty children?"

My father, a burly man in his late forties, replied with a sigh.

"Son, let me tell you something" He paused momentarily and looked around the room.

"A man's work is never done 'til the day he dies, now a God fearing man on the other hand, a God fearing man's work is never done. Even after he dies."

"Yeah, I know but-" he cuts me off with a stern look.

"You're much too young to know that now, but one day you and me will save 'em, together. Ok?"

I gave him a weak smile, sullen but understanding I answered simply "Ok, Papa."

"Now," he says, "Go play in the yard."

Our little town of New Brenna was an odd sort of place located in Southern Oklahoma. We didn't receive many visitors. Natives to the town lived sparsely and the only times in which we collected in unison were during the voting season or at my father's church, the New Brenna Baptist Church. Ours was a deeply religious community isolated from the outside world. I suppose you could have considered us a cult, as I would come to discover nearby towns did. My father would tell me in his raspy southern accent that they were just "Superstitous fools, products of modernism and sin. When the Rapture comes we'll be the ones laughing." I believed him then, I truly did and I was not the only one either. Everyone in town seemed to find him a prophet and listened to his words as though they were divine, sent from God himself. In hindsight, perhaps there are fewer towns in which the term "Forsaken by God" could apply. Our town seemed to fit the description so perfectly as to be banal.

According to historic documents on the town, during the late eighteenth century my great-grandfather's father, known only as Pastor Edmund led a group of German fanatics into the region seeking religious freedom, most likely inspired by their pilgrim predecessors. They were immigrants from an area known as Brannenburg, Bavaria. After the Louisiana Purchase the United States eventually integrated and forgot the small community in the wake of further European colonial events.

As I got older my father granted me more and more responsibility. One day in the early spring I buried the dead with him.

"Hey, Papa." I said

"What?" he responded simply somewhere in the field, out of my view.

"After we're done..."

"After we're done what?"

"After we're done, D'ya think we could take a break, y'know, just for a bit. We could get ice cream or something."

"No," he responded quietly. "This world won't be made clean with idle hands boy."

"But, Papa-"

He cuts me off, this time yelling.

"Shut your damn trap, get off your ass and help me! You think Jesus died for you, just so you could go and get some God forsaken ice cream?"

Sniffling I gave him a short, "No."

Grabbing my shovel I trod silently into the golden field. My father stood over a large pit filled with half a dozen small caskets.

"Start shoveling," he instructs. "A pious man needn't be recognized for doing the Lord's work" his voice trails off into the cool spring evening.

"The Lord's work..." he whispers almost inaudibly to himself. He begins pilling on the dirt.

A door slams somewhere in The House and I shoot up, spilling what remains of my coffee across the table. My heart raced in my chest as I stood there bewildered. Cursing myself for my inept reactions I cautiously entered the hallway and stopped, and listened. I heard only the rain above my own stammered breathes. Then slowly I heard it, starting as little more than an almost inaudible white noise in the back of my head. After a few seconds it grew louder than I could handle. I was unable to locate the direction in which the noise originated, in fact it seemed to come from everywhere and anywhere. At this point the noise had become increasingly louder still and I fell to my knees and covered my ears with my hands. Screaming I begged it to just stop, and on a sudden it did. Disappearing altogether in less than a second. I sat crumpled on the floor both horrified and relieved by its sudden disappearance. For some time I just rocked back and forth trying to make sense of what had occurred minutes before.

Collecting myself I stood up, my heart now beating at its normal pace, and decided that tonight I would retire myself to the upper floors of The House. I was beyond tired of these experiences and desired little more than to discover their source and perhaps even understand the whole thing. Altogether I'm not sure what gave me the courage to go for a feat like this, but a desire burned auburn within me and my course wouldn't be altered. I spent the greater part of the day moving things about, a bed, blankets, furniture and other such things, luckily without interruption. As the day had worn on the rain ceased and The House settled down into an ominously silent tomb. I feared it an omen and was unnerved by the complete silence.

As night descended upon The House I settled down into its onyx state. My only source of light being the full moon that shone in through the two windows and illuminated my furniture-starved room. I lay under the covers of my ragged excuse for a bed in the far right corner of the room, far from the door. Any disturbances in the night would be silhouetted by the pale luminescence of the moon. As the night drifted by uneventfully I wandered off into a hypnagogic state in which I attained a half-awareness of my settings. Unconcerned with the now slightly ajar door I submerged whole heartedly into my nightmares and dreams unprepared, but too tired to fight it.

My mind was in a frenzy, around me black and gray shades swirled and shattered into one another. In the distance a great fire burned into the Heavens and scorched the Earth. A thousand children cried out into the mad abyss, abandoned by sanity and thrown to the baying hounds. Pigs throwing themselves onto hooks with their bloody screams commanding the air, and then nothing. No pigs, no children, no fire, just the Field of Rye and a women who wept at its core alone. Above her a dozen angels dancing amongst the stars, circling her like vultures. At once I became aware of the fact that the women was pregnant and as soon as this fact became apparent she went into labor. All at once the angels fell upon her as she cried out in agony, swarming her they pulled at her limbs tearing and clawing their ways into her womb. One of the angels wielding a sword of pure light cut into the women's stomach and pulled out the baby and cut the umbilical cord. As the angel flew off with the newborn child the others pulled the women who was now bleeding profusely from her innards in the opposite direction. A massive pit opened and she was dragged screaming into the depths of Hell.

I awake with a gasp, breaking the silence of my rest, rain, it was raining again. Around me the incessant down pour on the walls and windows was broken by the roar of thunder off in the distance. On the first floor a clock chimed informing me that midnight had arrived. My eyes turned to the now wide open door, a sight which woke me in an instant. At first I just watched the door, unmoving, then a thud, and another, and a third resounded. Though consistent the noise never came towards me nor did it move further away, it stayed isolated to one area. Mustering up some sort of courage I stood and walked towards the door, my body shaking ever so slightly. At the door I stopped, mere inches from the precipice of the abyss in which I traversed so easily in the daylight. I could still hear the thudding and took a right, sure that I knew the room that birthed the sound and delivered it to me.

I crept down the hall and reached the door, upon doing so all sound ceased including my breath. Pushing the door open I peak into the room, though the room itself seemed foreign and unnatural. Each wall was painted with pictures of children dancing and laughing at dusk. In the distance I saw the sun as nothing more than a slit throat of light dying under the rising moon. My gaze fell on an old painting located in the moonlight, was this too an anomaly of the room? It was positioned so perfectly as to reflect the moon's light directly at the door and into my vision. I could not make out the painting at a distance though I felt myself being pulled forwards, an unknown force luring me to it. I took a step into the room and crept towards the painting.

Behind me the door slammed, practically stopping my heart with it. I rushed back to the door and with a rising fear grabbed at the knob and tried to make my way out, but the door would not budge. Defeated I turned to the painting now with a burning desire to be answered. I tore the painting from its spot and to my surprise discovered a bar-less window staring intently into nothingness. From the other side of it a fetid heat emanated, with it the sickly sweet smell of waste. Out of dumbfounded curiosity I looked through and much to my dismay was confronted with a sight that horrified me. There in the humid blackness I saw them, nearly thirty or more in total, emaciated people as pale as bones covered in all manner of filth. They all stared silently at me naked and without eyes and grinned revealing sharp yellow and rotten teeth. Confused and startled I moved backwards, and then a frigid nothing enshrouded me leaving me forlorn at the mercy of fate.

I awoke the next morning in a room that had been designated as a small library. How I had arrived here was a mystery, and not one on which I was keen. This room, as I had come to understand held shadows that buried into the books and starved them into faith. Each book an extravagant lie, or worse a cruel reality where mankind has wilted into nothing. I was dormant on the couch which was located in the center of the window less room, a skeleton of a man laid out for the artists.

A table piled high with archaic literature was stationed in proper order in front of me. On all walls except the northern one in which the door occupied were bookcases filled with books, or what appeared to be books. All that lit the room was a singular chandelier in which an artificial yet effective light radiated. Becoming lucid of my surroundings, I stood up, an almost comical thought passing briefly through my mind. I seemed to endure this fate often. Below my feet an echo of a cry shattered the oppresive silence. however this cry was not human, it seemed to resemble a great device whose machinations screamed into the sky. A few more times the sound came and went, each quieter than the one before. I spent a great deal of the morning in that library scouring though books in some attempt to find a meaning behind my Limbo. Though to my dissapointment I found little to nothing and resigned myself to a late breakfast to which my stomach growled in agreement. On my way back to the kitchen I thought of The Missionary.

Under the church in New Brenna was a room we called The Missionary. When a child turned two they'd be sent there. They would stay there every other year until the age of twelve, when they'd take a final rite. Afterwards the church would either accept them into the community or purge them from it. Only I and my father knew the process which made up the purge as we were the only ones with the authority to know. Besides, the town understood that it had to be done and even the parents would go so far as to disown their children. Traditionally we would conduct the purge during the winter solstice, this way the bodies wouldn't rot in the exposed air. I can't be sure but I believe even the crows shunned their crucified carcasses. Our process was harsh, the child would be tied hands first to the cross. Their legs - so as to take the pressure off of the top abdomen and chest areas - would be nailed at the ankles. By this time they would have been stripped naked being exposed to the frigid winds of early winter. To connect them further to God and distance them from sin their tongues and eyes would be plucked from their heads and force fed back to them. If the child miraculously survived the night they'd be taken down and beheaded, if they died their bones would be left on the cross until spring when their bodies would thaw and the ground would grow soft. Instead of mourning, the community would move on. Giving them little if any notice at all, their parents wept out of sight so as to hide their cancerous weakness. When spring did arrive one year my father in an almost sorrowful voice said:

"Ok boy, bring them poor sinners down. Bodies don't bury themselves."

Sitting once more at the table I reflected on last night's incursions, the pale bodies in the wall, the painting I had not seen before. Whether they were malevolent, magnanimous or somewhere in between is without answer thus far. Emerging from ambiguity my mind fell into an unconscious pattern of connecting memories and ascribing purpose. Of all the echoes of the past one rang louder in my ears, the hospital and a bleached white room. Of an impractical God that would soon be laid down for its final slumber while I watched helpless and confined.

When I was younger, perhaps during the teenage years before my hair turned gray and grew due to my own apathy, I remember being admitted to the Psychological Ward during an interim of the building. I was an exception. For what though my mind simply refuses to recall. What I do know is this, the place was often called the "Dead Ward" by its patients and staff. Apparently it was quit the fitting title and while dead men tell no tales, does that rule apply to wards? One wouldn't think so. I remember being half submerged in anesthetics and pills whilst all the blood in my body pounded in my head. At night, the bacteria in my gut would rise to my ears and whisper other people's idle chatter into them. Sometimes in the evening while I sat in my most complete solitude I'd carve parallel lines into my chest and watch all of my sins drain into the cracks in the floor. All of these memories and not one can tell me of the soul reason I was admitted or who it was that admitted me.

I blink and collect myself, staring awkwardly at the room around me as if it were new. Getting up I decide to wander back to the library. Walking through the halls I recognize, my eyes tear in the light air, a testament to my exhausted state. Once more New Brenna came into my conscious though.

By the age of thirteen my father had begun teaching me in the art of self-flagellation.

"Each whip," he'd say in his pastor's voice "Will cleanse your soul, boy. It'll make the Devil himself turn his head away from you in disgust."

When I first began I am ashamed to admit I cried, the pain almost unbearble as the blood coated my back. Often in the early morning I'd sit on my knees near a river, the steam rising off the water. I'd practice until the sun rose to its full height at midday, the cattail's shadows bowing on the river's edge.

"Enough!" my father would eventually shout.

"Thank God." I'd whisper under my breath.

Walking alongside him one evening on our way back to the house he and I talked.

"One day, boy. All of this'll be yours."

"Yeah dad."

"You know I'm proud of you? I don't say that enough, I know."

"It's ok dad, I know, anyways I've been thinking."

"Oh Lord" he whispered to himself.

"I was thinking about mom recently, how did she die?"

My father stops and turns to face me.

"Your mother, Issie, she uh, she died in a fire." He pause and stares into the sky.

"As you know you were only six. You meant the world to her." He nods to himself and moves on.

"Oh, ok..." I replied moving to catch up to him. I knew he was lying though I didn't confront him on the issue.

Entering the room I find the bookshelves devoid of any content, the books themselves are scattered on the floor. I sigh and grab a few, I sit on the couch a begin to read. My first choice was a book titled "Psychologie und die Moderne Epidemie" written by an unkown author as is similar to all the books here. Oddly enough, though the title was clearly German the rest of the book had been translated into proper English. It described events in which humanity and society together directly correlated to a massive surplus in mental illness, acting as a sort of conduit to the damned madness. My second book "Lost Hebridean History" tells of a man who in the early nineteenth century researched the local people and general culture of the Hebrides. To his misfortune he died on his way back to York, England, due to a disease he had caught from a shepherd's malcontented goat. His body was donated to the cause of forwarding the study of human anatomy. Nearly two weeks after his passing they discovered kidney stones in his stomach, stones that had grown into their own islands and made their way to sentience where lichen grew like weeds.

Closing the book I stared at the disarray around me and pondered the strangeness of it all. In my mind a connection became a light, for too long now I have searched for that door. A door that would lead me away from this place and deliver me to another reality. A reality in which I would be able to find another me, another me in which I can reminisce of my forgotten past and forge a new future. Where I would not be confined by a God forsaken house, a house in which even angels dare not trod. Now when all else had failed and the door eluded my grasp I had found a window, a window which perhaps, and in of itself, is a door. Continuous consideration of the subject rekindled a flame in me and in my now euphoric state I made my way to my very own Damascus.

Opening the door to the room I had been in the previous night I felt my hope fade for a second. What lay before me was a decrepit room, worn down from years of neglect. Falling down in lines from the corners of the ceiling rain water had dampened and made examples of the walls. There was no painting in the room, no children dancing in the dusk where the sun's throat bled. Trying to stay positive I told myself that the room must have to be under the moonlight it it's to alter. This room was a portal, a gateway between realms in which when under the cover of night, would tear away from its own reality and enter mine. Of course this was all theory but I was willing to believe it, if only to settle my worries. All thoughts aside it was now late into the evening and I should prepare for the night and the witching hour that accompanies it. Hours later as night had already descended unto Damascous I lay once more in bed, the same room as last night. Just as before I drift off, succumbing to the nightmares as is now ritual.

Birds, I hear them calling, the sun beating on my face. My eyes open, a beach, an island with a jungle filled to the brim with the avian creatures. Around me the noxious heat is crashing in on waves and the sea lies becalmed whilst no waves ride in on the current. I stand up, the heat and humidity leaving me light headed and dumb in the sun's sight. Nearby a small hill that looms over the water's edge, creating an arch that reaches fifty feet before falling back into the ocean. Intermingled into the hill are ancient bones in which the gulls nest and lay their eggs, they are protected in ribcages and skulls. Crowned atop it an Aztec temple glistening in the sun. On its steps a man in an eagle mask stares intently in my direction. His body bare and scarred is darkened by the sun. He beckons me wordlessly to him and I oblige and move forwards. Half-way up the steps the eagle masked man outstretches his left arm as to stop me. With his other he reaches into his chest and rips out his still beating ruby heart. Tossing it down the stairs and into my hands he tells me to eat. Unable to stop myself I devour the heart and feel content in my gluttony. Suddenly my throat and tongue swells I try to breath but I choke on my own mucus as it falls in globs down my constricted air way. I scream or attempt to, but my swollen gullet doesn't make more than a pathetic whistle.

I shoot up in bed, this time jumping to my feet which land loudly on the floor boards. A clock tolls downstairs preaching to me promises of salvation and I run to my pilgrim's path, the room. Barging into it I see the painting and the wallpaper, my heart soars. Taking down the frame I noticed that the darkness behind it was devoid of the masses who had prviously occupied it. Lifting the window I am confronted in full force by the humidity in which the abyss lay. I climb through left leg first and become submerged in this sanctum.

Blindly I stumbled my way forwards trying to find a buoy in the dark. My world has now become little more than impassioned nothing and I am lost within its heart. I cannot rightly discern the amount of time I wandered apathetically in the world's offal. As exhaustion began to grasp ahold of me while I simultaneously drowned under the humidity and sweat, I saw it. A light, thought it was distant and its source indiscernable  I cared little. I crawled towards it using all of whatever strength remained, leaving vestiges in my wake. Arriving at the light, my arms as fractured as a broken wing and my concscience ever commanding, I basked momentarily in my filthy glory crying out at redemption. For mere seconds I lay under the light, mere seconds before my heart stopped beating and I fell to the floor dead. A stillborn hog floating on the Somme under a cool autumn's night, its nerves frozen down to the nucleus.

Images, memories, like bullets tore through my mind. Rapid and inconsistent they took flight upon the moment of impact. A female voice chimes in the distance, monotone and robotic and nature.

"Subject 21297 disconnected, all medical staff please report to the Simulation Bay." She repeats the message once more.

My eyes begin to focus, the tiled room around me is in disrepair. Connected to me is an odd machine that beeps annoyingly by the second. No one seems to be here. As I sit up, I pull the wires that connect me to the machine from my skin, immediately shutting it down. Her voice once more echoes throughout the building.

"Doctor Rosen please report to the Medical Bay, Doctor Rosen to the Medical Bay."

I stand up but my legs fail me and I fall to my knees. I notice that I'm wearing a patient's gown. Above me a few lights flicker in the dust filled air. Gaining sensation in my legs I slowly lift myself off of the ground and limp towards the door. Grasping the rusted knob I push the door open and enter a decaying hall. Half of the lights that occupy it are slowly dying in their own insignificance, the other half are already deceased. Suddenly her voice booms in a speaker above my head and I grimace at the volume of it.

"Subject 21297, please return to your room, failure to comply will lead to your immediate detainment."

Nervous but defiant I pressed on, not entirely convinced that this voice had any real control. At the end of the hall I come to a crossroad, each hall has a number of signs and locations in which they lead too. Most of the words are indecipherable in their faded states but to my right upon a wall is the word "Exit" written in what appeared to be marker, a large arrow pointing underneath it. The font was large and written with unsteady hands but the word itself was clear to me. I walked down the hall further and came to a set of stairs, one leading up, and another down. This time there was no hand written word to guide me. I chose to follow the stairs upwards as I could feel a slight draft float silently down to me.

"Subject 21297, do not ascend, what you will find I cannot shield you from." Her voice as monotone as ever reverberated from a speaker somewhere below.

"What the hell are you talking about?" I yell into the empty stairwell, but I receive no response.

Continuing on my way I felt the temperature drop with every step I took. Around me the atmosphere grew bitterly cold and I shivered violently on the constantly ascending stairs, passing by floors in which numbers read out of order and in nonsensical patterns.

I tried at each level to open the doors I happened upon, but they would unveil their secrets to me. Eventually on the final level I reached, at the summit of the ascent, on a plaque reads the number zero. I push this door open easily and stare out into an empty lobby, adjacent to me were two shattered double glass doors. I walk towards them but at this point the cold is unbearable and my body numbs. This gown I wear provides nothing and I leave it behind me on the ground. Wandering nude through the doors I enter a world in which only white can be seen. As far as the eye can perceive, only white, no buildings or trees, no people or vehicles. I traverse out into the snow until I am knee deep in the poweder. Turning around I look at the building which I had emerged from moments ago. It is little more than a rundown store, rusting both inside and out, it seems to be a lone spire where no other child of man stands. For one final time the women's voice calls out to me.

"Subject 21297, please, return to your room, there's nothing left for you out there."