Was it merely sleep, or was it the death I craved?
All around me there was darkness, and the sound of a faint ticking met my ears as whispering emanated from the distance. In every dream thus far when I'd died, I either woke up or everything faded to white. In a haunting memory of one particular death dream, I was shot, and although I didn't remember feeling the true pain of the impact, I blinked and was on the ground. It was night in a downtown apartment and the attacker had fled. Slowly, everything faded to white, and I lay there on my stomach just staring into a white abyss.
As I died in the dream, I felt the release. It was orgasmic but without the heat and a racing heart. It was also gentle, and my astral body lifted while my physical form remained on the ground of the white abyss, just staring into nothing. It had been silent. I wasn't scared then.
But this was no dream.
In the darkness where I currently existed, I felt much more alive than in any lucid dream I'd had. The ground was soft, despite feeling like I was floating. When I reached out, I was able to push myself up until I stood in my worn black and white Converse and looked into the stygian darkness. I opened my mouth to speak, but I was lost for words. I might have mistaken the void for the coldness of space itself, but out there among the planets and the stars, there wouldn't be the incessant ticking of a clock that was just loud enough to drive me mad.
I walked forward with uncertainty. I knew I wasn't dead because my heart beat as it always had, and I breathed normally despite the heavy atmosphere. It was as if everything had been compressed to exist in a way that was just necessary. Nothing more and nothing less.
A warped whisper circled my head and I stopped. Searching the darkness brought no answers, and I stepped in whatever direction I'd been facing. It was then that I saw it with its dull lamplight that barely illuminated its black robe. It seemed to bleed into the darkness as it crept closer, the ticking coming with it. I shivered. The temperature grew colder with every step of the figure until it came close enough for me to make out its ancient and damaged skull of a head.
I had rarely felt fear like that before. With the figure's bony face settling mere inches from my own, the dark recesses in the skull's eye sockets appeared to have no end. It was as if the thing was made of the void itself, and the two existed in tandem — together and never without the other.
"Are you Death?" I managed to finally mumble. A vein in my neck pulsated. My limbs grew cold from the wintry frost surrounding us.
The being emitted a rattling moan before lifting the dim candle-lit lamp. With its other thin, pale hand covered in parchment-like skin, it reached beneath the neck of its black shroud to produce a tarnished silver pocket watch. It pressed the top button and the face flicked open to reveal a slowly ticking hand.
It stopped.
I choked and my eyes widened. My lungs refused to expand and I broke out into a fit of coughing, suffocating as my knees grew weak and I fell to the soft ground. I looked up at the figure staring down at me with the watch still in its grasp. My vision didn't blacken around the edges. I didn't appear to be losing consciousness. Yet, I was drowning.
A memory. Drowning. Water. So much salty water. Cold. Dark. Lonesome.
Finally, the clock began to tick once more. The wave of air that expanded my lungs made me dizzy, but I was able to stand again as I faced the figure. I realized that the clock ticked backward at a slow pace.
"You've been here before," the figure whispered.
A sickening nostalgia overwhelmed me. In my periphery, something in the abyss moved and I jerked my head in its direction. I only saw a flash before it was gone. A human-shaped shadow figure with eyes. There it was again. I looked to my right. No, it was behind me. Ah, yes, I knew it all too well. Its eyes were the only feature by which I could identify it; sad, bloodshot eyes that used to follow me in waking life.
I fought off the chill and clenched my jaw. The sound of a baby crying in the distance met my ears. "An infant?" I asked the bony figure.
It moved its head slightly to the side as if amused. "You belong here."
"Did I die?" Hope welled up within me.
The figure opened its bony mouth to answer, but it became distracted by something from above. It emitted another haunting death rattle as it stared to its upward right and lowered the lamp.
Water sloshing. Beeping from a heart monitor. Flat line — coming back again. I closed my eyes as the air around me became wet, and soon my clothing and hair clung to me smelling of the sea's musk.
The figure rested its hollowed eye sockets on me once more. Despite its inability to reflect emotion, I felt the weight of its gaze. It held the watch before me that ticked counter-clockwise. "Void walker," it whispered with a diseased rattle.
"Am I dead? Tell me, please!" I lost my composure and reached for the watch, and upon seeing my reflection in the tarnished silver, I sputtered a tearless sob. My skin had become pasty, my eyes now the light gray of the recently deceased. The long purple hair I'd dyed some time ago had begun to fade, and my features were clammy and thin. I looked once more at the hands moving in reverse. My emotions went flat. Was time moving backward? "Is this death?"
The watch vanished in my hands as the entity backed away. The darkness claimed its own as bleak shadow-like tendrils guided the being back gently, and as slowly as it came, it returned. I found myself alone again with no answers, but a force pulled backward. The void pushed me toward it as I fought, and I grabbed at the ground only to find the consistency of soft dirt as it crumbled between my fingers. The swishing that was present before grew louder. It sounded more like hurried whispers as I tried to make out any possible words.
Dreadoverwhelmed me. The sound of a door unlocking in the near distance sent panicrushing through my veins, and my nails clawed at the dirt as I slid back towardwhatever existed beyond the darkness. As I lost the fight, I was ripped througha threshold into the light.
YOU ARE READING
Open Wound
Horror*The Requiem Series: Book Two* After the angel that threatened his life, Sean faced his frightening alter, Vexis, who haunted his dreams. With the help of Byleth, Zagan, and Darokin, he thinks his troubles are finally behind him. Little does he know...
