Messages From the Void

The Forest

A boy walks his usual path
until he sees something fall from the sky
into a forest, not steps away from him.
The boy enters the vast forest
only to find a mystical place.
Little does he know he will be shocked
and scared when he finds out all is not right.
He walks deeper and deeper
and as he does, it gets darker and darker
and he sees...eyes.
On either side of him, bunches of orange eyes,
all staring at the boy as if he were their prey.
What are these strange animals in the dark?
The boy is curious, he marches forward.
He comes upon a hill in a clearing
and on this hill there is a large, wooden cross
and on that cross is a figure that he cannot see.
He ascends the hill and stands in front of the cross,
it is as if he were looking in a mirror.
His reflection staked onto the cross, bleeding,
moaning? He's still alive and says three words...
"get. out. now." The moaning stops.
The boy turns and starts to run,
However, his path is blocked by strange creatures.
They are as wolves, though with red fur;
the orange eyes have followed him.
He turns towards the cross and runs past it,
only to find himself in the forest once more
and then it gets even darker around him...
But what is that? A light?
There is a glowing aura in the distance.
The boy is mesmerized, he walks forward.
The light seems to move with him,
it gets dimmer and dimmer
until the boy reaches its source:
a fallen, dying star sits in front of him.
He reaches out a hand toward the star,
it gets brighter the closer he gets.
As his fingertips brush the star's surface,
the star envelops him and leaps into the sky.
The boy is suspended in space,
seeing a world no one has seen before.
He passes into an invisible atmosphere
and finds his breath again
as he descends to a platform
with a semicircle of diverse creatures
and he notices they're all staring at him.
The boy understands none of the languages being spoken
and has no idea where he could be.
The creatures whisper to each other
and before the boy knows it, he is falling,
into a slide nonetheless,
but on the other side of this slide
are vast piles of waste
and all around him are humans,
working under creatures with whips.
If one human disobeyed,
they would be mercilessly beaten and whipped.
It looked like hell on...well, wherever this boy was.
He is pushed forward and set to work,
shoveling the waste and disposing of it
into the atmosphere of Earth.
There is only one break for food
and the boy awaits it all day.
When it comes around, he sits beside an old man
who has worked there all his life
and they speak of revolt,
They spread the word to everyone.
The next day as they start to work,
the man collapses in fake pain
and as the guards rush to whip him back up,
The boy and the other humans ambush the guards.
The boy raises a whip and yells "Freedom!"
as they all rush into the room they started in.
It was empty.
Slowly, more and more guards appear out of thin air,
enclosing them all in the room
with the boy standing in the middle.
The creatures appear and walk to their chairs
and bang mallets on the table.
An enormous cross rises behind the boy
and the creature in the middle raises an open palm,
lifting the boy off the ground.
Out of nowhere, stakes drive the boy onto the cross
and, as he loses consciousness, he plummets.
He awakes atop a hill, just barely still breathing
and he moans from the pain.
He notices a figure ascending the hill
and sees himself, but his eyes are innocent.
The last words he could muster were...
"get. out. now."