03-08-2021, 05:16 PM
Of all the things she had expected to happen, from her tamest thoughts to her wildest worries, this was not one of them. The sound that answers her is so wrong, so inhuman, a growl turned groan and rattling through skin too wet to hold the sound steady, that she all but freezes in place like a startled doe to listen for it again. It is not that she wants to hear the sound a second time, in fact she is quite certain she could spend forever forgetting the way it had felt when it reached her and still never manage it. She wants to be sure that when it finds her again it comes from somewhere further.
But it does not.
She can hear movement before she hears anything else, can hear the leaves churning underfoot as he turns to the sound of her and she turns to the sound of him, twin images in a mirror split only by time. He a rotting zombie, she an empty skeleton. He lurches forward and she knows because the sound is so close now, because he is a symphony of all the sound found in any good nightmare. She recoils, stumbling over her own feet as she is simultaneously grateful to be blind and desperate to see.
Run. He says, and he sounds so like death that she would’ve done anything he asked of her. But she cannot do that. “I’m blind.” She says, and she doesn’t know why she’s telling him this except that death feels imminent and she feels lonely in it already, unwilling to go quietly in the way the sun had. “I am just as likely to run into a tree and break my neck.” She is fragile like this, but probably not that fragile.
Still, she is trying so hard to avoid him, and she is grateful for the way he is neither delicate nor graceful, for the way all of his movements are like a map in her ears as she steps cautiously aside, moving until trees appear at her shoulders or hips and redirect her back towards him. The forest is a maze, it is a trap, and she hadn’t realized it until now.
Fear explodes from her, knitting itself around her like a barrier as she continues to back away from him. She puts all of herself into it without realizing, all of this horror and fear, all of the pain in her chest threatening to strangle her long before this slavering creature can reach her. She builds it up like a wall, not even aware that she is the architect of anything more than an endless series of bad choices. And it might’ve kept her safe, too. But what do the dead have left to fear?
But it does not.
She can hear movement before she hears anything else, can hear the leaves churning underfoot as he turns to the sound of her and she turns to the sound of him, twin images in a mirror split only by time. He a rotting zombie, she an empty skeleton. He lurches forward and she knows because the sound is so close now, because he is a symphony of all the sound found in any good nightmare. She recoils, stumbling over her own feet as she is simultaneously grateful to be blind and desperate to see.
Run. He says, and he sounds so like death that she would’ve done anything he asked of her. But she cannot do that. “I’m blind.” She says, and she doesn’t know why she’s telling him this except that death feels imminent and she feels lonely in it already, unwilling to go quietly in the way the sun had. “I am just as likely to run into a tree and break my neck.” She is fragile like this, but probably not that fragile.
Still, she is trying so hard to avoid him, and she is grateful for the way he is neither delicate nor graceful, for the way all of his movements are like a map in her ears as she steps cautiously aside, moving until trees appear at her shoulders or hips and redirect her back towards him. The forest is a maze, it is a trap, and she hadn’t realized it until now.
Fear explodes from her, knitting itself around her like a barrier as she continues to back away from him. She puts all of herself into it without realizing, all of this horror and fear, all of the pain in her chest threatening to strangle her long before this slavering creature can reach her. She builds it up like a wall, not even aware that she is the architect of anything more than an endless series of bad choices. And it might’ve kept her safe, too. But what do the dead have left to fear?
splendora
how can i put it down into words,
when it's almost too much for my soul alone
@[firion]