PastelPhoenix
How did this even happen?
- 453
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- Seen Nov 20, 2022
So I previously posted a thread under this title, but it became largely new stuff. Right now, I have some stuff from last year, mostly prompt/flash fiction. I'd like to post it just to get maybe feedback on it, or at least see what worked in the past. As you can probably guess by the "flash", most of these are pretty short reads, and almost none of them actually have a title. So enjoy!
Untitled 1: "Red" Attempted Genre: Horror. Rating T? Maybe M? Very minor drug references.
Notes: The prompt for this one was to attempt a Lovecraft style monster. As such, this is kind of vague and... indirect. Not a whole lot of action in this one.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For as long as we have existed, we've lived in fear of the abominations that lurk just out of sight in the night. Where we have once seen heavens above us, we now look at that star filled sky and realize that between the faint twinkles of light from these far suns houses an indescribable amount of nothingness. It is in that nothingness where mankind faces the most fear, the ability to recognize true nothingness being one of the largest flaws of the human mind. The lack of sight is impossible to explain to someone who has lived their entire life with that particular sense, and the fear of nothingness after death has pushed many a man to religion. This may be a flaw of out own perspective on our little globe, where the most nothingness we experience, air, is still comprised of something.
It is with this perspective that I first stepped into the house that was sure to be my undoing, oh that accursed house. My job was simple, the house had been foreclosed by the bank my company had a major contract with, and it was my job to evaluate the security and safety of the house and determine if it was fit for market. I stepped past the front door expecting the worst horrors I spotted to be rats, stains, and damaged structures. At the very worst I would experience an unhappy homeowner or squatter, in which case my job was done until the police had time to do their job. Much to my surprise, the house was in pristine condition. The walls were unmolested by pen or fist, and even the carpet looked as if I had been the first living creature to walk upon it since it had been laid. The overall cleanliness was a little unnerving, the papers had stated that up to a month ago someone had been living in this house, and in total the house had been inhabited for some forty odd years.
My second thought was that the house had some other secret further in. While non as pristine as this one, I had experience many a house that where the initial room was in a much better shape than any room preceding it. To the average outsider at the door the first room is often enough to leave a positive message about the owner, while the back rooms can hide any number of illicit activities. I braced myself for the worst as I began my walk from room to room, half expecting to see some hastily shut down meth-lab or hoarder's den behind every door I opened. Thankfully, there was nary a piece of trash or crack pipe to be seen, and whoever had owned the house for those forty years must had just been a perfectionist of the highest order, or suffering from some mental illness that required the house to be spotless.
Unfortunately, this illusion of mine would only persist until I had wandered into the basement of this normal suburban house.
At first look the basement seemed like the rest of the house. While some boxes remained from the previous owner neglecting or deciding not to move them, even they had seemed deliberate in their placement. For some reason, the position of the boxes seemed natural and not at all out of place, as if the architect had decided that they should go there to accent the room. Out of curiosity I trifled through the contents of the box, hoping to gain some insight into the person who had inhabited the house and kept it looking as if it had been built yesterday. Inside I found the typical sort of thing one would store in the basement, toys and clothes from a child who outgrew them, old albums full of the memories of a happy family, and various memorabilia or knickknacks that one likely couldn't throw away due to the memories attached. All had seemed normal until in the last box I discovered a piece of cloth sewn with an odd symbol. The cloth was unusual for it's size, large enough to be a banner on an old medieval castle, yet far too large to display in the house without it dragging on the floor. I could not discern any purpose for the cloth, and the stitching of the odd symbol seemed to suggest it was made by hand with either very inexperienced, or very shaky hands. The symbol itself seemed to be a single line, twisting and folding in on itself many times. Each fold of the line seemed very deliberate, as if it was made to be placed there, yet ultimately the symbol as a whole failed to invoke any semblance of unified design aside from purposeful chaos.
Putting aside the cloth back into the box it was produced from, I decided to finish my inspection and leave the house as soon as possible. Something about the cleanliness combined with the odd cloth produced a sense of unease in me, and my mind was starting to create doubts towards my safety if I continued to spend time in the house. The rest of my inspection of the basement proved fruitless until I approached the last corner of the room. To this day I am not sure what drew me towards that corner, however even looking at it was not enough, for some reason I had to prove that it existed. That corner in particular seemed darker than the rest of the basement, and even as I shined my flashlight towards that area of the room it seemed to remain cloaked in shadows. Even as I walked towards it, the corner seemed to maintain it's same distance, as if I was standing still and watching it. Soon enough I began to pick up speed in my attempt to reach it, soon even breaking into an all out sprint. The basement was large, but even at a full sprint I should have been able to clear that basement in a few mere seconds, and yet here I was making no headway. In my dogmatic pursuit of that elusive corner, I had failed to notice how the darkness seemed to expand and swarm around me. When I had finally realized that I was surrounded in the same darkness that hid the corner I turned around to find that the light I had came from seemed oh so far away.
Before I could begin to make my crawl back towards the world I left behind, I felt a presence similar to inexplicable feeling of being watched. Turning around suddenly, I saw what appeared to be the figure of a person draped in a fine red cloth dart suddenly out of my vision. My look around the darkness failed to uncover where the figure came from, and I almost dismissed it as a trick of the mind until I saw what appeared to be a trap door in the direction that the figure disappeared. Unsettled, but the urge to make sense of the bizarre world around me overpowering any urge to turn and run, I made my way to the door. The trap door was a solid piece of wood with what appeared to be old iron bars for support and a ring to pull the door open. The door seemed more at home in an ancient European castle, leading to some kind of prison or torture room, rather than in the basement of a modern American house. Grabbing the ring and pulling with all my might, I was able to pull the door open and saw a small crawl space leading even deeper into the earth.
The tunnel was a small fit for my body, and required me to crawl on my stomach to traverse. The tunnel itself seemed to be carved out of stone, despite the house itself having had been built on a normal dirt lot. The stone scraped my skin, and every so often I would move too much and hit my back slightly against the ceiling, however something drove me to continue my descent. As I continued my crawl for what seemed like hours, I could feel the ceiling of the tunnel gradually began to touch my back, soon gently squeezing my body and requiring more effort to pull myself through, however despite the shrinking of my crawling room I never seemed to find myself caught. Most disturbing about the tunnel to me, however, was the occasional flash of red cloth in the darkness before me, as if the figure from before was traversing the same tunnel I was, but I surely would have heard them open the door before me. Every so often I felt something carved into the floor of the tunnel, and despite the lack of light examination with the fingers seemed to confirm it was the same symbol that I had seen sewn on the cloth before.
Eventually, after what had seemed like an entire day, I emerged into a room. The room seemed to be carved out of the same stone that the tunnel was, and adorning the walls were large pieces of cloth with the same line symbol. The room seemed to emit a strange heat, not enough to break a sweat but stuffy enough to cause discomfort. On the far wall, near a doorway I could only presume lead to another room, I noticed what seemed to be more carving, and upon closer inspection appeared to be crude symbols of various men looking up to a figure adorned in cloth upon a pillar. The clothed figure's limbs seemed larger and lankier than the men around it, and most curiously the face of the figure was blank except for a large smile. The other side of the wall next to the doorway had similar carvings, except this time the people were on their knees, seeming lead by the clothed figure in prayer. The area they were praying to seemed to be carved like the rest of the wall, but it just seemed to be a carving of a shapeless blob with no identifying figures. The shape didn't seem to be vandalized, however, as the carving was just a deep, and seem to be just as carefully made as the rest of the depiction. Swallowing my fear, I began to open the door between the carvings, seemingly carved of the same wood as the trapdoor. If any answers for this were to be seen, they would be further in.
Beyond the door was no room, nor was there another tunnel. The room seemed to lead to a large expanse of darkness similar to that of the room corner. Despite a seeming lack of flooring, I was able to walk upon the darkness and my flashlight failed to illuminate anything around me. Off in the near distance was what appeared to be an antiquated full body mirror, surrounded by several candles. I slowly made my way to the mirror, heart racing all the while, until I was just to the side of it. Gathering the last remnants of my failing willpower, I stepped in front of it. What I saw was not my own reflection, but a figure draped in red cloth. The figure stood taller than me, atop long, spindly legs and reached towards me with a four fingered hand, connected to a thin arm. Most unsettling about the figure was the face. The face seemed very similar in structure to a normal human face, but it lacked any features at all. Hair, eyes, nose, lips, none of those existed, replaced with smooth skin. The only feature the face actually had was a long crack one could only assume was a mouth, stretched into a wide smile with occasionally allowed a glimpse of sharpened fang. As the hand of the creature reached towards me, my legs suddenly began to respond to my mind and I began to run back to where I came. I ran past the etched room towards the tunnel, and even my crawl up seemed to take less time than down. Most frightening of all was the only sound being my own ragged breath, I had no idea if the creature was even following me or not. Eventually I found myself back in the darkness of the corner, with the light growing ever closer. Soon enough I emerged into the light and made my way through the house back outside, where I collapsed and allowed myself to rest. I called the police, but their own search failed to find anything, and in their presence I seemingly was unable to go back into the darkness.
I would have been happy to end my little adventure there, deeming the house unfit for market least anyone else follow the same path I did, but that day was not the end of my experience. That night, and every night after, I found myself dreaming of the clothed figure, most often as a part of the crowd worshiping with the faceless figure. It was there that I began to understand what that faceless blob was. In my dreams I stood on my knees before an entity seemingly made of the same darkness I had experienced that day. It seemingly existed in contrast to the world around it, neither illuminating in the sun or blending with the scenery like normal darkness. Occasionally in my dreams the darkness would show stars, as if a piece of the night sky fell to the earth during the day. Most nights the faceless figure kneeled and prayed with us, however every once in a while it spoke what seemed to be a prayer to the masses in a language the human tongue could seemingly not replicate. On specific night in particular I woke up at my desk, pen in hand and drying on a piece of paper. The writing on the page was my own, and only one sentence existed, and I recognized it from the faceless one's speech that night.
"Uh'e hupadgh shugg mg ch'shoggagl n'gha stell'bsna syha'h"
Even beyond the dreams, I eventually began to see the faceless figure in mirrors. It first happened while I was walking down a busy street, and gave me a fright when the figure popped up in a mirror on display at an antique store. In the coming days I saw the figure in more and more mirrors, the mirrors of passing cars, in the rearview mirror of my own car, even in the mirrors in the bathrooms at work. Eventually I began to see it no matter what mirror I looked into, even in puddles of water and the reflection of my watch.
It was a full month later that I finally broke down and came back to the house. The figure still interfered in my life, and seemingly only visiting the house would cure myself of it. As I began my descent down the stairs to the basement I spotted the corner, as dark and foreboding as the first time I saw it. As I traversed the darkness I saw the figure in the corner of my eye from time to time, guiding me back to the trap door. The tunnel felt as long as the first time I traversed it, and the flashes of red happened much more frequently. The carved room seemed the same as I had left it, nary a new dust mote in sight. With a shaking hand I opened the door to the darkness, revealing the mirror inside. The walk to the mirror seemed longer, and on the walk I began to feel nothing. As I stepped up to the mirror my fear was seemingly gone, and I stepped in front to confront the red figure once again.
Only to see myself staring back at me.
I wanted to laugh, all this work for nothing. I felt my throat move and my vocal cords vibrate, yet I heard nothing. Slumping to my knees, I saw tears falling from my face onto my arms despite the laughing, yet I felt nothing there.
I closed my eyes, and then I saw nothing.
Untitled 1: "Red" Attempted Genre: Horror. Rating T? Maybe M? Very minor drug references.
Notes: The prompt for this one was to attempt a Lovecraft style monster. As such, this is kind of vague and... indirect. Not a whole lot of action in this one.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For as long as we have existed, we've lived in fear of the abominations that lurk just out of sight in the night. Where we have once seen heavens above us, we now look at that star filled sky and realize that between the faint twinkles of light from these far suns houses an indescribable amount of nothingness. It is in that nothingness where mankind faces the most fear, the ability to recognize true nothingness being one of the largest flaws of the human mind. The lack of sight is impossible to explain to someone who has lived their entire life with that particular sense, and the fear of nothingness after death has pushed many a man to religion. This may be a flaw of out own perspective on our little globe, where the most nothingness we experience, air, is still comprised of something.
It is with this perspective that I first stepped into the house that was sure to be my undoing, oh that accursed house. My job was simple, the house had been foreclosed by the bank my company had a major contract with, and it was my job to evaluate the security and safety of the house and determine if it was fit for market. I stepped past the front door expecting the worst horrors I spotted to be rats, stains, and damaged structures. At the very worst I would experience an unhappy homeowner or squatter, in which case my job was done until the police had time to do their job. Much to my surprise, the house was in pristine condition. The walls were unmolested by pen or fist, and even the carpet looked as if I had been the first living creature to walk upon it since it had been laid. The overall cleanliness was a little unnerving, the papers had stated that up to a month ago someone had been living in this house, and in total the house had been inhabited for some forty odd years.
My second thought was that the house had some other secret further in. While non as pristine as this one, I had experience many a house that where the initial room was in a much better shape than any room preceding it. To the average outsider at the door the first room is often enough to leave a positive message about the owner, while the back rooms can hide any number of illicit activities. I braced myself for the worst as I began my walk from room to room, half expecting to see some hastily shut down meth-lab or hoarder's den behind every door I opened. Thankfully, there was nary a piece of trash or crack pipe to be seen, and whoever had owned the house for those forty years must had just been a perfectionist of the highest order, or suffering from some mental illness that required the house to be spotless.
Unfortunately, this illusion of mine would only persist until I had wandered into the basement of this normal suburban house.
At first look the basement seemed like the rest of the house. While some boxes remained from the previous owner neglecting or deciding not to move them, even they had seemed deliberate in their placement. For some reason, the position of the boxes seemed natural and not at all out of place, as if the architect had decided that they should go there to accent the room. Out of curiosity I trifled through the contents of the box, hoping to gain some insight into the person who had inhabited the house and kept it looking as if it had been built yesterday. Inside I found the typical sort of thing one would store in the basement, toys and clothes from a child who outgrew them, old albums full of the memories of a happy family, and various memorabilia or knickknacks that one likely couldn't throw away due to the memories attached. All had seemed normal until in the last box I discovered a piece of cloth sewn with an odd symbol. The cloth was unusual for it's size, large enough to be a banner on an old medieval castle, yet far too large to display in the house without it dragging on the floor. I could not discern any purpose for the cloth, and the stitching of the odd symbol seemed to suggest it was made by hand with either very inexperienced, or very shaky hands. The symbol itself seemed to be a single line, twisting and folding in on itself many times. Each fold of the line seemed very deliberate, as if it was made to be placed there, yet ultimately the symbol as a whole failed to invoke any semblance of unified design aside from purposeful chaos.
Putting aside the cloth back into the box it was produced from, I decided to finish my inspection and leave the house as soon as possible. Something about the cleanliness combined with the odd cloth produced a sense of unease in me, and my mind was starting to create doubts towards my safety if I continued to spend time in the house. The rest of my inspection of the basement proved fruitless until I approached the last corner of the room. To this day I am not sure what drew me towards that corner, however even looking at it was not enough, for some reason I had to prove that it existed. That corner in particular seemed darker than the rest of the basement, and even as I shined my flashlight towards that area of the room it seemed to remain cloaked in shadows. Even as I walked towards it, the corner seemed to maintain it's same distance, as if I was standing still and watching it. Soon enough I began to pick up speed in my attempt to reach it, soon even breaking into an all out sprint. The basement was large, but even at a full sprint I should have been able to clear that basement in a few mere seconds, and yet here I was making no headway. In my dogmatic pursuit of that elusive corner, I had failed to notice how the darkness seemed to expand and swarm around me. When I had finally realized that I was surrounded in the same darkness that hid the corner I turned around to find that the light I had came from seemed oh so far away.
Before I could begin to make my crawl back towards the world I left behind, I felt a presence similar to inexplicable feeling of being watched. Turning around suddenly, I saw what appeared to be the figure of a person draped in a fine red cloth dart suddenly out of my vision. My look around the darkness failed to uncover where the figure came from, and I almost dismissed it as a trick of the mind until I saw what appeared to be a trap door in the direction that the figure disappeared. Unsettled, but the urge to make sense of the bizarre world around me overpowering any urge to turn and run, I made my way to the door. The trap door was a solid piece of wood with what appeared to be old iron bars for support and a ring to pull the door open. The door seemed more at home in an ancient European castle, leading to some kind of prison or torture room, rather than in the basement of a modern American house. Grabbing the ring and pulling with all my might, I was able to pull the door open and saw a small crawl space leading even deeper into the earth.
The tunnel was a small fit for my body, and required me to crawl on my stomach to traverse. The tunnel itself seemed to be carved out of stone, despite the house itself having had been built on a normal dirt lot. The stone scraped my skin, and every so often I would move too much and hit my back slightly against the ceiling, however something drove me to continue my descent. As I continued my crawl for what seemed like hours, I could feel the ceiling of the tunnel gradually began to touch my back, soon gently squeezing my body and requiring more effort to pull myself through, however despite the shrinking of my crawling room I never seemed to find myself caught. Most disturbing about the tunnel to me, however, was the occasional flash of red cloth in the darkness before me, as if the figure from before was traversing the same tunnel I was, but I surely would have heard them open the door before me. Every so often I felt something carved into the floor of the tunnel, and despite the lack of light examination with the fingers seemed to confirm it was the same symbol that I had seen sewn on the cloth before.
Eventually, after what had seemed like an entire day, I emerged into a room. The room seemed to be carved out of the same stone that the tunnel was, and adorning the walls were large pieces of cloth with the same line symbol. The room seemed to emit a strange heat, not enough to break a sweat but stuffy enough to cause discomfort. On the far wall, near a doorway I could only presume lead to another room, I noticed what seemed to be more carving, and upon closer inspection appeared to be crude symbols of various men looking up to a figure adorned in cloth upon a pillar. The clothed figure's limbs seemed larger and lankier than the men around it, and most curiously the face of the figure was blank except for a large smile. The other side of the wall next to the doorway had similar carvings, except this time the people were on their knees, seeming lead by the clothed figure in prayer. The area they were praying to seemed to be carved like the rest of the wall, but it just seemed to be a carving of a shapeless blob with no identifying figures. The shape didn't seem to be vandalized, however, as the carving was just a deep, and seem to be just as carefully made as the rest of the depiction. Swallowing my fear, I began to open the door between the carvings, seemingly carved of the same wood as the trapdoor. If any answers for this were to be seen, they would be further in.
Beyond the door was no room, nor was there another tunnel. The room seemed to lead to a large expanse of darkness similar to that of the room corner. Despite a seeming lack of flooring, I was able to walk upon the darkness and my flashlight failed to illuminate anything around me. Off in the near distance was what appeared to be an antiquated full body mirror, surrounded by several candles. I slowly made my way to the mirror, heart racing all the while, until I was just to the side of it. Gathering the last remnants of my failing willpower, I stepped in front of it. What I saw was not my own reflection, but a figure draped in red cloth. The figure stood taller than me, atop long, spindly legs and reached towards me with a four fingered hand, connected to a thin arm. Most unsettling about the figure was the face. The face seemed very similar in structure to a normal human face, but it lacked any features at all. Hair, eyes, nose, lips, none of those existed, replaced with smooth skin. The only feature the face actually had was a long crack one could only assume was a mouth, stretched into a wide smile with occasionally allowed a glimpse of sharpened fang. As the hand of the creature reached towards me, my legs suddenly began to respond to my mind and I began to run back to where I came. I ran past the etched room towards the tunnel, and even my crawl up seemed to take less time than down. Most frightening of all was the only sound being my own ragged breath, I had no idea if the creature was even following me or not. Eventually I found myself back in the darkness of the corner, with the light growing ever closer. Soon enough I emerged into the light and made my way through the house back outside, where I collapsed and allowed myself to rest. I called the police, but their own search failed to find anything, and in their presence I seemingly was unable to go back into the darkness.
I would have been happy to end my little adventure there, deeming the house unfit for market least anyone else follow the same path I did, but that day was not the end of my experience. That night, and every night after, I found myself dreaming of the clothed figure, most often as a part of the crowd worshiping with the faceless figure. It was there that I began to understand what that faceless blob was. In my dreams I stood on my knees before an entity seemingly made of the same darkness I had experienced that day. It seemingly existed in contrast to the world around it, neither illuminating in the sun or blending with the scenery like normal darkness. Occasionally in my dreams the darkness would show stars, as if a piece of the night sky fell to the earth during the day. Most nights the faceless figure kneeled and prayed with us, however every once in a while it spoke what seemed to be a prayer to the masses in a language the human tongue could seemingly not replicate. On specific night in particular I woke up at my desk, pen in hand and drying on a piece of paper. The writing on the page was my own, and only one sentence existed, and I recognized it from the faceless one's speech that night.
"Uh'e hupadgh shugg mg ch'shoggagl n'gha stell'bsna syha'h"
Even beyond the dreams, I eventually began to see the faceless figure in mirrors. It first happened while I was walking down a busy street, and gave me a fright when the figure popped up in a mirror on display at an antique store. In the coming days I saw the figure in more and more mirrors, the mirrors of passing cars, in the rearview mirror of my own car, even in the mirrors in the bathrooms at work. Eventually I began to see it no matter what mirror I looked into, even in puddles of water and the reflection of my watch.
It was a full month later that I finally broke down and came back to the house. The figure still interfered in my life, and seemingly only visiting the house would cure myself of it. As I began my descent down the stairs to the basement I spotted the corner, as dark and foreboding as the first time I saw it. As I traversed the darkness I saw the figure in the corner of my eye from time to time, guiding me back to the trap door. The tunnel felt as long as the first time I traversed it, and the flashes of red happened much more frequently. The carved room seemed the same as I had left it, nary a new dust mote in sight. With a shaking hand I opened the door to the darkness, revealing the mirror inside. The walk to the mirror seemed longer, and on the walk I began to feel nothing. As I stepped up to the mirror my fear was seemingly gone, and I stepped in front to confront the red figure once again.
Only to see myself staring back at me.
I wanted to laugh, all this work for nothing. I felt my throat move and my vocal cords vibrate, yet I heard nothing. Slumping to my knees, I saw tears falling from my face onto my arms despite the laughing, yet I felt nothing there.
I closed my eyes, and then I saw nothing.