《THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (Completed)》Chapter 4- THE CYLINDER OPENS
Advertisement
When I returned to the common the sun was setting. Scattered groups were hurrying from the direction of Woking, and one or two persons were returning. The crowd about the pit had increased, and stood out black against the lemon yellow of the sky--a couple of hundred people, perhaps. There were raised voices, and some sort of struggle appeared to be going on about the pit. Strange imaginings passed through my mind. As I drew nearer I heard Stent's voice:
"Keep back! Keep back!"
A boy came running towards me.
"It's a-movin'," he said to me as he passed; "a-screwin' and a-screwin' out. I don't like it. I'm a-goin' 'ome, I am."
I went on to the crowd. There were really, I should think, two or three hundred people elbowing and jostling one another, the one or two ladies there being by no means the least active.
"He's fallen in the pit!" cried some one.
"Keep back!" said several.
The crowd swayed a little, and I elbowed my way through. Every one seemed greatly excited. I heard a peculiar humming sound from the pit.
"I say!" said Ogilvy; "help keep these idiots back. We don't know what's in the confounded thing, you know!"
I saw a young man, a shop assistant in Woking I believe he was, standing on the cylinder and trying to scramble out of the hole again. The crowd had pushed him in.
The end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within. Nearly two feet of shining screw projected. Somebody blundered against me, and I narrowly missed being pitched onto the top of the screw. I turned, and as I did so the screw must have come out, for the lid of the cylinder fell upon the gravel with a ringing concussion. I stuck my elbow into the person behind me, and turned my head towards the Thing again. For a moment that circular cavity seemed perfectly black. I had the sunset in my eyes.
Advertisement
I think everyone expected to see a man emerge--possibly something a little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essentials a man. I know I did. But, looking, I presently saw something stirring within the shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two luminous disks--like eyes. Then something resembling a little grey snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me--and then another.
A sudden chill came over me. There was a loud shriek from a woman behind. I half turned, keeping my eyes fixed upon the cylinder still, from which other tentacles were now projecting, and began pushing my way back from the edge of the pit. I saw astonishment giving place to horror on the faces of the people about me. I heard inarticulate exclamations on all sides. There was a general movement backwards. I saw the shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit. I found myself alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit running off, Stent among them. I looked again at the cylinder, and ungovernable terror gripped me. I stood petrified and staring.
A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.
Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air.
Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth--above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes--were at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. There was something fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty. Even at this first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread.
Advertisement
Suddenly the monster vanished. It had toppled over the brim of the cylinder and fallen into the pit, with a thud like the fall of a great mass of leather. I heard it give a peculiar thick cry, and forthwith another of these creatures appeared darkly in the deep shadow of the aperture.
I turned and, running madly, made for the first group of trees, perhaps a hundred yards away; but I ran slantingly and stumbling, for I could not avert my face from these things.
There, among some young pine trees and furze bushes, I stopped, panting, and waited further developments. The common round the sand pits was dotted with people, standing like myself in a half-fascinated terror, staring at these creatures, or rather at the heaped gravel at the edge of the pit in which they lay. And then, with a renewed horror, I saw a round, black object bobbing up and down on the edge of the pit. It was the head of the shopman who had fallen in, but showing as a little black object against the hot western sun. Now he got his shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed to slip back until only his head was visible. Suddenly he vanished, and I could have fancied a faint shriek had reached me. I had a momentary impulse to go back and help him that my fears overruled.
Everything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made. Anyone coming along the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the sight--a dwindling multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more standing in a great irregular circle, in ditches, behind bushes, behind gates and hedges, saying little to one another and that in short, excited shouts, and staring, staring hard at a few heaps of sand. The barrow of ginger beer stood, a queer derelict, black against the burning sky, and in the sand pits was a row of deserted vehicles with their horses feeding out of nosebags or pawing the ground.
Advertisement
The Harukian Chronicler [ReWrite]
A rewrite of the story I have done before hand. Please tune in for exciting adventures with our youn boy, who was shot by crazy, to become crazy; as he just simple lives his life. No upload schedule as of yet, as my brain is finicky. If you have ideas for NPCs, DM me; I can always use more ideas!
8 190Second Patriarch: Rise of the Liu Clan
After the death of his father, Liu Zhu must prevail over his older brother in order to become the Liu Clan's second patriarch and bring his family to glory within Yutian Country. In the process Liu Zhu will come across lucky chances, have brushes with death, and slowly expand his world beyond that of the small country he lives in. NOTE: Currently dropped for various reasons. The short version of why I dropped it is because even the shortest form of my outlining resulted in a main plot of at least 300 - 400 chapters and I messed up massively by directly adapting it from my first attempt at this, which was a choose your own adventure on another website. It did not make the jump well at all imo.
8 88World Integration
Earth's inhabitants have long since grown accustomed to peace. With the rapid advancement in technology and modern-day medicine over the years, the average human lifespan has been increased. Some individuals manage to exceed a hundred years, which is more than double the average lifespan expectancy of those who had lived 100 years ago. And some of the Old Gods from the previous eras having forsaken their old ways of living a primitive lifestyle for a more modern way of living. They have decided to live peacefully hidden amongst the humans, under the disguise of an ordinary person. One of the Old Gods, [Loki, the God of Mischief and Chaos] has grown bored watching over the peaceful world. So he and the other Old Gods then transpired together to wreak havoc upon the modern world, and thereby started a second Ragnarok event to reset the world, starting from the bottom up... This story was based upon Yue Hajime's story [The Broken World] which was discontinued, with some added elements and plots from the novel [The Legendary Mechanic].
8 68Journey to Elvander
Journey to Elvander will be available on Kindle, iBooks, and Print on 2/14/2018. If you read it here, please leave a review on release day. Your help is greatly appreciated! Feel free to contact me via Twitter to get yourself a FREE advanced eBook copy. Deacon Maynard may be young, but he is hardly idealistic. A Tech Repairman, he spends his days surrounded by tools and broken phones, watching the news unfold on the television while carefully trying to avoid the reality that seems inevitable. There is a war out there… and it is creeping closer and closer to his home. Elvander, a high-tech country miles away, is locked in a colossal battle with the deadly terrorist organization, Shadow Cannon… and it’s a war Deacon wants nothing to do with. Until he spies a flash of light outside his apartment window and discovers Ragnar, a giant machine Golem meant to be a Shadow Cannon secret weapon – a machine that is now asking for his help. Suddenly thrust into a war he wants no part of, Deacon must struggle to discover the truth, save his strange new friend and possibly save the world.
8 135Yibo's Baby{Completed}
ရိေပၚ ဆီမွာ ေမ်ာက္စိတ္နဲ႔ယုန္ေလးတစ္ေကာင္ရိွတယ္ရိပေါ် ဆီမှာ မျောက်စိတ်နဲ့ယုန်လေးတစ်ကောင်ရှိတယ်
8 198Stay || Benny The Jet Rodriguez
"Please don't go. We all need you... I need you."Ella Moore was visiting her grandma over the summer. She becomes fast friends sandlot boys since they all shared a passion for playing baseball. Although she had a boyfriend back in Texas, she couldn't help but fall for the best player in California, Benny Rodriguez. At the end of the summer, she's forced to choose whether to stay or go back to her life in Texas.This is based in 2021 but without corona(some characters belong to the creator of the sandlot movies)Go read pt 2 after as well! It's called "Forever Yours"
8 196