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I've been working on an idea for a short story that I want to expand into a novel and this is a portion of it.
It will be about a man who has the ability to enter peoples dreams and nightmares, and he uses the ability to help him better understand their issues.
This portion I'm about to post takes place inside a nightmare of one of his patients.
Here we go:
Ian opened his eyes and examined his new surroundings. He was standing in a hallway that seemed curved out of site in each direction. Dull lights lay inset into the ceiling, giving faint illumination to the corridor. The walls were metallic and rusted. The floor too was metal and rusting; and the sheen of still wet blood made a trail that stretched down the passageway in one direction. A slight noise of metal on metal could be heard coming from the direction in which the blood path led.
What do you do when you come across a trail of blood when inside the nightmares of a borderline psychotic therapy patient? You follow it.
Ian took a deep breath and slowly began to follow the path of blood. The hallway curved to the left, then to the right, and over again, with no sign of immediately stopping. His footfalls began to echo uncomfortably loudly in the hallway and each breath seemed to echo menacingly. A few lights along the way sputtered and blinked, casting unearthly shadows on the wall, and the faint scent of rotten meat began to fill the air. As Ian continued down the seemingly endless corridor the smell began to increase in potency and a faint sound of crying could be heard. Or perhaps it was laughter? With each step Ian took the sobbing/laughing began to intensify, and the clanging he had first heard started up again, the sharp sound of metal sharpening metal. The blood on the floor, which at first had started as a thin path, now covered the entire width of the hallway and had begun to get deeper.
More steps, more curves, and the smell now intensified, filling his nose. Ian felt an urge to gag and could feel bile forming in his throat. Hastily he swallowed it back. The manic voice grew ever louder and Ian determined that it was, in fact, crying - though in such a way to suggest total madness. The blood on the floor was now an inch deep at least, and sloshed around Ian’s shoes at every step.
The metallic scraping sounds came to a sudden stop, which caused whoever was weeping to begin sobbing and crying out uncontrollably. The sobbing was so loud that Ian knew he was close to wherever it was he was going and he increased his pace. The blood on the floor was now several inches thick and splashed around Ian’s legs as his started to trot briskly towards the sound. The voice could be heard plainly now, and Ian knew exactly whose voice it belonged to.
Ian rounded a final curve and reached his destination. The hallway opened up into an octagonal room. In the middle of the room was a chair that looked similar to the type of chair a dentist would use, only made from the same rusted out metal that formed the walls. Strapped into the chair was Rob, his eyes wide with fear. He was strapped to the chair with old barbed wire that lay taut against his neck, his chest, his waist, his wrists, and ankles. Across from the foot of the chair where Rob sat prisoner was his captor. The captor was roughly the size and height of an average man, yet he wore no clothes. Instead a leathery, wrinkled skin lay draped over its almost frail looking frame as though the skin should be worn by someone much larger. Its back was to Ian, as it stood hunched over a crude wooden work bench. After a few seconds it turned around. Ian gasped involuntarily. The creature’s front side was much like its back, like it was wearing skin several sizes too large; but its face was another matter entirely. Its face had no features save for one small slit where a nose might be. It had no eyes, ear, or mouth, nothing but that single reptilian looking slit.
The source of the metallic scraping noise quickly became evident. It had been holding a sharp, long bladed knife in one hand, with a metal sharpening tool in the other. It dropped the tool on the ground and increased its grip on the knife. Despite the creatures apparent lack of vision and hearing it seemed to have no problem locating its victim affixed to the chair. Rob’s crying began to reach a shrill point; he screamed and begged, flailing his body which caused the barbed wire holding him to dig into his skin. Blood began seeping from the screaming mans body as the creature reached him and began to raise the knife slowly into the air above his body.
Ian stood transfixed in horror, forcing himself not to stop what was happening.
“I’m not allowed to interfere!” he chided himself “I can only observe and evaluate and nothing more!”
The creature’s right arm now stood fully erect in the air, the knife glinting faintly in the artificial life. Rob’s scream had reached a frenetic pace; he was almost incoherent in his screams and pleads. With a sudden jerk of motion the creature brought the knife down into Rob’s chest. And then it quickly stabbed again. And again. And again. And again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
With each successive stab Rob’s screams only grew louder. Despite the fact that his chest was becoming nothing more then a twisted and distorted assortment of mangled flesh and bone he did not die, nor did he seem to have any trouble breathing despite his horribly punctured lungs. He just kept screaming. And the creature kept stabbing.Rob’s screams increased in intensity and volume until Ian thought his own eardrums would burst from the onslaught of sound.
Suddenly Ian could feel the familiar prickling sensation in the back of his mind that told him Rob was waking up. The room and everything in it began to distort and melt. And Ian forced himself out of Rob’s mind and into his own.
Edit: I already have some revisions in mind. Some to correct flow, some to correct grammar. I also intend on expanding this section, being a bit more colorful in my descriptions. I'm going to be following a limited third person narrative through this whole thing. Any comments appreciated though. I'll probably have a second draft of this portion here sometime in the next couple of days.
It will be about a man who has the ability to enter peoples dreams and nightmares, and he uses the ability to help him better understand their issues.
This portion I'm about to post takes place inside a nightmare of one of his patients.
Here we go:
Ian opened his eyes and examined his new surroundings. He was standing in a hallway that seemed curved out of site in each direction. Dull lights lay inset into the ceiling, giving faint illumination to the corridor. The walls were metallic and rusted. The floor too was metal and rusting; and the sheen of still wet blood made a trail that stretched down the passageway in one direction. A slight noise of metal on metal could be heard coming from the direction in which the blood path led.
What do you do when you come across a trail of blood when inside the nightmares of a borderline psychotic therapy patient? You follow it.
Ian took a deep breath and slowly began to follow the path of blood. The hallway curved to the left, then to the right, and over again, with no sign of immediately stopping. His footfalls began to echo uncomfortably loudly in the hallway and each breath seemed to echo menacingly. A few lights along the way sputtered and blinked, casting unearthly shadows on the wall, and the faint scent of rotten meat began to fill the air. As Ian continued down the seemingly endless corridor the smell began to increase in potency and a faint sound of crying could be heard. Or perhaps it was laughter? With each step Ian took the sobbing/laughing began to intensify, and the clanging he had first heard started up again, the sharp sound of metal sharpening metal. The blood on the floor, which at first had started as a thin path, now covered the entire width of the hallway and had begun to get deeper.
More steps, more curves, and the smell now intensified, filling his nose. Ian felt an urge to gag and could feel bile forming in his throat. Hastily he swallowed it back. The manic voice grew ever louder and Ian determined that it was, in fact, crying - though in such a way to suggest total madness. The blood on the floor was now an inch deep at least, and sloshed around Ian’s shoes at every step.
The metallic scraping sounds came to a sudden stop, which caused whoever was weeping to begin sobbing and crying out uncontrollably. The sobbing was so loud that Ian knew he was close to wherever it was he was going and he increased his pace. The blood on the floor was now several inches thick and splashed around Ian’s legs as his started to trot briskly towards the sound. The voice could be heard plainly now, and Ian knew exactly whose voice it belonged to.
Ian rounded a final curve and reached his destination. The hallway opened up into an octagonal room. In the middle of the room was a chair that looked similar to the type of chair a dentist would use, only made from the same rusted out metal that formed the walls. Strapped into the chair was Rob, his eyes wide with fear. He was strapped to the chair with old barbed wire that lay taut against his neck, his chest, his waist, his wrists, and ankles. Across from the foot of the chair where Rob sat prisoner was his captor. The captor was roughly the size and height of an average man, yet he wore no clothes. Instead a leathery, wrinkled skin lay draped over its almost frail looking frame as though the skin should be worn by someone much larger. Its back was to Ian, as it stood hunched over a crude wooden work bench. After a few seconds it turned around. Ian gasped involuntarily. The creature’s front side was much like its back, like it was wearing skin several sizes too large; but its face was another matter entirely. Its face had no features save for one small slit where a nose might be. It had no eyes, ear, or mouth, nothing but that single reptilian looking slit.
The source of the metallic scraping noise quickly became evident. It had been holding a sharp, long bladed knife in one hand, with a metal sharpening tool in the other. It dropped the tool on the ground and increased its grip on the knife. Despite the creatures apparent lack of vision and hearing it seemed to have no problem locating its victim affixed to the chair. Rob’s crying began to reach a shrill point; he screamed and begged, flailing his body which caused the barbed wire holding him to dig into his skin. Blood began seeping from the screaming mans body as the creature reached him and began to raise the knife slowly into the air above his body.
Ian stood transfixed in horror, forcing himself not to stop what was happening.
“I’m not allowed to interfere!” he chided himself “I can only observe and evaluate and nothing more!”
The creature’s right arm now stood fully erect in the air, the knife glinting faintly in the artificial life. Rob’s scream had reached a frenetic pace; he was almost incoherent in his screams and pleads. With a sudden jerk of motion the creature brought the knife down into Rob’s chest. And then it quickly stabbed again. And again. And again. And again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
With each successive stab Rob’s screams only grew louder. Despite the fact that his chest was becoming nothing more then a twisted and distorted assortment of mangled flesh and bone he did not die, nor did he seem to have any trouble breathing despite his horribly punctured lungs. He just kept screaming. And the creature kept stabbing.Rob’s screams increased in intensity and volume until Ian thought his own eardrums would burst from the onslaught of sound.
Suddenly Ian could feel the familiar prickling sensation in the back of his mind that told him Rob was waking up. The room and everything in it began to distort and melt. And Ian forced himself out of Rob’s mind and into his own.
Edit: I already have some revisions in mind. Some to correct flow, some to correct grammar. I also intend on expanding this section, being a bit more colorful in my descriptions. I'm going to be following a limited third person narrative through this whole thing. Any comments appreciated though. I'll probably have a second draft of this portion here sometime in the next couple of days.
