Cold.
I stared at the group of shadows far off in the distance. They laughed, smiled, and seemingly had a great time. I stood off by myself, taking a moderate interest in the design patterns on the wall. What was the point in even coming to these parties anymore? No one ever bothered to talk to me anyways.
I suddenly jerked in place. The unexpected jostle snapped me out of my self induced trance.
The shadows were closer now. Their silent talks became faint murmurs. I tried to turn my attention back to the design on the walls, but that seems to have vanished. Now I stared at an empty blue sky, and the formless shadows turned and looked at me. Two white dots glowed where their eyes should’ve been, but I still did my best to ignore them.
If you ignore them, they will go away. I’ve told myself this ever since I was little, and it’s usually worked. People won’t bother someone who doesn’t give them the attention they’re looking for.
It didn’t seem to work here, as now the shades were but a few feet away from me. The details of their faces were obscured through scars and blood, though I could now make out what they’re saying.
“Darren.” All together. Not a single one out of sync.
My shoulders tensed as their expressionless stares drilled a hole straight through me. Their emotionless voices clawed at my ears as they repeated my name again and again. Crowds of people have always given me anxiety, and now scarred and bleeding shadows were all staring at me, saying my name. I found it hard to comprehend.
I gasped as the anonymous figures surrounded me.
“Darren,” they spoke again.
I grasped at my throat as my breath completely left me, and then I was wheezing. I could feel the weight of their stares pushing down on me, choking the life out of me.
“Darren!”
I opened my eyes and quickly sat up. The empty blue sky was replaced with the side of a brick building, and I felt my grip tighten on something solid and leathery. I glanced around wildly until I finally saw another human staring back at me. She had both hands on a steering wheel, and her eyebrows were slightly furrowed as she examined me.
“Darren, are you okay? You seem like you had another one of your nightmares,” she asked.
I blinked a couple of times before I brought a hand to my forehead. I wiped away some moisture and sighed.
“Just a dream. Okay.” I took a deep breath.
“Honey, are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” She put a hand on my wrist then glanced to the building before looking back at me. “This is the fourth psychiatrist you’ve been to. I want to make sure this one treats you right, and I know how hard it is for you to tell people how you feel.”
I patted her hand before I pulled away and open the car door. “I need to get over this eventually, mom. How am I gonna do it if you do all of the work for me?”
She chuckled and nodded. “Okay. Just call me when you need me to pick you up, okay?”
I sighed, still sore at the prospect of needing to be picked up. Hopefully the license suspension would end soon and I could get behind the wheel of a car again without getting into trouble.
“Okay,” I answered before I closed the car door. She gave me another concerned look, but I simply waved at her and made for the front door of the building.
The building itself wasn’t particularly tall or noticeable; a small single story brick building with a set of windows encircling the exterior. I opened the door, and the ding of a bell reached my ears.
There was a desk next to the entrance, and the woman behind it looked up as I entered. Her blonde hair was tied back into a ponytail with a pink braid, and she wore glasses. She smiled at me as I approached her.
“Hello, how can I help you?” she asked
“I’m here for an appointment. It’s with Dr. Geneveve, I believe?” I glanced over to the doorway on the other side of the desk, which seemed to lead to the offices beyond.
“Oh!” She grabbed a nearby pencil and paper. “Doctor Geneveve, he only has one appointment this morning. You’re Darren, right?”
I nodded affirmatively. “Yep.”
“Great. Just have a seat and he’ll be with you shortly.” She punched something into a nearby computer as I walked over to a rather comfortable looking couch and sat down.
I took a moment to pull out my phone and see if anyone had tried contacting me, but I unsurprisingly had no new notifications. So, rather than try to text anyone, I opened up my phone and started playing Candy Crush.
I didn’t play long before I heard the woman call my name.
“Darren?” I glanced up to the desk as I heard my name. “The doctor will see you now. Just go to room 5A.”
I nodded, standing up to make my way down the hallway. The tile floor squeaked underneath my sneakers as I counted the numbers going down the hallway.
“3A, 4A… here it is.” The door I stopped in front of had a nameplate that read ‘Dr. Geneveve, Psychiatrist.’
I put my hand on the doorknob and hesitated only for a moment before turning it. The door opened with a rush of air, and I stepped into a small office space. There was a desk, decorated with a few pictures of someone who I assumed was Dr. Geneveve. A small window that showed the street just outside the building, a large office chair with its back facing me sat in front of the desk, and a small armchair on the opposite side of the room with a glass table divided the two halves of the room.
“Yes, welcome, welcome,” a slightly high pitched voice greeted me. “Have a seat, I’ll be with you in just a moment.”
I did as he asked and sat down in the chair. I tired to look at some of the magazines on the table in front of me, but none of them really seemed interesting me. ‘Multiverse Theories for Dummies’? Who even needs that sort of thing in an office environment?
Finally, with a turn of the office chair, and I finally saw him face to face.
“So,” he began. “You must be Darren, yes?”
He was not the same as the man in the pictures. What I had pictured to be a tall, skinny doctor was instead a short, stout looking individual with garments concealing his entire appearance. I could only stare, slack jawed as he spoke to me.
“Uhm….” I fumbled with my thoughts for a moment.
The doctor suddenly clapped his hands. “Come now, out with it! We don’t have all day, and if you’re not the patient I came here to see, then I have other things to be doing! Are you Darren, or are you not?”
“Oh! Uh, yes.” I answered finally, taking a moment to examine the doctor more closely. He wore a hood that covered his entire head and obscured his face in darkness. The robe even covered his hands so that I didn’t seen them when he clapped. Next to the desk, I could see a large backpack that had to be twice as large as the man himself. It had odd trinkets strapped onto it. Keychains, creepy masks, and… was that a jetpack? “I’m sorry, I just… well, you weren’t exactly what I was expecting.”
The doctor chuckled. “Appearances aren’t everything, Darren. Some of the most outstanding and intellectual people of our time had less than appealing looks, yes?” He shook his head. “But enough about them, we’re not here to talk about other people we’re here to talk about you!” A notepad and a pencil appeared, which he grasped with the sleeve of his robe. “Now tell me, whyever have you come here to see me today?”
I blinked. “I kind of thought you already knew. I mean, we talked on the phone,”
“Up-up-up,” The doctor waved his sleeve. “Short and vaguely detailed phone calls can only do so much. I want you to tell me in detail what it is that you think needs fixing up here.” He tapped the eraser of his pencil to his hood. “Once you’ve done that, we’ll see what we can do about it.”
“All right.” I shifted in my seat slightly as I tried to think of what my problems were. “I have a rather hard time around other people.”
He wrote something down. “Yes, go on then.”
I thought some more. “Well, it goes a bit beyond communication. It just seems that I never have anything in common with anyone I talk to, or no one out there really cares if we do have something in common.”
Another scribble. “Uh huh. Keep going.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t this the part where you usually give me some sort of advice?”
He shook his head. “I want to hear about you first. Once I’ve heard that, we’ll establish if something is particularly wrong with you or not.”
All right, well that wasn’t something any of the other psychiatrists tried. “Okay. I just feel so distant from everyone. So disconnected and unimportant.”
He finally put down the notepad and pencil and leaned back in his chair. “Tell me, Darren, do you think it would be better if you could be connected to everyone?”
“I’m not sure. I mean, I suppose it would be a lot easier to tell what people are thinking, and communication definitely wouldn’t be an issue anymore.” I looked up into the darkness of his hood, and within it I saw a long, fanged smile.
“That’s good, you’ll do perfectly then.” He slid out of his chair and stretched his arms over his head. He was smaller than I thought, and I questioned if he even came up to my knee.
“I’ll do perfectly? What do you mean?” I tensed my grip on the arm chair slightly.
“Now now my boy, not all questions can be answered straight away. No, see, some require a little more of a... ‘demonstration,’ if you will.” The man raised his sleeve, and I felt my body lock up.
“W-what—” I tried to get a word out, but my voice was quickly choked off.
“Tut tut, you leave the work to me. I just want you to relax and feel what it’s like to see with your mind’s eye.” He lifted his other hand, and my body began to float in the air. “You won’t find any trouble communicating with people soon, I can assure you of that.” I began to feel a warmth building up within me. It was dull at first, but then began to grow hot. Below, I could see the small man’s fanged smile, and above it a pair of slitted cat eyes. “Ta ta for now. Don’t forget to write! I’ll be seeing you soon.” Then he brought his sleeves together, and darkness consumed me.
Pain.
It was immediate and intense. I could feel every part of my body, every nerve ending, screaming in agony.
I tried to move, to writhe, but it felt wrong. What little I did move, did not feel in any way like a way I moved before.
I twisted, trying to find some point of reference, or sight in this blighted, painful world, but that only brought me more pain.
I had never felt so awful in my life.
That’s when my body began to move for me.
I could feel myself being twisted, stretched, bent, viciously torn apart only to be put back together again by some unseen force. I tried to scream. I wanted to let someone know where I was, anyone, to come and put an end to this torture. What I instead heard was a garbled, gurgling sound that was not my voice.
Just as it began to die down and I thought it was finally over, it came crashing back like a tidal wave.
Back and forth, I thrashed about, trying to grip something or to force whatever it was that was causing this immense pain to go away, but I could only produce irregular and unfamiliar spasms.
I was stuck in some sort of enclosed space, and I desperately wanted out.
There had to be something… I felt around. I pushed, I thrashed, until I finally felt something soft. I threw myself at it with all I had, and felt it give away under my assault. Now I was rising, pushing through something that was giving its all to hold me back.
Pushing and pushing, I continued until finally I pushed through into light. I felt something above me as I merged, and it toppled over with a crash, but I was out. There was light, and I could see the sky overhead.
Despite my efforts, I couldn’t pull myself completely out of whatever it was that I was stuck in. I felt freedom only to be stopped just short of experiencing it completely. I shouted, I wanted to let someone know that I was here. A gigantic, inhuman roar burst forth from me. I couldn’t even process that as, finally, I toppled over and smashed onto the ground. The earth around me shook with the impact. I let out a heavy breath, and the darkness of unconsciousness consumed me once more.
“...Is this the place? They said they heard it around here?” A distant, muffled voice reached my ears. I didn’t exactly open my eyes, but it was as if my vision suddenly flicked back on. What the hell was happening to me?
“Yeah. It sounded pretty big, whatever it was, so stay on guard.” Another, deeper voice answered.
“If it sounded so big, then why did they send us to go check it out? In the Everfree forest, no less!” The other voice responded.
“We need to determine if it’s a threat, first off.” The deep voice finished with a huff. “Besides, do you really want to disobey an order from the queen? She’s got enough on her plate with the ‘resistance’ as is.”
“I guess not.” The original voice answered.
None of what they said made sense to me, but I was so happy to hear the voice of another human being. I needed them to find me, judging by the lingering pain I was in some serious need of medical attention.
I heard some nearby bushes rustle. “Okay, it came from around here— Sweet jelly sacks, what is that?!” I heard one of them shout in a panic. I tried hard to turn my head, to get a look at my saviors.
“It’s moving! Kill it!”
‘Kill it?’ What?
I felt something like a shock hit me on the back of my head. I twitched away from it, summoning the strength of whatever muscles I knew how to move to get away from the pain. It wasn’t nearly enough, as the electric feeling came back again. I heard a thump followed by the deep voice again. “Are you crazy? You don’t know what that thing is!”
I wanted to reach out, to try and get away from these crazed people. So I threw out my arm towards them to try and push them away.
What I got instead was a much louder, much more wet thud as my ‘arm’ came into contact with one of my assailants. I heard an excruciating scream, one that was quickly cut off with a solid cracking sound.
“B-by the queen…” The one I hadn’t hit mumbled.
Finally I gained a small bit of control of my new muscles, I turned to see some sort of black, blue eyed four legged horse thing staring at me.
“H-he… it… y-you…” The horse started backing away.
Not far off, I could see something that looked similar to him. It laid in a heap at the base of a tree, its body cracked and broken. Green liquid pooled underneath of it.
I couldn’t even begin to understand why or how this thing was talking to me, but as of right now it was the only thing I could understand in a world where nothing made sense.
Please. I didn’t mean to do it. Please help me, I’m in so much pain.
That’s what I wanted to say, but what came out instead was a low groan.
That prompted the horse to take off running into the forest like hell was at his hooves. I reached out to him, but he spread wings I hadn’t even seen before and took to the sky, out of my reach.
I turned again, and finally found the muscles I needed to rise up off of the ground. I had the chance to look down at myself.
I towered over everything. The trees all around me were like small toothpicks, and I could gaze at the horizon in every direction. What was once my human body had been replaced by a long, tubular worm-like carapace that descended into a deep hole far below me. The ‘arms’ I used earlier were long, lethal looking tentacles. I had no way of looking at my face, but I could only assume that I looked like a monster.
I turned to see a mountain far in the distance, with some sort of green, glowing object near its peak.
I didn’t know where I was, but I wasn’t home.
I leaned back and raised my head to the skies. Then I let out a long, drawn out roar.
What’s happening?!
