approx. 300 words
The Dangers Of Darkness
Dalton reached out and couldn't see his hands in the dense gloom. He was trying hard to control his urge to scream as the deepening shadows swallowed him. A cloying odor stung his nostrils, filling his throat with bile; he had to fight not to be sick. The clinging air reeked with a sadness that he couldn't understand. Not knowing where he was, he was afraid to move and just as afraid to be caught standing still. An ache filled his heart and body as his tainted vision began to clear. My god, was this ...
Hysteria rose within him as the space ahead took on a scarlet-hued glow. Surging illusions, cloaked in icy-cold, pushed at him from the rear, slowing his actions. Figures began to emerge from the darkness, making their way through tangible webs.
Dalton's hystrionics were frozen in his throat. Simultaneously he felt torrid heat from the reddened mist ahead and iciness from the melancholia at his back. Transparent spectres infiltrated the apparition, eeriely promising extinction. They drifted aimlessly through his mind. Feelings of desperation and despair cut sharply through the thickness of gothic depression to Dalton's core. They wanted his soul!
His feet were heavy, as though implanted in the ground. Devastation began to embrace him, determined to follow ... but follow what? His flesh turned frigid in the moist ambience, as did his mind. Blood began to flow from nowhere in red-hazed streaks, reaching out for him!
A sparkling white cloud invaded the shadows, offending and dispelling them. Serenity was consuming the sadness while the bloody flow was staunched right before his eyes. Suddenly there was a sword in his hand and his fight returned. Now prepared to do battle he valiantly began slicing through the rapidly retreating darkness, stilling the shrieks of insanity.
Cathy Bollhoefer
copyright April2006