Waking in a Nightmare World

[IsabellaRose]

You open your eyes and look around. You're in the dark. This is not just dark, this darkness is absolute, a suffocating void that seems to pulse against your skin, pressing inward like a living thing. The air is thick and wet, heavy with the stench of decay and something metallic, like old blood. Something undefinable fills you with terror, a feeling of impending doom pressing down upon you. You have no idea why you're scared, but terror grips your heart like an icy fist.

A faint glow the sickly green of rotting vegetation begins to seep through the blackness, revealing a landscape that seems to writhe and shift, as if alive. The ground beneath your feet squelches and moans, a spongy carpet of pulsating flesh riddled with glistening veins that pump a sluggish black ichor. You can feel the fleshy surface below you, warm and damp, and you realize your feet are bare. You need to get off of this disgusting surface, but there's nothing else to walk on.

Towering structures loomed in the distance, twisted spires of bone and sinew wrapped in flesh that pulsates with a nauseating rhythm. You realize there is a sound that matches that pulsing, the distant sound of a heartbeat. The sky above is not a sky at all but a churning mass of unblinking eyes, each bloodshot and twitching as if in pain, fixing their collective gaze downward. In the distance, a guttural scream rises, not from a single throat but a cacophony of overlapping voices, a symphony of agony that makes your teeth vibrate and your blood run cold. And then you see one of the spires begin to move. Its tip unfurls like a flower revealing a cavernous maw filled with foot long, needle-like teeth. 

From the corner of your eye you catch a hint of movement in the distance, quick, skittering shadows that dart just out of the reach of the faint light, their limbs impossibly long and jointed at unnatural angles. You freeze, every muscle locked tight as the first creature steps into the sickly green glow. Its form is angular and wrong, as though it had been assembled from the parts of something else. Its head is featureless save for a single, gaping hole where a mouth might have been. From the hole comes a low, resonant hum that vibrates deep in your chest, like a predator’s growl.

The creature moves on all fours, its clawed hands sinking into the pulsating ground with wet squelches. Then it pauses, lifting its head as if sniffing the air. Behind it, more of the creatures emerge, an entire pack, each one slightly different, but all equally uncomfortable to look at. One drags a tail-like appendage that oozes a shimmering slime, while another’s back is covered in jagged spines that drip with the same ichor as the veins in the ground. Their movements are almost synchronized yet oddly erratic, a chaotic dance of misaligned flesh and bone.

Suddenly, one of them turns its eyeless head toward you, the hum from its gaping maw growing louder, sharper. You stagger back, your heel sinking into the fleshy ground with a nauseating squish. As you try to pull free, the creature breaks away from the pack, slowly crawling forward. As it grows nearer, you finally wrench your foot free and prepare to run, but to your horror, it speaks. It doesn't use words, but a sound that is both a scream and a whisper, a sound you hear both in filling your ears and your mind.

"You… awake…" it rasps, its telepathic voice like shards of glass scraping against the inside of your skull. The others echo the phrase, their tones overlapping into a discordant symphony that makes your vision blur.

The creature crouches low, extending one clawed hand. For a moment, it seems almost curious, its head tilting in a mimicry of something disturbingly human. But as the hum deepens, vibrating the very ground beneath you, it becomes clear this is no gesture of peace. The pack closes in, their movements steady and sure. Just as you are certain one of them will pounce, they suddenly become completely immobile. From behind you a voice speaks, and you are surprised to understand the words.

 

 

• If a female voice says, "Do not fear the chorath, human. I sent them to collect new seed, and they found that magnificent tool hanging between your legs." click here. <link forthcoming>
• If a female voice says, "Welcome, sister. Our Lord Malamialen has awaited your return." click here. <link forthcoming>
• If a male voice says, "Your choice, female. Kneel or be fed to the chorath." click here. 
• If a male voice says, "What business have you in the lands of Lord Malamialen, warrior?" click here. <link forthcoming>
• If a deep monstrous voice says, "Mmm... dinner time." click here.

 

Edited February 7 by IsabellaRose