plazma
Bluelighter
With the last vestiges of consciousness, I feel myself sinking down, deeper and deeper into the warm velvet wrap of oblivion. For an unknown time I lie there, asleep. Then, with a start, my eyes open, feeling each lid open quickly, without the drag and rub of sleep's remnants. I'm somewhere else now, the air tasting bitter, metallic on my tongue. Am I awake or dreaming? My eyes rove quickly, travelling over the landscape, a windswept place, marshy grass and mud, I can hear the howl of the wind whipping through stunted bushes, yet feel warmth on what I realise is my naked skin. I hear a voice in my ear, warm and female.
- Step closer
I don't know why, but I obey, lifting one leg up, feeling the mud sucking at my bare foot. As I look down, I realise that my foot is clear of mud, seeing no traces of brown on my white skin. Feeling the hair on the back of my neck prickle, I put my foot down, and take another step forwards. Again, the same feeling of suck and give on my foot, yet no mud sticks. The grass at my feet is withered brown, and patchy with brown mud and puddles of water. There's no mist here, no evidence of anyone else but myself, I can hear no birds, no animals, and the sky is thick with clouds, yet no rain comes. I force myself to step forward again. I can still taste the air, without a hint of the smell you'd expect from such a swamp, no smell of rot, no smell of dankness. My gaze travels, there's no hint of a change, this place stretches as far as the eye can see. I pivot swiftly, catching a slight movement in the corner of my eye. As I turn like the hands of a clock, I realise that this continuance is universal, there is no exit from this place, no entry. I can see no movement now, yet as I turn, seeking a landmark, there's another slight blur in the corner of my eye. I can feel the slight edge of panic on the air I breathe, the adrenaline pumping through my veins.
Then as I spin quickly on my heel, my sight convinces me at once that I'm insane. Before me, where no one could possibly have stood without me seeing them move, stands a girl. Close to my height, with dark hair flowing down her shoulders, her pale skin accentuating a sense of alienness in this place of bleak darkness. Her arms flow down her sides, and she exudes a feeling of grace. Yet, in a second, as my gaze sweeps down her naked body, glancing off her full breasts, and down her legs, arousal turns to fear. I breathe in and it seems the air is scented with blood. As I reel back and my eyes travel up to meet hers, I realise she has no face. There exist no eyes to meet mine, and for that I feel for a second, glad, because if they were, should I look into them, I know I would never see again but in a million shades of red, and feel nothing but pain. Slowly I fumble to move my tongue.
- Who are you?
I gasp thickly, feeling the suck of the ground beneath me, as it betrays my balance and I stumble backwards away from her. The sky seethes slowly above me, seeming to boil and bubble in spats of cloud.
- I have no name but what you call me. I have no face but what you see. I have no breath save what you give me, and I have lived for a billion lives.
Her voice sounds odd in this place, a human kindness, seeming to echo with understanding and compassion, coming from such a terrifying sight. She walks smoothly towards me. Her feet padding softly on the rustling tussocks and over the muddy ground. As I stand my ground, she seems to weave through the very molecules of the air, and I can feel her eyes upon me, from this face that has no features, shrouded in shadow. With but a blink, I feel her body pressed against mine, her head upturned, to face me, and suddenly, without the slightest other change. The sky turns slowly red and then the ground drops away, as I'm falling into darkness.
As I blink my eyes open, I'm gifted with the sight of a city, sparkling in the sunlight. I feel like I'm flying high above it. Golden towers reach up towards me, seeming crystalline in the bright sun. The air crisp and free of any fog or haze. Below on the streets, a multicoloured mass of people move and sway, as I soar higher and higher on the cool air, I can see the dark green and brown tangled mass of a forest surrounding the city. Then, there's a hand gripping my wrist, fingers cold from the rush of wind past us. I somehow turn, and there, cowled like a monk, in dark cloth, the girl appears once more. As I glance down my body I see I'm clothed in much the same, my bare feet protruding, and the robes fluttering as I realise we're dropping at ever increasing speed towards the ground. Tumbling end over end we fall, her hand gripping my wrist, and the golden towers reach up towards and then beyond us and we swoop like pouncing eagles. My heart pounds, almost in my throat, and the wind tears the breath from my lips. Suddenly, we're no longer falling, but standing on a pavement of brown tiles, feeling cool underfoot. Next to me, stands the girl with no face, hidden beneath her cloak. I step towards her, then suddenly gasp as I realise, that every footprint I leave is marked in blood. She nods, slowly, then takes my hand, cold, in her even colder ones, turning me, as we walk slowly along, between tall trees I do not recognise, green in their magnificence. While behind me, pointing like a finger of guilt, follow my trail of bloody footprints. The street I glance up is devoid of people, only buildings with diamond shaped windows, made from multicoloured bricks, yellow, orange, blue, green, and the brown tiled pavement marked only by the crimson of blood. I can hear the breeze whistling through the tops of the tallest buildings.
She turns towards me, and I hear her voice, echoing among the buildings.
- Watch
And she leads me forward, down the wide street, our footsteps echoing. I cannot speak, and I realise that I have no tongue. A moment of panic makes my eyes go wide, and I feel my nostrils flaring like a horse. I look down, for I feel no pain in my feet, yet still the blood seems to ooze like sweat from the pores of my soles. She pulls me along with her, and we continue, past tree after tree, building after building. Once we reach the end of the street, she turns and abruptly changes direction, and we see a crowd of people, stretching down the street towards us. As I walk towards them, some of them turn towards us, yelling phrases I cannot understand in a tongue sounding harsh and somehow edged with tones of hysteria. They open before us, hearing screams as they see my footprints, following me like a trail in the snow, through the crowd, who close behind us, except for the narrow trail marked by my bloody footprints. She leads me to a dais, and as her dark robes swish behind her, I walk the steps, counting them silently. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen and twenty. By this time, we're somehow high above the crowd. She begins a chant, I hear echoing throughout the buildings, as it spreads from mouth to gaping mouth like a deadly virus. Then as the voices soar in a tower of darkness around us, she reaches towards me drawing me to her swiftly, her hands grasp mine, close like a lover's, fingers entwined. She pulls me towards her, her body flowing against mine, and I close my eyes, as she throws back her hood, revealing a face so young and terrifying to behold. Her eyes are black, and her lips are faintly pink, high cheekbones and a small nose, and her lips part slightly as she raises her face to mine. My fear has left me now, and yet as I raise my hands to her face, cupping her cheeks, I feel the blood ooze slowly from my palms.
As before us the crowd chants, stamping their feet, each of them dressed in robes of a different colour. I see contentment in their eyes, contrasting with the chant, which echoes like a banshee's howl down the long and empty corridors of the streets. I cannot voice words to stop them, or to question them, as I feel her tongue slip, smooth and cold into my mouth. Her hands running over my body as suddenly I realise that both our robes are gone, and we stand on the dais naked, our skins gleaming slightly in the sun. I can feel her, as her hands slide down my back, her nails digging slightly into my skin, and I cup her breasts in my hands, feeling her nipples harden. I can feel my desire for this dark girl envelop me, yet fear still holds reign over my heart. I cannot pull away from her, as she kisses me, deeper and deeper into a trance. Then, with only a half-second's realisation, she pushes her hand up to the wrist in my chest, feeling no blood or pain, she withdraws it, holding in her hand, my bloody and still beating heart. As she pushes me backwards, and I stumble off the edge of the dais, losing my balance as gravity pulls me down towards the crowd. I catch a last glimpse of her figure, standing tall, bloody handprints on her cheeks and breasts, her eyes alight with strange fire, holding her hand high, blood trailing down her wrist, as she casts my heart upwards into the air, and then without a second's pause, I'm falling into darkness again.
Then, I come to my senses once more, glancing about me seeing a streetlight, and a concrete footpath, cracked from age, with slight scrawlings, illegible in the dark. I breathe in, tasting the polluted air, slightly warm, and feeling my heart beating smoothly in my chest. I reach my hand to my pocket, feeling something heavy there, hanging bulkily against my thigh. Feeling my hand touching smooth metal I pull out a gun, my hand fitting naturally against the grip, slightly sweaty in my palm. I look down at my feet, seeing the body of a young man, blood flowing stickily into the cracks in the pavement, seemingly black in the orange glare of the streetlights. I can hear sirens in the distance. With a surge of adrenaline in my veins, I realise that the only explanation for this, is that the gun in my right hand fired the shots. I suddenly reel as a hazy image of the young man, his face contorted in shock, stumbling backwards, clutching at his chest, comes to me. The barrel of the gun feels warm to the touch, and as I take a step backward, I feel the distinctive bump of a spent shell under my shoe. Then, as I see a movement in the shadows, I see the dark girl step towards me, her face hidden once more. I can see her feet stepping without hesitation on the concrete, as she walks from out of the darkness. She steps forward to me, seeming to taste my fear in the air, growing stronger from it, she moves faster. I try to step backwards, to turn and run, yet I cannot move. She steps forward, and as I feel myself recoiling in fear from her she whispers to me, the sound of her voice carrying smoothly in the warm air.
- Run
With that word I'm released, and I almost sag to the ground, before my legs catch me, and I turn from her. I can hear her voice, imbued with the nuances of a thousand nights of pleasure and desire, a million years of pain and torture, echoing in my ears. I run, I can feel my feet thudding smoothly on the pavement, as my lungs heave. I can hear the flat slapping of rubber on concrete, and the swish of fabric, yet, as I reach the end of the street and turn around, she's vanished as if she was never there. I can feel a sense of deep terror, prickling the hairs on the back of my neck, pins and needles in my spine, as I turn once more and start to run. Through the dark streets, the splashes of streetlights, lights of houses and buildings, and the dark mass of bushes and trees looming over me. My breath saws in my throat, I'm trying to blink the sweat from my eyes, and behind me, always behind me lurks this sense of absolute, complete and utter horror. Then, with a tumble of limbs, I feel something thud into my back, and I'm rolling across the ground, not feeling the scraped elbows or bones jarring on the hard surface. I can feel consciousness fading from me. Lying on my back, through the intermittent light of the streetlamps, I see her walking towards me. Slowly and deliberately, a tiger stalking its prey. I pedal backwards with legs that feel leaden, pushing myself back away from her. Her eyes glow ever so slightly in the dark, and her mouth is open slightly, her lips wet. With a sudden gasp of breath, I roll over, trying to get to my feet.
Rolling over and over and over through the darkened fog of sleep, I feel my pillow against my cheek. Pulling my bedclothes closer to me, and only now, can I relax, relax, but never sleep. For always does the dark girl haunt my dreams.
*** THE END ***
This was just a random exercise. I have been having damn strange dreams recently, so I thought that I would try to use the dream I had last night, as the inspiration for an extrapolation into this short story.
-plaz out-
- Step closer
I don't know why, but I obey, lifting one leg up, feeling the mud sucking at my bare foot. As I look down, I realise that my foot is clear of mud, seeing no traces of brown on my white skin. Feeling the hair on the back of my neck prickle, I put my foot down, and take another step forwards. Again, the same feeling of suck and give on my foot, yet no mud sticks. The grass at my feet is withered brown, and patchy with brown mud and puddles of water. There's no mist here, no evidence of anyone else but myself, I can hear no birds, no animals, and the sky is thick with clouds, yet no rain comes. I force myself to step forward again. I can still taste the air, without a hint of the smell you'd expect from such a swamp, no smell of rot, no smell of dankness. My gaze travels, there's no hint of a change, this place stretches as far as the eye can see. I pivot swiftly, catching a slight movement in the corner of my eye. As I turn like the hands of a clock, I realise that this continuance is universal, there is no exit from this place, no entry. I can see no movement now, yet as I turn, seeking a landmark, there's another slight blur in the corner of my eye. I can feel the slight edge of panic on the air I breathe, the adrenaline pumping through my veins.
Then as I spin quickly on my heel, my sight convinces me at once that I'm insane. Before me, where no one could possibly have stood without me seeing them move, stands a girl. Close to my height, with dark hair flowing down her shoulders, her pale skin accentuating a sense of alienness in this place of bleak darkness. Her arms flow down her sides, and she exudes a feeling of grace. Yet, in a second, as my gaze sweeps down her naked body, glancing off her full breasts, and down her legs, arousal turns to fear. I breathe in and it seems the air is scented with blood. As I reel back and my eyes travel up to meet hers, I realise she has no face. There exist no eyes to meet mine, and for that I feel for a second, glad, because if they were, should I look into them, I know I would never see again but in a million shades of red, and feel nothing but pain. Slowly I fumble to move my tongue.
- Who are you?
I gasp thickly, feeling the suck of the ground beneath me, as it betrays my balance and I stumble backwards away from her. The sky seethes slowly above me, seeming to boil and bubble in spats of cloud.
- I have no name but what you call me. I have no face but what you see. I have no breath save what you give me, and I have lived for a billion lives.
Her voice sounds odd in this place, a human kindness, seeming to echo with understanding and compassion, coming from such a terrifying sight. She walks smoothly towards me. Her feet padding softly on the rustling tussocks and over the muddy ground. As I stand my ground, she seems to weave through the very molecules of the air, and I can feel her eyes upon me, from this face that has no features, shrouded in shadow. With but a blink, I feel her body pressed against mine, her head upturned, to face me, and suddenly, without the slightest other change. The sky turns slowly red and then the ground drops away, as I'm falling into darkness.
As I blink my eyes open, I'm gifted with the sight of a city, sparkling in the sunlight. I feel like I'm flying high above it. Golden towers reach up towards me, seeming crystalline in the bright sun. The air crisp and free of any fog or haze. Below on the streets, a multicoloured mass of people move and sway, as I soar higher and higher on the cool air, I can see the dark green and brown tangled mass of a forest surrounding the city. Then, there's a hand gripping my wrist, fingers cold from the rush of wind past us. I somehow turn, and there, cowled like a monk, in dark cloth, the girl appears once more. As I glance down my body I see I'm clothed in much the same, my bare feet protruding, and the robes fluttering as I realise we're dropping at ever increasing speed towards the ground. Tumbling end over end we fall, her hand gripping my wrist, and the golden towers reach up towards and then beyond us and we swoop like pouncing eagles. My heart pounds, almost in my throat, and the wind tears the breath from my lips. Suddenly, we're no longer falling, but standing on a pavement of brown tiles, feeling cool underfoot. Next to me, stands the girl with no face, hidden beneath her cloak. I step towards her, then suddenly gasp as I realise, that every footprint I leave is marked in blood. She nods, slowly, then takes my hand, cold, in her even colder ones, turning me, as we walk slowly along, between tall trees I do not recognise, green in their magnificence. While behind me, pointing like a finger of guilt, follow my trail of bloody footprints. The street I glance up is devoid of people, only buildings with diamond shaped windows, made from multicoloured bricks, yellow, orange, blue, green, and the brown tiled pavement marked only by the crimson of blood. I can hear the breeze whistling through the tops of the tallest buildings.
She turns towards me, and I hear her voice, echoing among the buildings.
- Watch
And she leads me forward, down the wide street, our footsteps echoing. I cannot speak, and I realise that I have no tongue. A moment of panic makes my eyes go wide, and I feel my nostrils flaring like a horse. I look down, for I feel no pain in my feet, yet still the blood seems to ooze like sweat from the pores of my soles. She pulls me along with her, and we continue, past tree after tree, building after building. Once we reach the end of the street, she turns and abruptly changes direction, and we see a crowd of people, stretching down the street towards us. As I walk towards them, some of them turn towards us, yelling phrases I cannot understand in a tongue sounding harsh and somehow edged with tones of hysteria. They open before us, hearing screams as they see my footprints, following me like a trail in the snow, through the crowd, who close behind us, except for the narrow trail marked by my bloody footprints. She leads me to a dais, and as her dark robes swish behind her, I walk the steps, counting them silently. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen and twenty. By this time, we're somehow high above the crowd. She begins a chant, I hear echoing throughout the buildings, as it spreads from mouth to gaping mouth like a deadly virus. Then as the voices soar in a tower of darkness around us, she reaches towards me drawing me to her swiftly, her hands grasp mine, close like a lover's, fingers entwined. She pulls me towards her, her body flowing against mine, and I close my eyes, as she throws back her hood, revealing a face so young and terrifying to behold. Her eyes are black, and her lips are faintly pink, high cheekbones and a small nose, and her lips part slightly as she raises her face to mine. My fear has left me now, and yet as I raise my hands to her face, cupping her cheeks, I feel the blood ooze slowly from my palms.
As before us the crowd chants, stamping their feet, each of them dressed in robes of a different colour. I see contentment in their eyes, contrasting with the chant, which echoes like a banshee's howl down the long and empty corridors of the streets. I cannot voice words to stop them, or to question them, as I feel her tongue slip, smooth and cold into my mouth. Her hands running over my body as suddenly I realise that both our robes are gone, and we stand on the dais naked, our skins gleaming slightly in the sun. I can feel her, as her hands slide down my back, her nails digging slightly into my skin, and I cup her breasts in my hands, feeling her nipples harden. I can feel my desire for this dark girl envelop me, yet fear still holds reign over my heart. I cannot pull away from her, as she kisses me, deeper and deeper into a trance. Then, with only a half-second's realisation, she pushes her hand up to the wrist in my chest, feeling no blood or pain, she withdraws it, holding in her hand, my bloody and still beating heart. As she pushes me backwards, and I stumble off the edge of the dais, losing my balance as gravity pulls me down towards the crowd. I catch a last glimpse of her figure, standing tall, bloody handprints on her cheeks and breasts, her eyes alight with strange fire, holding her hand high, blood trailing down her wrist, as she casts my heart upwards into the air, and then without a second's pause, I'm falling into darkness again.
Then, I come to my senses once more, glancing about me seeing a streetlight, and a concrete footpath, cracked from age, with slight scrawlings, illegible in the dark. I breathe in, tasting the polluted air, slightly warm, and feeling my heart beating smoothly in my chest. I reach my hand to my pocket, feeling something heavy there, hanging bulkily against my thigh. Feeling my hand touching smooth metal I pull out a gun, my hand fitting naturally against the grip, slightly sweaty in my palm. I look down at my feet, seeing the body of a young man, blood flowing stickily into the cracks in the pavement, seemingly black in the orange glare of the streetlights. I can hear sirens in the distance. With a surge of adrenaline in my veins, I realise that the only explanation for this, is that the gun in my right hand fired the shots. I suddenly reel as a hazy image of the young man, his face contorted in shock, stumbling backwards, clutching at his chest, comes to me. The barrel of the gun feels warm to the touch, and as I take a step backward, I feel the distinctive bump of a spent shell under my shoe. Then, as I see a movement in the shadows, I see the dark girl step towards me, her face hidden once more. I can see her feet stepping without hesitation on the concrete, as she walks from out of the darkness. She steps forward to me, seeming to taste my fear in the air, growing stronger from it, she moves faster. I try to step backwards, to turn and run, yet I cannot move. She steps forward, and as I feel myself recoiling in fear from her she whispers to me, the sound of her voice carrying smoothly in the warm air.
- Run
With that word I'm released, and I almost sag to the ground, before my legs catch me, and I turn from her. I can hear her voice, imbued with the nuances of a thousand nights of pleasure and desire, a million years of pain and torture, echoing in my ears. I run, I can feel my feet thudding smoothly on the pavement, as my lungs heave. I can hear the flat slapping of rubber on concrete, and the swish of fabric, yet, as I reach the end of the street and turn around, she's vanished as if she was never there. I can feel a sense of deep terror, prickling the hairs on the back of my neck, pins and needles in my spine, as I turn once more and start to run. Through the dark streets, the splashes of streetlights, lights of houses and buildings, and the dark mass of bushes and trees looming over me. My breath saws in my throat, I'm trying to blink the sweat from my eyes, and behind me, always behind me lurks this sense of absolute, complete and utter horror. Then, with a tumble of limbs, I feel something thud into my back, and I'm rolling across the ground, not feeling the scraped elbows or bones jarring on the hard surface. I can feel consciousness fading from me. Lying on my back, through the intermittent light of the streetlamps, I see her walking towards me. Slowly and deliberately, a tiger stalking its prey. I pedal backwards with legs that feel leaden, pushing myself back away from her. Her eyes glow ever so slightly in the dark, and her mouth is open slightly, her lips wet. With a sudden gasp of breath, I roll over, trying to get to my feet.
Rolling over and over and over through the darkened fog of sleep, I feel my pillow against my cheek. Pulling my bedclothes closer to me, and only now, can I relax, relax, but never sleep. For always does the dark girl haunt my dreams.
*** THE END ***
This was just a random exercise. I have been having damn strange dreams recently, so I thought that I would try to use the dream I had last night, as the inspiration for an extrapolation into this short story.
-plaz out-
