Hands of Demons and Shadows
This is just the first chapter in what i hope is to become one of my series. I'm not 100% sure where the main plot is going to come from but i have a general idea on where this is going sketched out in my head. But anyways, enjoy! And feel free to tell me what you think of it, i love feedback! :D
At first the world was made up of a peaceful thickness swallowing her ears in a low hum, every day a new tune that over years made a symphony in her brain. Her eyes were never opened. But behind the lids was a world forged of colors and adventures with things beyond her imagination.
It always started with stingy clumps of color, a part of her mind insisted it was the same shade of her eyes, scattered over a deep sloping surface, with a ball of intense heat withering away in the back round. It was all nameless, no memories of what it could be, and she never knew how her consciousness could even conjure up the will power to show her things she has never seen before. But time was a factor not needed in the process, for it was not measured at all. Her body was always sizzling in the bubbling temperature she has always known, and her ears pop, disturbing her newest adventure, every once in a while. But it always pours back into her ears, whatever substance it was, filling the missing space in again, filling in a new part of herself.
Then one day her bubble of tranquility was popped.
Hands, hands grasping her from all angles, like tentacles from the dark abyss of her consciousness, at her biceps, legs, shoulders. Lifting her out of her dream, but she doesn’t want to leave. Don’t take her away from her paradise where she can just let her mind whirl around and break her, but never really breaking her. Because she just keeps re spawning in a new level of her mind, along with it new nightmares and thoughts and whirlwinds and thundering shapes overhead, and days of cool and specks filling a washing surface, blindly colored, but other rage like a storm, spinning and spinning out of control, but she wants it to align again, and let her think straight for once. But she doesn’t know what straight is and the curves are winding and knotting in her mind, and then for the first time, she opens her eyes.
Her eyes open, her eyes open-
To more eyes and eyes and eyes and where are they coming from? Eyes just fly around her head and flap behind her pupils, and the images are blurry and fluffed in her sight, but the real images overlap the ones flashing behind her eyes and her mind aches in a pain she has never felt before in such an intense way. Please, please let her back.
Echoes, not voices, echoes like they always are. But these voices seem too solid to be one of her creation. Faces push each other in and out of her vision, and so many colors attack her sight that she wills herself to shut down again. Shut down and stop this intense ache that cracks in the center of her brain and sparks across her mind like wildfire. Her eyes squeeze shut in a forced tone, not quite knowing how to work themselves out. But it does the job as the lid seals shut the blinding flashes of sights that she doesn’t want to see, never see, not all at once, ever ever again. Never, just let her back to her world of timeless wonders and muted comfort. The abyss sinks in along with dulled swirls of her normal tints, and all is fine, but her new seals for her eyes don’t block out the voices.
“Are you sure she’s not dead?”
An audible bounce pops off the walls and clatterers painfully around her ears. Along with the annoyed protest of the one who received the form of pain.
“Of course you idiot, look at her! She’s breathing ain’t she?”
“I don’t know, she doesn’t seem to be responding well…”
Her chest seemed to expand and deflate on its own, bringing in minty intakes of something dry and sharp through a bump inbetween her eyes, and without her consent to do so. It increased at an alarming rate once the voices died down and she felt their gazes burning into herself. A thump reverberated under her skin, and rang in her ear drums faster and faster than she even thought possible.
Everything scared her, was this breathing?
Aching soreness drained through her body and she just wanted to slip away and soar in her adventures again. And she found herself doing just that. Taking off into a world as the one that got shattered and pieced back together before her slipped away, and her whole body slumped defeated in a heavy sort of way, like a weight at the bottom of a river.
She wanted to dream… just dream again.
To swirl back into her river of flowing adventures and not one’s laced with bombarding pain. But before she could sneak back into her hole, a hand snaked through and pulled her back.
It was always hands wasn’t it?
Her eyes were forced back open to see charcoal eyes shaking her, worry bubbling underneath them, and it ached her to see the vividness in his face, it was all real, too real. His lips open slightly and then in an attack of noise his voice boomed around her-
She winced back from the question and covered her ears on instinct. His sight flickered between her hands and her face, and in a burst of realization he took both of her hands in his, gently guided them down from their posts, and in a softer tone, that didn’t pierce her brain, but rather dripped into it in a muddled mess, he asked a different question, “What’s your name?” Her eyes stare blankly back at him.
She remembers the definition, though she has never been told, but the answer to it seems to playfully tug strings in her tangled jumble of a mind, twirling out of reach, falling back down the tip of her tongue. She doesn’t know what she was called, or if she was even called something. There was no need, everything in her dreams knew her, and she them, there was no verbal confirmation needed. So without an answer to his question, she sat stranded, surrounded by his words with only silence as her answer. His partner clipped into view and delivered another swift hit to his head, to which his sharp shout send rippling waves of anguish up her spine, and her hands flew out of his grip and back to her ears-
“Dude! Look what you did! I was just about to get an answer!”
“You idiot! Why on earth would she have a name, she’s been living in that gelatin goop her entire life!”
Life? What a strange word, she doesn’t know if it applies to her, but the sunken feeling in her stomach tells her life isn’t a gift she is able to receive. She is not a part of life, merely a bystander in its game.
Her eyes wander to her legs, and her ears start to become just a dull ache in the presence of the muted bickering of the two strangers, and she removes her hands from them. Could she stand now? In her dreams she was always standing, smiling, and being free. It was always in a subdued manner, never quite real but always in a daze. But now, now she can stand.
She could stand, and run, and be free.
A tingling sensation buzzed through her and she started to fidget in place out of excitement.
The sound of it sent quivers up her spine and her hands hastily placed themselves on the floor, as she pushed herself up off of the ground in a wobbly fashion, like a fawn standing for the first time. In the back of her mind she noticed that the two had stopped their quarrel, and felt their stares burning into her head. But her concentration was pinpointed in a scorching focus that blocked out the outside world. Her hands left the floor and spread themselves out on either side of her, acting as a balance, as her legs shook violently from the pressure of her body. Then she as standing, her legs shooting out straight under her, and the world was spread out before her in a wash of colors, and it was all so real.
The pain of processing everything was here again, but she didn’t dwell on it, she pushed past and stared wide eyed at the strangers who were staring back at her just as surprised. One was a man of lemon hair, streaked by fire. One of his pale hands was pressed against the top of his head, he must be the one who got chastised. The culprit was a man of ashes and roots splashed with mud. But his eyes were prickling blue waters that made her shiver from the coldness they implied.
A twitch shot out from her lips, and then her cheeks hurt from the strain on the smile that smeared over her face for the first time. It was big and painful, like her entire entrance into this world, but it was real. She was standing here with a thousand possibilities to the future and all were unlocked and ready for her to open the door. And she would gladly take every chance she had, and never go back to her world of fake dreams and fake adventures that just rewound themselves back into place for her to watch again. And her radiance burned through her smile and dusted the cheeks of the two strangers in pink, but the fiery lemon boy managed a smile of sizzling warmth back at her.
Then her whole world tilted as her legs buckled underneath her-
And every color of the room flashed past in a blur-
Until it all splashed into an ocean of black.