The floor was cold below me, and the wind blew softly at my shoulder, huffed in by unseen vents that hid in the dark corners of the room. I could hear nothing- no birds and sounds of nature outside, nor any hiss of air from a ventilation system. Only the sound of my thumping heart and my breathing.
I stood there for what felt like an eternity, sweat suddenly lining my hands. My God! For suddenly I felt a twinge and stab and my senses sharpened. I knew not how I had found myself in this room, this box with no window or door- but I knew that I must escape! Both body and soul cried for my freedom. This was wrong, a terrible place to be. I could not stay, no, indeed, for this was a terrible feeling rolling in my chest.
I desperately tried to lift my feet to run to the walls, to scrabble at them and try to find some way out, but merely fruitlessly strained to even take a single step. My feet had been rooted to the ground, and although I looked down I could see no bonds or ropes fastening me. This was surely some devilish trickery, some ill-meant mischief of demons!
I stared back at the wall, miserable. And afraid. Those white walls, those terrible white walls, so blank and emotionless, glinting from a faraway light like a murderer’s blade! Oh, did I not want to escape and be free! Something was to befall me!
Then a soft glow, the color of strong and old ivy and deep poison, resonated from in front of me. I tried to lean back to avoid this glow in fright, but I could not bend in any way! My back had been frozen rigid as if I had been set into a block of ice! Tingles ran up and down my spine, and sweat dripped from my nose as I shook frenziedly. The terror was almost too great, I could almost feel my mind cracking! What would I do…!
Then a flash of bright white light, blinding me and leaving the room a completely indecipherable blanket of darkness except for the hand. One hand, glowing a pure white color, but bringing with it such a horrible visage! Wrinkled hands, veined and scabby skin, rotting and curled nails, grip outstretched and fastened on a long and bloody iron pike. A revulsion leapt through me, and I screamed. A voice boomed and rasped and whispered and yelled, speaking in a hundred different tones in a hundred different ways! It said menacingly, “Take it!” These two words were driven into my mind like a spear, breaking my poor mental defenses and leaving me almost senseless. But no! I did not take it, that vile thing, for I was too strong for it yet! My resolve faltered, but now it was back, and I shied away from the white hand. “Be gone!” I gasped. “O foul specter! What damnable trickery this is I shall not guess! But I will have no part! No part, I tell you!”
“Very well,” Came the voice. And the hand suddenly drove the pike straight into my chest.
I woke up again, standing. The room looked vaguely familiar. The floor was icy under my feet, and a breeze whipped at my shoulders, sending a shiver down my spine. I did not like the look of the room too much- it was dark and forbidding, and I could not see nor hear anything.
Then suddenly an assault came down upon me and my mind. I needed to escape, came the insistent thought. I needed to find a way out! I yelled and I screamed as I tried to rush to a wall, but my feet could not move, as if they had been sunken in concrete.
I finally had to stop, my arms and legs and back straining and perspiration running down my face in rivulets. I stare at the wall, shivering as I stare, those terrible white walls.
Then a flash of green, dark and dangerous like a cobra’s skin, and a flash of bright white light. And my eyesight plunges everything but the white shriveled hand and the pike into darkness.
“Take it!”
“No! I Will not!” I whisper this, the sudden fear- and feeling of familiarity- tugging at my senses. This sickening sight, this apparition- it was somehow familiar to me. How?
“Very well,” Came the answer in a thousand voices. Then the hand thrust the black, rusting spike into my chest.
I wake again, standing in a room. This time the fear of full realization comes to me. I tremble, knowing what is going to happen. I do not even try to escape, a single push of my feet telling me all I need to know. I am stuck. Then the green light, and the white light, and the hand- that decaying, evil, loathsome hand- was before me again, holding the spike.
“Take it,” The voice orders me.
I know that I will die if I do not take it! This thing, this foul thing, it will stab me and kill me and all the nightmare will begin again if I do not take it! So I reach over and with hot, moist, shaking hands, take the pike.
Then suddenly I am in a dark room. There is a cold breeze. But this time the room is different- larger, with a pale ray of moonlight streaming through the shattered window. I look around dazedly- there is a sharp smell of decay that makes me want to retch. Then I look at the weight in my hand. It is a spike- black, iron, bloody- and this time the blood is also all over my hand as well, splattered up to my elbow. I look around and see bodies.
Then a flash of purple and white, and the white hand is there again. I hold back a scream.
“Convicted,” comes a voice, and the shriveled hand points a talon-like finger at me. I shake and drive the pike into my chest myself.
As I collapse onto the floor, shrieking, I see my outstretched hand. Before the night falls, I notice that it and the disembodied one in front of me, pointing accusingly, are the same.
I wake again. This time my arm is not my own.