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.
“Definitely, but first you need to move.” alexis responded as she reached forward to pull Jung to his feet right before…
Shatter
The surrounding room was suddenly plunged into darkness. The only light she could see was the two glowing blue dots shining on the mold coated door directly in front of her, but they too darted out of her line of sight. And just like that the feeling of ever present dread grew stronger, closer even.
By the time the second clang rung out, she had trouble breathing, and began to feel nauseated. each little drop of water caused her to jump she wouldn’t move- no she couldn’t move. If she did, the Beast would be upon her. Alexis just stood there silent, and unmoving.
It feel like you’ve never stood before - but you have. You have. It wasn’t like this. It wasn’t this …
Sinuous.
To onlookers, Jung’s arm shoots up, simultaneously rigid and languid, grabbing something, anything on the wall - mold - and straining, his legs bunching up underneath him, his leg’s muscles straining upwards. His back … flexes, not normally, like his vertebral muscles … his entire torso bends, backwards, and then forwards.
He stands.
Beneath the colorless ooze squeezing out of the mold, it is surprisingly dry and crackable. The dampening of noise that would seem to be intuitive to at least a centimeters of organic matter is sadly (for others’ cochlea, at least) lacking.
Your fist compresses the mold, an off-white cloud dust shooting from the impact as you crunch into the dry mold. The mold around your impact ripples outwards, and your knuckles impact something hard.
As you pull your hand out of the fist-sized hole in the mold, your luminescent eyes reveal four finger-segment sized indents in a sheet of greyish metal.
Alexis only, nerds
The foreboding is deafening, the silence impending, the fear is utterly suffocating, yet you want to hyperventilate. Eight very specific sharp tingles claw up your back. A scream starts to build in you chest, but then they are gone.
Everything is black. You realize you’ve squeezed your eyes closed, and you have to strain to open them.
Alexis felt something cold in her hand, in her panicked state she had nabbed her handgun and was now holding it in front of her. She hadn’t even noticed, was she so prepared to kill the thing? Could Bullets even injure the beast, much less kill it?
Finally, once some time had passed, Alexis decided to finally brave the unknown. She opened her eyes, she didn’t want to see what ever it was that had just pressed it’s clawed finger’s up against her back, but the untold horrors that might be behind pushed her to continue and-
Nothing, the room still remained dark, she hadn’t died yet. This fact only confirmed a notion she had come to months ago, “it’s toying with me.”
Basil’s ears pricked up at an odd noise coming from somewhere nearby, like the clicking of dominoes. He looked frantically about for the source - the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the shattered bulb on the floor - and with some dismay realized it had come from the dramatic rising and falling of his ribcage as every vein in his body stood out, his heart pumping wildly.
Clutching one hand over the hammering force in his chest, the yellow lights disappear from the room for a moment as he shut his eyes and desperately tried to calm down. Process, process, it’s okay, just think about something else. The lightbulb is off. That’s right, it’s on the floor. It must have been broken somehow, but nobody is tall enough to reach it I think. How did it get there? How did I fall asleep? How did I end up in this corner? There was a noise, a horrible… There was the blanket, but it’s gone now? And the eyeball woman-
…Oh. Basil’s eyes slowly reopened, guilt swelling in the yellow light. I broke it. I broke it when I ran.
Basil turned his eyes back upon the group in time to meet Eve’s glowing blue, not quite processing that she could likely see him in the dim shadow. Those eyes… The artificial light stung, but it was equally mesmerizing. He had seen artificial light of that color before, but there was something human in them… They weren’t solely glowing bulbs of energy, they were… Eyes. They looked back just as much as he looked into them.
The first comment about a bat flew past him, but the second one hit home. So he was transformed - that horrible nightmare hadn’t simply been a nightmare and nothing more; it was reality now. This HAD to be reality; everything was so real. It couldn’t be a dream…
There was a jolt, and Basil now sat on the floor, his tailbone smarting. She actually said that bad word. His parents didn’t use it unless they were really mad… Perhaps he should stay in the corneeeaaAAAaAAGHH
His spine arched as his shoulders flew into his neck, the slime from the mold reintroducing itself to his back. He almost wanted to crawl back up to the ceiling, but if was being completely honest, he had no idea how he did it the last two times. The middle of the room was treacherous with the broken glass and the other people, and the floor was cold and hard.
As the small creature leapt from her arms, the light went out with a bang. Sue winced, taking a step back, her back colliding with the wall. Her eye felt weird; had the glass landed in it?
Wait, no, she just needed to blink. Blinking wasn’t as natural with this giant eye for some reason. She would have to mentally remind herself to do it every so often, at least for now. Hopefully she’d get used to it.
Also, glass. She was suddenly aware of the fact that she had no feet – er, nothing covering her feet. She had a sudden memory, of feeling different types of floor and ground with her feet, before she could see. She tried desperately to latch onto it, to remember, but it was only a feeling, probably one she’d experienced many a time, but nothing concrete.
Okay, focus on the present. Blink. The bat thing seemed scared. Wait, did it get scared and break the light, or did the light breaking scare it? It happened so fast… wait, if it didn’t break the light, what did? It must have… but then what scared it? Maybe it just doesn’t like being hugged. Congratulations, you fail at being helpful. Again.
She forgot about the bat-kid for a moment, turning toward the silver girl who was apparently trying to open the door by hitting it. She might not remember her own past, but she felt pretty sure she knew how doors worked.
“Have you considered looking for, like, a handle or something?” she said aloud.
Eve’s teeth scrape against each other, so loudly it sounds like nails being drawn against metal. “Rotted door, rotted little dank chamber underground away from the sun, rotting rotting dream.” She draws back her hand, fingers coiling around each other into a fist as her arm pistons into the door again, and again.
On the fourth strike the sound of her fists clanging against the door mixes with the sound of someone (at least attempting to) talking to her. Eve frowns more deeply and pauses momentarily, turning around to stare down at Sue. It takes her a moment to make out, no she was not hallucinating at first, the woman talking apparently has a gargantuan eye for a head. An amber eye, looking at her.
Eve’s left eye twitches and her frown gives way to a somewhat confused grimace. What dreamling is this? One of the citizens, some kind of…aptly designed spy? Why would I dream up such strange looking things?
Her right pinky twitches. For a moment Eve wonders if she should ask Eyeball Lady who she is, but that idea passes quickly into one motivated more by her rampant frustration. “Yes,” she growls in a mostly human tone. “And it didn’t open. Locked, by some stupid little dreamling or rot. Rotting little dreams.”
Eve stretches back slightly to her full height, half to put an inch or so of distance between herself and the eye-woman and half to make herself look just that little bit more eerie in the darkness of the room. “You don’t look like anyone I dreamed. What are you, again?”
“I…” Sue wasn’t sure how to answer that. She had already established that she didn’t want to let anyone know that she didn’t remember who she was, but she wasn’t expecting someone to just ask ‘what are you?’ How do you even answer that?
Also, this silver girl seemed upset. Perhaps a snarky comment wasn’t such a great idea.
Time for a new plan: when you’re not sure what to say, say everything at once and hope they get confused before you do.
“My name is Sue. I was a normal person, except I was blind, and then I took a pill and now I can see but I also have a giant eye for a head. I don’t think you dreamed me into existence, but that might explain–” Shoot! Not supposed to say you can’t remember, remember? “uh, might explain the absurdity of the situation. So now the question is, what are you?” Yeah, maybe I should stop talking now I’m totally just making things worse. Blink.
She took the pill too? Is she the only one, or did the rest…
He tore his eyes away from the slight blue glow across the eyeball lady’s… Eyeball, and looked at the mesmerizing blue glow of Eve’s eyes instead. She didn’t seem familiar, or like a possible construction of his dreams or fantasies - or even his nightmares. The rest could all very well be the abstract memories he had witnessed or imagined before, but she - She was real.
Whether this world was a dream or a nightmare, or reality itself: she was real. And that fact wasn’t necessarily comforting as she had been mashing at that door for a solid ten seconds or more. Which meant she could hurt him if she decided to, and considering she referred to his as “a bat”, the nuclear option appeared to be on the table.
Basil drew his knees to his chin and tried not to touch the wall. He didn’t want her to punch him.
“…What?” Jung thought to himself. His first attempt at standing had gone much better than anticipated. He had fully expected to fumble for a few minutes before getting the hang of it. Naturally he was pleasantly surprised by this immediate success, though the specific actions required to get there left him dumbfounded.
Jung remained frozen in the position he was in, wondering if the strange movements would continue if something happened. He tried looking around the room to see if anyone else had observed his movements. However, the darkness surrounding him was only betrayed by the glowing eyes of the cyborg, monocular woman, and child.
Jung was caught off guard. The woman, sue, had taken a pill and wound up here. Jung had done the same thing. Could it be the same…
Jung heard the labored breathing of the seemingly normal woman nearby. Thanks to the darkness, he failed to see the gun she was holding. He thought back to a few moments ago where she had tried to help him. What could be happening to her now? Was she shocked by the pain he had gone through? He had to check on her.
Jung attempted to walk over to the panic-struck woman, asking: “Is everything ok?”
Eve glowers down at Sue, expression cold as the Arctic. “A normal person, here. In my dream. I hope you’ll understand if I find that unlikely.”
“What-no, who. I’m the dreamer. I took the pills and came here and then I-” She cuts off midsentence, blue eyes blinking as the memories return to her.
Falling through the air like a stone, all that strength empty and useless against gravity. Arms that could rend steel helpless, dead weight.
The ground rushing up beneath her like every storm in history-
“I woke up here,” Eve lies, just enough anger in her voice for it to sound less obviously fake. “Here in this stupid room with this stupid door. Full of all of you.”
She turns and savagely kicks against the door with a foot, letting out a hoarse growl. “I’m going to go find who put me in here and peel them apart. And then all their accomplices.”
Eve leans down and looks towards where the handle was, attempting to grab and turn it with more force this time. “Look for a key or something, a brick. A weapon or a tool, if they were foolish enough to let us in here with any of those.”
Alexis took a shaky breath before replacing her gun back into the pocket where it belonged. “No, I’m not okay.” and being trapped in a dark room is not making it any better. She continued, “Do you know what took the light out? Did you see it?”
Alexis jumped at the Fish’s screaming before what it said finally registered in her mind and the all too familiar overwhelming sense of dread retuned to her again. In an instant, her hand once again was wrapped around her gun. “Where!” She was tired of being in this dark, dank, and mold covered room, she was tired of not knowing what was happening, And she was tired of waiting for the beast to come and kill her. She. Wanted. Out.
A noise echoes out from where Alexis is standing, and it’s unmistakably the sound of a gun cocking.
Basil subconsciously cocked his head as he tried to take in what had just occurred. She just said this was her dream; she was the dreamer and she took the pills. But that couldn’t be true, because Basil was there. Or maybe this was her dream, and he entered it somehow?
Or, perhaps, this was a collective dream. Parts of everyone else’s experiences, or- No, that made less sense. He couldn’t be in a dream. This muck, this filth, this unpleasant discomfort creeping up his spine and seriously ruining any chance of accepting whatever was going on - it was real. It had to be real. But didn’t the dream from the pill feel like this, too? Or… Did it?
And more importantly, was he already second-guessing himself?
Basil opened his mouth. If anyone was listening they might hear the beginning note of a word.
But, Basil closed his mouth without uttering a word. It would only be an annoyance to this blue-eyed - wait, that sounds normal - to this glowing-blue-orbs-for-eyes girl to have it be reiterated that nobody could see a darn thing other than her and him because he was the one responsible for making it impossible to see in here in the first place.
Wait. I can see. I can help; I have to help.
That being said, Basil looked around at the barren walls, barren ceiling, and barren floor just in case there was something really obvious he missed. But he didn’t get very long to consider.
Slide follows magazine body. Firing pin locked. Bullet enters chamber. Hammer is drawn and held. Safety is disengaged.
Now, Basil didn’t necessarily think all these thoughts, as his thought process was more click goes click and then clack. But every tiny mechanism, every tightened spring and metallic movement, even the creak of the handle in Alexis’ grip run crystal clear in his massive ears. Nothing else would fit those sounds. He had never heard this exact combination of noises replicated, and yet there was only one thing that it could be.
Gun.
With that being said, Basil did not know how exactly he got back up on the wall, and why he or anyone in their right mind would claw onto the disgusting mold with their feet in order to stay off the ground. But here he was all the same.
Eve was still turning the handle, glaring hatefully at the door. Carved through concrete, can’t open a door? I’ll peel you apart like a fruit, maybe I’ll chew your bolts when I-
Click.
She stops turning the handle and looks up. Taimon exhales heavily, the sound still rolling around in her head. Her eyes close and the blue glow vanishes. Clever little dream. A double agent, one of the faceless. Hidden here, all mad-looking, pretending at innocence. And all along waiting, just waiting for me to turn my back.
stupid girl all that strength and still nothing
There is a loud sound as Eve’s fingers scrape against the door, punctuated by teeth grinding against each other audibly. The sound fades as she releases it and lets her arms hang limply by her sides. She exhales again, just as sharp as before.
“So you do have something. Don’t you, Sue?”
Taimon’s jagged silhouette turns to face Sue. Her head tilts, very slightly, to the left. She otherwise doesn’t move.
Sue’s first thought was to recommend the bat-kid. After all, if it – he could take out the light, maybe he could take out a door too, or at least a lock.
Her second thought was that she’d just considered recommending they use a scared child(?) as a weapon, and that maybe she’d said enough stupid things in the last few minutes. Besides, before she could say anything, there was another sound in the dark: the click of a gun.
It must be an attack. That was it: the lights were knocked out, and now they were ambushed in the dark. She froze; a part of her wanted to raise her hands, while another part said not to move at all. She listened to the second instinct. She doesn’t close her eye – if she’s going to die, she’s not going to show fear. She’ll keep her eye open (even if she can’t actually see anything).
It takes Sue a second to remember that that’s her ‘name’ and that the silver girl with flashlight eyes is talking to her. “It – it wasn’t me!” she says, in an embarrassingly high-pitched voice. okay, no, I am not going to go out squealing like a little girl. “Gun – you see – where is it?” she says, her voice normal this time, but her sentence coming out in fragments.
The noises and exchanges that happened within those brief moments made Jung’s head spin. But the click of the gun made him freeze
“*The holder of the weapon is right in front of you, the girl who tried to comfort you. She’s panicked, her emotions taking control of her mind. She will shoot at any movement in front of her. *” Jung thought to himself. His years on the streets had brought him through gang territory, where the denizens were armed to the teeth. Usually if they were armed with simple melee weapons like pipes, knives or makeshift clubs, Jung could defend himself decently, using his own blade to hit critical tendons that allowed the enemy fine motor control. However, if there was a gun in the midst (and there generally was) Jung usually had one option:
Run
However, there was nowhere to run. The small concrete room had little cover, not that it was visible right now. Plus, running would catch the eye of the woman, potentially startling her and causing her to fire the weapon, potentially hitting Jung or the child and further angering the cyborg. No, running would cause the situation to devolve at a much quicker rate. He thought about tackling the woman to the ground, perhaps stunning her and allowing for the weapon to be taken. But then again, she very well could be a good shot, and it would be kind of rude to assail someone who just tried to help you. So, Jung did the only other option available to him: nothing
During stressful situations, the brain produces self-preservation responses such as fighting or fleeing, allowing one to react appropriately to a given situation. Unbeknownst to most, however, is a third option: Freezing. This action causes the being to attempt to not be seen as a threat or potential meal.
Considering fleeing would be futile and fighting could be fatal, freezing would have to do until further notice.
Quietly, yet firmly, Jung said to the panicked woman: “Listen to me, you need to put that gun down. There is a high possibility of you hurting someone in such close quarters. From what I can tell, the light overloaded. There is no need to panic.” Jung knew what happened to the light was a lie, but he needed something to cool the woman’s nerves down.
Turning to the rest of the group Jung declared, “We all need to cool off and use our minds rather than our emotions to get out of this mess. Because if we let this continue to devolve, it will lead to unnecessary pain and damage. We can make it out of this situation if we calm down. Am I clear?”
Jung suspected he would get called out by the cyborg but he didn’t care . He was not going to die due to collateral damage of unchecked emotion from others and he was not going to let another child and get hurt while he was present.
Miles is initially frightened by the sudden shattering of the only light in the room, retreating further into his corner and away from whatever was happening. However, the talk of pill taking was enough to get him out of his initial shock and back to his normal state of general annoyance.
“Oh, if this is MENDAX behind everything again…”
Miles said as he pressed a hand to his forehead. His train of thought was interrupted again by the sound of Alexis’s gun and Jung’s attempt at calming everyone down.
“He’s right, we need to work together on this. I can get past that door and maybe open it from the other side, or even start ferrying people through.”
Miles started making his way toward the mold-covered door.