User:FireBlade624

 STILTS



Her heart raced, sweat began to bead on her brow … She couldn’t really be awake; it couldn’t really be true… She tried to shrug it off, deep down, however, a fear was welling inside of her. She felt her stomach writhing around in her, she felt her pulse in her throat… As much as she tried to convince herself it was fake, one word shined like a beacon in her mind, over and over it flashed in her mind’s eye… Run. Run. Run. Run.

She willed herself forward, she tried to pry herself from her chair but she could not. Run. Run. Run.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to pray, but only one word echoed again and again. Run. Run. A prick found its home on the back of her neck. She suddenly, violently peeled her eyes open only to see the egg-like mask of her nightmare, the very fear she had fought so hard to control, its single, black eye peering at hers with its orange iris… It looked so welcoming, but this was not the welcome she wanted, she knew this hell, all too well… She’d dreamed it time and time again in the weeks before. She knew his sleek, curved blade was at her neck, she knew in seconds he would kill her, she knew. This was made apparent by the madness he imposed on her. He felt her trying to push past him in her mind, but she was weak. Longer and longer she stared into his mesmerizing eye. Like a portal to some terrifying world, full of all the daemons she had come to know. He spoke to her, in her mind. He said one word. And as he said it, she glanced up to see she was hanging, upside down, in a large cave. Many other girls her age hung with her, beside her, staring into the distance, dead inside, a shell. With that one word, she knew it would not be over as soon as it had always been in her sleep. Run. She slammed her eyes shut once more, trying desperately to block the image of the hypnotizing eye from her mind. Then she ran. She ran as hard as she could for as long as she could stand to run. When she finally collapsed, she opened her eyes to find herself back in her chair, staring at the painting of the man she had made from recollections of dreams. He wore a hooded jacket and jeans, a mask with one gaping hole that showed his sole eye. His arms and legs were long for his short torso, and his fingers pointed viciously. The black scythe he carried seemed to glow darkly, ominously, but the thing that really stood out about him were his shins. They stretched at least half his height, and ended in the sneakers that looked too small to hold all of his weight. That was it though, he had no weight to carry, he was a figment of her mind, she told herself again and again. She mumbled incoherently and shook silently from her room on the third floor of the apartment building she lived in, walking slowly to the window to get some fresh air, clear her head. Reaching the window she realized with a start that there were no stars in sight, nor any clouds in the sky. Looking down, she saw nothing, no ground, no building below her, only the mask. The eye. The prison that suddenly encompassed her. She fell to her knees and cried as he strode silently up to her, floating across the floor. He took his blade and slowly and precisely touched the top of her head. Pressing accurately, as if a surgeon, he slid his scythe through her flesh and pulled it down her face, splitting it in two. She saw this all, she felt the cold steel on her skull, but it didn’t hurt, even as he peeled her face apart at the seam he created, pushed his feet one at a time down her forehead, climbing inside slowly. He closed the wound and walked casually away, silently admiring his new suit.