The Creature in the Well (9) : While Destiny City has a modern water system, it’s not uncommon to see decorative wells around the city. Often in parks or around gardens, they grant a peaceful, countryside flair to the otherwise busy metropolis. Most days, they blend into the background. Not today. Maybe you heard a powerful, fierce splash, like something smacking violently against the water, or maybe it was the unnerving croak that echoed from deep below, but something has clearly gotten trapped in the well. Sometimes, there’s the distinct sound of something clawing, scratching, climbing–desperate to get out. The noise its making is deep enough to vibrate through the ground. If you go to investigate, you’ll see nothing but a pair of golden, snakelike eyes staring back up at you. Whatever it is, its body is completely submerged under the water, but just looking into its eyes is enough to petrify someone. There’s something hypnotic about it, something that seems like it’s drawing you into the well. And why shouldn’t you climb in? What’s stopping you? Danger is forgotten; the creature in the well has made a target of you. Hopefully you have someone to pull you out of the trance–or, maybe if you’re strong enough, you can do it yourself. If you lose the battle with the creature, you will fall unconscious just as you hit the water in the well; you will feel the sensation of something coiling around you, crushing you, and then–blackness. You will wake up in a hospital with a day lost and no memory of what happened in the well, or how you were pulled out. You only have bumps and bruises, and when you close your eyes you’re haunted by the chilling golden eyes in the well. If you return to it, you’ll find nothing but a strange, croaking echo.
She had stopped at one of her favorite park gardens after work tonight. The weather was cooling off, finally, and things had been getting a little bit better. Settling down. It was hard to tell why she struggled so hard with things at the start of the semester, and she’d turned it over in her mind plenty of times, but Mel finally found herself in a decent space, both mentally and emotionally.
Work was picking up–her boss had talked to her about promoting her to a regular staff position once she finished out her program at the end of this school year–and school was picking up again. She was back for another round with a couple of her favorite professors, studying up on subject matter that she loved.
Even her Knight life had been getting a little bit better. Things were progressing decently on her Wonder, her patrols were…well, they were patrols. “Smooth” wasn’t exactly a word she could use to accurately describe it, but at least they weren’t as unpleasant now given the improvement in the water. She was getting better at fighting and using her magic though, and on top of all that she was meeting new people and making connections among her powered peers. She learned some interesting things about a couple of people already close to her, and it made her curious to know if there were others among her family, friends, and acquaintances that were also powered in some way, shape or form.
Settling in front of the now familiar well, the blonde took a deep breath, stretching out briefly before finally taking a seat on the bench.
“If only it were as easy as just asking them point blank,” she laughed lightly.
A nearby splash wiped the smile right off of her face. In fact, she went from perfectly relaxed to completely tense in a matter of seconds, and she glanced over at the only possible source of a splash in her immediate vicinity.
The well.
“Oh, don’t do this to me,” she said with a grimace as the scene before her brought back a frightful scene of a girl crawling up out of a well. Why she agreed to watch that movie, to this day she’ll never understand. It came back to haunt her, without fail, throughout Halloween season. There was something about DC during the holidays, and she recalled her conversation with a certain agent that reminded her that she really should learn to expect this kind of thing.
The sound of a splash echoed up and out of the well once more, a bit louder now. More fierce, almost demanding her attention.
Maybe it was an occupational hazard, not to mention her heaping amounts of morbid curiosity, but Mel stood and slowly moved toward the well. She heard a strange croak between splashes as she moved, unnerving and growing in frequency the closer she got. The sound of it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, but she couldn’t help but wonder what it was and why it was inside the well.
She couldn’t imagine that kind of sound coming out of a regular animal, like a dog or a cat, so she could only imagine the worst. Was it a youma, maybe? Or one of those strange non-magical creatures that always cropped up during the holidays?
Just feet from the well now, she could hear it clawing and scratching at the walls–no doubt trying to climb its way out. Her curiosity was stronger than her fear, it seemed, as she continued moving closer until she was finally looking into the well.
Golden and snakelike, the gaze that she caught from the creature down below completely froze her. She didn’t blink and barely breathed, just stared down at whatever it was. She couldn’t tell beyonds its eyes; it must have decided to settle inside the water now that it had gotten someone’s attention. No thoughts came to her, nor did any words. She simply stared for a good long moment, and eventually a thought did finally come to her.
“If you’re that curious, why don’t you go in and find out.”
It was a simple solution, she nearly smacked herself for not having it sooner. As she moved, though, she couldn’t help but wonder why that thought felt so wrong. It made the most sense, right? It was the fastest way to get the answers, she was sure of that much. In the back of her mind she could swear she could hear someone calling from a good way away, but she didn’t pay them any mind. It was the holiday, right? Maybe she was hearing things. That happened last year sometime, she vaguely recalled, so it could definitely happen again.
No, she had to focus. She had to find out about those golden eyes at the bottom of this well. So, finally, she jumped in.
The sensation of free falling was such an interesting one, she thought, and it was only as she succumbed that feeling that reality and fear gripped her once more. Her icy blue eyes went wide as she fell down, down into the depths of the well. She could feel her heartbeat in her ears, and breathing became shallow and uneven. She could barely think as she fell for far longer than she thought possible for a well in the city. She fell until her head became light and her eyes closed and gave way to darkness, and before she knew it she was swallowed by the cold depths of the water below.
Something coiled around her then, and she could feel it slowly squeezing her. Crushing her. She could still process the pain of it, and the quiet ache deep inside of her as her life seemed to flash before her. Close friends at school and at work, her new powered friends and other acquaintances she had taken a liking to and was just starting to really befriend. All the good in her life, alongside the bad.
A picture of her parents came then, as well as her brother. The four of them, happily posing for a family portrait.
Her family and Lulu, of course.
Then there was him.
And then everything went black.
1045 (gdocs)
