I awoke to the sounds of dead silence. There was nothing, not a hum from nearby electronics, not a gracing of a slight breeze. No tentative rustling from the bugs of the undergrowth, birds in the trees or animals of the land. It was just nothing, even my breathing beckoned no sound. In times like this it was usual, when all the sounds of the world disappear, to hear your own heart pumping life around your body and comforting your being in the knowledge you were still part of the ever evolving, ever revolving organism, earth.
I heard nothing.
Nothing at all.
I was standing in my room, barefoot, bare chested, dressed only with a pair of black pajamas and a black leather wristband. The wristband was of nothing special, just a quaint black leather weave which tied up in a knot, though it felt heavy, heavier than it should. I lifted my gaze from inspecting my wrist and took in my surroundings for the first time.
It was my room, but it wasn’t.
My posters had gone, removed without even a trace of bluetack or sellotape I had used to fix them. The walls instead wore cracks and stains, greyed and flaking. I recognised them, they had been there all the while, I had used my posters and pictures to hide them, but now with no contrast and no colour they threatened, standing tall and hanging from the ceiling, willing my eyes to look closer and pick between the seams. All four walls were the same. I traced the cracks to the floor and noticed, my carpet had gone. In fact all of the furniture in my room had gone. For the first time I felt the coldness of the white stone floor I stood on, and I stretched my toes curious to get a feel for the smooth surface. To my right were my stairs, and the thin, steep, darkened stairwell that housed them. Without thinking I turned and drew my steps towards the opening, surrendering to an unfamiliar feeling of burdening curiosity that coursed through me. My steps made no sound, mute and meagre. I wasn’t sure why the quiet continued through me, why I felt compelled to submit to the silence, why I didn’t just shout and scream and force some sort of reverberation in rebellion, I just knew, something inside me knew, that if I were to protest, I would never see what it was I was to be shown, and so onwards I stepped, noiseless and discreet until I came to the top of the stairs. Faced on, at the top, with toes gently creeping over the first step I looked down into the dark. The first few steps could be made out, but after that it was just black, as if they trailed off into nothingness as if they ceased to be. I leered a little with both hands holding me firm on the walls either side of the stairs, looking, trying to peer down, trying to catch just a glimpse of what lay in the blackness. But my eyes would not let me see past the first few steps. As I leered and leaned in further, keeping my feet on the step I willed my eyes to succumb to the blackness and allow any light to come in. I squinted hard and watched, throwing all my focus to finding the next steps down and what lay at the bottom…
Silence.
Without warning the hairs on the back of my neck jolted and raised, and a shock of dread flew up my spine to the back of my head. I inhaled sharply and my eyes widened never moving from the blackness below. What the hell was that, I..? Did my eyes see something I could not. The shudder cloaked my shoulders with a silken terror, the weight of it leading me to stoop and pushed my body forward. Something was not right, I knew that, pistons fired in my head and all the muscles in my body clenched, expectant. The serene sensibility of before had fallen and been trampled by an uneasiness. Still, the shock had sparked an innate unwavering focus at the blackness, I needed to see what had changed me with such swift contamination.
My feet moved, one step, one step at a time, hands drawing themselves down the walls as I walked into the darkness. Now there was sound, but only my own, only from within and not from my hands or feet, only from my heart and from my lungs, drumming and scathing from my chest like the quiet rage of an orchestra in the dark of the stage. I reached the bottom, all too soon I had walked beyond the invisible stairs, engulfed in blackness. My feet had found their purchase and lead me through, though my mind had not the slightest idea of how such steps were made, the distraction of the ever growing presence of something had kept my focus. I knew there were walls surrounding me and a floor beneath my feet, but I could see none of them and it seemed I had come to the steps end. A thick blackness like a tarred veil before me told me so.
Slowly, ever so slowly a thin light broke through it, about 1 foot from the floor, one bright piercing dagger of red light through the black. It’s brightness pierced my iris’ forcing them to be covered to glare through fingers, and I stumbled back as it hit. Suddenly the brightness dimmed and the light squared, and shot out in lines in opposite directions from the initial piercing, shooting out wide to the edges of the black wall then turing at a right angle and darting upwards to the invisible ceiling. The two separate lines flew in perfect symmetry reaching 1 foot from the ceiling, another right angle before charging at each other to a point perfectly in line with the initial dagger point, albeit 7ft above. There the blood light erupted through the geometric seams and splayed out like a million murderous hands reaching for the walls and as quickly as it burst through it drew back dimmer and subdued. It had formed a perfect rectangle.
A door.
I stared, bewildered, stunned at the sudden outburst in the darkness. Though I did not feel comfortable, as the appearance of light amidst the dark should allow. I did not feel safe. As if it had crawled from inside my soul and out through my pores, and with sharp claws clinging onto to my skin, forced the fleshy membrane around my muscles back inside, forcing my body back into the dark from whence it came. Everything inside me told to leave. Told me to get out, to back away slowly to let whatever was lying behind that door lie in piece. Or to scream, to turn and to run back, run back up the stairs and back into the safety of the silent room. But something forced me to stay, something drew me in. I reached out, out to the door and stepped a little closer, fingers mere millimiters from it and my heart raged as my eyes left my head and breath held, caught in terrorising incarceration. I stretched a little further, a little further still, caught between the dire curioursity of awe and insidious malevolence that flooded the stairwell like an armies first breach…. and my palm touched the door. …
…..abruptly, unexpectedly all became silent once more, and the dim rectangular light retracted. Not my breath, stopped tight in my lungs, nor the rampaging tumultuous pounding of my heart, made a single sound. Quiet… as death, as if all time stopped and all things ceased to be.
Noiseless like a vacuum
Red light exploded from the seams and a demonic roar came thundering from beyond the backlit door
“----------!!!! LETtt ....MEEEee …..INNNNNnn !!!!-----------”
The door rattled uncontrollably shaking violently as the voice pounded through the gaps in the wall spitting a rage as it burst though the stairwell vibrating the very floor I stood on and tore through my already shattered nerves like rusted razored claws. The voice was not human, not real, but more alive than I had ever heard, more alive than I wanted to acknowledge, venomous and broken and sinister. It wanted me, wanted my soul, wanted to rip through my chest and ravage my insides intent on never stopping until I was a mere shell, I knew this, I didn’t know how, but my every being told me so. I couldn’t, I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t know what to do, I was paralysed in fear and as the words were spat, as the snarl reverberated around the room bouncing off all the walls and attacking from all sides, gravity broke, and chaos vibrated its screeching menace throughout, tossing and turning my helpless body, turning the room, my mind, the stairs, the door, everything, in the very fabric of the space I existed, all spinning uncontrollably in dissolute desperation.
