04-27-2014, 12:25 AM
It was a horror, a driving panic. The thing, beast, man before her was…enormous. Called her chosen, warned her to be strong. Elise tried to scream, but nothing came. No air in her lungs, her bright eyes going too-wide as the ground beneath her voided, sending tumbling backwards through even more nothing. It was like drowning, her lungs refused to work.
When she woke, it was with a gasp, ringing in her ears, on her stomach in a bed she did not recognize. Her room was not hers, it was not her own. That ringing, too, it was not her phone. And yet, here it sat, just beside her hand, buzzing like her life depended on it. And, perhaps, it did. From this angle, out of the corner of her eye, she could see past torn drapery to the bloody world beyond.
It did not help quell her fears.
“What is this,” she whispered, touched the phone. It rang with an unknown number, and yet she felt compelled to answer. The message…much like the awful thing from her dream, held no comfort for her. Her brothers, her brothers.
She was out of bed in a rush, phone clasped in white knuckles as she barreled down the hallway. Doors were burned, ancient ash gathering in their empty rooms beyond. Down the stairs, the kitchen was obliterated. She couldn’t even find the stove.
The front door was gone, missing entirely, and beyond it she saw…hell. She approached her porch with horrified awe, the red, rolling sky above. Buildings broken and crumbling below it, and she felt something in her back begin to ache. Thin fingers came to her mouth as tears strung, made her nose itch.
Go to the park, she thought to herself. Maybe the boys made it early, maybe they’d gotten the same call. If they were there, they would be all right.
Her bare feet barely felt the concrete of the road as she took of, heading for the only place she could think to go. Even if she didn’t understand, couldn’t understand the dream, the phone or it’s message, she would find her brothers.
X
James wanted to touch the robes, curious, endlessly and always. But he couldn’t make himself move, and that made him even more curious. What was this man, and where was he?
The ground swallowed him, and he fell with his hands reaching for the place he had been standing. A dream, his mind informed him. He let his eyes fall shut.
When he woke it was slow, to an annoying, piercing sound that had him floundering for the device making it. It wasn’t until the phone was in his hand, angry and loud, that he saw the state of his dorm room. Or what he thought had, at one point, been his dorm room. He frowned, slowly easing himself out of bed and his feet into a pair of boat-shoes. The phone continued on, and he looked down at it. Whoever it was, they were persistent. He agreed to accept the call and lifted the phone to his ear, the voice just as eerie as the cloaked man had been in his dream.
There was a park near by? When the message was complete he took pause, going over to look out the window. What he saw startled him, and his free hand pressed against the glass.
How had he slept through so much?
When he made it outside, the sky above him seemed too angry to look at. He kept his eyes down as he walked, aimless, and yet with purpose. The park seemed to materialize before him, unsure of how he’d gotten there or when. He slowed to a stop, seeing others. A taller man with blond hair approaching a girl, another girl being shaken by a young man. A third girl, a redhead, running with panic in her eyes and something strange about her, warping her back.
“Um,” he offered, looking around at the others. “Okay?” She seemed to slow when she spotted others, eyes darting around rapidly. She wasn’t happy, she looked terrified. He felt for her.
If he wasn’t half convinced he was still asleep, he’d be afraid too.
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