"Dark Halls" (ice story)

[ice]

Ok... I'm going out on a major, major limb here. I try very hard to never show my work (besides DA) because I dunno. I'm extremely nervous about showing my work for some reason.

I've spent a considerable amount of time on this story. I've edited it and re-edited it multiple times, and I've had some other people edit it too. Also, I've redone the ending three times, and then edited it some more. I do not consider this the greatest piece I've done... and I'd like to ask that you guys leave the harsh critiqueing in the closet, because I don't write for publishing, I just write because I've got an idea in my head and it needs to be recorded. I'm not saying don't critique, because I do want it to be critiqued.. just not really harsh.

Sorry, I rambled there for a bit. So, here it is *edit: crap. It won't take my indentations even if I just use spacebar.. so it's a bit harder to read, because I tend to use really short paragraphs a lot*:



A gentle breeze woke him up. He peered out the open window, it was just about dawn, and the sky was a light pink.
He raised himself slowly from the bed and lowered his bare feet to the cold floor. Quietly, as to not disturb his wife, he put his clothes on and closed the window, something didn’t seem right. It had been an unusually warm night, and this morning the temperature had barely changed.
It was still dark, even though the sun was rising, so he grabbed a flashlight and went down the unlit hall. It seemed everything became darker as he went down the hall, and the hall felt longer than usual. He had always hated going down this hall when it was dark, there were no lights in it due to a construction error.
Slowly he trod down the hall, the flashlight leading his way. On he walked; the long hall still raised the hairs on his neck. Ever since the first time he set foot in it, he had felt an ominous presence in it.
A sudden chill tingled up his legs and through his spine. He stopped in his tracks; there were no windows or vents in this hall.
He turned around, and as he did so, the door to his room squealed shut. He quietly cursed to himself, and continued down the long hall.
The flashlight gleamed lightly off the walls – strangely the pictures seemed further apart than he remembered. Focusing the beam to the cold wood below, he continued on. He didn’t know whether he was walking slower than usual or what, but the hall was longer than he thought it should have been.
“A trick of the mind,” he thought, and silently adjusted his shorts.
Just then, he heard a crash behind him in the black recesses of the hall. He turned around to see what it was. His flashlight gave him an inadequately short glimpse before the bulb flickered out.
What he saw made him shiver. A little black figure crouched above a shattered picture frame of his wife and himself. Again he cursed at his imagination; it might just have been a slight tremble that he didn’t feel. It wasn’t the first time a picture had fallen off the wall unexpectedly. Either way though, he didn’t like it.
He swiftly started his solemn walk down the horrid hall, but stopped suddenly.
What was that he heard?
Not daring to look behind him, he listened. Nothing.
Taking a little step forward, he heard it again. He stopped again, and standing as still as he could, he heard it. He knew it couldn’t be himself.
It sounded like faint breathing and a sinister dripping at odd intervals.
He quickly went through all the possibilities in his mind: what breathed, dripped, and was small and black?
He didn’t care to find out, and started into an all out sprint down the hall.
His footsteps resounded through the hall, but whatever was behind him never made even the slightest shuffling sound.
“Oh my god,” he thought to himself as he was running, “I should have reached the end of the hall even before I started running…”
Suddenly he felt a searing pain in his calf. He lost his balance and came crashing down into what should have been wood. Instead he landed upon a soft, spongy-like material.
He instantly scrambled onto his feet and tried to run, but he fell again. It was almost impossible to even stand on this weird material. He scrambled as fast as he could.
Thwack! He collided with a gelatinous object covered in cold, sticky mucous.
Looking up instinctively in the pitch dark, he saw three reddish-yellow gleaming orbs, almost like evil eyes glaring into the depths of his soul.
Screaming, he was sucked into the spongy ground.

***

A faint green light emanated from an unknown source.
Everything was hazy, and he slowly started coming to his senses.
He was suspended in nothing. The pain in his leg was gone, but he couldn’t feel anything anywhere. He tried to lift himself up to look, but he couldn’t; something he couldn’t see or feel was binding him down… or up. He didn’t know which direction was up or down.
With all his might he struggled with his invisible constrictions. He tried to open his mouth to call out, he couldn’t. Something kept that shut too.
He tried to have a look around, but he couldn’t even move his eyes. His focus was fixed right in front of him, focused on the light green nothingness.
He became panicked and tried to calm himself by taking in deep breaths as he usually did, but then the force of a thousand tons of realization crushed his soul; he wasn’t even breathing.
It was as if his whole body was frozen, but he couldn’t even tell how cold it was.
He began to understand why he didn’t feel pain in calf, he began to understand everything – like massive abysmal blackness in a deep crevice, the only way to know what was down there is to know is by prior knowledge, whether from experience or word of mouth – he only knew he had a pain in his leg because he retained a memory of the previous hour… or was it a day? Or a week?
How long had he been frozen in this green void?
Where was his wife? His friends? His parents? His boss? His home? His world?
Maybe he had been frozen like this for a dozen eons.
Maybe this was what the reality of life is, and all that you see, feel or know is just imaginary?
A horrible pain sliced through him; maybe he doesn’t even exist in this form?
How many levels of realization would he need to pass through to really know himself, what he is?
As suddenly as he realized everything, he forgot everything.
He knew he was supposed to remember something, but what was it?
He wanted to scream the most primal scream, but he couldn’t.
What was his wife’s name?
Did he even have a wife?
What was his name?
Where did he live?
Did he ever live?
The faint green light was growing dim. He couldn’t even remember what his body had looked like.
In a flash the green light faded out, and all his brain functions ceased.
He was no more.

***

Off in the distance he heard a soft humming noise. He slowly opened his eyes, he on his back and was very cold. Above him, a fiery circle of light glared into his eyes. It only illuminated him, the rest of the room was pitch black. He glanced around the room but couldn’t see anything, the light was destroying his night vision. The room smelled metallic, and it stunk of disinfectants. There was also a slightly sweet smell he couldn’t place, a decadent smell.
Gradually his gaze shifted from the room to his body. He was naked, and a thin black line was drawn across his abdomen, just above his navel. His hands were by his side, but they were bound down with an old leather strap to the bed.. or table. He was lying upon an extremely cold stainless steel table. Looking past his hands, he saw there was a white cloth over his thighs, and he couldn’t see beyond that, as the small circle of light didn’t go beyond that.
Shifting his gaze once again to the light, he focused on it. The intense light burned his eyes, but he felt a certain calm staring into it – it made him forget his current reality. He wasn’t so much scared or worried about his reality, but he just wanted to forget… he wanted to forget and to remember what he had forgotten, but he couldn’t. He was strapped to a cold steel table and that was all he knew, until a muffled clicking sound disrupted the calm.
Some static followed the clicking, and there was silence again. Very slowly he started to hear a symphony playing. It was a strange tune he’d never heard before; it was a beautiful tune that trumpeted into powerful crescendos and went back to the peaceful intervals. He became entranced in the tune, staring at the bright light above his head. Rocking back and forth he listened to it. It filled his head: he couldn’t see, feel or hear anything except the music. He didn’t even realize it had ended until a dark shadow crossed his face. Snapping out of his trance he looked around and saw a tall figure clothed all in starchy white.
He looked upon the figure numbly, as if it wasn’t even there. Slowly and deliberately the shadowy figure raised a gloved hand, revealing a shiny silver instrument. Blinking a few times, he saw the shadow was revealing to him a razor sharp scalpel which had a terrible serrated pattern. His mouth clenched shut, he watched the malignant figure place the edge of the scalpel right in the middle of his stomach, on the thin black line.
Suddenly an airy, lilting voice whispered, “Relax, shut your eyes. Relax, shut your eyes. Relax, shut your…” and its voice faded as he did as he was told.
He felt a cold biting sensation along the line on his stomach, but still he held his eyes shut. After a minute, he didn’t feel anything more and peeked with one eye. He saw the figure removing what looked like long strands of dark steaming spaghetti being pulled from his stomach. Immediately his eyes snapped open and he screamed.
“Hush, child, hush… I’m not hurting you, I’m making you better… you must believe me. I’m not hurting you, I’m making you better…” and again the voice faded out. It had an extraordinary way of calming him, “Shut your eyes… I’m not hurting you… Shut your eyes…”
Again, he shut his eyes and clenched his mouth shut. He felt powerless when the shadow whispered.
He heard a damp snipping sound and then some gurgling. Not opening his eyes, he felt it filling him with something fantastically strange. Finally he peeked to see what the figure was doing: it was stuffing him full of iridescent black seeds.
“Close your eyes, we’re almost done here… Close your eyes…”
And he shut his eyes again. He was sensationless for a few minutes until the figure stuck a long needle into his thigh. Slowly, gradually he drifted into sleep.

***

The next morning he awoke feeling refreshed. It was only a dream, his two episodes were only a dream.
He hopped out of bed and scurried down the horrible hall and into the bathroom. Turning on the shower, he stood in front of the full length mirror and sighed. He was OK, his adventures were nothing but a bad nightmare. Pulling off his night-shirt he noticed some odd little black things on his stomach. Looking down, he froze in terror – there were twenty three evenly spaced stitches across his stomach. He tore them out of his flesh as fast as he could in furious disbelief, his warm red blood splattered onto the clean white floor below.
Feeling faint he leaned into the tub and started vomiting. He retched until he couldn’t retch any more. Wiping the spew from his lips he looked into the tub and screamed. Squirming around in the tub was a multitude of little black seeds with little green ventricles feeling their way out of the tub and down into the drain.
The sight disgusted and terrified him. Standing up, he slipped on his blood and smashed his head into the sink.
In a few hours his wife received a report from the hospital. It stated that because of complications from cerebral tumor and the recent trauma to his brain caused by the fall, they could not save him.
When she got back home, she trudged through the hall and removed a small bottle of sleeping pills from the bathroom. Popping as many as she could into her mouth, she shut her eyes and slowly drifted into a deep, calm sleep.

[creepylittleshit]

That was very creative. I really liked it.

[MrMaelstrom]

My version on your quote, m'kay?

Originally Posted by ice

A gentle breeze woke him up.
He peered out the open window.
It was just before dawn, and the sky was that light pink swelling upward and turning purple-blue.
He raised himself up slowly from the bed, lowering his bare feet to the cold, hard ground... ... quietly... ... as not to disturb his wife.
He put on his clothes and closed the window...
...something didn’t seem right!
It had been an unusually warm night, and, up until morning, the temperature had barely changed at all.
It was dark, the Sun still a pink, distant whisper, so he took? a flashlight and went into the unlit room. It seemed as if everything became darker as he walked on down the hall, and the hall felt longer than usual as well.
He had always hated going down this hall when it was dark.
There were no lights in because of a construction error.

Ever so slowly, he trod down the hall, the flashlight leading his way...
Down he walked into the dark narrow; the long hall raising the hair on the back of his neck!...
Ever since the first time he'd set foot in it, he'd felt an ominous presence in it, surrounding him...
A sudden chill tingled up his legs and up through his spine... He stood in his tracks... ...there were no windows or vents in this hall.......... ....... ....
He slowly turned around, and, as he did so, the door to his room squealed shut!
He quietly cursed to himself, and kept walking down the long hall.
The flashlight bounced softtly off the dim, mouldy walls.
Strangely enough, the pictures seemed further apart than he had remembered them to be before.
Trying to adjust the light to the cold wood below his feet, he kept on going...
He didn’t know whether he was walking slower than usual or if it was his mind playing tricks on him in the dark, but the hall somehow seemed longer than he remembered it to be before...
“A trick of the mind, a dejá vu,” he thought, silently adjusting his shorts.
Just then(?), he heard a crash behind him in the blackness of the hall.
He turned to see what it was...
His flashlight gave him an inadequate glimpse as the bulb flickered out of this world as well...
What he saw had made him shiver down to the bone.
A little black figure crouched above a shattered picture frame (of his wife and himself) shattered his gaze.
Again he cursed at his imagination; it might just have been a slight tremble that he didn’t feel. It wasn’t the first time a picture had fallen off the wall unexpectedly.

Maelstrom here: The original text is unchanged from now on.

[creepylittleshit]

wtf??????????????????????????

[MrMaelstrom]

Creepy: look to the above post and search for the newly added "Maelstrom edit" and search for the differences in the text up until then, ok? :wink:

[drgnlvr]

Deliciously creepy, Ice. I enjoyed the story very much!

And if it's any extra consolation, I cringed when he ripped those stiches out *shudder* (That's a good thing, though...means I was deeply into the story).

[winged_dreams]

Amazing story ice!! It made me shudder a bit. I will steal a phrase from drgnlvr. It was deliciously creepy!! Well done!

[ice]

Thanks you guys :P

[WolfMoon]

I like it, Ice!

It reminds me of O'Henry(master of the short creepy story) for some reason.

[TJTheNotSoSane]

This is a very nice work. I hope you do something with it.

[ghostposts]

Nice!!

I'd omit "He was no more." It's a given, and the previous sentence is blunt, making a greater impact.

“Oh my god,” he thought to himself as he was running, “I should have reached the end of the hall even before I started running…”

Why not try

“Oh my god,” he thought to himself as he bolted, “I should have reached the end of the hall even before I started running…”

See if you can slip in a tiny bit more show and less tell. Just a bit of a tweak, really, as it's almost there.


You have real talent. Good work. Polish and submit it! I know you don't write for publication, but it would be a shame not to share this with more readers.

[αρнσтι¢ єι∂σℓση]

It is very beauteous that I must say that it is epochal that you publish this kind of work.
It made my bones melt, which is extremely not rare, but please do consider it as a compliment.
I think the proper phrase in brackets would be (Fire story) but that is just another insignificant proposal.
As to speak of it, I think that people before me told you about the lack of action verbs. You attend to use words that are to some people boring yet to fulfill their desire you use words that are so dark their imagination wouldn't have the slightest light to explore.
My apologise, I too attend to ramble.
Please do continue on this project, and I will be a dreamer who pleases her eyes with visions of this book on a shelf in one of the bookstores she usually attend.
I apologize once more.