Welcome to Gaia! ::

This is something I plan to update now and then, so it will be like reading a story in progress. And I have a good plot lined up.

Yes. Be excited.

I'll start by posting the first and second chapters (they're very short). Remember: feedback is love!

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Chapter I.

The man in the soiled white coat removed his glasses with grubby fingers and gestured in Oliver's direction.“Seems to be resting peacefully, no?
Collin's eyes sought out his sickly comrade, whose face had taken on a waxen, deathly pallor. The skin below his eyes was sable, darkened even more so by the room’s lack of light.
“Hasn’t got all that much time left, I’d imagine. A week at best.” He redirected his attention at Collin, whose sight was still transfixed on the rhythmic yet torpid rise and fall of Oliver’s chest. He was, quite obviously, rent with the hypnotic expectation that such vital movement might cease to exist. “Hope you haven’t grown too fond of him,” the man added, with a short, dry bark that could hardly be considered as laughter.
Collin’s hand slowly crept to his face. “Why does it affect him… so differently than us?”
“Don’t you pay attention to the world around you?”
“If you could call this prison a world.”
“Don’t interrupt me.” There was silence, absolute, save for the sound of steady breathing. Oliver's was too faint and indistinct to be heard without unbridled concentration.
It took Collin a long moment to discover that this man wanted an apology. He looked into his face, a moon, blurred and rugged in the dimness. His spectacles, now refixed, glinted like two parallel stars.
“…Sorry.”
The man cleared his throat. “Well. The first thing you’ve got to understand is that you’re in no way immune to it. You’re dying as well, and you’ll end up in the same catatonic state he's in, sooner or later. This place has a manner of draining the life right out of a man, whether it be through sickness, insanity, or something ... self-inflicted. Your life - our lives - are just simply…mercilessly extended.” Another bark. “But as to why he’s very near death and you’re just peaches, I’ll stand by my old theory.”
“And what is that?”
“I venture to guess that your friend is not quite the most veritable ray of sunshine. Doesn't put a high price on his own head – you see where I’m going with this?”
Collin paused in thought. Back in Salvestein, he had never bothered to get to know Oliver. He was certain he'd never been a "veritable ray of sunshine," but he knew Oliver couldn't have been as despondent as he was now, two long years after their incarceration. But Collin knew too well that his comrade had a lot to be heavyhearted about.
"True," Collin remarked finally.
“Well, there it is. Life holds nothing for him any longer. He sees no reason behind living. Therefore he allows it to dangle precariously in front of him, and no longer does he have the will to fight for it.”
“Are you saying I’m okay… that I'm okay because I’m happy?” The concept was ludicrous to Collin. One suffering from the plague is not cured just because he or she is at peace. Besides, his usual air of optimism hadn’t resurfaced in ages.
“You don’t believe me either.” The man stated, then laughed. “Well, if you’re not willing to accept what I say, then don’t bother me with stupid questions.”
Collin thought it best to say nothing, and his anxious eyes fell back on Oliver’s empty visage.

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Chapter II

The envenoming memory of his family brands his thoughts. Even when he presses the matter from his mind, it dances like a paper kite on the fringes of his consciousness.

His mind has become unbearable.

His beleaguered thoughts seethe like a desert storm within a clogged hourglass. The storm is not always noticeable: it fades in and out spontaneously and sub-audibly like static. From somewhere far away he can hear a heart drum out a contorted rhythm as if driven by the hands of an untalented, psychotic percussionist. He can sense sweaty, twitching hands marking the ends of two uncoordinated, motionless elephants' trunks. He notices the absence of sight: eyes lay like marbles in two sallow, unseeing sockets not unlike the dark orbs of a skull.

This is his heart, his hands. These are his eyes. But he does not know this.

He is severed from his senses. He has been robbed of his ability to understand. The only reality in existence is the murky and terrible past, and in this he finds no refuge. Instead he is left terrified and shackled to what he does not know, the ghosts of his past lurking in the shadows.


Oliver Lund is alone in the dark.

© 2007 NMG

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