Background info:
It is present day, only 2 days until Christmas. Earlier this morning you got into another fight with your parents and foolishly ran away-with nothing. Along the road a blizzard suddenly appears, and you are stranded.
Little do you know who's waiting within the snow...
It is a bitterly cold night. Tiny flakes of snow falling in insane amounts flutter around you like a plague, blinding you so that even the area directly in front of you is a blur. You trudge through banks of knee-high snow, white and impassable, with nothing but a thin, soaking-wet sweatshirt on. The cold bites easily through it, frosting your skin in a layer of ice. You can feel the hairs on your arms uncomfortably sticking straight up, nearly puncturing the material with a billion tiny holes.
The temperature is at most 20 degrees, probably less, and you figure it won't be long before you're either forced to curl up in a foxhole or die from the cold.
You pause. On second thought, either way you'll die. Not like the snow would do much to keep you warm with a sweatshirt that was wet and would just absorb more melted snow.
You sigh with nervousness, your breath coming out as foggy little icicles. You can imagine what the news will say tomorrow, the surprise and shock on your parents' and friends' faces.
"_, age 16, died in a freak blizzard when she stupidly ran away from home in the middle of winter without so much as a coat."
You roll your eyes, shaking and shivering with every step.
"This is ridiculous," you mumble. "Of course this comes out of nowhere. Of course! And of course it has to happen today- when I finally decide to get out of here, and now here I am- in the middle of a dang blizzard!"
You want to scream, but even if you do it's unlikely you'll hear yourself over the intense roar if the storm. And that's the point, isn't it? To hear yourself letting your anger out?
Instead, you growl, angrily kicking the snow though it does little.
You can't believe how stupid you are. "Who in their right mind runs away without a coat in the middle of winter? Or without anything else for that matter?" you think to yourself.
The blizzard continues to pound you, and you can feel yourself freezing. You can't tell if you still have toes- you can't feel them anymore when you try to move them. Or your fingers, even though they are securely locked in a nest of wet sweatshirt in your crossed arms. Like that helps.
You keep your head down, but it does little for you- you don't even have a hood.
It's nothing short of a miracle that you are still alive.
You scold yourself relentlessly, but in time decide that it would be best to at least think about how to get out of this. Your options are limited, but there has to be something. Anything. You've already wasted this much time cursing about your fate.
Like a lightbulb, it dawns on you.
"There's got to be a patrol around here somewhere."
Because of your location and previous blizzard deaths, the town decided to send out patrols to search for anyone lost in storms like this.
With a small hope to hold on to, you feel your energy boost and you pick up speed, if only slightly. If you're to see the patrol, you'll have to keep your head up.
Cringing, you lift it into the freezing winds. You feel it burning your cheeks with ice, and you could swear there's icicles on your nose-like that Snow Miser from "The Year Without a Santa Clause". That was always your least favorite Christmas special, although its close to your favorite now. It used to scare you when you were little, though for what reason two misers were scary to a 4 year old is beyond you.
Your favorite special is on tomorrow. The story of Jack Frost and his endeavors with the girl he liked so much. You used to love him, but now you aren't so sure.
You sigh sadly. Christmas Eve is tomorrow.
"How selfish I am," you think to yourself. Then you shake your head again. You would've slapped yourself if your hands could've moved that far.
"Focus!" You coach yourself.
You peer through your frozen lashes, looking for any blobs or color that aren't white.
For what seems like a lifetime, you see nothing. You're losing hope, and fast. For every second you're out here, you get colder, your body gets more numb with each slow step.
You are ready to cry, to collapse and die...
But then you see something!
A tall, seemingly black figure only a few feet away!
You nearly squeal in happiness. This is it! You will survive!
"Hey!" You shout as loudly as you can manage. Your teeth chatter uncontrollably; your cheeks are red and your lips blue.
"Hey! Can you hear me? I need help!"
You watch closely. The figure begins to move towards you- but not fast. In fact, it's moving even slower than you are, and it's clearly more able-bodied than you.
The thought disturbs you, a slight feeling of fear slowly coming over you.
"If it's a patrol, wouldn't it want to help me? It'd be rushing towards me by now."
You yourself slow as the figure approaches. Suddenly, like a spell, you become completely frozen in your tracks, unable to move, but whether that is because of the storm or the man, you can't be sure.
The storm ceases, but only around him, and now, as he is just 2 feet from you, you too.
You decide, with great reluctance, that it is the man.
You watch as his unnerving black lips curl into a sinister smile, framed by two piercing yellow eyes and a wide nose. His skin is blacker than coal, tinted with shades of gray. His hand sweeps across his body in an introductory fashion as he mockingly bows.
"Hello, my dear."
His voice is sleek and smooth, carrying tones of undeniable evil and wretchedness. Without another thought, you know that his life has been spent on creating suffering among others. You can almost see visions of him strangling and suffocating happiness, crushing dreams and replacing them with scarring nightmares that would haunt for life.
You've never felt so afraid. This man makes Freddy Kreuger look like a mouse; Jason a bunny and his sword a feather. You feel the horror from every second of your life spent being afraid rushing onto you now, a pressure so great you feel you might explode. He is the original fear. The very root of it; the essence of everything that scares anyone. You remember being afraid of someone like this when you were little. Illusions and shadows playing across your bedroom walls; noises in the closet.
You cannot speak, cannot do anything as he stretches his black hand out to you. Usually a welcoming gesture, but it is far from it.
"Come now, we can be the best of friends."
You back away swiftly, a few of your instincts kicking in despite what your mind says.
"W-who are you?"
You barely manage to speak through the mental layers of darkness around you.
The man clucks his tongue disapprovingly, slicking his hair back and grinning slyly.
"I think you know. After all, you used to believe in me once. It appears...you do again."
He disappears.
For a moment you panic, and then, as if slipping from space, a cloud of swirling black dust flies at you with speed greater than a jet plane. Its particles sting your eyes, and everything you've ever feared appears before you.
Men with knives and guns, terrifying bloody faces with soulless eyes, feral packs of animals slavering viscous fluids. With wind even fiercer than the raging snowstorm you had just escaped from the particles blow around you, tearing and whipping at your hair and clothes. You can't even scream, too afraid and helpless. You never thought you'd wish you were back in that snowstorm.
You feel a sense of dark, brutal coldness looming over your shoulder as it finally stops. Not natural coldness like that of the snowstorm or winter, but a new, eerily unfamiliar coldness that is evil and burns full malice.
You bury your head in your hands, collapsing to the snow covered ground. You sob uncontrollably, sounding much like a two year old once again.
You hear footsteps, deliberate and steady, approaching you from behind like a stalking black shadow in a dark alley.
He has become solid again, and you wince in fear as he leans into your ear, his malicious breath cascading onto your neck.
"So tell me..."
He brushes his pointed nails across your frozen cheek, leaving faint black scratches, the flesh instantly becoming colder. You didn't think that was possible.
"Who am I?"
Your squeeze your eyes shut, streams of tears caressing your face uncomfortably. You resist the urge to run, for you know it will be in vain. He has you. Your one and only hope is to obey him, as terrible and dangerous as that is.
"Y-you're...the boogeyman. Y-y-"
He laughs lowly, chilling you to the bone and freezing you mid sentence.
"Yes...my dear..."
He creates a turbulent tornado of the black dust again, made up of ashen horses galloping in a death dance, whispering and screaming nightmares into your ears in varying pitches.
Their ears fold menacingly back onto their heads; their black teeth glisten with drops of red; their eyes hurt to look at.
You scream as the darkness forcibly overwhelms you, you hear the whinnies of the angry horses and laughs of the boogeyman. A name that until now carried little weight besides a good laugh.
The final thing you hear before you completely lose your consciousness and most likely your sanity:
"I am Pitch Black."
Your world becomes just that.
Author's Note:
Hope you enjoyed this first chapter! It was actually originally written months ago and posted at that time on deviantart. As I recently picked it up again, I decided to post it here. Please review! :)