Every story has a beginning, middle, and an end.
It gets boring.
I want to be different. Middle, end, beginning. That’s going to be my story.
So I’ll start with when I fell in. Literally.
I couldn't breathe. It was like the space around me had tightened, and stifled. I gasped, but the movement felt as if in slow-motion. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs, and when I finally did, it was already gone, used up. Outside pressure greater than my own strength kept my eyes closed as I swam around in water-like air.
Was it air? Maybe it was water. Why was it so dry then?
Slowly, the pressure began to lessen, and lessen. Cold, normal air hit the top half of my body, and it felt like I had broken through whatever abyss I was caught in. My elbows, thrown forward, hit a gravel surface as the rest of my forearm sank into the tiny rocks. I gasped again, feeling the relief of finally being able to breathe in normal air. My eyes fought to adjust to the dark ambiance beyond my tangled mess of brown hair, as did my nose.
I was in some kind of cave, but it felt wrong. It was boxed, and silver glinted in the rocks. As I looked deeper, I could see different colored lines gracefully moving around the cave rocks, swirling and branching off into more curls. The air smelled somewhat sulfuric, with the bittersweet edge of decay hiding behind it.
Then I looked down. Half of my body was submerged in a black pool, too thick and dark to see one inch below the surface. Using my elbows, I twisted my waist until I could lift it from the water, and collapsed on the gravel.
Once I trusted my legs to be strong enough to stand, I lifted myself from the ground. It shifted from gravel, to graphite, to marble. Runes of all colors- greens, yellows, oranges, blues- threaded in and out of the rocks. The deeper I went into the room, the more I found that this cave was some kind of sacred area.
The air turned cold, and a small breeze fannee the top of my head. I turned around slowly, never lifting my eyes from my own two feet. Until, that is, they landed on the hem of a red velvet robe.
As I lifted my eyes, I took in that the figure loomed over my small frame easily, its body shape contradictory in every way.
It stood tall with such a willowy grace, its angular features jabbing in all directs. Four pairs of fangs were bared from its mouth, gums black. Boney fingers were tipped off with long, thick talons, sharpened and curled to a dangerous perfection.
But its eyes... they were monstrous, cold. They were a bright shade of green. They resembled that of a cat's eye, only tinged with bloodied around the edges. I screamed.
It wasn’t its hideousness that caused the bloodcurdling scream to rip through my throat. It wasn’t my realization that I was most probably going to die in a few seconds. It was that I knew what it was, I’d seen it before. I was face to face with a creature I always believed to be just a figment of my imagination, a dark little piece of myself.
It reached for my arm, and pulled me towards a door I hadn't seen. too scared to think, too shocked to react, my legs carried me behind the... thing, until we reached a great room adorned with ornate chairs and elegantly carved tables. I was sat down at one of the chairs.
It was then that I realized it was some kind of court room, and that more creatures were beginning to surround me.
“How did you find us?” The tall thing, with black skin and slits in it’s eyes talked down at me, blowing hot breath into my face, acidic-like. I blinked the tears away.
“Well, I mean, it was just a sort of a happy accident, right? I… I walked into a lake behind my house that turned out not to be a lake and-” I stopped. There were more creatures like it, all staring down at me, scrutinizing my inability to form a coherent sentence. Moments passed by as I felt myself go from pale, to red, to purple. I let out a nervous laugh and smoothed my hands over my thighs before one of them finally decided to break the heavy silence.
