Lore/Story Insomnia

needed to get this off my chest

Spoiler: Insomnia

Again.

I lay shaking on the bed. The 5th time in the past week it had happened. I was at the foot of my bed. A choice, yet again. Close my eyes - and see it again, and again, and again. Get up - and live it one more time. At the foot of my bed, a ghastly figure sat on a piano bench. Runes were tattooed across her body in a grid. Her left hand lay over her right which fit snugly in the lap of here folded legs. Her gray hair was in neat curls. Her face was a solid-colored, inky black mass, devoid of shape or form. It burned and boiled, enveloping itself with it’s cold embrace. My mother. The piano played itself. Camille Saint-Saëns, Danse Macabre. Her appearance was semi-transparent. She snapped, and every other object in the room turned into curling mist. The mist collect in her palm. A plate of food. The plainest white plate. A single, plump strawberry in the center. She sent it gliding across and on to my chest. I had no control over myself. My arm lifted up. I felt nothing. Nothing at all, not the slightest twinge or hint of impending danger. I picked it up. I held it to my mouth. I sank my teeth in like a wolf sinking its fangs into their prey. As soon as my teeth made contact with the fruit.

Pain. Unending, unbridled pain radiated from my mouth. I screamed as loud as I could - no, louder.

Everything around me collapsed.

The room shook violently.

The walls folded in.

My mother’s familiar disappeared.

The piano disintegrated.

The plate broke itself into a million tiny shards. The shards morphed like they were hatching, each one becoming a monster insect. Buzz buzz, they chattered as they flew around me in a swarm, biting me.

Screams all around me. Muffled voices. Ancient words. Ancient powers. New strength.

Space broke down. An inch was a million miles, objects were given new dimensions and measurements. The walls closed in, the ceiling flew into the void above me, flat surfaces became curved. Perspective no longer functioned. Depth was an illusion.

Everything flashed between the most brilliant white and the most depraved, desperate black.

I lifted up my other hand. I was dissolving into a dark liquid, pooling, dripping.

A blast of heat dehydrated me, followed by the shock of cold penetrating me. Tendrils of ice wrapping around my legs and arms, keeping me stubbornly in place.

Out of my arms spawned tentacles that reached towards my face, as I squirmed to avoid them, they eventually covered me completely.

The voice was louder.

CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE. CHOOSE.

Spoiler: See it again

The ground below me churned and groaned. Lava shot into the air from beneath me. I turned away from the imminent mortal danger of the melting rock below and in front of me. My childhood home, in flames. My older sister ran out, tears in her eyes. She ran to me. Before she even touched me, she crumbled to ash. Beginning to cry, I turned back. No more lava. A gargantuan chasm led into a ceaseless abyss. Something behind me pushed me forwards.

Into the void I fell. Familiar voices surrounded me as I dropped. Brilliant colors filled my vision. Blinding light showered me from all angles.

I found myself on a cold, rocky floor. I looked up. The obelisk. A black monument stood erect in the night sky. 7 moons, again. Deep gashes and cracks in it were filled by a malevolent red light. At the top, a beam split into 7, each crashing into another moon. Enough power to crack a tectonic plate like an eggshell. Each one smashed open, raining down a hail of boulders the size of mountains upon me. My vision left my body, and I zoomed out to the scale of space in the blink of an eye. A young child played with his solar system play model. One of the planets was covered in black rocks and tar, with 7 moons. The model planets and moons crashed into each other and morphed into the shape of my childhood friend. He collapsed into dust, the dust became snow, without knowing how I was at a mountain peak. I fell down, hitting every rock, boulder, and tree, but feeling nothing. I landed in a frozen lake. A desolate wasteland. Frozen lake surface and nothing but, farther than the eye can see. I sat with my head in my hands, sobbing. I felt something land on my head. I picked the object out of my hair and unfolded it. A piece of paper. On it, in beautiful calligraphy, the word ‘Innocence’. As I held it, it burned with great fury in my hand. All that was left was ash.

I felt the force of my fist against the ice. I punched it, again, and again, and again. My hand was bleeding. I was sore. But the ice cracked. I plunged into the welcoming darkness of the underice.

All too familiar.

Spoiler: Live it again

I kept my eyes open. I got out of my bed. My room was exactly as normal. I opened my curtains. Sunny days, clear skies, pure water from mountain springs ran in rivers cutting through the scenery. The only way out there was the hallway from my door to the stairwell. I cracked my door open and walked in. Every surface except the floor was mirrors. Mirrors. Endless mirroring. Everything was mirrored. Another version of me at the end of the hallway. Mirror Me. Mirror Me charged at me. The entire hallway curved into a spiral. Mirror Me fell into the walls as the barrier between reality and imagination broke down, when mind and matter converged, space itself fractures. It smashed into a mirror and fell back in through another one, the hole It made when It went through had repaired itself. I had no choice. I had to fight myself. I picked up a creaky wooden floorboard. So did it. I yelled at It; I don’t know what I said. We fought savagely. With our makeshift weapons, with our fists, with our words. The halls around us bent free of the restrictions of reality, as we fell through one mirror, we came out another.

Finally, after what seemed like years. It plunged their weapon into my chest. I watched myself crumble. I became dust. In my last moments, I remember only one thing. On every mirror was scratched in the word ‘Regret’. Scratched in, over and over again, on every part of every surface, mirroring itself endlessly, never ceasing. And so I became dust as all things must.

All too familiar.