Sweet Dreams

I was looking at bits of writing last night, things that I created years ago, and came across many items that I either can't or just probably won't ever do anything with. Even the original creations would need to be improved in order to stick into a newer (read: better) story. However, after digging these out of the woodwork, I thought to myself, well, might as well post bits of them and see what sort of reaction I get. So to begin with - this is half of a short story that I wrote for an RPG character (my first character on Ansible MOO, an RPG based on the book Ender's Game). Criticism welcome (if anyone is actually reading this yet), but remember - I was in my mid-teens at the time I wrote this. Be nice.

Sweet Dreams

It was dark. So dark. In the pitch blackness of the area, Myth could see nothing. She didn’t know how she had gotten here, or where she was. Just that it was dark, stretching forever in every direction, no boundaries, no stopping.. and something was wrong. She could feel it hanging in the air, she could taste the wrongness on her tongue, a sharp bitter taste that was like nothing else. Silence draped the night…she assumed it was night.. like a thick curtain, shutting out all else.

Myth crouched down and squinted into the blackness, trying to see anything at all, but not even the tiniest hint of light existed. Her hand hit the floor as she reached down to steady herself and found it cold, hard. Cement, or tile, she didn’t care which and it didn’t tell her where she was. Myth lowered her other hand, felt it come in contact with the same surface. She stood up quickly, eyes straining for the briefest glimpse of anything. She was inside, she was sure of that now, but where? It didn’t seem like anywhere she knew.. if she had to guess, there was nothing alive anywhere around her. There was an inhuman air to the place, contributing to the awful feeling it gave her.

Myth took an uneasy step forward, then another, each foot following the other slowly and testing the ground before she put any weight on it. Her arms were raised, held out in front of her to keep from bumping into anything. Though there certainly didn’t seem to be anything except open space. She walked like this, kept walking, for what seemed like forever.

And then her hands hit something solid in front of her. It hadn’t been forever, after all. Just seemed like it. This whatever-it-was had been rather close to her. She examined it, ran her hands over the surface cautiously. There was a crack, then it continued, and another on the other side of it.. a door. This was a door, and a wall. Which meant she was in a room. And if the wall was that close, however long it had taken her to actually get to it, then all the others might be that close, as well... She’d never been claustrophobic, but suddenly the room seemed to press in on her, suffocating her as the walls and ceiling approached out of the dreadful darkness. She pushed once against the door, then again, harder. It wouldn’t open, and her hands found no knob to turn and no keyhole.

Myth took a deep breath and turned around. With no pause for caution this time, she jogged in the opposite direction, searching for the back wall. Though she could feel her feet pounding the hard ground, the steps made no sound. She didn’t consciously realize the lack of sound, she hadn’t heard a single sound yet since she found herself here, but it still added to the eerieness of the situation. Myth stumbled into another surface and stopped, fingers examining the details of the wall, searching desperately for an opening. There was none. She turned to her right, running her hand along the wall as she walked in that direction. All to quickly she came to a third wall, still finding nothing. After a brief search of that wall - still nothing! - she turned yet again, went back to the wall opposite the door, then felt her way to the final wall. Nothing anywhere. She was trapped.

As if this fact by itself wasn’t bad enough, the sense that there was something terribly wrong was growing stronger. The feeling was increasing rapidly, so rapidly that the sheer mental weight of it pulled the breath from her throat until the air only came to Myth in quick, short gasps. Still silent, of course. She stood in the back left corner, facing the wall, not wanting to look around any more. The room was empty, she knew that now, but there was something...

A creaking noise from behind Myth broke the silence for the first time. Gulping, she reluctantly turned to the sound. The unopenable door was swinging open, almost in slow motion, letting in just barely enough light to outline the two shapes who were revealed behind it. They were both tall, towering over her, and well built. Human-looking, but it was still an inhuman place, their presence felt wrong. Nothing about the feeling indicated that other people were around… only dead, or undead, or some horrible monster trying to pass for a man.

They were standing one next to the other, the second trailing behind the first by a step or two. The door remained open, casting the room into a dim grey light, hardly bright enough to see by. But the two Things showed up clearly as black, faceless shapes slowly advancing.

Myth stepped back, stiffening as her foot encountered only the wall behind her. She leaned back into the corner, willing it to absorb her, cringing as the Two came nearer. The door was still open but it was past them, she’d never make it past them, she knew that even without trying. She pulled back even farther, but there was no more room to do so, she felt her head press against the cool surface behind her and it shook. Shook, except that after a moment she realized the room wasn’t moving, it was her, she was trembling. And the Two kept coming forward, and God wasn’t it taking them a long time, the wait was as agonizing as the fear that boiled within her at their sight.

The first one stopped, suddenly, close enough to reach out and grab her. The second figure came to a halt beside the first, and both stared menacingly down at her. If they’d been tall before, now they stood at a gigantic height, as though they’d grown with each step, and Myth wondered how the ceiling was high enough for them. They way the Two stood was itself a command for respect, but that respect came in the form of another wave of terror, and she sunk to the floor, cowering under them as the first opened his mouth to speak.

"We have come for you, Myth." The voice was low and harsh, grating out each word as if was an effort, yet with a sense of pleasure hiding behind each syllable. An evil sense of pleasure, one that only meant bad things, one that made Myth sink lower yet and whimper softly, not even knowing she was doing it. "You are on your way to a worse place, much worse. We have come to take you there."

The words echoed in the silence after, and the Two both reached out for Myth, reached down to her. She raised her arms in front of her face, shielding herself from them, and squeezed her eyes shut, dreading their touch. There was a cold, tight pressure, their hands like bands of metal encircling her arms...


(As I said, the first half. Of a nightmare. And, yes, this is the character I later took my general online identity from, as evidenced by the name and title on this blog.)