• Halls. A short story that I need opinions on.
    5 replies, posted
Well, Last night I started writing in MS Word, and eight pages later, I'm wondering if I should continue, or scrap it altogether and start anew. It's not really meant to be scary, but it's not calm in any sense. I'm wondering if I should go with more twists, or iron out the story and go somewhere with it. I don't know how far it's done, but I'm fairly sure if I continue, it'll be quite a lot longer. Also, I've never written seriously before, or I've always given up after a very short while, so don't bash me for sucking if I do. [B][U]Halls[/U][/B] As one would expect, this story isn’t about an everyday occurrence. In fact, a story isn’t really a story if it isn’t worth telling, at least, that’s what I think. With all that’s going on around me, I don’t know what to think anymore. If everything is just a perception of our own separate minds, then what is life really like? Time is most likely a state of mind, with no physical occasions as far as we can tell. With everything either false by reality, or false in some other sense, how can one trust our inhibitions or senses? As I’ve come to find out, there’s only so much we, as humanity, can do to understand the universe, then we’re just a group of rambling kids spewing their ideas in the dark. North, South, West, East, up, down, left, right, they may all be the same. Everything is what we don’t expect, and everything we don’t expect is what we won’t further accept, or our minds won’t accept those thoughts. However, in the very unlikely event that our logic is correct, and everything is just how we think it is, then life really is a bore. However, a boring life is better than what I’ve lead recently. People lead their lives like there is forever ahead of them, like they’ve got the world to lose, but in reality, or the contrary of what we find to be reality, their life is meaningless to each other. I could go on, saying this could really be that, and there could really be that place, but it wouldn’t do justice to the story I’m about to tell. Just remember, reality has complete power over what happens in this world, and if it fucks up, then what do we have to trust in? It all started as a kid, when I was around the age of five. Although I can’t trust my own memories from this age, the reoccurrence of this compels me to believe it in some context of our pigmented, doubtful, and put-together reality. I was in my room, which I, at the time, shared with my younger brother. Because of our financial situation, our house didn’t have very many rooms, and I doubt my parents were really dedicated to giving any of my siblings separate attention. I had nightmares, many of them, no, all of them reoccurring. They were very vague, as if I was witnessing them when I just woke up and hadn’t yet regained my senses. Each time, a dark figure would come forward very slowly. Its image would jump around as if static were somehow applied to him. Each time, the figure had a different voice, but in the nightmares, no, dreams, I was the same. I looked much like I do now, grown up and all that. I’m not quite sure how I could see myself in the dream, but I could, I have no doubt, and although I was only five or so at the time, in the dream, I could contemplate much like I can now. Each time the dream occurred, it became no clearer, but the figure got closer each time. No physical changes were made to it, but the voice changed every time the dream repeated itself. I don’t remember what it was at first, but it was calming, soothing to the ears. It grew more unbearable or more so excruciating each time it reoccurred. I never did recall what they said, but it always had to do with something meaningless, maybe some talking about animals, or arguing with someone who’s not there. They didn’t seem to be talking to me, but seemed to be repeating a message or previous statement. As I got older, developed a real life with responsibilities, the dreams came less and less often, sometimes making me forget about them. However, around the time I was fifteen, something happened that I won’t, can’t, and could never forget. I think I was at my friend’s house, sometime in winter if I recall. We were sitting in his living room, his house empty apart from the two of us, when he went upstairs to make food. It seemed like forever, but I waited. Eventually, I got bored and began to look around. Every hallway covered in shadow, every room casting some eerie brilliance into the halls. I was going to call his name, when the power went out. During a storm, this may have seemed normal. But on a calm Winter night, it seemed extremely out of place, so much so that I sat back down and waited further. That’s when I saw it, or rather, him. A man in the hallway, lit up from below somehow, staring at me, or rather, through me. He said nothing, and nothing in the scene bared any resemblance to my dreams, but I knew they were connected, through some odd feeling in my gut, I knew they were one in the same. He came towards me in the same creepy fashion as before, but much faster, and without the static-like jumping in my dreams. As he did, I sat on the couch petrified, not able to move a muscle in any major way, much like sleep paralysis. When he finally got within a few feet of me, he stopped. His facial expression hadn’t changed, but he seemed annoyed. He backed away, and the light that was lighting him went out. The lights in the house suddenly turned back on, not only the previous ones, but every light in the house, when my friend clambered the door open, and came down the stairs making enough noise to be considered a thunderstorm. Whether he was trying to scare me, or he was just in a mood to go through everything fast, I sat on the couch staring down the now-bright hallway, my eyes steadily locked on last place I’d seen the man standing, expecting him to reappear. I said nothing of this to my friend, or anyone, from an odd fear of being called insane. Now, the real-life episodes of these ‘dreams’ were occurring often, only when I was alone, and only at night when there isn’t much ambient light to fill an area with the brilliance of the sun. I went only to places where light is abundance. Electricity was pointless, as it would just turn off, or more so shut down around my surrounding area, when these things happened. However, I never called these rules. To do so would be redundant, like trying to reach the moon from a tree. Whatever was happening was going on without any explanation, and seemed to have no ties with physical, mental, or emotional reality, so defining rules would be meaningless. I became severely depressed through my late teen years. I couldn’t leave populated areas, and dark areas scared me to the point of crying when walking past a dark room in a hallway. When I was seventeen, my parents had hit gold; they remarried, and began a quite successful firm together. I didn’t, no, couldn’t care enough to be there when they opened it, nor have I ever been to it. I rarely enjoyed anything, and hung around people just to be safe. I was as paranoid as a bird walking through an empty alley, always expecting a cat to jump out at me, kill me in an instant. So far, these ‘things’ had been harmless physically, but my mental health declined at an astounding rate. My ‘friends’ said they’ve heard me talking to myself, and who knows, maybe I was. At eighteen, things escalated quickly. It had been about six months since on of these ‘dreams’ and I’d regained a small portion of my mental health, enough to get some actual friends, and forget about the odd plaguing dreams. However, I knew they would come back as they always did, something told me they’d be there forever, and I just had to accept it. I believe I was at my cousins house, I believe it had been around eight months since the last dream, and for this I was glad to some small extent. We were watching TV, some show about video games or something, when the power went out. Instead of the power dying in a second or two, it dimmed off, much slower than previously. I looked over at my cousin, to see if he knew what was going on, but he wasn’t there. Before, I’d stupidly assumed that these things happened when I was alone, when no one else was near me, and the nearest light sources can be shut off by whatever was doing it. Now, in the same shock state as with the other dream, I stared ahead, not at the TV, but the wall the TV’s back was facing. A hallway had appeared. It seemed much longer than physically possible, and its actual length probably went into some of the other houses, but I don’t think it really did. It was filled with rooms, packed with small doorways on each side. Each doorway was too close to each other to support the space of a room, so I’d assumed each one was another hallway. Even though I was in the same state as before, I was becoming a bit better at focusing enough to move slightly, such as turning my head, or whispering softly. Then, out of one of the doors near the end of the hallway furthest from me, the figure from my dreams when I was five came out. I couldn’t yet see him, as he was too far away, but he wore all black clothes with a hood covering his head. The way he was lit made it so the hood cast shadows over his face, so I had no way of seeing it from this far. He slowly moved out of the doorway, never making walking motion, none of them ever did. He turned to face me, and when I thought he was going to come towards me, he slowly put his hands up to take off his hood. Although I still could not see much detail from the far distance, his face came out as clear as if it were parallel with mine at two feet. He smiled a very angry smile, much like a smile someone were to make if they were assured some revenge. Out of nowhere, he disappeared from view, and I regained control of my body. However, the scene remained powerless, and my cousin was still not where he was previously. Then, I looked to the real hallway. It’s dark corridor, lit by the same creepy ambiance as before, seemed to beckon to me. I got up, looked around in every direction. The ‘false’ hallway was gone, and the TV displayed a very code-like static. The static flashed, scanlines ran down the screen as normal static does, but it seemed different. The front door was still closed, and I could see nothing out it’s windows, or any of the other windows of the house. I got closer to the hallway, when one of the door’s light turned on, I believe it was the master bedroom of my cousins house. I slowly crept towards it, too afraid to look in any of the dimly lit rooms I was passing. The ceiling light was out, and only the very dim lights in these rooms, and the one bright master bedroom light, provided enough to see in. As I approached the doorway, I noticed the end of the hallway was pitch black, as if space ended there. As I reached the room, I looked back to where I came from. That way was dark too, just cut off from the rest of the world. Pressing forward, I finally came to the room after what seemed to be hours. Slowly turning to, the light seemed brighter and brighter in a very unnatural way. It became so bright that I hesitated to look, but it didn’t create anymore light in the hallway contrary to what you’d think. When my eyes settled to the brightness, I found myself in a white room, no furnishings or wall hangings, just white. I stood in the doorway for some amount of time mesmerized, time didn’t seem to matter. I took a step in, when the figure in the dark cloak appeared face to face with me. He looked to be around sixty or seventy, and if I were to see him in everyday life, he’d seem very wise. His hair was gray and thinning, and his face was somehow normal compared to the rest of this. The figure smiled that same ‘revenge smile’, and out of his closed mouth, I heard him whisper, “Many will fall attempting to end you, it must stop.” The words made me cringe in a way I’ll never forget. At this moment, a giant flash of light engulfed the room, much like a nuclear explosion. The room shook violently, when without warning, I was in my cousins master bedroom. Out of the window, I saw street lights turned on, as well as lights in the house that were turned on. I turned to face the door, but it wasn’t there. Patting the wall where it was excessively, I began to panic. At once, the door reappeared instantly, and a noise, very human, was made when it did. It sounded like laughter, not happy mind you, it was angry. It could have been the previous incident, but I couldn’t have been sure. I walked back to the living room, where my cousin was sleeping heavily; his snores were loud enough to wake up the whole house. I decided to just sleep, continuing to keep these incidents to myself, pertaining to some odd logic I’d accompanied with them long before. However, sleep was not easy, as one would expect. I began to see things, things that were very real, but seemed so physically impossible that I was doubtful I was still awake. The TV was floating in the same spot it had been previously, but the stand for it was gone. I looked around, but couldn’t find it. When I looked back, it was holding the TV up. I went to grab my glass of soda, when I saw nothing there. I decided to turn the television on and watch something uplifting, but it was on that same static. Something was so demonizing and demonic about it, but I knew it was just regular static this time. Between then and now, two years later, nothing much changed. These dream-like states still occurred, but nothing new occurred within them, and still no physical harm was dealt. I decided to go to some upstate psychologists last year, thinking this may have been a well diagnosed problem. Although it’s there job to listen, they always just nodded their head, and seemed to want to scream at you that you were crazy. Objects, no matter how big or small, began jumping around in space, not in a quirky fashion, but changing places in the universe around them. A dresser would move two feet to the left, or a drink would move to another table. Even doors seemed to slide over a few feet, sometimes even disappearing to another room. This didn’t occur to anyone else in the room, or I don’t think they could notice. Whatever reality had once been, something was eating at it, or possibly repairing it to its rightful state, if that were possible. I’d recently gotten a pretty successful job in my parents law firm, and in the time between the last ‘dream’ and the next, I was doing quite well. I had a house, a girlfriend who knew nothing about these occurrences, and plenty more to look forward to. I knew that another dream would come and go sometime, but I got used to it, or tried to. I never did forget about them though. Even if a year went by with their absence, every shadow, every dark room reminded me of them. Sitting in my room, all alone in my house, I decided to test these ‘dreams’. My cognitive faculties had gotten better within the flashes, so much so that I could probably confront the person standing ahead of me if I were brave enough. I walked to the light switch, and flicked it to the off position. Then, I walked to the window, and pulled down it’s curtain, darkening the room to a near pitch black, with the exempt of the light coming off of my computer monitor. I unplugged the surge protector which powered nearly all of my electronics, such as digital clocks, and of course, my computer and monitor. Then, I found my bed, sat down, and stared at the blank wall ahead of me. The wall had previously housed a large Rolling Stones poster, but I put it away to find a new poster, for which I hadn’t done yet. My eyes gained composure as I stared hard into the dark, the wall remaining solid. I noticed a few objects flickering left and right in my peripheral vision, such as my office chair, and my keyboard. I stared, and as I glared at the wall, the light my eyes had grasped onto soon disappeared, leaving the room as dark as ever. Out of nowhere, a doorway blinked into existence on the section of the wall I was staring at. The hallway extruding from it seemed as long as ever, but remained as dimly lit as it was in previous experiences. Everything was the same, except for one thing. The end of the hallway, where once stood nothing, was another door. This door, closed unlike the others, had a sliver of flickering red light coming from the threshold. For some reason, I hadn’t stopped staring, and it seemed much like I never was, but I regained myself, and looked around. The room I was in, previously my bedroom as well as my office, had turned into nothingness. As soon as I got off the bed, I felt back, and it wasn’t there. I felt for my computer, desk, and my chair, and nothing was there. This shocked me, but I kept my mind focused. My original plan was to enter the first door on the right, and so I kept it that. I walked forward, my footsteps making no noise as I walked on what seemed like melting glass, and reached the doorway which had once been a solid stucco wall. Before entering it, I touched the sill of the door, and slid my hand out further until I reached the edge of the door. What I expected to feel was wall to the left of the door, but instead felt nothing. I leaned my head over, and looked into the nothingness, but saw nothing. My hand was now, or should have been, intersecting the hallway. I was sure my hand would have hit the walls of the elongated walkway, but I felt nothing. When I leaned back to look in the hallway, a young woman, maybe twenty-five or so, was standing face-to-face with me. The shock caused me to jump back a foot or two. Her face was, or could have been beautiful, if it weren’t for the mutilation that had been done on one side. Her left eye was pushed in it’s socket, and her cheek on that side had been ripped through. She stood there with no expression. Here one remaining eye peered deep into my pertaining eye. Then, she murmured something in the voice of an angel. “You must never enter the door at the end, for it stands for the end of you. You must stop the distress you are now witnessing; space can only take so much bending before it snaps.” She whispered this as though she were a messenger. No compassion, no large tone changes, just a statement. Before I could say anything, or became composed enough to think of something, she vanished, leaving nothing behind. With that, I waited. I can’t recall what for, but I’m fairly sure I hadn’t a reason for it. After what seemed to be a good two minutes or so, I took a step into the hall. I decided to only look in the hall I was planning to enter, as risk was most likely involved even in stepping within the hall. The walls and ceiling seemed to be solid white in a matte finish, but to the touch, they felt as smooth as fine silk that could tear at the slightest tug. The floor was a very odd tile. It looked much like large porcelain tile, but to the touch, or should I say step, it was unusually soft. It felt as though I were stepping on one of those new ‘space-age’ material beds, but didn’t deform physically as you might expect. When I reached the first door on the right, I was reluctant to look it, as I was afraid of what may be in there. I boldly turned my head to look in there, and found a white room, like the one I had seen before, with one difference. In the corner of the room was a small child, maybe three or four, crying and wailing. It sat with its head buried in its shoulders, and made a slight rocking motion. I had a slight compassion for children, and at the sight of this toddler crying, I hurried to him. His hair was sandy blonde, and looked very dirty. His shirt, or from what I could see, was white and covered in some red fluid, which I assumed to be blood. Once I got within a few feet of him, I asked, “Are you okay?” in a very panic riddled voice. He looked up, and I saw that he wasn’t okay at all. I often see things that remind me of things from my past. A dog that looked similar to mine, or a toy that I once had as a child. I’ll often sway myself into looking for these kinds of things, and if I can’t find them, I’ll look for some minor detail that might. It’s something of an obsession, or maybe I could call it a hobby. I didn’t have the greatest childhood, but something was pleasing about the feeling of nostalgia that came from the reminiscence of the past. The child in the corner looked at me solemnly. His lower jaw was knocked to the right, I assumed it was broken. His teeth were almost all missing, or were dug/bent into his gums. His eyes were calm compared to what I would have thought with him crying seconds ago. The child stood up, his height was maybe around three feet, but one of his legs was broken in several spots from what I could tell. He stared at me, even with multiple broken limbs, with a quiet face. He was wearing a shirt that I once owned as a kid. It was a shirt for one of the city’s high school football teams. It didn’t have the roster on it, only the name of the team and something I couldn’t recall at the moment, maybe the school district or something. The reason this shocked me was unknown, but I felt as pale as a ghost when I saw the shirt covered in blood. That, along with the child’s bloodied appearance, made me look away to one of the other corners of the room. For a second, I gagged on my own saliva. I was hyperventilating heavily. I tried as hard as I could to regain my composure, but could not. I fell to the floor face-first and passed out cold. The last thing I remember is looking up and seeing the child looking at me with a cold, expressionless face. [B]---[/B] [B]---[/B] I woke up in the hospital, coughing up blood as I came to. I couldn’t recall anything since the intentional dream ‘experiment’, and began to panic, when my girlfriend came in. She said she’d found me on my bedroom floor passed out as white as a ghost. I wasn’t breathing, and I was surrounded by a pool of sweat. The doctors resuscitated me as soon as she got me here, and said I barely made it. They don’t know what caused the incident exactly, but they thought it was drugs, and for some reason, my girlfriend did too. Even though I’d never used drugs before, I was now a suicidal overdose-er who can’t control his meds. She left me, and I was soon released from the hospital after they found no chemicals in my body. I never tried to get her back, nor did I continue work. I stopped answering the phone, eventually disconnecting it completely. Depression hit me like a sack of bricks. Leaving the house was a chore, conversing with others was hell. So, I stayed like this for three months, the image of the bloody and mutilated child, and the face of the woman sticking in my head the entire time. I decided to try this experiment again. If death were to come at that time, I really don’t think I would have cared. I sat in my living room this time, my house being paid off by my now quite successful mother. Once again, I shut off all of the lights near me, and unplugged each and every electronic. My shades were already closed, but I checked all of my windows to make sure. I rested onto the couch, looking at the television’s reflective image in the room’s dark light. I couldn’t see myself in it for that angle, only the doorway to my kitchen. I stared as hard as I could; it was hurting my eyes, when the doorway that led to the kitchen disappeared. I didn’t look at it physically, but through the reflection, I could defiantly see that it had vanished. I then refocused my eyes to the wall behind the TV. The television, as well as all of the other things in my eyeshot, moved out of the way to the left or right, giving me clear view of the wall. Then, the hallway appeared. However, it was different this time. The room that I had visited earlier had vanished, and where it stood was a large ‘O’ in bright red. I stood up, and again, everything was gone. The floor gave the illusion of feeling soft, but in reality, was probably solid, or even nonexistent. I started forward, when a man, maybe twenty or so, approached me. He walked forward with a competent and normal posture. I looked down, and his left leg was broken, yet he was able to walk normally. When he reached me, his face scraped and bloody, he said in a very calm and sunken voice, “Whatever you do, don’t listen to Him. He will stop you from ending this, He’ll let nothing in his way.” And with that, he fell to the ground, gasping for air like a fish on land. I tried to help, but when I touched him, he disappeared, only his clothes left in that spot. I decided to go in whichever door I walked by first, which would happen to be the one parallel to the ‘O’ on the wall. As I approached the door I planned to enter, I took a closer look at the large symbol on the wall. In it, was a small picture of that little boy in that room, no bigger than a wallet. It showed the boy like he probably looked in life, a big smile on his face. I stared at the image for a while, then decided to leave it, as it reminded me of his deformity earlier. This room was quite different, in fact, it wasn’t really a room. I appeared on the roof on a tall building. It wasn’t quite a skyscraper, but it was tall enough to be deadly if fallen off of. I looked around, and stepped onto the rooftop. The air was muggy, as if a storm was gathering humidity for a tornado, but the sky was clear. The door behind me dissipated, but I paid no mind to it, for at the far edge of the roof, sat a man huddling, possibly crying. Starting towards him, I noticed how familiar the place looked. I realized that it was the city I lived in, possibly thirty or forty years earlier. The diner had a retro look to it, and the theater was playing an old comedy movie I’d heard my grandparents talk about once or twice. The man paid no attention to me, even as I yelled. As I reached him, I had all but given up on communicating with him verbally. I attempted to tap on his shoulder, but my finger sunk through him as if he were a ghost. I stood there, baffled by the idiocy of my attempts of communicating with him. I assumed it was meant for me to watch, not perform, so I looked at him with some more depth. He was holding a bottle of Bourbon in one hand, and a picture of a young woman in his hand. The bottle was nearly empty, and he took a swig of it every minute or so. At closer inspection, the woman in the picture was the woman I had seen in the entrance to the hall. Before I could contemplate further, the man began weeping. “Why?! Why’d you have to die?! Why the fuck did you leave me this way?!” I barely heard what he said through his crying, but it was obvious that she had died. Beside the man, I noticed a wet and soggy newspaper. Upon closer inspection of the paper, I read a section in the obituaries that was circled in pen very raggedly, most likely by this man. It read: [I][U]“WOMAN AND CHILD KILLED IN CAR ACCIDENT; FOULPLAY A POSSIBILITY.[/U] Mrs. Kathleen Cantebury and her young son Jacob were killed on highway 63 this past night. The cause of death for both victims was blunt trauma, as the car collided with the center divider at high speeds. Neither of the victims were wearing safety harnesses. Foul play suspected by an unknown source, police have yet to comment further.”[/I] The man stared blankly at the picture of his wife. His jacket, most likely a mechanic’s, said ‘Robert Cantebury’ on one of it’s ironed on patches, most likely a sort of nametag. His face was red from crying, he looked as if he were going to explode under pressure, and his eyes were pouring tears. Without warning, he stood up, still sobbing and weeping. Out of his pocket, he equipped a small gun, a sort of magnum. His hands shaking terribly, he checked the six-bullet cartridge. I could see two bullets in it. He faced the city, still pretty underdeveloped at whatever time this took place, and stepped up on the ledge. Facing me now, he placed the gun in his mouth, the barrel pointing to an upwards angle towards his brain. With all this happening in a matter of thirty seconds or so, I hadn’t enough time to react. Two shots, fired in rapid succession. His body fell back limply, feet clipping the ledge as he fell. It seemed like a while before I heard a gory sound ‘crack’ sound on the pavement below. I sat on the ledge, falling down as I went through what I had just seen over and over. I gagged for a few seconds, finally puking when replaying the dull cracking sound his body made as it hit the ground below. In time, I stood up, and got my mind to accept what had happened. I peered over the edge, and on the ground was the man’s body surrounded by a pool of blood. His head was the first to hit the pavement, making the horrendous sound that forced vomit from me. I sat back down once seeing this, feeling too dizzy to stand near the edge. I looked down at the newspaper, and noticed it had changed. It now read: [I][U]“MAN COMMITS SUICIDE ON HOTEL ROOFTOP”[/U] Robert Cantebury committed suicide on the rooftop of the Billingsly Hotel this morning at three A.M. He was killed by two shots to the head through the mouth, and falling from the roof of the thirteen story building. This only twelve hours from his wife and child’s death by car accident. Coworkers say Cantebury was severely depressed the last hours of his life. Bourbon and a .44 magnum were found at the scene. No further comments by the police chief.[/I] I awoke in my room two hours from when I had began the experiment, everything still very fresh in my mind. As was habit with me, I repeated the scenario in my mind, everything from the brand of the Bouban, to the cracking sound the man made as he hit the pavement. At that moment, I felt the urge to vomit again, and hurried to the bathroom. It seemed as if I was only going to gag, but soon enough, I vomited, completely missing the toilet. I looked in the mirror at my sullen face. I had long stubble, and the shadows under my eyes could have been mistaken for mascara. I cleaned up, shaved my chin and combed my hair, then left the house. The local library was named, ‘Redal Local Library’. I wasn’t sure why, nor did I care much at the time. I ran inside, and without clearance checked the newspaper archive machine. I flipped through news papers, starting in the 1950’s, and working my way up. I had reached the month of July in 1964, when I found it. The paper had the deaths of Kathleen and Jacob on the front page, as well as the obituaries. The next paper had the death of Robert Cantebury in it. My heart sunk, I felt the urge to cry, but withheld it. I hadn’t known these people, but I had witnessed their death, or what they appeared as after death. I nearly cried, when I asked the librarian if I could get copies of each newspaper. Being a big library, the machine had scans of every newspaper since the 1920’s, with the exception of a few that must have been hard to find. As well as this, the scans could be printed by the librarian as well. I took the scans home, hardly watching the road as I read each detail of the family’s deaths. I set the scans down, and drove home as fast as possible without dying myself. The drive seemed to take longer than should have been, seeing as the library is only a few miles away. When I got home, I sat at my computer. The searches for the name ‘Cantebury’ came up very loosely. Peoples social network pages, random blogs of people with the same last name, nothing about the people I was concerned with. Then, I searched more specifically, including the name of the city. I was linked to one site which didn’t offer much more detail than the newspaper articles. I went back, and on page two of the results, I found a page telling of their deaths in very descript detail. The website was named something demonic, something I really didn’t feel like pronouncing. It seemed to have hundreds of obituaries from the city, including the Cantebury’s. The detail that went into these was more descript than needed be. The gore of Robert’s death was described down to the sound, making me cringe extremely badly. However, it did have detail on the wife and son’s death, which is what I was interested in. I clicked the link, and patiently waited for the page to load, when the monitor turned off. In fact, all of the power in the house had gone out. I could still see some faint light emitting from behind the window shades through the reflection in the dead monitor. As I was about to look away, the screen turned back on. On it were gruesome pictures of both deaths. A photo of each persons face, their body, and the entire scene. The images made my stomach turn, and before almost vomiting at the gruesome scenes, the monitor flickered off and on. When it turned on, the face of the old man I had seen years ago in one of my ‘dreams’ flashed on it. His smile made me extremely uneasy. He seemed as if he wanted to play with me before he killed me, if that was his intention. His face left the screen, and soon the scene around me collapsed, leaving me in darkness. People, no, Humanity as a whole is afraid of the unknown, which is why I think we strive to know every detail about the universe. Most people aren’t afraid of the dark itself, but are more so terrified of what they cannot see in the dark. As H.P. Lovecraft said, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Light can seem like a savior in the dark, but can also reveal what is about to come, good or, in most cases, bad. The first light I witnessed came after what seemed like forever, glaring through the heavy forest ahead of me. It was early, perhaps four or five in the morning, and nothing around me hinted at civilization. I sat bewildered for a moment, replaying through everything I remembered before this, and couldn’t remember how I got here. It became obvious that it was another ‘dream’ like scenarios, but I was afraid to assume what could happen. I got up, brushed myself off, and peered into the distance, with no results. I settled on walking North, or where North was in accordance to the sun’s position. About an hour later, the forest began to thin. Horror movies about witches in forests no longer scared me as much as real-life, though I wish they did. I continued, and spotted a four-lane highway. It was quite open on both sides, and was divided in the middle by cement walls every ten feet or so. Still terrified, I looked down each length of the road, and spotted no traffic. I walked East, or towards the sun, for no particular reason. It wasn’t dark out anymore, it had to be at least six o’ clock, but ignorance is the scariest type of darkness. Without a clue where I was going, I sat down to catch my breath. I looked around, and soon realized something was very wrong. I looked into the forest, and saw something that was out of place. A person in a dark cloak, hiding beside the trees. He kept his head down, and didn’t seem to notice or take notice to me at all. The fog was thickening rapidly, to the point where one could only see about fifty feet ahead. The person, whom I’d assumed was male, looked up. His face was still covered in shade, but it seemed as though he was familiar. He began to walk towards me. He didn’t change his pace, nor did he change his type of walk, but he was on a set course towards me. I moved out of the way, and he brushed aside me. Had this been any other moment, the contact would have been earthly and normal, but it felt alien. Making assumptions in these ‘dreams’ could most likely prove fatal, but I had time and time before. Before, during the scene of Robert’s death, contact with him was impossible. However, this man in a cloaked touched me. I didn’t know if he could see me or not, but I know he was aware of me. Headlights. Through the fog about seventy feet away were two headlights of a small car. It was going extremely fast, swerving multiple times. The car re-steadied, and stayed on its course. It seemed likely that the driver was intoxicated or angry. The car kept its speed, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the cloaked man step onto the road, keeping the same pace. The car was now only feet away, and the driver seemed to have noticed the man on the road when it was too late. The car, a small blue sports car from the early sixties, swerved right into the center divider of the highway. The man had continued walking, forcing the car to keep swerving. The collision was horribly graphic. The car smashed into the divider, crushing it much like a thin aluminum can. The car spun multiple times before rolling into a ditch, where it rested on its top. Paint confetti littered the sky, as well as small debris. One of the tires flew off of the axel on collision, and was still rolling when it was all over. Out of instinct, I ran over to the car. I hoped what I found wasn’t what I knew I was going to find. In the car, laid the bloody and broken body of Kathleen Cantebury, whom died on impact. In the back was the mangled body of a small child with dirty blonde hair, his white shit covered in blood. I sat down on the side of the road, still in awe of what had just occurred. I knew it was going to happen the moment I saw the car, but it only just hit me at that moment. I looked to the man in the black cloak, and he continued his pace into the other side of the forest, and was soon gone. I stood up, and regained what I had left of my sanity. I began walking down the highway, when I became terribly dizzy. The entire world around me was trembling, much like an earthquake. It became so intense that I fell over onto the road. I laid there, when I heard a loud rumbling. I looked down the road, and a large semi-truck was within ten feet of me. I braced for impact. It’s funny how humanity has always strived for complete knowledge. What we can’t define or know, we create mystical theories to explain how. Religion had the biggest role in every part of the natural role, with deities defining the sky, water, land, and so on. As we became more advanced, the need for these gods dissipated. However, no equilibrium will ever be met in this strive for ultimate knowledge. Humans will kill themselves before reaching stasis, and all the wars that have been fought, the causes that have been supported, the peace that has been made will all have been for naught. My vision was extremely blurred when I awoke. It took me awhile to focus, but it seemed I was still sitting at my computer. The browser was on the states obituary website, and nothing seemed to show of the descript site with the graphic images on it. The time was two A.M., and I was tired even though I was apparently just sleeping. Maybe I didn’t sleep through these events, just left my body during them. Such things seemed preposterous, but then again, I couldn’t really consider anything ‘false’ anymore. A year later, and a year ago from when I’m writing this, I had entered this ‘dream-state’ many times. I’d witnessed deaths from gunfights to rape. Every single death was caused by someone in a black cloak, either directly or indirectly. I became obsessed with, no; I needed to find out what was causing all of this. Nothing was clear anymore. I hadn’t made contact with another human being for at least a few months, and only bought a few groceries when extremely necessary. I sat in my living room, staring at the wall designated by myself for entering the ‘dream state’. The lights were off, my windows were covered by large thick blankets that light could not pass through. I stared at one spot on the wall until it felt as though my head was going to implode in on itself due to stress. Finally, the hallway appeared. However, something was very wrong. I peered into the hallway. I had entered each doorway on the sides, and each spot was marked with a large circle with the picture of the deceased in the middle. There seemed to be no discretion in who was killed. Kids, senior citizens, black people, white people, fat, skinny, it didn’t seem to matter. I could spot no pattern, and couldn’t find any news on a mass murderer like the one I’ve witnessed. They were all in the city which I resided, or at least in the city limits. Some were recent, and some were from as far back as the early 1900’s. Now, something was different. The door at the end was just as ominous as ever, but I paid no homage to the warning Kathleen, or the image of her, gave me to never enter the door at the end of the hall. I looked at each photo on the wall as I passed. This time, each photo was of the face of the deceased post-death. I no longer cringed at the sight of them, as I had seen them all before, but my heart still sank at each image. Children brutally killed, innocent people slaughtered inhumanely. As I came forward, I noticed the door at the end had a small white square on it. I walked a steady pace, not looking back at the darkness that engulfed the real, or false, world. As I approached, the white square developed into a picture. I hurried my pace, and soon reached the door. I was taken back at what had shown up on the image. An image of me having been hung from my ceiling. I was bloody, battered, and broken. My left arm was chopped off, and both of my legs had been broken inwards at the kneecaps. The sight of this made my body tremble. I fell down on the floor, passing out before I hit the ground. The dream I had, who knows, maybe it wasn’t a dream, was extremely odd. I was only five years old, and was watching cartoons on the television while eating cereal. I heard my family in the background say something, but didn’t understand it. The TV turned off, and the house began to shake with a terrible force. In seconds, I fell on my back. The scene fell away, and was replaced by an all white room. A man in a black cloak approached me, and gave me a small box. I sat dumbfounded as the man spoke, his voice hitting me with more power than ever before. “This box will end this madness, through it you will have been sacrificed, but many will be saved.” The voice was a terrible noise that seemed to be the combination of many separate, and very different, voices. The man lowered his hood, and his face shocked me. It was the face of an old man, maybe eighty or ninety, with a large beard. He seemed nice, and as soon as he’d appeared, he walked away. I awoke in the living room, cartoons still blaring about. In my hand, I held a small black box. I couldn’t find a way to open it, but I felt it necessary to hide it. I went down to my basement, and placed it under one of many loose floorboards. The dream ended there, and I awoke on my bed, still shaken from the image on the door of myself being hung. I gathered my senses, cleaned up, and left. My destination was my family’s old house, which my mother had abandoned. I was pretty confident that no one had bought the little lot, but I was going to find out. The one-hour drive seemed to take three-hours, even though I sped most of the way there. When I approached the rural lot, the blue house had been pretty much as they’d left it. It was a tiny house, and I still remembered my way around it. I got out of my car, and approached the steps. As I stepped up, I heard a few rats scurry, and possibly a raccoon or something. I reached the door to find it locked. Without discretion, I smashed the window of the weak door with a brick that was lying by the stairs. I unlocked it from the inside, and entered the home. It was dark inside, but the light coming through the windows was emitting enough to let me see most objects. I looked to the left at the kitchen, where in a bright flash, changed to a scene of me and my family having dinner. Mother and father were fighting; my brother and I were eating amongst the screaming. I quickly looked away to the living room, where I saw myself as a child, sitting in front of the TV watching cartoons. A dark figure came out of the stairwell, and the room faded from the two. The scene that played out was the one in my dream, and was most likely what I had witnessed first hand as a five year-old. I saw the epiphany of myself as a child take the small black box. The figure turned away, and walked a few feet. Then, he turned to me. His persona changed, and he began to walk angrily towards me. He lunged at me without warning, but disappeared once he touched me. As my child-self was examining the box he now help, the scene around him went back to the musty present state of the house. Light streaming through cracks in the roof and through windows. He stood up, and began to walk to the basement. I followed him carefully, and when he reached the basement door, vanished. I stood at the door, remembering where I had seen him hide the box. Regaining memory, I opened the rusty door. It creaked loudly as I quickly took a step down. The darkness of the basement would have been absolute had it not have been for the few cracks in the ceiling letting a little light in from the ground floor. I stepped down, each stair creaking as loud as the last. When I reached the bottom, I felt an odd sense of vertigo. I looked to the west, and a flash of another scene appeared. It was of me as a kid again, going down into the basement to ask my father for help with something. I saw the young image of myself stare in shock at what he’d witnessed. His father, my father, hanging from a noose in the corner of the basement. I didn’t remember, I shut this out of my mind, but when I saw it, I nearly screamed. The five year-old me screamed and cried as he ran upstairs. My mother came down, and with one look, fainted without making a noise. She faded away, but the image of my hanging father resided in the same spot. Then, I noticed a twitch. He began to move, his feet and hands first, then his limbs and neck. The noose became untied at the top, and he fell to his feet. In shock, I quietly watched as this horrific scene unfolded before my eyes. He looked up at me. At first, he seemed to look much like I remembered as a child, but he soon changed. He moaned my name and reached out for me. As soon as he took a step towards me, his skin began to break up, and his clothes became dirtier and more ruined. He began screaming my name, his bones showing through what little skin was left. His face degraded into a skull, his bones dark and in disrepair. In another step forward, he fell to the floor, a pile of bones. Many times, people keep memories in procurement, hoping to keep the good and forget the bad. It’s very well documented in physiology that people will forget entire sections of their lives because of bad events. When they do this, the memories are not forgotten, but are moved to areas further back in the mind so they can be brought up with coaxing. The dark basement became a little easier to see in as my eyes became used to the level of low light. I gathered myself, and walked to the opposite side of the basement from my father’s bones. I felt each floorboard with each step, when I found one that was unusually loose. Somehow, I gained a sense of ecstasy in this, and pried it up with all of my might. It popped off with a slight tug, and inside was the little box. I looked at it, and picked it up slowly. Spinning it in my hands, it hand no markings, it was just a box, much like a wedding ring box. I ran up the stairs two at a time, hoping to forget what I had seen, when I ran into another scene. This time, my brother was running out of the house, probably around five or six at the time. He was only a year younger than me. I witnessed him running out the door crying, jumping the stairs down the porch all together. I walked to the threshold of the door, where I saw the entire area change in a flash of brilliance, my brother running down the driveway of the house. He ran down slowly, crying loudly, when he reached the street. The street was a major road for truckers trying to get on the interstate quickly. He ran onto the street without looking, and was caught in the headlights of a large tanker. I stared at him as I remembered what had happened, crying silently at the sight of it. The truck had no room to stop or avoid him, nor could the driver see the small child in the road. He looked into the headlights as the truck drove right through him, gore splattering everywhere. Instead of stopping, the truck driver sped up. I screamed, and at the same time cried heavily. My mother looked out the door to see the mutilated corpse of her second son, only a year after her husband killed himself. She collapsed, and began weeping. My eyes remained focused on my brother, who remained motionless. Out of the trees on the other side of the road however, I saw a dark figure, something of a faded person in a dark cloak. The figure looked at me, and although I could not see its face, I could tell it smiled through some odd inhibition. I began to run at it with all my strength, leaves crunching under my feet. As soon as I reached the curb, however, the scene faded back to the present day. The bones of my brother lie in the middle of the road, much like how my father’s had done. I walked solemnly back to my car, remembering parts of my past that I’d chosen to recess. I sat in the car, and soon fell asleep, little box in hand. [B]---[/B] [B]---[/B] Sorry if it's a bit hard to read, formatting, such as tabs, doesn't compute into Facepunch, so you'll just have to bear with it. So, critique/comments? I'm pretty content with it myself, but I'd like to hear others' opinions on it.
Wow, amazing. I really like your style. Also, the beginning part is how I perceive things.
[QUOTE=Zatar963;17251487]Wow, amazing. I really like your style. Also, the beginning part is how I perceive things.[/QUOTE] Oh wow, thanks. Anyone else got any comments or critiques? I guess I'll keep writing it if no one does, but I'd like some more opinion on it.
Rated x for [I]not short story[/I].
[QUOTE=blafnigem;17253247]Rated x for [I]not short story[/I].[/QUOTE] p. sure short stories are somewhere around 7,000 words. This is like 4,000 which is short even by short story standards. [editline]11:56PM[/editline] As for the story, try to elaborate your writing. For instance: [i]It all started as a kid, when I was around the age of five. Although I can’t trust my own memories from this age, the reoccurrence of this compels me to believe it in some context of our pigmented, doubtful, and put-together reality.[/i] This bit is fairly straight forward and somewhat bland. Let's assume you want to express the character's anger, you would begin: [i]My memories betray me even as a child, an affliction that has inundated my life with a mistrust of my own perceived reality.[/i] Contrariwise let's say you want to express the character's curiosity and intuition: [i]Even as I lay in my crib the world is a puzzle, my mind playing little tricks on me as I try to get my bearings in this wonderfully confusing place.[/i] You're verbose as you need to be but you don't express enough emotion for a first-person narrative. [editline]11:59PM[/editline] The biggest problem is that your character's apathy would tend to wear on the reader's nerves. Readers don't like a narrator who has no confidence in the story he tells. A narration is a retelling of an event, fictional or otherwise. A narrator so apathetic undermines the narration in of itself.
[QUOTE=Lankist;17256461]p. sure short stories are somewhere around 7,000 words. This is like 4,000 which is short even by short story standards. [editline]11:56PM[/editline] As for the story, try to elaborate your writing. For instance: [i]It all started as a kid, when I was around the age of five. Although I can’t trust my own memories from this age, the reoccurrence of this compels me to believe it in some context of our pigmented, doubtful, and put-together reality.[/i] This bit is fairly straight forward and somewhat bland. Let's assume you want to express the character's anger, you would begin: [i]My memories betray me even as a child, an affliction that has inundated my life with a mistrust of my own perceived reality.[/i] Contrariwise let's say you want to express the character's curiosity and intuition: [i]Even as I lay in my crib the world is a puzzle, my mind playing little tricks on me as I try to get my bearings in this wonderfully confusing place.[/i] You're verbose as you need to be but you don't express enough emotion for a first-person narrative. [editline]11:59PM[/editline] The biggest problem is that your character's apathy would tend to wear on the reader's nerves. Readers don't like a narrator who has no confidence in the story he tells. A narration is a retelling of an event, fictional or otherwise. A narrator so apathetic undermines the narration in of itself.[/QUOTE] Thanks, I wrote most of the rest of the story, but I didn't read this before doing so. I have trouble expressing the right views of emotion in characters for some reason, but I'll try harder in my next story if I ever do write another. I'll use you critique for good, but I mind you, this is the first story I have written with the goal of actually finishing. The other half, (Or most of it), is on the OP now. I sort of felt like I was drawing a line on paper with no end, as in, I wasn't getting anywhere. I'd appreciate tips on how to move a story along as well. That sounds weird, but I seem to get 'lost' in certain areas. I still have a bit to finish, but it's for the most part coming to a close. [B]EDIT:[/B] It's now over nine-thousand words, (Not referring to that meme shit), I guess it's just a story now.
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