Hello, this is my piece for your story contest. I hope you like it! Happy judging.
mrgreen
Waking Up
Darkness is swirling and rising in the old city, flowing in inky whirlpools like a tide ready to drown the world. Demons and ghosts hiss as they slowly emerge from the surface of the cobblestone streets like ghastly flowers blooming in a world of grey. The sky is bleak and rainy, enclosing a world that is no longer safe. Along windy streets and through the gloomy park, the girl Ophelia is being stalked. Menacing silhouettes watch her from windows above, and ominous specters are around every corner, waiting for the right moment. Ophelia knows they’re good at waiting; they can lurk in the background for years until they decide to spring, and they never lose interest.
Ophelia walks through the gloomy and colorless streets, wind whipping her auburn hair, and remains calm. This world has gone bad, so she’ll find another one. She walks briskly to the park and stops at a huge old tree, weathered and wide on the dark grey grass. Everything here is grey now. Ophelia pushes her hands into the trunk as easily as she would push a knife through butter and pulls open the edges of the cut she has mad. Reaching inside, she pulls out a mirror. It’s exactly her height, and its silvery gleam makes it look almost liquid. She props up the mirror against the tree and stands back, as though admiring her reflection. Ophelia’s vision goes blurry; the world around her dissolves into hazy grey ripples as her reflection reaches out to her, its hand extending beyond the surface of the mirror. She stands alone in a vast space of grey nothingness as the two Ophelias clasp hands. Then one of her is pulled forward into the shining mirror and slowly leaves the fog behind.
Ophelia steps through the mirror into her new world. She knows the demons can’t get her here, but the sky is stormy and a strong wind blows. She is standing on the lawn behind her house, and just as she enters the back door the storm begins, tearing up the sky with stabs of lightning. As she enters the house, a sudden feeling of warmth and security rushes through her. She is safe here. A voice is whispering to her in the back of her head, saying that it’s not over yet, but she pushes it from her mind. If she decides that this is the happy ending, it will be true. Ophelia desperately wants a happy ending.
In the kitchen, Ophelia sits down at the table that has been in her house since before she was born. The storm outside the solid walls has nothing to do with her as long as she is here, safe in the back of the house in her new world. She is wrinkling the tablecloth, wondering if she should eat something, when
he walks into the warm room. Ophelia isn’t at all surprised to see him; this is his world as much as it is hers. They smile at each other, and Ophelia follows him out of the room.
When she walks out of the kitchen, the world changes slightly, but she doesn’t notice.
They walk down a dark hallway and down a gloomy staircase into a pitch black cavern underground. As they descend, Ophelia’s mind starts to feel hazy and disjointed, like a piece of music being played one random phrase at a time, instead of its original order. Her foot leaves the last step of the stairs, and her world is plunged into utter chaos in the darkness. Images flash in front of her eyes: a blue river running through the cave, a tiny castle glowing green in a corner, strange birds flapping around her face. Her mind speeds through her experiences, faster and faster, and through it all, he is there with her, the cause of it all. She turns to
him dizzy and unable to think, wanting to ask why this is happening, but she is face to face with the eternal grin of a skull.
He crouches on a ledge near her, and turns his head to laugh at her with empty eye sockets surrounded by yellow bone. She gazes at him with detached horror, and realizes that he was a skeleton all along.
More images flash through her unhinged brain, and suddenly she’s in the house again. Or rather, she’s in a version of the house. It’s not the same house she left hours ago. There are windows now; a large rectangle of glass has appeared next to the back door, and when Ophelia looks out of the kitchen into the front room of the house she sees with revulsion that the entire front wall of the house has been replaced by two huge windows.
The storm is gone, and has been replaced by a fog so thick that the house seems to be in the middle of a silent grey cloud. Ophelia sees the fog through the huge windows, and sinks to her knees in the kitchen doorway. Fear rises up in her throat as awful knowledge crashes into her mind like a boulder: there are monsters in that fog. She closes her eyes, turns her head away from the windows, and tries to forget. She focuses her entire mind on forcing the knowledge away, on convincing herself that there is nothing outside. Desperation takes control of her, and she can’t think of anything else but her all-consuming fear of looking into the fog and seeing a monster.
No! she screams inside her head,
Anything but that! There’s nothing outside! I can’t let there be anything outside!
Ophelia leans her back against the doorframe and shakes her head from side to side, but even with her eyes closed she can see them. The monsters bypass her eyes and arrive directly in her head. Her mind is full of fog, and she sees terrible creatures emerging from the haze. Shape and color are unnoticed; they are pure monstrousness whatever form they take. They are still outside the house, but they are close to the windows now and Ophelia sees them in terrifying flashes. One after another they appear before her, threatening her with something she has tried to escape all these years. The monsters roar, and throughout the ordeal she hears a long painful scream in the background, an endless scream of sheer terror and denial. At some point, Ophelia realizes that it is her own scream.
Suddenly a burst of pain shudders through her and she can’t see the monsters anymore. Back in the kitchen again, she hugs her shaking knees with one arm while her other hand goes to the lump forming where she smashed her head against the wall. For a few minutes she stays that way; collapsed and shivering. Her mind is numb and frozen with fear. Then a loud roar from the monsters outside sends her up and sprinting, to any place away from those frightening windows.
Ophelia runs without thinking for what could be minutes, seconds, or hours, not seeing the halls and doors she passes through, until she arrives in a white room. Every surface is stark white, without furniture or decoration, and when she stands in the center of it she doesn’t know if what she is standing on is the floor or the ceiling. The door she has just passed through slams shut behind her and turns into another white wall. Ophelia is past noticing or caring that her escape has been sealed off; she collapses onto her knees for the second time today and stares dully at the soulless white floor beneath her ankle. As she sits there, mind as blank and empty as the room she is trapped in, she can feel the monsters around her.
They surround the room on all sides, and with an echoing roar they mold together to form one huge monster; Ophelia doesn’t even twitch as she experiences a terror so profound that all thought processes come to a complete halt. Her only other feeling is one of deep calmness as she accepts what she has known all along: she is going to die. She doesn’t move as the room around her turns from the purist shade of white to endless blackness, and she is sitting in the mouth of her monster.
Its jaws open wide and Ophelia sees that she is no longer inside the monster, but has somehow ended up sitting in front of it, while all her emotions fade, leaving her void and empty. She watches with detached interest as a child, a small girl, appears opposite her. Small lights appear scattered throughout the darkness like stars, twinkling faintly. The monster looms over them both as they gaze at each other silently. Ophelia clears her throat and says carefully, with a voice that has grown hoarse from screaming, “When I was little, I used to believe that stars gave special light to make me grow. You know—the way sunlight makes flowers grow.” She speaks casually, but underneath her calm tone Ophelia can hear herself begging for forgiveness. The small girl just looks at her curiously.
The peaceful moment is ended when the monster gives a bone-shuddering roar and finally, after years of waiting, attacks. The little girl is sucked backward while Ophelia is rapidly pulled back to the blank white room. As the child is enveloped in the monster’s fathomless darkness, Ophelia is crushed by a wave of anguish and she screams the child’s name in a voice so rough and broken that it doesn’t even sound like her own anymore. She screams until her voice vanishes completely, and all she can do is rock back and forth on the floor as she sobs for the lost girl.
~ ~ ~ ~
In an empty white room inside her head, a woman with auburn hair sits on the floor, still croaking the name
“Ophelia” as the walls run crimson with her blood.
sign next to it in the table of contents, and then look for it again in that post to see exactly what has been added. Items will keep the sign next to it for about a week.
