Darned to Heck

Shadow creature

~Allie~

I woke suddenly.

My nails clamped into my palms and my teeth bit into my tongue as I shuddered awake. Consumed in a cold sweat I shivered uncontrollably, grasping and scraping my hands into whatever it was I was lying on. It was cold and wet and dark. Somewhere to my left I could hear the steady repetitive dripping of water onto a hard surface and the scratching of some small thing in the dark.

I pushed my head weakly to the direction of the noise. My tongue sat like lead in my mouth and my eyelids felt like they were being held down, but I could see. I was not alone in the dark, someone, or rather something sat watching me. It was darker even than the pitch black that surrounded me, and bigger than a bear. To say the thing was a shape would have been the most accurate way to describe it, as it had no form other than that. It was a shadow creature; it had no eyes or mouth, no hands or legs or arms. But even so I could tell it was facing me, and watching me intently.

Its presence was everything at once and at the same time nothing at all. I felt everything as it watched me, flickering like an old movie emotions swamped over me. Love, hate, admiration, fear, envy, sadness, pain, joy, humour, malice, anger, hope, greed, over and over and over and then nothing. So much nothingness that it swallowed me whole and wouldn't let me go.

The shape rose and moved towards me. It stopped, peering deeply at me before a single white feather fell from where its mouth should have been and drifted silently to rest gently in front of my face. It shifted in and out of focus as I looked at it, but there was no denying what it was, or where it had come from.

It had killed the angel.

"W-w-wherre..." I struggled to communicate my question as it continued to watch me, it seemed to be incredibly interested in what I would think of this gesture, and stooped lower to me. It's head twisted to the side curiously. Part of it's shadow grew out to form a kind of rudimentary arm shape. It touched the feather lightly and where they met the feather sunk into it, allowing the shadow creature to pick it up.

My eyes followed the feather as it was lifted slowly into the air and then placed gently onto my cheek. It reeked of Angel and an involuntary hiss broke through my teeth as the instinctive eons old hatred between worlds flared within me. The shadow creature reached out to the feather once more and, removing it from my cheek proceeded to lift the feather higher up to where its mouth would be, before swallowing it whole.

"Y-y-you... w-wh..."

I frowned as my muscles refused to move properly and gave up on my sentence, the heavy fog that clouded my mind had begun to release its grip ever so slightly, but I still could not find a way to make my words fit together.

How—h-where? Where? I thought at it, if it was like pretty much everything else in the underworld I reasoned, it should be able to read minds.

If it could read them, it seemed it could not answer them. The creature rose taller, and then shrunk smaller. Although eyeless I could feel that it was still watching me, in fact it never stopped. Even as it climbed up onto the rock table I assumed I was on, and sat rather slowly and very deliberately, right on top of my chest. The creature was solid enough but almost weightless and leant down to me, peering intently into my face. Again it tilted it's head to the side questioningly. I tried again.

Where, where? What... you... what are... you?

It sat back upright and reproduced the arm shape, we both watched wordlessly as four night-black fingers grew from the shape and stretched experimentally before a small rough lump of familiarly shiny black rock floated to the surface of its makeshift palm. It considered it for a moment before looking around itself as though it had lost something. Finding my hand the creature very delicately dropped the little piece of stone into it and then waited, utterly transfixed by my still unmoving hand.