Entering The Red Room
Part 1
Its like the world faded away and I came to this nothingness..
In this one simple.. swift.. moment, it happened. Unexpectedly. One night I was just heading to the kitchen to refill my glass with water and then, all of a sudden, I feel myself fading in and out..... I stumbled the rest of the way through the kitchen to the sink just to hold onto something and try to catch my breath. Trying ever so carefully to place the glass cup down on the counter. Feeling the cold metal sink beneath my fingertips was all I could focus on, other than my breathing to stop the room from fading away. When the feeling lightened enough to leave me lightly dazed, I got some water and slowly walked back to my room. I don't even remember the walk back to my room since I was almost unable to focus on the hallway. I just remember standing in the doorway when I rubbed my wrist into the side of my head and then I closed the door with my other elbow, glass in hand, in an almost slightly drunken worried manner.. The closer I got to my bed, the more off I felt.. So I sat down at the edge, took a drink and then.......
There it was, my eyes opened wide when this unnerving petrified feeling rushed over me. I could see the black edges of the room begining to consume everything in sight. It frightened me as I faded out. Then the glass in my hand dropped to the floor, spilling water all over the carpet... and my body drops on the bed.
A huge glass box on a platform in a red room was what I woke up to... and.. Well, they all come from there.. Not one of them is meant to.. but, . . . . [then the character pauses and glitches to the next sentence] . . . . wh-when I arrived, all I could hear were the whispers and I'm always for some reason walking slowly towards the box... The whispers tell me of a spell I must complete and the red walls turn into the doors that the voices need them to be, like portals. Only, my voice repeating after them opens them. Like a key... Always taking me where they want me to go; and behind me after I walk through?.. Is always the red room with the glass box. No matter how far from this box I get, its never far behind.
Imagine everything sort of glitching and then all of a sudden its like an environment is bleeding through the wall, like a cave you could walk into. All the walls are still red but imagine seeing dirt creeping towards the glass box from the wall to your left, leading into grass, small plants and little glowing red mushrooms.. To bushes and trees growing up along the walls while vines crawled up and onto the ceiling....and enough of an opening through the branches for you to duck through. One Red light shining on it all. Though I was under a spell to retrieve what I needed for the rituals I was compelled to complete, I could still feel the fear slowly eating me alive and my heart sometimes races out of my chest at the thought..
I never know what's in the cave but I can't ever stop myself from walking towards it, tears flooding my eyes every time I felt one of my legs lifting... pulling me towards it. And then boom! Just like that, I begin to black out as I can see the colors lightly piercing through the opening of the branches. Once I come to again, all I feel is my heart beating out of my chest... racing and then I start coughing. Always a delayed reaction but I'm out of breath and exhausted.. and I never know why or what I did to get back.
The first time it happened, I looked down to discover I was covered in half dried mud and had a few scrapes. My chest and legs gave away that.. I ran, I ran back to the red room and the glass box. When I could focus again, I could see that I was down on my knees in the middle of the glass box and everything I gathered was dropped on the floor in front of me, like it all fell out of my arms. One knee hurting as if I fell when I got there. I felt a sharp ringing in my ear when I tried to look up at the glass walls and quickly shut my eyes, grabbed my head and ducked down. Jaw streached wide until, all of a sudden it was as if it didn't happen at all. I unclenched my head and kept my eyes down. Then the whispering began again, telling me how to set up the items in front of me. I didn't know what I was doing but I could follow direction, after the first few steps, it always made sense in an almost natural way. Why did I know the next step sometimes though?.. I'd give anything to know. I assume its why they use me..
The first thing I did was draw a wide circle arount myself with chalk
dropped flower petals around the perimeter
Sprinkled salt on the petals
And the rest I can't seem to remember...
and then lit a tall black candle with carvings of encantations & symbols.
After drawing a unique symbol I've never seen before, I placed the candle in the center and began to mix herbs in a bowl and crushed them together. Placed some odd items around the candle how I was told, along with some stones and then.... Their voices began.... They.......... Well.. they began to speak through me when I finished putting everything together. Honestly, it was fucken terrifying..... [the character clutching their throat during a long pause] its the amount of pain I felt for each word they said..... It felt like it was breaking my neck to be controlled like that.... The suffocation you feel because they don't need to breath, so it feels like your lungs are going to explode or cave in. At the time I couldn't tell the difference. When I was done, or when their ritual was completed, my body dropped...
When I woke up I wasn't alone.... Someone had been pulled through the portal at the top of the room. This one was a different door though. One not meant to be opened.
To be continued. . . . .
A story written by myself @decotoquinn
