Post by silence on Sept 27, 2006 21:48:08 GMT -5
A quick convulsion, and he snapped upward. Sweat laced his pores, giving him a feeling of uncomfortable warmth and stickiness. He looked around, realizing he was not familiar with his surroundings. Don’t panic now. How could he not panic? There he was, all alone in an unfamiliar room drenched in his own sweat, wondering how on Earth he got there in the first place.
Then he remembered. He must have been taken here by the man with the goatee, the one who had somehow found him in his former home. The home he had tried to return to three years prior, three years that seemed like several decades. He opened his mouth to cry out, but no vibration left his larynx. He collected himself, and then let his head fall back onto the sorry excuse for a pillow he had been sleeping on. A tattered blanket wrapped his body, his back began to ache from laying on the hard, wooden floor. His thoughts traveled elsewhere, taking his mind off of the pulsing pangs in his back. Who is the man anyhow? The question reverberated off of the walls of his cerebral cortex, yet an answer was something he could not discover.
Footsteps sending sound waves through the floorboards caused him to sit up once more, and he instinctively turned his head to the doorway. The man with the goatee stood there, a bowl in one hand, a spoon in the other. He walked across the floor, coming to kneel down beside the boy.
‘Here, uh. Eat this. You must be sorta hungry.’ the man spoke through clenched teeth, maybe a sign of nervousness. Something was troubling him, but the boy couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Nor was it his main concern at this time, as he began to ladle the soup into his mouth, as quickly as he could. He couldn’t remember the last time he was that hungry. At least at the orphanage, they fed him...to his knowledge it had hardly been thirty hours since the last time he ate, but he felt as though it had been days.
As the child gulped down the last of the soup, the man had disappeared and returned, this time with a glass of water. He gave it to the child, and he backed away, observing the young boy, as though pondering something. The child sighed a contemptuous sigh, that resulted in the man moving toward him.
‘Hey, chin up kid. You’ll be alright.’ the man smiled at the boy, who looked up at his face, but the smile the man expected to see wasn’t there. The child’s lips morphed into a pout, and for a second, he looked as though he would cry. The tears never came. The child stood up, and walked across the room to the window. He peered out, and upon staring out into the outside world, he realized he wasn’t where he had imagined he would be. He expected a city, yet all he saw was trees. A gasp escaped the lungs of the boy, and the man spoke, ‘I wasn’t sure where to take you. It’s complicated. I can try to explain if you want me to.’ Yet the child stood transfixed on the trees outside of the window.
The man crossed the room, and placed his hand on the child’s shoulder. ‘I, uh, gotta run out for a bit. I’ll be back later on. If you need anything, the fridge has a bit of stuff in it.’ He removed his hand, the child still not turning, but he knew he had acknowledged his farewell. As he reached the doorframe, he turned around, to find the child staring at his back. ‘Don’t, uh, run away on me. Please?’
Without another word, he was gone. The child walked back over to his make-shift bed on the floor, and began to contemplate what to do. As he thought, his mind was brought back that morning, or at least, he thought it was that morning. The man had been carrying him through the woods. Yet, how long had they been driving for? How deep into the woods could this be? Which way is out?
He thought about leaving, yet something about the eyes of the man made him stay steadfast in his spot on the wooden floor. A wave of tiredness rushed over his body, and he grabbed the tattered blanket, and wrapped it once more around his also tattered body. He laid back on the tattered pillow, and tried to piece together his tattered life. Everything that had happened to him in the past three years had been a result of those horrible people, who took away his family. But for what? He had no clue. It must have been because of something his father was going to put to the press. Deep down, he was certain that was the reason behind the whole ordeal. He also knew that his mother and brother had warned his father many times of the repercussions of such a prolific yet dangerous profession. His father was an assassin, yet his pen was his weapon as opposed to a sword. He had destroyed as many people as any Roman gladiator.
His eyes began to fade, slowly closing before popping back open. Soon, it became too much. The child drifted into slumber, unaware of the horror that awaited him in his dreams.
Bob Diehard. A man of God. God, indeed.
(A chime can be heard in the background, faintly. It is quickly stopped. A flash of light, the face of Silence and The Voice coming to view. They disappear into the darkness.)
The Voice: Check the cache you refer to as your memory. What do you see, on Tuesday night, September Twenty-Sixth. The third match of the night. The proof in the pudding. Silence walked into that match, and abolished Brad Moore and The Byrd. They may never wrestle again. You saw the devastating force that is the Reticent Raider. The fear shall soon set in.
(Three quick flashes of light, the upset face of Silence moving ever closer with each flash. Another flash, and The Voice stands in his place.)
The Voice: I have informed Silence of his next opponent. Bob Diehard, he seems pleased. Although you wouldn’t be able to tell by his face.
(Another flash, once again the upset face of Silence appears.)
The Voice: When you’ve seen so much pain, delivered so much pain, you have a hard time smiling. You have a hard time concentrating on anything, but delivering more pain, hearing more choking gasps. Listen close, Diehard. Listen to the silence, peer into the darkness. Do you hear it? It is the tears of the fallen, Brad Moore, The Byrd. They are weeping, for their souls have been branded with the mark of the one that does not speak. They were the first checkpoints on the trail of darkness. Evidence of the pain was left in those mounds of battered former men on the canvas.
(A maniacal laugh escapes from The Voice. Another flash, and the room is illuminated to show a dark, empty cellar. A bed of nails positioned against the wall. The light goes out.)
The Voice: God will not help you on Tuesday, Bob Diehard. Nor will you want him to. You will simply want him to welcome you into His arms. Take you away, from the pain that shall be caused to you by the very man that every man shall come to fear.
(A flash of light, Silence at a standstill. His dreadlocks in a jumble around him, unkept. The light stays on, Silence stays unmoving.)
The Voice: Guarantees may be viewed as a tool of the weak and insecure, yet a guarantee of intense amounts of pain being dealt onto you by Silence, is almost mandatory. So prepare yourself, Bob. You will surely need it, you will surely need a way to combat the fear that will overcome you. The pain that you will feel. The silence that will consume you afterward. Don’t go to sleep with the lights off tonight, Diehard. You might be surprised by what you find lurking in the darkest corners.
The room that surrounded him began to change. The walls contracted before expanding and disappearing, leaving him surrounded by trees. The floor disintegrated beneath him, becoming soggy ground. He turned to look in every direction, yet he saw nothing but tree-line. He was in a clearing, sitting on the ground, the blanket and pillow gone, and he felt it. Cold. The occasional raindrop plunging directly onto his forehead, like Chinese water torture. An attempted scream, and failure.
With a flash of blinding light, the surrounding forest disappeared. The wet ground beneath his buttocks flipped, causing him to fall straight down. He landed in the back seat of a car. The car was not moving, and as he looked to see who occupied the front seat, he saw a figure tucked away beyond a dark void, as well as a sleeping boy. He had to look again, because although he had not looked in the mirror in quite some time, the boy was undoubtedly himself. He looked horrible. Nothing like the boy whose cheeks would glow when his father came through the door, or when he heard his mother’s angelic voice echoing through the halls of the house, making him feel warm all over. His face was sickly pale, his clothes dirty. He looked down upon himself, and realized the child in the front seat was clad in the same apparel as he. The dark figure loomed over the child now, something in it’s hand. It flicked the tip of something pointy, and then the figure dropped down over the child, encompassing him in the darkness as well. When the figure returned to an upright position, nothing had seemed to change about the child. On first notice, at least. The child’s breathing had slowed.
The figure opened the car door, and walked around to the other side. It opened the passenger’s side door with relative reluctance, as though it was reconsidering its current course of action. A solemn shake of where the figure’s head would have been, and the boy was scooped up by the darkness. Transfixed, the child climbed between the seats and out of the unclosed passenger’s side door. He followed the dark void at a distance, fearing that if he got too close, he would be swallowed as well. The figure ventured into the woods a little, into a clearing. A familiar clearing. The clearing the child had been to just moments earlier. The child saw the figure place the splitting image of himself down in the center of the clearing, and then saunter off into the darkness, joining it, as though it had achieved something vast. The child looked down upon his non-existent twin, yet there he was, right in front of him.
The twin began to convulse. His limbs began to thrash uncontrollably, unpredictably. The twin’s eyes opened, and then closed just as promptly. He fell back, lifeless on the ground. The child tried to gasp, but as per the norm, no sound escaped. He slowly made his way to the heap of flesh and growing-a-bit-too-long scraggly hair in front of him. He bent down to look upon his fallen twin, and once again, the convulsions began. The limbs flew wildly, and the child backed away. He looked on in horror as a mirror replica of himself slowly died. Why is this happening?
The rain slowly disappeared, while the child looked on in horror. Just as the rain had, the darkness also disappeared, The sun emerged over the top of a tree. The child heard the snap of a twig behind him. He turned to find himself standing face to face with the goateed man. Yet, the man did not notice the child there. He did, however, see the child laying lifeless on the ground. He walked directly past the child, and broke into a run toward the fallen child. He checked for a pulse. The man spoke, but the words were indistinct, and slow. ‘Howw arreeyoo stee liiiive’ The child looked on, more confused now. The man began to administer CPR on the lifeless body of the his strange mirror image. It’s no use. He’s gone. A sound began to fill the ears of the child now. The sound of a heart-rate increasing. Slowly, at first. Thump. Thump. Thump-Thump. Thump-Thump. Could it be possible? The man continued the CPR. Thump-Thump Thump-Thump.
The man lifted the boy, and cradled him in his arms. He walked back in the direction of the child. Directly past the boy, standing bewildered at what he just witnessed. Although shock had set in, the boy still noticed his counterpart’s eyes open, scan the sky above him, and then fall shut.
As the man left the clearing with the boy cradled in his arms, the sky grew black. The dark figure transpired from whence it had disappeared, and began to close in on the confused, and now terrified boy. The child backed away, but soon he found his feet were heavy as cinder blocks. The figure approached him, began to loom over him, just as it had his carbon copy, and then dropped upon him, consuming him in the darkness.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
A shrill scream broke the depths of the darkness, as the boy convulsed and jolted upright once more. The tattered blanket still wrapped around his body. He reached behind his head. The tattered pillow still in place. Once again the dankness stood out in his mind. The sweat, fear sweat. The dream seemed so real. The dark figure, the man who had saved his life... Saved his life. Could it be true? He stood up and walked over to the window, gazing out at the tree-line. A chill came over him, as he was certain he saw a dark figure roving through the wood.
Then he remembered. He must have been taken here by the man with the goatee, the one who had somehow found him in his former home. The home he had tried to return to three years prior, three years that seemed like several decades. He opened his mouth to cry out, but no vibration left his larynx. He collected himself, and then let his head fall back onto the sorry excuse for a pillow he had been sleeping on. A tattered blanket wrapped his body, his back began to ache from laying on the hard, wooden floor. His thoughts traveled elsewhere, taking his mind off of the pulsing pangs in his back. Who is the man anyhow? The question reverberated off of the walls of his cerebral cortex, yet an answer was something he could not discover.
Footsteps sending sound waves through the floorboards caused him to sit up once more, and he instinctively turned his head to the doorway. The man with the goatee stood there, a bowl in one hand, a spoon in the other. He walked across the floor, coming to kneel down beside the boy.
‘Here, uh. Eat this. You must be sorta hungry.’ the man spoke through clenched teeth, maybe a sign of nervousness. Something was troubling him, but the boy couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Nor was it his main concern at this time, as he began to ladle the soup into his mouth, as quickly as he could. He couldn’t remember the last time he was that hungry. At least at the orphanage, they fed him...to his knowledge it had hardly been thirty hours since the last time he ate, but he felt as though it had been days.
As the child gulped down the last of the soup, the man had disappeared and returned, this time with a glass of water. He gave it to the child, and he backed away, observing the young boy, as though pondering something. The child sighed a contemptuous sigh, that resulted in the man moving toward him.
‘Hey, chin up kid. You’ll be alright.’ the man smiled at the boy, who looked up at his face, but the smile the man expected to see wasn’t there. The child’s lips morphed into a pout, and for a second, he looked as though he would cry. The tears never came. The child stood up, and walked across the room to the window. He peered out, and upon staring out into the outside world, he realized he wasn’t where he had imagined he would be. He expected a city, yet all he saw was trees. A gasp escaped the lungs of the boy, and the man spoke, ‘I wasn’t sure where to take you. It’s complicated. I can try to explain if you want me to.’ Yet the child stood transfixed on the trees outside of the window.
The man crossed the room, and placed his hand on the child’s shoulder. ‘I, uh, gotta run out for a bit. I’ll be back later on. If you need anything, the fridge has a bit of stuff in it.’ He removed his hand, the child still not turning, but he knew he had acknowledged his farewell. As he reached the doorframe, he turned around, to find the child staring at his back. ‘Don’t, uh, run away on me. Please?’
Without another word, he was gone. The child walked back over to his make-shift bed on the floor, and began to contemplate what to do. As he thought, his mind was brought back that morning, or at least, he thought it was that morning. The man had been carrying him through the woods. Yet, how long had they been driving for? How deep into the woods could this be? Which way is out?
He thought about leaving, yet something about the eyes of the man made him stay steadfast in his spot on the wooden floor. A wave of tiredness rushed over his body, and he grabbed the tattered blanket, and wrapped it once more around his also tattered body. He laid back on the tattered pillow, and tried to piece together his tattered life. Everything that had happened to him in the past three years had been a result of those horrible people, who took away his family. But for what? He had no clue. It must have been because of something his father was going to put to the press. Deep down, he was certain that was the reason behind the whole ordeal. He also knew that his mother and brother had warned his father many times of the repercussions of such a prolific yet dangerous profession. His father was an assassin, yet his pen was his weapon as opposed to a sword. He had destroyed as many people as any Roman gladiator.
His eyes began to fade, slowly closing before popping back open. Soon, it became too much. The child drifted into slumber, unaware of the horror that awaited him in his dreams.
* * *
Bob Diehard. A man of God. God, indeed.
(A chime can be heard in the background, faintly. It is quickly stopped. A flash of light, the face of Silence and The Voice coming to view. They disappear into the darkness.)
The Voice: Check the cache you refer to as your memory. What do you see, on Tuesday night, September Twenty-Sixth. The third match of the night. The proof in the pudding. Silence walked into that match, and abolished Brad Moore and The Byrd. They may never wrestle again. You saw the devastating force that is the Reticent Raider. The fear shall soon set in.
(Three quick flashes of light, the upset face of Silence moving ever closer with each flash. Another flash, and The Voice stands in his place.)
The Voice: I have informed Silence of his next opponent. Bob Diehard, he seems pleased. Although you wouldn’t be able to tell by his face.
(Another flash, once again the upset face of Silence appears.)
The Voice: When you’ve seen so much pain, delivered so much pain, you have a hard time smiling. You have a hard time concentrating on anything, but delivering more pain, hearing more choking gasps. Listen close, Diehard. Listen to the silence, peer into the darkness. Do you hear it? It is the tears of the fallen, Brad Moore, The Byrd. They are weeping, for their souls have been branded with the mark of the one that does not speak. They were the first checkpoints on the trail of darkness. Evidence of the pain was left in those mounds of battered former men on the canvas.
(A maniacal laugh escapes from The Voice. Another flash, and the room is illuminated to show a dark, empty cellar. A bed of nails positioned against the wall. The light goes out.)
The Voice: God will not help you on Tuesday, Bob Diehard. Nor will you want him to. You will simply want him to welcome you into His arms. Take you away, from the pain that shall be caused to you by the very man that every man shall come to fear.
(A flash of light, Silence at a standstill. His dreadlocks in a jumble around him, unkept. The light stays on, Silence stays unmoving.)
The Voice: Guarantees may be viewed as a tool of the weak and insecure, yet a guarantee of intense amounts of pain being dealt onto you by Silence, is almost mandatory. So prepare yourself, Bob. You will surely need it, you will surely need a way to combat the fear that will overcome you. The pain that you will feel. The silence that will consume you afterward. Don’t go to sleep with the lights off tonight, Diehard. You might be surprised by what you find lurking in the darkest corners.
* * *
The room that surrounded him began to change. The walls contracted before expanding and disappearing, leaving him surrounded by trees. The floor disintegrated beneath him, becoming soggy ground. He turned to look in every direction, yet he saw nothing but tree-line. He was in a clearing, sitting on the ground, the blanket and pillow gone, and he felt it. Cold. The occasional raindrop plunging directly onto his forehead, like Chinese water torture. An attempted scream, and failure.
With a flash of blinding light, the surrounding forest disappeared. The wet ground beneath his buttocks flipped, causing him to fall straight down. He landed in the back seat of a car. The car was not moving, and as he looked to see who occupied the front seat, he saw a figure tucked away beyond a dark void, as well as a sleeping boy. He had to look again, because although he had not looked in the mirror in quite some time, the boy was undoubtedly himself. He looked horrible. Nothing like the boy whose cheeks would glow when his father came through the door, or when he heard his mother’s angelic voice echoing through the halls of the house, making him feel warm all over. His face was sickly pale, his clothes dirty. He looked down upon himself, and realized the child in the front seat was clad in the same apparel as he. The dark figure loomed over the child now, something in it’s hand. It flicked the tip of something pointy, and then the figure dropped down over the child, encompassing him in the darkness as well. When the figure returned to an upright position, nothing had seemed to change about the child. On first notice, at least. The child’s breathing had slowed.
The figure opened the car door, and walked around to the other side. It opened the passenger’s side door with relative reluctance, as though it was reconsidering its current course of action. A solemn shake of where the figure’s head would have been, and the boy was scooped up by the darkness. Transfixed, the child climbed between the seats and out of the unclosed passenger’s side door. He followed the dark void at a distance, fearing that if he got too close, he would be swallowed as well. The figure ventured into the woods a little, into a clearing. A familiar clearing. The clearing the child had been to just moments earlier. The child saw the figure place the splitting image of himself down in the center of the clearing, and then saunter off into the darkness, joining it, as though it had achieved something vast. The child looked down upon his non-existent twin, yet there he was, right in front of him.
The twin began to convulse. His limbs began to thrash uncontrollably, unpredictably. The twin’s eyes opened, and then closed just as promptly. He fell back, lifeless on the ground. The child tried to gasp, but as per the norm, no sound escaped. He slowly made his way to the heap of flesh and growing-a-bit-too-long scraggly hair in front of him. He bent down to look upon his fallen twin, and once again, the convulsions began. The limbs flew wildly, and the child backed away. He looked on in horror as a mirror replica of himself slowly died. Why is this happening?
The rain slowly disappeared, while the child looked on in horror. Just as the rain had, the darkness also disappeared, The sun emerged over the top of a tree. The child heard the snap of a twig behind him. He turned to find himself standing face to face with the goateed man. Yet, the man did not notice the child there. He did, however, see the child laying lifeless on the ground. He walked directly past the child, and broke into a run toward the fallen child. He checked for a pulse. The man spoke, but the words were indistinct, and slow. ‘Howw arreeyoo stee liiiive’ The child looked on, more confused now. The man began to administer CPR on the lifeless body of the his strange mirror image. It’s no use. He’s gone. A sound began to fill the ears of the child now. The sound of a heart-rate increasing. Slowly, at first. Thump. Thump. Thump-Thump. Thump-Thump. Could it be possible? The man continued the CPR. Thump-Thump Thump-Thump.
The man lifted the boy, and cradled him in his arms. He walked back in the direction of the child. Directly past the boy, standing bewildered at what he just witnessed. Although shock had set in, the boy still noticed his counterpart’s eyes open, scan the sky above him, and then fall shut.
As the man left the clearing with the boy cradled in his arms, the sky grew black. The dark figure transpired from whence it had disappeared, and began to close in on the confused, and now terrified boy. The child backed away, but soon he found his feet were heavy as cinder blocks. The figure approached him, began to loom over him, just as it had his carbon copy, and then dropped upon him, consuming him in the darkness.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
A shrill scream broke the depths of the darkness, as the boy convulsed and jolted upright once more. The tattered blanket still wrapped around his body. He reached behind his head. The tattered pillow still in place. Once again the dankness stood out in his mind. The sweat, fear sweat. The dream seemed so real. The dark figure, the man who had saved his life... Saved his life. Could it be true? He stood up and walked over to the window, gazing out at the tree-line. A chill came over him, as he was certain he saw a dark figure roving through the wood.