A Spectral Étude
#2 of Musings of a Minstrel
18+ Only: Sex happens. Violence, language, all that noise.
I've seen this place before, I'm sure of it. I knew this was the dreamworld, this subconscious place that I often found myself in when asleep. A wavy darkness, with silver outlining for objects, no shadows- for the world itself was shadow. I could easily make out the bed that held me, the desk nearby with a wooden chair before it, the closet door- also seeming to be made out of a wood-like material, and I instinctively knew that I was in my own room. I moved to sit up at the edge of my bed, but found myself unable to move, my muscles unresponsive despite my mental strain to get them to move. An icy cold blanket of darkness seemed to cover me, numbing my skin to the bone. I may have been hallucinating this, but I swear I saw a face in the darkness before I heard it voice out in a raspy voice.
"Be careful, Lendar. You know not what you write of." Was all it said before I felt the blanket lift off of me, and sensation return to my body. Half surprised that I was able to move, I stood up beside the bed and looked around my not-so-familiar room. Everything was in the same position as in reality, except that everything was shadow, the only way to tell what something was were the silvery-almost glimmering- lines that objectified things. I've seen this world before tonight, but I've never been able to walk around and explore it. Looking at the clock on the desk next to the bed I saw that I had about three hours before it would wake me up for my usual rousing time of five thirty to get ready for school.
Walking into the den outside of my room, I took a moment to examine it. Again, everything was in its usual place here, the couch, the TV, the clock on the wall, nothing seemed out of the ordinary- beside the obvious of course. I turned to my left and walked up the stairs, they even creaked in this world too, although the wooden handrail that led up beside the stairs was incredibly cold. Figuring everything else in the house would be the same, I didn't waste time examining the rest of it. I opened the front door slowly, peeking outside through a thin crack, despite the house being the same, outside things were entirely different.
It was a massacre, bodies everywhere, various objects of which I could not recognize broken and shattered across the field in front of me. The houses that took residence across the street in my world were now crumbled and destroyed, their materials strewn across this field of blood. I saw a corpse on my doorstep that seemed as if it were reaching for my doorknob before it passed, it's arm extended toward me and it's face down. I bent down over the doorway to get a closer look at it... it wasn't human.
Maybe I was hasty with that last thought, as it wasn't entirely human. It was slightly bulkier with a heavier chest with long and thick hair. In this darkness, I couldn't tell if it were brown or black, but it was definitely darker. I swallowed my growing fear and slowly slid out of the doorway outside around the corpse. As I walked toward the ruins that were once the houses across the street, I felt the air become thicker, and harder to breathe in. I stopped about halfway to the wreckage when I couldn't take the thickness anymore and dropped to my knees. I looked up, mouth agape, at the moon above me- the exact same one that I saw in reality, I could sense it.
"So this is the other world." I rasped to myself between harsh breaths of thick air, the moon beginning to blur in image- from suffocation I imagined. I tried to rise from my knees, but once again found myself unable to move. My head hung as I tried to gasp air into my lungs, feeling my mind beginning to slow; I knew I wasn't going to survive this, and I began to wonder what happened if I died in this world. Would I simply wake up? Or would there be some tax on my physical body? I guess I'm about to find out.
I felt darkness begin to claim me as my body went more and more limp, my head beginning to pound with alacrity. Let's see what happens, thinking to myself- my lips lacking the strength to even mutter anything- Let's see the price for this. Just as I let my willpower go, something grabbed onto my shoulder, something warm. I felt it pull me up from my knees rather forcefully and turn me to face it. My eyelids opened slowly and heavily, unable to focus on the entity that I was looking at.
I let out a muffled groan as I felt it throw me toward my house into the clearer air, and I sucked a lungful of sweet air in after I hit the ground. As I lay on the cement looking up at the moon once more I felt a small pool of warm liquid beginning to pool under my head- though I felt no pain, I assumed from the force of the throw that it was my blood. My body jumped as I remembered that something tossed me out of the fog, and I groaned as I worked to sit up quickly to look at what had done it. My jaw dropped and my blood froze as I stared at it, and quickly realized I should have stayed inside to play this time.
What greeted my horrified eyes was an image taken out of a fantasy novel, an anthropomorphic wolf leaning over my crippled body. Black fur, and a frame that seemed to tremble with muscular power; I stood no chance against this creature- especially in my condition. I could see it's muzzle wrinkled at me, teeth bared as if they themselves wanted to leap out of their owners mouth and dig into my flesh. As my heart thumped I felt my blood begin to to thaw and crawl its way through my veins, while my mind worked to snap itself out of its boreal fear. My lip quivered as I tried to scoot back away from the creature, my legs uselessly sliding on the cement. I could tell this creature knew that I was unable to actually get up and give it a decent go at trying to get away, because it seemed to stalk toward me at the same speed I was skidding away at.
After a couple moments that I can only describe as being horrifically dreadful, I felt my arms hit the first of the steps to my front door, and glanced behind me to see the corpse that I saw earlier- one of these creatures. At about eye level I could see that it's face was barely humanistic- more of a slightly enlarged wolf head. My vision was jerked back toward my pursuer as I was lifted off of the ground by my shirt, feeling my useless legs straighten out then lose contact with the cement. I grimaced as my eyes were forced to look into the creatures, and I swear I saw a smirk on its lupine face. Its other paw reached up and rest on my forehead, and as I looked up at the fine fur covering it I felt my mind burst with fiery pain. Flames of searing agony burned their way through my mind as I felt the creature pulling-what felt like my mind- out of my head.
I jerked my body violently as I squinted through stinging tears at my attacker, my vision quickly blurring through both the tears and the losing of my own consciousness. My kicks and useless tugs of getting out of its grip became lethargic and useless- and I lost the will to even fight it. As it held my body up I felt my body go limp, my mind unable to combat the restraint on it any longer, and instead I braced for the torrent of debilitating pain that coursed through my entire body now. I could hear my slowing heartbeat pounding in my skull as I felt myself begin to pass out, my body convulsing now from the agony I was experiencing. My willpower failed then, as I felt my resistance and urge to stay conscious fade away, and I felt the gloom of unconsciousness take me.
Just as I gave up, the pain vanished. I felt myself fall a few feet to the ground, and I lay there for a few moments gasping for breath. Through half open and blurred eyes I saw the creature who tortured me snarl at something behind me, then turn and run into darkness. My heartbeat still pounded in my head, although I could feel it increasing pace as it tried to revive my body. I tried my best to gasp any air I could into my lungs, but the fog that had consumed me earlier seemed to have spread to my doorstep. Rolling my head to look up at the sky, I could see the moon shining bright, so similar to the moon that I could see in reality.
My body began to shutdown, my vision blurry and breath laborious. I didn't know exactly what was going to happen to me, and what the consequence of death was in this dreamworld- or if there even was one. Blurry vision became reddish blurred vision as I felt my heart pound harder in my head, and I felt needles began to prick at my body. Needles led to numbness, and I knew that I was going to die: amidst a dreamworld in a pool of my own blood. I heard a voice then, serene and feminine, though I heard it more in my mind rather my ears.
"Write." I heard, and I blinked my eyes a few times- my vision seemed to be focusing.
"Write?" My mind voiced to itself, and silence followed for a few moments before something came into my view. A face, though this one wasn't human either, nor was it lupine. After a few seconds of thought, it seemed more feline than anything; Pointed whiskers protruding near it's nose and mouth, slender but sharp teeth filling its grin, and perky pointed ears helped me confirm this thought.
"Write of what you have seen and experienced this night, Lendar... I'll make sure you return safely." It's voice was almost melodic in my mind, and in an accent that I had never heard before. I was unable to question what exactly was going on, as it put its paw on my forehead and I reflexively flinched expecting pain- but none came. Dizziness swept me up as my eyes closed, and it felt as if I had been lifted off of the ground. Before I blacked out it's voice chimed once more in my head before the blankness took me.
"Write, Lendar, I will wait here."