Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27622208-20160116181426

This is my first time comitting to accomplishing a work of fiction and publicly displaying it on the internet for everyone to see. I will be fine with frank remarks about my work.

A boom from the skies madly startled the good spirit out of the traveler, to which he responded by whipping back in fright. He felt his two ears explode and his eyes temporarily blinded by the white flash. For a short time, all the traveler could hear in agony was the endless ringing seeping into his head, his eyes closed in amazement. Covering his ears with his palms only worsened the ringing. Gradually, and with patience, the ringing died out, and he sprang to his feet, dusting off the soil and dirt from his back. However, he was also mad; facing the heavens with his glowering eyes, he punched the cold air upwards, cursing it with two, expressive words:

“Damn you!”

After that curt rant, the traveler fixed his long, blue coat, and donned his hat back, which he almost forgot on the ground. He checked his belongings, which included his faithful cane and a waterskin. Once he felt secured, he resumed his journey towards the misty road to return to home, walking as if he was strolling on the shores of the beach, with a huge grin on his face that mocked and challenged the odds against him. Unexpectedly, the heavens above answered him—with a rainstorm that fell without warning. The traveler stopped, washing in his debacle. Another glance at the sky, but with a heavy frown and two raging pearls, assured his defeat to the workings of the heavens. Now he had to find shelter, and quickly, before this cold rain makes him ill and delays his journey.

The night before the rainstorm was what a dreamer might see. Legions of stars decked the black sky, and thick, white clouds floated gently. The moon seemed delightful tonight, for her light beamed the scope of the land with a passionate mirth. Nevertheless, the traveler found this mundane, for he has painted many scenes of the earthly night, and criticized the world’s blasphemous repetition. He was a man of reason, whose early years were shaped by the burden of the ages on his shoulders. He had been a sailor, a farmer, a lord’s lowly lackey, until he discovered what he could achieve without the world’s commandment chaining him along with the plebeians. This dramatic process was what drove him to be a loner, to be a traveler. To travel this world and paint all the precious scenes there are was his mission, and to let his eyes burst to a million pieces was his ultimate goal when the banality of the world would finally seize him.

Under the glittering night, vegetation reigned over the land. Verdant forests filled the sights of land-goers for a long stretch of miles, stretching to every direction. The woods were concealing the beasts of dark, however, and their tall stature and eerie shadows would instill those who past by them in the cold night with a taste of nature’s wicked side. Who knows what terrible creature lurks behind the vast armies of trees? The traveler found this alarming, and his security was playing a game of chance that he was about to lose. He could hear the howling of wolves—or wolves is it? What other damned creature could howl? The eagles could, couldn’t they? Monkeys and hairy beasts could also howl, is he not right? Perchance, it is his mother reprimanding him for being a forsaken child, but his mother was deceased long years ago—or was she? Was she that ghastly woman that would haunt him by the house? Notions such as these should have put the traveler in a straightjacket during those desolate times; but he was a man of reason, he would tell himself, and these notions are nothing but illusions of a doubtful and unclean mind. He is a man of reason and intellect, and these are nothing but spectres formulated by man’s insanity to lead other men to destruction. These are nothing…

“Nothing!”

He laughed and challenged the so-called heavens again, which the heavens duly responded to with another lightning bolt of their own arsenal, roaring with divine might that would incinerate any mere organism to stardust. The bolt struck the cold earth, and the traveler was startled again, persuaded to run for his poor soul.

He ran and ran for what seemed to him an eternity, until, out of the thick misty fog, he was closing upon a figure, dark and large in scale. It was unmoving, and the traveler thought this could be what he had in mind. He ran towards it fearlessly, his eyes squinted and his celerity increased. The rain was still falling upon him, and the night was getting darker, but he soon arrived to his point. He stopped running as the mists cleared way, and the image was elucidated.

It was an old cabin, and the traveler quickly darted towards the door.

Opening the wooden door, the hinges let out a sharp, noisy creak, as if unopened for a long time. The cabin was utterly dark, but the traveler’s eyes fell upon a fireplace. His closed the door behind him and headed towards the fireplace, to which his found oak wood still remaining. Fortunately, he had a box full of matches. Gathering some blank papers from a table opposite of the fireplace, he placed this on the hearth, and lighted it with one prosperous match. A paper reacted, and was soon producing fire. The bunch of papers he arranged under the logs was then ablaze, and he positioned them with the fork carefully, squatting for better mobilization. As the fireplace soon became great, it was illuminating the space behind the traveler, and at the same moment radiating his cold and damp body. He stood up and turned around, and his gaze was met by an array of colorful candles neatly placed on the table. As he walked towards it, his boots were loudly tapping the central floor between the fireplace and the table, indicating hollowness below the wooden tiling. Odd, but his mind was not set to that fact, and he was carrying a small, partly alighted twisted piece of paper to light the candles for further illumination. He leaned over the table and began lighting all twenty-seven of them, as he counted. Soon, the cabin was generously bright and clear. The traveler was now warm and cozy, but he saw no need to explore the abandoned cabin. He saw baskets on one corner of the house, not far from the door, and his curiosity was alighted. The baskets were akin to the ones he saw from Delhi, where cobras were charmed by the playing of the pungi. They had a curvaceous body, curving larger from bottom to top. The lid had a small, woven handle. Something large would fit in one of these big baskets, thought the traveler.

His hands were reluctant at first, seeing that he was also respectable man. A respectable man, an honorable man, a diligent man—he was man of encompassing motley. Oftentimes, his ego was incomparable, and like the tower of Haman, it was built heavenward to jeer at creations of man. Curiosity, however, was the catalyst for many of his workings, including him getting mocked back by the heavens; and this curiosity was coercing his right hand to open one of the lids. What could be bad about it?

He opened one of the lids, and he was taken aback. Disgust, horror, terror, and dumbfounded was all in his contorted countenance—but it was neither of those. He was more appalled by what he had discovered: turtles. Baby turtles, and nothing more. They were swimming in water, amazingly, for this was a basket and water should be seeping out, thought he. He had no interest to examine the unknown mechanism to make this basket not flowing out with water; for his mind was on the joyously frolicking baby turtles in the basket. He had tasted baby turtles before. It was during those trips to an island inhabited by various cultures of uncivilized cannibals and islanders. Endocannibalism or exocannibalism, both were practices worthy of abolishment and abomination. Man should not eat one another. Man should eat turtles, however, for they are nutritiously scrumptious when you have nothing and you are lost, pursued by crazed cannibals. One day—hopefully one day, thought he—when he gets someway affluent from selling his masterpieces, he would buy a squadron of the British army to merely efface the cannibals he met that day from the face of the earth.

Talk about him joining politics—it would be disastrous.

Reliving those short moments, he was still playing with the turtles, hungrily. Perhaps he should roast one of them, and tear the hard shell away from them to enjoy the delectable turtle flesh, tender and délicieuse. Before he could take one, a slight creak from a door widened his two eyes. Quickly, he turned around, his hand starting to sweat and shake. The door was closed firmly, but where was the damn creak? He was sweating, time was slowing down, and his heart was abnormally beating. No, it was not from the door, not from it at all.

It was from the spandrel under the stairs.

Narrowly opened it was, but the blackness was striking the inner guts of his abdomen with newfound fear. His reason and intellect did not matter. The air around him was now thick, strangling him in sweat. Who opened the spandrel door? The traveler’s head was forming all kinds of ideas as he stood there in silence, breathing the cold air, motionless.

Then he abruptly heard a tap. Another tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap from the blackness of the spandrel. The traveler found himself, gaping, walking backwards in a troubled pace. The air was getting thicker and thicker.

And the figure came into light, uttering words that further froze the traveler…

“I am truly sorry, auntie. I thought you were going to be late. Let me take your…”

The traveler’s wide eyes met with a cadaverous face.

Screams and cries pierced the night. Its echoes forced the birds around the cabin to fly away. The rain still fell heavily, the fireplace was still ablaze, and the traveler was screaming from the abyss of his lungs; so was the figure in a feminine terror. Then he stopped to behold the figure. It was a maid. It was a young woman.

“Oh, I am very sorry, madam!” The traveler shrieked in the most frightened voice of his; “I thought this cabin was aba—abandoned. I meant not an intention to transgress your property. I am not a burglar!”

The traveler was drowning in cold fear and surprise, so was the maid, whose pale hands were on her chest, and her eyes and mouth widened by the unexpected.

“Oh my God!” Started the terrified maiden. “What are you doing here? Oh my, perished you will be when she finds you here!”

“Who? On whose hands will I be perished?”

The maid went out of the door, walked in a meek manner, and, with gaunt fingers, pointed towards the window beside the main door. The traveler was bound to look.

“Her!” She pointed towards a ghostly shadow as lightning struck.

The traveler looked, and more horrors entered his eyes. It was neither human nor beast, and he was beginning to panic. The maid was also about to panic, but she knew the grave consequences the traveler was to be buried in if her auntie discovers a visitor in the house!

“Quickly, visitor!” She led the traveler to the baskets. “Hide here until she goes upstairs—and do not let out any sounds!”

The traveler fearfully obeyed as he could the figure’s heavy footsteps on the muddy ground. He opened the lid of the basket, and instead of the feeling of being appalled, he was disgusted. However, there was no moment for any personal impediments. He forced himself to go inside with the turtles, mouthed a handful air, and held his breath under the water, the turtles covering his above.

All he could do now was to wait and hear.

Then he heard the door creak open.

“Hello, my dear Augustine,” a hoarse, gloomy, eldritch voice spoke.

“What is that I smell? Are there any visitors here? Visitors to be devoured?”

“N—not at all, my auntie. There is no one here. No living flesh here.”

The traveler heard the most awful sounds of sniffing, as if the auntie—as the maid addresses to—does not agree with the maid’s answer.

"My dear, my nose can smell the scent of a human visitor here,"

Sniffed and sniffed she did, and the traveler felt offended by how this woman, or man, committed to her, or his, body. He was at the same time zonked, for he did not know if this speaker was truly a woman, or a man; the voice was unsettlingly lackadaisical but domineering, as if she or he was the housekeeper of this 'house'. It was akin to the diction of a dying tyrant. In short, it was devilishly manipulative.

"Where is he hiding, my dear?" The voice demanded, snorting.

"I--I do not know what are you requesting of me, my auntie. There have been no visitors here I assure you." The maid with a weakly voice replied.

The traveler felt the maid being pressured. He wanted to help her from what madness she--and essentially him--was dealing with; but all he could was hold his breath, be silent and wait. His lungs were already panting for air.

"Augustine," The voice snorted. "You do acknowledge that visitors will corrupt you. Corrupt, my child! That is why I am here to protect you from them. Now, tell me: where is he?"

"I swear to you, auntie, there is no one here!"

"If you will not tell," The voice warned. "Then I will make you tell where he is."

Sharp jingles of metals were caught by the traveler’s ears, indicating the auntie is bringing out something demonic.

“The light of the lantern commands you!” The auntie commanded in a tempestuous tone.

Lantern? What will the accursed lantern do? Damn him to his seat in the underworld? Trap his soul inside the lantern? No, for it was not connected to him. The command was given to the maiden!

“I am under the command of the light.” A strange voice replied, whose tone was submissive and straight. There was no intonation. It was a lifeless reply.

Was it the maid? No, no, it cannot be.

“Now, tell me: where is he hiding?”

“In… the…basket…”

The traveler froze. He gulped. His eyes closed. His lungs were shriveled beyond their limit. Death was strumming the strings of his fate. He was motionless, unable to save himself.

“So,” heavy footsteps followed. “Here you have been hiding.”

The footsteps stopped at the very side of the barrel he was hiding in.

“Have you come here to have your insides devoured? Surely you did.” Her voice must be the last wicked sound he would hear on earth. It reeked of the gallows, of drowning down the sea, of swords and spears, of cruel Death. He heard a rustling sound above the lid. Suddenly, it was opened.

“THERE YOU AR…oh…”

A stop commenced, and the silence remained. The traveler could see the ray of fractured light diffusing through the infinitesimal spaces between the piles of baby turtles above him. He did not see her face.

“Oh, my old nose has wronged me well,” the eerie voice glumly exclaimed as she took one of the turtles. “It was but turtles.”

A horrible sound of crunching and munching, and gluttonous slurping and ugsome dripping of saliva awoke the nerves of the traveler, remaining hidden under the mass of turtles.

“Delicious,” the voice broke the silence. “Well, it was all turtles, my dear Augustine. My old nose has wronged me quite well. How can I sniff human flesh now? Do not worry, my child, for I will still protect you.”

“Thank you, my dear auntie. I—I will keep away from those visitors. Do not worry.”

“You should be, for they will corrupt you,” The voice snorted again. “Any evil secrets you have been keeping?”

“No—not at all, auntie. There are no secrets that I keep undisclosed.”

“Good, and put that fire out; I told you not to light it.”

“Yes, I will, auntie.”

There was a small amount of air that the traveler breathed into as he heard someone going upstairs. He succeeded in surviving.

“Remember, Augustine, I keep doing this for you so you will be safe. Those visitors will corrupt you. You must keep doing chores.”

The traveler heard the jingles again.

“The light of the lantern commands you to clean!”

“Yes…my…auntie…”

The sound of brushing followed, and the heavy footsteps became fainter and fainter, until it died away. A couple of tapping approached the basket he was in.

“It is safe now. You can come out”

The traveler was wet and cold, sitting before the blazing fireplace. The maid was cleaning and brushing away dust from the wooden floor. She wore a clean black dress that had no speck of blemish. Her white cap was clean too. She was strikingly pale, and her blue eyes spoke of tiredness and banality. It was as if the traveler felt himself in that poor maid—hardworking, obedient and never whining. He felt a bolt of compassion strike his tongue.

“That was your auntie—that manly voice?”

The maid giggled as if this was the first comedic statement she ever heard.

“No, she is not. She is merely protecting me.”

Not her auntie? Then who was that ugsome voice? He did not want to learn. He wanted to free the maid.

“I could help you,” The traveler stood up from his sit and faced the maid. “Then, hopefully, I could take you—“he gestured at the door.

“Escape? I cannot do that! By the time I finish cleaning, my auntie will be coming down again. She always does this to me to keep me away from turning corrupted.”

“That is why I will offer my help to decrease the time you need to finish your chores. Then, you can escape.”

The maid was smiling her widest, and the next moment her and the traveler were brushing the floor, washing it, and dusting the walls of cobwebs. The traveler was doing a splendid deed for someone, and he took pride in it. He felt like a benevolent ruler, a wise man, an angel. No, not like a blasphemous angel: but as if he was a good man, to be short. The world is evil, but inside men there is good.

Brushing must be a strenuous chore; all those muscles stretched and torn, must be the plausible reason why the maid is always pale and tired. He looked at her face, and she looked back too. She smiled, showing her teeth, which were neatly white. Joy and hope was in her face.

It is a very splendid deed, he merrily thought.

They were finally done. The cold air was still silent. It has stopped raining and the heaven’s wrath subsided. The night was in complete rest.

“We are done now, and she still sleeps. We can escape”

There was a look of reluctance on the maid’s face.

“I cannot. Not without the protection of my auntie! What if I—“

A loud, creaking sound emerged from above. It was heavy and it was slow. The traveler began to look at the stairs. She has awoken!

“Augustine? Is that you? Is there somebody with you?”

The chorus of a slow, loud foot came down from the darkness. The traveler held his breath and the maid only gaped in silence.

“Is there any visitors?” the hoarse voice growled. “Have you cleaned the pit of bones?”

Then, there she was. A form of the most deformed creation, covered by a tattered cloak behind her back. She was tall and her skin was dotted with a gross amount of fleshy growths. Her eyes were imbalanced, and her face was an unspeakable abnormality. She was an entity of horror that gave the traveler a reason to scream aloud. The auntie was then startled.

“Visitor!” She exclaimed, her tone frightened. “What are you doing here?”

The traveler was too terrified and dazzled by what he saw to even utter a word, and the maid did nothing but stand behind the traveler. As the monstrous auntie walked closer to them, the traveler frantically waved his cane against the auntie, like a chair against a circus lion.

“Augustine!” Shouted the auntie. “Come here and away from that visitor—or you will be corrupted!”

The poor maid did not utter a word.

“Stand back, monster!” The traveler swung his cane to and fro. “Augustine, retreat to the spandrel!”

He and the maid hurried into the darkness of the spandrel and closed it with terrified speed. It was lightened only by the candle carried by the maid. The auntie started bashing on the door.

“Lad, you do not know what curse you have dealt upon. Your soul will be devoured!”

The traveler sighed, enjoying his fractured security.

“We will be safe here, Augustine. We shall find a way out—“he turned around, but there was no Augustine. Only a vast, blanket of blackness met his gaze.

“You should have not come here.”

A blue, floating figure came out of the darkness. It had jaws of immeasurable lengths and jagged sharpness. Its eyes were two pearls of bottomless voids. These stared unto the traveler’s soul, and the traveler did what could be his last breath on earth.

Scream.

Night has gone to the other side of the world, and the sun shone his clemency to the other side. The trees were gentle and kind again, the beasts retreated, and the poor traveler’s skeleton lay buried with other bones under the cabins wooden floor, never to be found again.

The end.

Or is it?  