Flash Horror

From Darkness to Light by Avrettos

Perspective is more than a lens which allows us to see.  It is a venue of all sensory input, allowing us to truly taste the story, to feel through the nerves of another, to hear the reverberations of our own perspective bounding back at us.  But not all perspectives are equal; sometimes we are not glimpsing into the mirror, but are looking back at ourselves from the black side of the glass.                   -Fleeting Terrors

Darkness. There is a familiarity about it. Movement. Memory or instinct, I'm not sure which, but it stirs. I stir. I am aware of myself in the dark, or an absence of myself – I am hollow. Empty. The emptiness goads desperation. I cannot stay here.

I feel around. There is hard above me and soft below me. It is above that I need to go. Down is not an option. I push. There is a point where pushing seems useless, but I push beyond it, past it. Determination or instinct, I'm not sure which. Sound. There is a creaking. I push harder, more. An ember of memory impressed at the strength before it dies, absorbed into the darkness of the present. A crack in my ears and I am able to push beyond the hardness. As it falls away it is replaced by cold and damp, falling in on me, crushing. I merely push through it. No urgency but the desperate emptiness inside. As I push it aside I am able to climb up through it. As I move through it, the cold damp closes around me, clinging to me and I get a sense of my shape. There is a familiarity about that too. Distant and separate. Memory fades and instinct grows. Everything I need is there when I need it. I am curious about nothing. I want only one thing – an end to the emptiness. The cold and damp is replaced by something else in my advance extremities, something new, and it is not long before the darkness rolls away and I am emerging into something else.

Light. A white luminescence hangs in the air above where I emerge as if awaiting me. I look in all directions, down corridors of uniform squat shapes in the darkness. The largest is right by me, towering over me where I am. On a threshold between worlds. It is different to the others. It reflects the white light above, gleaming where the others sit dull and forgotten in the darkness. My emergence is harder with no cold and damp to climb through, but I have to get free of it. I don't know what I seek, but I know I'll know it when I find it. I wriggle and pull myself along where I  am able to get a grip.

I roll free in a moment that should know triumph but did not. Instinct or memory. Only the satisfaction of the emptiness would know triumph. The slaking of appetite.

I cannot go far like this. With the thought comes action. Instinct awakening. I raise myself so that the cold damp drops away beneath me, and I stumble forwards. There is a different kind of light in the distance and there is movement that is not my own there. The emptiness yearned. Instinct. I move towards that movement. Absolute faith that I will know what to do when I need to do it.

Smell. There are many, but all are unimportant but one. The emptiness yearns. Its desire to be filled is intoxicating, driving me forward. The sharp smell I seek, warm, seductive, with a promise of peace that the darkness had failed to award me.

The smell inflamed in my senses as I lurched out through a gap onto a hard surface. A figure is suddenly before me. It stops. There is a familiarity about it, its shape is like mine but it serves a different purpose. It is too easy. I pull them in to me and move into the smell until warm wet spills down me. Sharp sustenance rushes into the emptiness and a low groan rises from inside me. An ear splitting scream embraces me in return.

Instinct has not let me down and the promise of peace teases me as the world came alive in my undead eyes.