Author's note: This is a segment story, originally beginning as an elaborate way of expressing emotions, but after a few paragraphs I decided to make it a fully fledged story.
And as I came to a fork in the road a darkness enveloped me, and I was consumed by the darkness, and the darkness and I came to understand each other. The darkness and I traverse that very road still, wandering until we find the light.
The darkness and I fell upon an abyssal ravine, filled with the shadows of our pasts. And it was at this point that I came to realize that the darkness had followed me all my life, as his pains were mine in the ravine, his shadows intertwined with my own.
And after ages of endless torment, the shadows ceased to exist, and we fell into the void, the darkness and I, and Lucifer himself came to behold us. He raised his mighty blade and cut the darkness from me, and at that point I knew I was empty, and would remain empty until the darkness was reunited with me.
As I lay on Satan’s rack, tortured and cut, I thought about my friend, the darkness, who had been taken from me. I held my resolve, saved my strength, as I knew that, somewhere in this Hell, the darkness was here doing the same. At the first chance, we would escape, and the darkness and I would be one once more.
The floor of Hell gave way, releasing me into the nothingness below. “What is below Hell?” you may ask. It’s nothing; it is void, sans of life and movement. I don’t know what power had released me, but I feared that lifelessness might drive me mad. It was not dark, nor was it light; it was empty.
As I fell, I felt the warm embrace of the abyssal shadows return to me, pulling me back to Hell, inking my eyes to blindness. I allowed myself to be lulled to sleep, vaguely feeling motion as the shadowy tendrils dragged me upward. The darkness was my friend, and it was dragging me back, so where do I stand?
When I awoke, I was cold. Numbed. Painless. It was no longer shadowy, but rather, light. “I found the light…” I whispered to no one in particular, and began to ponder about my lost friend, the darkness. I fear I will die in the light, cold and alone, unsleeping for eternity, praying for an end to the emptiness.
Eons later, a voice rang out through the light, desecrating the silence. The voice was not of any one mind, as it seemed to be a mass of people, vying for the right to speak. Eventually, a small voice, perhaps of a child, burst into my mind. “Darkness”.
As the voiced faded, I found I could once again move my formerly incapacitated extremities, and I looked around. The light only went a small way, a mere two yards from where I had been laying; Beyond that were white curtains and a trolley with miscellaneous tools on board, including a scalpel and a bone knife.
“Run.” It was a different voice, although it seemed to be of the same mind. I rose, and collapsed immediately. I saw through blurry eyes as white shapes passed through my vision, rushing towards me, making incoherent noises. I felt something pierce my flesh, and once again I was drifting towards the crippling light.
“We’ll return.” And at that, voices faded out of earshot, and I was alone lost in the immaculate calm of the Ether. As I was once again being soothed into a dormant coma, I imagined the voice. It would return, wouldn’t it? I had to keep faith that it would, so perhaps I could know why I was here.
Decades later, a voice called out again, disrupting the balance of the eternal light. “Come.” This time, however, I knew better. I disregarded my surroundings, merely charging forward, through an endless corridor full of shapes and colors. I breezed past, going where the voice directed.
“Jump,” the voice ordered as I came to a window. The voice hadn’t led me astray yet, so I fulfilled said command. When I hit the ground, none were more astounded than I to see me keep running, my mind cut out of the equation of where to go.
I eventually came to a burnt out building, full of ashes and lost time. A figure stood, and while my vision was still hazy, I could clearly see the figure, strutting away. I enquired who they were, and they looked at me, and what I saw sent me reeling. The face was ever moving, ever fluid.
I was shocked enough to collapse once more, only to awake somewhere entirely different. The room was clean, with hardwood floors and a low coffee table. There were memories strung along the wall, frames holding them in their place, refusing to allow them to wander in our minds. A large window revealed a sunrise, crystal clear.
“Jump.” I obliged.
I awoke and returned to the road where the Darkness had been introduced to me. It was not there, but rather a figure of pure energy, gleaming in the fading sunlight. The figure beckoned to me with its chrome-like figure, fluidly moving and changing. I followed it to the end of the road, where it spoke.
“Have you heard of a phenomenon known as dreaming?” I responded that I had not. The figure nodded, and proceeded along the road, unaware if I had been following or not. I realized that it was mumbling to itself, although it was too soft for my mind to clearly make out what it had been saying. The chrome figure brought me to Hell, where Satan still laughed at me and mocked me.
“You know this?” I responded that it was Hell. Again it nodded. He carried on through Hell, demons ignoring us, Satan disregarding a puny nuisance such as us.
We came upon the gaping maw of where I had fallen, Lucifer’s rack cast aside nearby. Once more the figure asked, “And this? You know this, too?” I merely answered yes, and interrogated why I was subject to these queries. The energy being pressed on still nodding, mumbling getting louder.
We passed through the abyssal hole and into the light, although here he did not rest to enquire anything of me. The surroundings of the voided light had changed, however, and a border of a large room soon became apparent.
The figure sat at a desk, and talked to the person toiling at it. The person rose, and stared at me. It was the multi faced monster I had witnessed before. It spoke, although in longer sentences now. As it spoke it strutted towards me, speaking in ever migrating voices.
“Do you remember anything before the Darkness?”
This struck wrong with me, and asked how it knew about the darkness. “We know many things, please answer us; Do you remember anything before the Darkness?” I answered that no, I didn’t. “It is as we feared.”
The figure strode back towards the desk, and a window appeared in the wall behind it. It peered through, apparently interested in some event occurring outside the strange room. “I’m sorry that this had to happen to you, Nate.”
I woke up, staring into the face of a small child. The child jumped with obvious shock, and went running. I struggled to move, and was in pain. My eyes began fluttering, but before I drifted off once more I heard a voice cry out, “We missed you…”
Senator Joe Schiavoni woke up after some disturbing dreams. “Who are you…?” he stuttered to the figure lying next to him in the plush bed. The figure turned, and for a brief moment the face seemed undecided as to what it was planning on looking like, but it settled into the face of Margaret.
Stunned, Joe shook his head. Yes, it was indeed his wife, Margaret. She asked what was wrong, but he blew her off. He couldn’t remember what had happened yesterday or… anything, recently. Just work things.
“Nothing, sweetie. I’m going to get ready for work.”
Doctor Grey watched through the shielded glass into the observation room. Another doctor nonchalantly asked if he really thought he was the senator, and Grey merely smirked.
“You doubt my work? It has worked before, and it’ll work again. My technique is perfect. They never realize a thing.” The other doctor, fearful of getting fired, quickly agreed and changed the subject. He knew they would release their newest project into the world soon, so he would have to be on the inside if he wanted to help these people.
The doctor hurried down more hallways, and shuddered as one of the training dummies used their technology to change its face.
It looked like his wife. It was smirking, just like she always did when she knew something he didn’t. He hated that.
Written by AMarbleHornet
Content is available under CC BY-SA