Your nerves are shot. Your leg does not move, and neither does your arm or your fingers or your foot or you-
Something moves on your leg. A horrifying, prickling, ever so slightly painful sensation.
Like there’s something alive in your pant.
In the dim light, you see it. Something long - two thirds the length of your entire leg - that quivers and slithers and moves and crawls, up the side of your leg, it’s on your hip, wrapping around to your back.
This section of wall is even more heavily coated in mold than any of the others, making it look just like any of the other walls. But after a moment, you start to recognize it for what it is - a larger lump of mold? A handle. The lip of fungi? A jamb.
Basil felt an uncontrollable shiver work up his spine. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but something was making a horrible clicking sound, like fingernails tapping together in rapid succession. It was an incredibly subtle sound, but it gave him chills all the same, and… Now that he had paid attention to it, he suspected it was coming from Jung…
But that didn’t make sense. he was completely immobile. How was he producing any kind of noise? Did he have a bug in his mouth or something?
Eve’s eyes widen a fraction. Her teeth bare although her voice remains at roughly the same volume. “How did you even get in the wall? You’re more detailed than the other dream-people I saw earlier.”
She reaches out, metal talons stretching half the length of her fingers inching painfully close to Jung’s face. “Much more detailed,” Eve murmurs. “You don’t look like anyone I would dream up. Which…”
No, there can’t be others here. Could there? This is supposed to be my dream, my world, my…
One of her talons twitches and her face turns dark. She steps over the prone man, thoughts already drifting from him as she focuses on the “wall” in front of her, the odd sound coming from his leg immediately forgotten.
There’s just enough detail for her to make out the handle in the faint electric light. Experimentally she reaches with one hand, face scrunching up as she tries to angle her talons down as she tries to grab the handle and turn it. If the door opens normally, that’d at least be less exertion than kicking it down. And would let her out faster.
“Uh, no. They did not make me aware of that.” Jung replied hesitantly. Perhaps the fish new of someone who could help. “Who are they exactly?” Jung asked. It was odd, but maybe the creature could provide help. Before he could listen for a response…
“I wish I could tell you, last thing I saw was, well-” Jung paused. Was it really worth it telling these strangers about what he had just gone through? They surely wouldn’t care, so he decided not to burden them with his sob story and dropped the response.
Not that the metallic woman doing that helped things out.
"Oh goodness that sharp." Jung squealed shakily, “What do you mean by ‘more detailed’?”
Jung was starting to get overwhelmed by all this. He was stuck on the ground, unable to move or seek medical attention. A talking bat child, a seemingly hostile metallic cyborg, an aloof intangible attorney, and a woman with profound vision capabilities surrounded him, seemingly uncaring to his plight. The only other denizen of the small room was a seemingly normal person like himself, but based on the way things were going, she probably was just as bizarre as them.
To add to that, the horrid odor coming from his proximity to the molded walls was beginning to make Jung nauseas. To vomit was one thing, but to vomit in public? Mortifying. The cold, wet fingers of fear began to crawl in Jung’s throat, moving both directions as they settled, forming a nest of raw fear in his stomach and nasal cavity. He wanted to run, to flee this nightmare of a nasty, ever-shrinking space into freedom, back into reality. He tried to command his legs to stop their slumber and go and take him to safety.
But nothing happened. Then he saw it…
The fear in his body flash froze as Jung locked eyes with the newfound entity. Something terrifying was crawling up onto his back. His breath accelerated dramatically. Normally, most people would flee and hit the vile intruder. But both Jung’s physical and mental state prevented Jung from doing that.
This was too much. The strange creature’s arrival culminated in Jung losing the final shred of control he had over his emotions and caused him to shout, something he only ever did when in mortal danger:
“SOMEONE HELP ME!!! THERE’S SOMETHING ON MY BACK!!!”
The delicate examination performed by Eve was almost perfectly seem by Basil - in fact, it was when the lightbulb flashed that it was most difficult for him to see. He didn’t spend any time pondering why that was, however, since more pressing matters were at hand, like-
Like that.
The sentence began with the surprise and volume enough to make Basil jump in response. But as it continued, growing more pressing and causing adrenaline to pump through Basil’s arteries, something happened. Something, because Basil really wasn’t sure what occurred or why his fingers were hurting or why he was now on the ceiling.
For the rest of the group, there was a violent blur at Basil’s corner of the room, and the next moment the bundle of cloth was on the ceiling, the hidden fingers and toes of its inhabitant piercing through both the blanket and the mold to grip into the worn lines of the concrete. The glowing yellow eyes were still visible, if a little obscured.
The mold on the handle seems to have solidified it in position. It looks like it’s been growing for years, decades. In fact, the whole room feels … ancient. Undisturbed.
But the handle does turn, sheets of oozing mold sloughing off of it. You pull, then push, but the door doesn’t budge. There’s a slight, wet, shlooping noise, of mold being disturbed by you trying to open the door, but the resistance is too much for your first attempt.
Pain, excruciating.
Terror, all-encompassing.
You aren’t being bitten. The pain is deeper, more horrific, more inescapable. Whatever it is, the thing, it’s burning,burrowing-
It stops.
Your mental convulsions suddenly become physical, as you arm flies up and out to your neck and back.
Alexis stopped her pacing momentarily and glared at the man, more out of concern then anger, who was currently sprawled out on the floor writhing in agony, “Are you okay? Do you need help?” She stepped closer to Jung, reaching out to place a hand on his shoulder, hoping to calm him down.
Whatever had decided to crawl near him was now making a meal out of him, doing things far too horrible to be described here. The pain was not so much as Jung felt pain before. It was searing hot, almost as if it was burning away the area where the creature now was.
Jung’s mind was far more out of control, however. Hey lay there, screaming in agony as the creature did it’s dirty work. Why would someone stoop so low as to leave him where he would suffer without any form of ending the predator that currently was attacking him. Who, he thought, would be that sick
“No” Jung thought to himself. “I will not succumb to this”. “I am stronger than you, whoever you are, you will not break me MENDAX!!”
As his screams filled the room, Jung attempted to regain control over his mind. He tried to logic the pain away, stating it was all in his head. He tried to focus on the nasty mold-lined light. He tried to focus on someone, anyone who would give him at least a glance of pity.
Seemingly, no relief came. But then,
Jung briefly made eye contact with the woman concerned about “it”. Considering the circumstances, Jung was expecting to burn through this alone. While the gesture did nothing to alleviate the pain, it did help ease his mind a bit. Perhaps there was good still left after all.
As Jung’s voice began to wear and as his will was about to run dry, the nearly infinitely long, excruciating pain suddenly ceased. He heard a slap of something hitting the back of his hand behind him. He sat up straight in an instant, turning his head and torso to see what was going on. Jung turned to see an arm that when followed, linked to his own shoulder. As well as the arm belonging to the woman. He stretched his legs, wondering if he was-
“Wait”, Jung realized.
His arm had moved, He had moved it. Jung was no longer paralyzed. A small smile of relief began to break out on his tear stained face.
Jung didn’t know whether to laugh at his regained control or cry at the trauma that just befell him.
”What on earth was that?!” Jung exclaimed as he tried to turn and see what had just bitten into him
They say being blind makes your other senses more adept, like hearing. They say blind people are really great with voices, committing them to memory, picking voices out of a crowd, knowing who’s around by their voice…
Of course, this might not necessarily apply when you’re in a bizarre new situation full of sensory overload. The eye-headed girl had already heard the voices of the other two girls – she wasn’t familiar enough with how people looked to realize they weren’t usually silver – the paralytic, the business man, and the quiet voice of the blanket thing. But when a new voice spoke up, it didn’t register to her that that was odd – at first.
She frowned, disappointed. At least, she thought about frowning…
Underground?
For a moment, she panicked. Were they buried? Were they going to slowly run out of air and suffocate, if they couldn’t find a way out? What if there was no way out? What if–
Calm down. Underground doesn’t mean buried. Probably an underground bunker or something. Lawmaster here probably just tried to exit the wrong direction, but surely there’s a door somewhere…
The words register, though not the fact that it’s a new voice speaking. But then…
She turned back to the rest of the room, and this time saw the fish talk. She stared, dumbfounded, as the fish proceeded to hold a conversation with the others.
Okay, talking fish. I guess that’s probably not the weirdest thing I’ve seen all day.
Her first instinct was to leap to his aid, help him up, help him figure out what was attacking him. But instead of doing that, instead of being the hero she wanted to be… she froze. A part of her was crying out to help, but another part felt anxious, that she wouldn’t know what to do, that she would make things worse.
And then, she saw the shorter girl step in to help. She wasn’t sure whether she should feel relief that someone had come to her aid, or anger, at herself, for hesitating.
Okay, well, you want to be helpful now? Maybe you can help the child. Wait, why is he on the ceiling?
And the definition of fun in this instance was ‘not fun at all and extremely traumatic to witness and hear’, especially for Basil.
Jung had suddenly began screaming with such ferocity that all the hairs on Basil’s body lifted up in horror. And he was only getting started. Pang after pang of torture shot through his body, and Jung responded with increasingly violent screaming which had the extremely negative side effect of making Basil back an impossible amount into the corner of the ceiling, trying to get away from the noise.
But he couldn’t. The agony of the man repeatedly tore through the air, beating down hard on Basil’s sensitive ears. Soon he was sharing a portion of the pain as well, pressing his head against the ceiling as his hands were currently unavailable to impossibly cover his oversized ears. But the noise didn’t stop.
Basil’s mind had already raced up to this point, but now it was out of control. The sensory overload from the surrounding occurrences was far too much for him to handle, with no experience controlling his abilities, and his internal organs were overclocking, churning, and throbbing with each successive wail.
Then it suddenly ceased. Basil’s fingers suddenly slipped out of exhaustion, and the muscles in his legs locked his knees as all his energy redirected into holding his toes in place. However, he was now upside-down, and…
“HgrrUHK”
An accumulation of foaming bile dropped out of the gap in Basil’s blanket, hitting the floor with a plop as the owner of said pile began to moan incoherently, his hands vaguely traveling up and down, unsure whether to clutch his stomach or his head. Or, perhaps, to reach for the arms of someone who wasn’t there.
Half-words escaped Basil’s mouth as he began to sway. It would be impossible to see them now, what with him hanging upside-down, but his eyes had the tiniest orange tint to them.
Eve’s face grows even darker and she braces to kick the entire door down. Metal, concrete, even if this thing is made of steel she doesn’t care. It’s in her way, daring to impede her, daring to stop her progress in her own dream.
What if this isn’t your dream-
Her next train of destructive thought is thoroughly derailed when the paralytic starts screaming. She half-turns to look at him and ponders whether to ask if he’s ok…and then in a moment he starts moving.
Eve stares mutely at the “paralytic” who seems to have regained at least part of his mobility. “What just happened,” she deadpans. “And why are you moving now? I thought your limbs were shattered or something.”
She glances around the room, turning in a little circle and looking with narrowed eyes for anything moving that shouldn’t be, any small monstrous things trying to hide in with the mold. “Are there more of whatever those were?”
Miles was about to lay out the cold, hard facts so that the literal floating fish would realize the gravity of their situation until Jung started screaming. He jumped back with a start, thoughts racing through his head about what could be attacking the paralyctic man. Miles didn’t have much time to overthink, however, because the bat-blanket bundle was suddenly on the ceiling and being incredibly threatening. Miles stumbled back farther until he ran into one of the room’s walls, electing to stay there until things died down.
Okay, so the man on the floor is screaming, and now he stopped? I guess maybe that girl helped… hmm, I don’t know anyone’s names. Or… my name? I don’t remember my own name. Does everyone have amnesia like this? Wait, someone mentioned going to sleep somewhere else.
What am I going to say if someone asks my name? I don’t know? I shouldn’t tell them that I don’t remember. I should act like I know my own name. I shouldn’t even question it. I should confidently say something like
“My name is Sue.”
Wait, I just said that aloud. Did anyone hear? Screw it, that’s my name now. Okay, now what was I doing? I guess the girl who I hope is not also named Sue is helping the guy who is probably not named Sue, so I was gonna… right, the kid.
The girl who was apparently now named Sue walked over to the blanketed thing hanging from the ceiling, careful to avoid the pile of bile, and reached up to attempt to pluck him from the ceiling.
The blanketed thing had some resistance to being plucked from the ceiling, but with some effort disengages from the concrete, his toes sliding out of the grooves in the structure. He’s abnormally light, but then again he is a child.
The odd triangles coming off his head offer a cumbersome aspect to maneuvering him, but not as much as his legs, which remain locked in position despite being off the wall. What are presumably his hands continue gripping at random areas across his body, and his slurred words mumble out in saddened moans as his fingers occasionally poke the blanket’s surface in an attempt to grasp something not there.
Okay, I got him, now what do I do? Uh, I didn’t think this through, did I? Maybe I should just put him down… No, I committed to doing this, I’m gonna do it. I guess I should see about getting him out of the blanket.
Maybe it was altruism, or maybe it was just curiosity, but she did want to see this kid thing. Sue turned the child over to what she assumed was right-side up – at least, the pointy things that were probably ears were on top – and attempted to unwrap the blanket to see what exactly was hidden inside.
What might first be noticed is a series of small holes near the center of the blanket where Basil’s fingers had punched through in order to grab the ceiling. The blanket itself was of a soft, vaguely fuzzy material, grey in appearance and discolored in one place by a drop from the ceiling muck.
Undoing the stretched fabric revealed the quivering body of a child, with unmistakable features greatly resembling a bat, yet restrained from marring the appearance of youth and innocence he possessed. Two triangle-like ears stretched out from the sides of his head, and the skin of his cheekbones was thick and pronounced, with a deep wrinkle underneath each side as it appeared to separate from the rest of the face. His hair was thick and matted to his head, implying either an atypical molecular makeup or a desperate need for a bath. His eyes were closed now, but every now and then a quiver cracked one open, and the yellow ball beneath swirled amidst a sea of orange mist.
While taking this in, his abnormally long arms moved vaguely up and down, clutching at the air, weakly pulling at his own hair, and generally acting aimless and unsure, but they easily displayed the sharpened claws at the tips of his fingers. His toes displayed the same features, but his legs remained rigid and unmoving all the while.
“Dreumh…” His lips audibly created some incomplete sound with each breath, his chest rising and falling dramatically. With each word his sharpened canines flashed in the dim and inconsistent light. “Mothr… Hilp…”
Well, this clearly wasn’t a human. Was it even a child? If a magic pill could give a girl a giant eye for a head, it could probably turn a grown adult into a small bat thing.
Well, whatever the case may be, he certainly seemed distressed, even more than earlier. Perhaps he really was a child.
was he… asking for his mother? that would make sense, if he were a kid. Would she ask for her mother? She abruptly realized she didn’t even remember her mother.
At that moment, she came to a realization: she had no idea what to do, except for one thing. She wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, but it was all she had. She brought the little guy close and embraced him in a hug.
The immediate first thought by any outside observer who were to pluck off the roof of that tiny room and peer inside would be the utter absurdity of a woman with an eyeball for a head cradling a child with as much tender care could be mustered in the scenario. And yet the moment she embraced Basil in a hug, his arms stopped traveling aimlessly, his knees unlocked, and his breathing immediately calmed, slightly drawing his legs towards his chest.
It worked. Well, for now at least.
It was the nightmare again.
Basil was less scared this time, but the motions had to be gone through or he wouldn’t wake up. At least, he thought he wouldn’t.
So with some obvious reluctance he reached his hand upwards and felt the two small holes in his neck healing themselves after the foreboding bite. Again. The two glowing eyes looked up at him from the puddle, Again, he recoiled at the sight of what stared back at him. Again.
Except now there was no screaming on his part. He had done this before; the scenario he had ‘woken up’ in with those strangers was far beyond the peculiarity of this nightmare. At least this one made sense in his mind.
“Basil, you’re frightened.” A voice hissed venemous words down on him. He looked up, knowing exactly what it was he would see and what the large bat monster whispering towards him would say next. He almost mouthed the bat’s words “Never had a nightmare?” as the bat repeated them, in the same menacing tones it had originally spoken in.
But now there was something new, something unexpected in place of what normally followed. There was a barely discernable pressure in the ominous room which seemed to pacify the chills sweeping his body, warming the air and putting distance between the massive creature monologuing to him. The calm was not yet felt, but it could be… Heard. Seen. Known. She was there.
…She? Was this ‘She’ the gentle comfort he could now feel, protection against all the vague and uncertain horrors lurking in the dark? At the slightest thought the bat monster, flashing its teeth and howling out silent words, was banished back into the darkness, the void being drowned out by a lovely rose color.
He had ‘She’ to thank… Mother? Or was it one of those from the room?
With great difficulty Basil clawed his mind out of the dream, his eyelids slowly creaking open as the stuttering yellow light brought fresh stinging pain to his senses. He was definitely in someone’s embrace - all he could see was the shoulder of whoever-this-was - and for a brief moment there was no room, no sickening mold, no flickering yellow light and no hopeless dread of the future. There was only comfort in the arms of someone who truly, genuinely cared.
Craning his neck around slowly, Basil poked his head upwards to see who it was.
For the rest of the party who had not acted in response to Basil, preferring to quietly watch as events unfolded, there was a blur for half a second from the corner of the room where Sue and Basil were which shot across to the far, unoccupied corner of the room, next to the one Malaco occupied. As it did so, there was a sickening splintering noise, like fiberglass shattering, and the light in the room went out, the fractured form of the former bulb dancing on the floor in tiny, unidentifiable pieces. Those without shoes may wish to be wary.
The party would be in complete darkness if not for Eve’s electric eyes illuminating wherever she glanced, and the reflective eyes of Basil, which were now so big in the dark they appeared almost the size of his whole head.
Although that was probably hyperbole.
Just before the lights went out, Jung was able to get the slightest look at…
Nothing. Sadly, the human neck didn’t allow for such a range of motion that would allow Jung to see what exactly had occurred. But even with assistance of another pair of eyes - unless they were Eve’s - that task would be very difficult.
Perhaps there was a greater light source outside of this blasted room.
Unfortunately for him, Jung’s jacket blocked any view to what had just hurt him, with the hood blocking the majority of his neck.
Jung was still reeling from the attack. His breath lay shallow upon his tongue, and sweat and tears stained his face. Despite all that, the fact that he could now move on his own strength was the predominant thing on his mind now. Not that there was much left after all that pain he went through. Still, it was nice to move again.
Jung was far too exhausted to answer the valid question of the cyborg above him. The pain had drained the low energy he had from the beginning of the experience.
Jung turned just in time to see the poor child on the ceiling losing his lunch. Near him, the woman with one eye then grabbed him, with some difficulty, from the ceiling. The woman pulled the blanket back to reveal a child…
Something had just taken out their light. Jung’s wondering about what had just bitten him and what the child looked like would have to wait, for now, they needed light.
He turned to the cyborg, “We should probably get that door open.” Jung then proceeded to try his hand at standing up. Now was not the time to sit, the group needed to move.
“There’s a bat,” Eve says, in a voice that’s trying to decide between being angry and being confused. Her electric-blue eyes blink rapidly as she tries to follow Basil’s movements, finally setting on staring at his huge reflective eyes. It…it was in here with us the whole time? Could it be one of the dreams…a dreamer…I have to still be asleep. Don’t I?
“There’s a giant bat hanging on the ceiling,” Eve says again. She’s clearly confused now, more than a bit unnerved by the sudden darkness consuming the room. “Why is there-aaaaaaaagh.”
She shakes her head and bangs her right hand against the wall with a deafening clang. “Shut up. Shut up. I’ll deal with you. I’ll deal with all of you in a moment.”
Eve half turns toward the door, fingers forming into a fist as she scowls in the dark. Without another word, she punches the door. Her arm pistons forward as she moves, whistling slightly as it impacts with yet another deafening clang.