What Follows

Chapter 2 What it feels like.

Chapter 2

What it feels like.

I’m lying there in the room I was brought to this world in, only it’s much brighter than I remember. Many things the light did not touch before are now in plain view. From the ceiling, hang hundreds of arms, many of which do not even appear human. There are jagged rocks lining the walls that make up most of the room, one of which displays a well sized hole that is surely linked to the edge of the forest. I use the remainder of my working muscles to get my body standing. I nearly stumble several times, due to a large slit along my left calf.

“Hello?” I groan, in the same throaty voice I had before my new layer of skin.

I slowly make my way to a wall fashioned out of stone brick, and an old metal braced wooden door, but find that there’s no latch. I turn around, deciding to examine the room more thoroughly. I can see large spikes of rock protruding along the edges of the large room’s walls, large puddles of water littering the floor in sections. Walking along one puddle’s side, I notice a hideous creature displayed in it. I am startled at first, but I approach it slowly, realizing that this is my reflection. This beast is me… The pale wrinkled gray skin clinging to every bone in my face, a nose barely revealing itself, as if the one that was once there had fallen off and left only some skin to form a small ridge above two vertical slits, eyes that bear no lids, lips that have fused with the base of the seven teeth I have in total, and hair as pale as the moon, translucent in most areas where there is less.

This is who I am? I don’t remember… Suddenly, I hear a large blast behind me, and I turn falling back in alarm, and look to see what caused it. The iron braced door was now open, leaving several cracks on the stone brick wall that stopped its momentum. The torch lights flickering from the wind force the door created, and then began dimming. Darkness spills into the room like water spreading along the floor, only it is not bound by gravity. The same darkness spills throughout the walls, and ceiling; Arms shaking as the darkness flowed over, giving them new life. In seconds, the darkness engulfs the entire room, now exactly as I remember it when I first awoke.

A concentration of darkness begins enveloping my body, and I feel the puddle under me that I had been oblivious to only moments before. This is what water feels like..

“I want you to feel this you worthless being.” Spits the cold voice.

The feelings become more intricate and complex every moment, and finally.

“AHHHHH!”  I scream, as pulses of pain begin shooting up from my left shoulder, left arm, right set of fingers, and my left calf.

“Aha! Yes! And I haven’t even started yet!” He spits again, more amused than ever. With my eyes closed, I curl up, still lying in the puddle. The pain intensifying, and the sensitivity increasing. Pain begins shooting through my eyes, and nose, and even my deformed lips, and the darkness laughs.

I feel something gliding across my leg, and then another over my wounded shoulder, and arm. They begin wrapping themselves around me, grabbing hold of my arms, and legs. They tighten, and each of the four pulls in its own directions forcefully, adding to the pain.

“It’s time for you to know what pain feels like, and maybe then you wouldn’t be so careless in the manner of which you do things!” He roars.

The ropes begin pulling farther apart; seeming not to notice the protest of my joints, and my screaming intensifies. With several pops, my arms, and legs are now completely out of their sockets, being held in place only by withered flesh. The ropes do not slow in their paths away from each other. My right arm is the first to fully detach itself from my body, sending new waves of pain from the split, to replace those of my stretching flesh. My right leg follows. My left arm, and leg bearing the force of the ropes through the slits in my shoulder, and calf; allowing for more room to stretch, until my left arm gives way to the tearing. The rope quickly releases the arm, and grabs new hold of my neck. The stretching continues, and a new more intense pain is pulsing from my neck. When the flesh of my leg finally gives way, the ropes release. My limbless torso falls to the floor, and I begin fading out of consciousness, deeper into the darkness.