《The Crux of Human Suffering》Chapter 3: Dream?
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Suddenly, outside of a dirt stained window, the abomination becomes visible. It tip toes with ethereal steps towards a set of mountains several miles away from my house. Its height is at least 150 meters. It stops with unearthly suddenness. At this point sickness is bubbling from the pit of my stomach, but there is another sensation as well. Cracks in my mind fill with willpower. I want to stand against the ominous creature.
I search around the room for tools as a bright light forms near the mountain. I grab a large stack of wood and instinctively activate something that is like a muscle I can barely control deep inside of my head. The wood is promptly pressurized together. The white light forms into a large dark orb that is growing. Tears flow freely as I stand up and build what looks like a perfect sphere of dark reddish wood.
The pressure from the situation isn't causing the tears to flow from my face, but the fact that I can move my legs and arms freely again. Spastic urges to move my unchained limbs develop, but I suppress it and instead thicken the reddish sphere of wood with random materials lying about the workshop like room. Random metal trinkets and building materials crash at a high speed into the sphere.
The dark orb collapses and a gigantic white shockwave grows from its center. At this point in time I open the perfect sphere and walk into it. I frantically close the opening in the object as the shockwave gets closer and closer. The sound of glass being broken is the last thing I hear before the sphere completely closes.
I have molded the sphere so that I am locked into place by wooden restraints. Like being strapped in a completely dark wooden surgery table, I start to be moved at a speed that completely removes my ability to think. My senses give way to the event.
Gravity multiplies and is applied at random angles as the protective sphere is rocketed back and forth. After some period of time my wits slowly return. I control my breathing as I crack open what used to be a perfect sphere to crawl outside.
I stare at my house from a distance of easily over 6 miles away. I rationalize that I have been catapulted at a speed easily over sound. The colossal horror has slowly walked away from our house after crossing the mountain range. It’s horrible tentacle covered body then continues lightly treading on the earth. My mind turns blurry, and hit my head to grab my wits back.
As though fighting an entrancing pull, I turn from the wriggling beast. The collection of flattened wooden houses and trees appear in my center of vision instead. Realizing that I have survived the incident that has killed me so many times before, I start to walk towards the top of the hill that my sphere has landed on. It smells strongly of pine tree sap and dirt in every direction because of the shattered wood and freshly turned up earth.
After reaching the top of the hill, a slightly larger village than the recently destroyed one reveals itself. It has been protected by a crater like mountain surrounding it. I carefully scale the massive fallen trees and ravaged ground towards the village. Oddly enough as I approach the village the only thing that is on my mind is how irrational the situation has become.
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I remember being incredibly crippled just yesterday….Why am I okay now? The question daunts me as I approach the nearest house that is made of logs that have obviously been stacked by hand.
Dirt and what looks like some form of pinkish adhesive have been plastered in between the logs. This gives a surreal almost candy like look to the log houses that both intrigue and disturb me. Also the proportions of the houses are surreal. The trees used to create the houses are smaller than the surrounding forest, but still outlandishly large. The houses could easily be as wide and large as a school gymnasium, but at a normal height.
As the adrenaline fades, every single part of my body hurts viciously. My body is injured in ways only the cruelest of imaginations could hallucinate. The tendons and bones show around my wrists, and my skin looks bruised on each exposed surface.
I knock on the door and start to breathe very heavily as the energy seems to ooze away from my body. A woman with light blonde hair that gently dances in the wind answers the door. With eyebrows raising sharply and her jaw gaping, she just silently stares at me. She faces me frozen in horror and stands perfectly still for a full minute or two. I try to speak but cannot. My head falls downwards and I see my skin is lacking a semblance of any normal color.
Like skin that has been pulverized for hours. Each square inch is a unique blend of bright crimson, purple, and dark blue. Where the restraints had been inside of the circle(around my wrists, shoulders, thighs, and ankles) dug deep through my limbs. The bone are visible around the front of my ankles and wrists, but the thighs and shoulders have enough thickness to them that they resist being completely destroyed. It is at this horror filled epiphany that I stumble forwards and attempt to lift my arms. I instead meet a gentle embrace as I slip out of consciousness.
When I awake numbness weighs my limbs down completely. Tiredness barely permissible by the condition of life kept my ability to think at bay, and I am sipping on a warm liquid. I can not open my eyes, but I can still smell decaying meat. At this point I slip back out of consciousness.
After a series of these foggy awakenings, I finally awake with a trickle of consciousness. The walls look like spiderwebs made of branches that have opaque pink glass in between them. My mind races towards the goal of understanding my current situation. Why aren't I home? Where am I? How long have I been asleep? Why am I covered in Blue goo? Why are there so many colors? The area looked like a candy land creation. Pink, deep blue, and white are everywhere.
A moment later a man creaks open the door and stares inside with one eye. I imitate death the best I can. He grumbles loudly and then leaves. I thank his short arrival, or he would have noticed the pools of sweat forming over my forehead.
After about 6 hours of waiting, the sun finally sets completely. The hurt paralyzes me at first, but I slowly get up and rip off the dark blue coating covering me. My skin is pink and healed to my great surprise, but the muscles underneath are still devastated. I start the excruciating process of moving through the house.
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I wander through an incredibly intricate labyrinth of rooms and hallways to eventually find an exit to the building. At this point, I see a room with a fireplace that has a man sitting in a chair asleep. Behind the man is the only exit/entrance to the building. I can feel my muscles ache as I skulk silently across the ground. The soft snoring stifles and I remain frozen. The man scratches his face and rolls over. I quickly go back to the painstaking work of crossing the room.
I start to curse the abnormally large room when I finally reach the door. When leaving and entering my room,the door is completely silent. I attribute this to either fantastic lubricants, or perfect building materials. Either way, I thank my current situation as I slowly open the door and it remains quiet. Just as I am closing the door at the last second, an ear piercing animalistic cry is heard. The man jumps out of his seat surprisingly fast as I shut the door and run to jump behind a thicket of enormous tree roots located near the front of the home.
The man sees me and pursues me until I jump across the roots. He scans the horizon and decides to prioritize the loud animal squelch instead of me. I follow so I can see the threat
After the end of a small forest path, the guard sees the creature that is causing the ruckus. A huge creature on what looks like hooved legs is next to a partially collapsed village house. The creature has 4 legs and stood at least 15 feet tall. It moved with the twitchy motions of an insect as it stands over the house and smashes it. The featureless fur covered body with no appendages suddenly makes a popping noise as it opens up a large fleshy hole from its stomach region.
At this point I am a jittering, trembling mess. I watch with horror as what appears to be organ like tentacles fall out and start to prod through the house. It slowly picks up a screaming child and its parents. The tentacles have a thick slime that is melting away at the flesh of the people it has grabbed. As if forcing the people into a meat grinder made of melting tentacles, the creature pulls them into its body.
The fleshy hole closes, and the creature turns to face the random man with an ax in hand. Hand prints can be seen as people tried to force their way out of the fleshy hell they have just been trapped in. Their cries of agony are heard as they are eaten by many smaller tentacles inside of the main body of the creature. The front face of its body is just a snout and two odd looking patches of skin I guess are used for echolocation or heat sensing like a snake.
“AAAAGHHHHHHH!!!!” The man cries with a visceral intensity only available to animals truly fearing for death.
As if to confirm the need for fear, the godawful monster shuffles with insect like speed towards the man. Shockwaves of disgust bombard my mind. The man is quickly scooped up into the sea of crimson, churning organs. At this point the initial horror and shock have fallen to a point that I can finally let go of a gut wrenching amount of vomit.
I quickly run to what is a steep incline into a valley of still towering trees. The trees are about 40 feet apart from each other so the land is actually fairly open, but the sky is mostly dark because of the amount of light the thick tops of the trees absorb.
The creature has paused as if to rearrange its new contents before turning to face me. It moves. Running with an unnatural speed, I am driven by adrenaline firing every fiber of muscle into gear. The creature quickly breaks the gap and finally stops above me.
The next moment a gigantic fleshy hole reopens and randomly shaped organs covered in what looks like large but sparse hair came out of the creature's body. I start to panic and throw rocks at the creature while I think of something to do. It is at this point that I remember the sensation I used to move the wood into a sphere.
A needle stabs into the lower part of my head when unlike before the entire landscape changes. I call upon my power. I am vastly stronger than before. Nerves are completely silenced throughout my entire body, and then pain like bees stinging every silenced nerve baptize my existence.
I can tell the problem is my complete lack of control over the ability and I collapse the entire surroundings. The creature and I start to fall down a hole that is at least several hundred feet down when I scramble to grab the rocks located at the side of the expanse. Fingernails snap and arms break as I reach into rocks passing by me. As if reaching into pavement while in a speeding car, my hands are being ground to mush as I fall.
I still scramble to try and launch my new stump like nubs into the cliff to stop my fall. I release as much of my ability as I can muster and the entire surrounding rocks, earth, and the sinister being start to fracture into sand. I slowly fall with the large pile of sand into the new crater I have just created. I scream my most soul wrenching cry right before I land onto a patch of pitch black rocks.
******
Massive edits my friends. PUHLEASE tell me if there are errors.
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