(*tugs this account out of its grave and dusts it off*)
Good very-early-morning, guys; long time no see. Welcome to a project of mine that's been in planning for quite a while now. When I first watched a playthrough of the horror platformer Little Nightmares, I pretty much fell in love with it, and many, many more playthroughs later, here is what that resulted in: me basically mashing two of my favourite games together.
I did originally plan to get this first chapter posted and gather some feedback on it around mid-September, but happily, I've finally managed to put this together and get it out there, so I hope it's okay and that you guys enjoy reading it :)
Fic-ward, ho!
Water.
Water everywhere, deep and dark and turbid, finding its way into airways and down scratched throats as it surged. Water, so cold it pierced every layer of skin and flesh and permeated every muscle, like a thousand blades cutting right down to the bone. Choking, spluttering around starved lungs and a desperately pounding heart, liquid ice coursing through their veins. Struggling.
Always struggling.
Nobody would come, though. Nobody ever did.
Shadows grabbed at fleshless ankles, pulling, pulling, pulling. Intent on opening the way to the watery graveyard for its newest tenant. They couldn't fight, they couldn't breathe, they couldn't-
Jesse jerked awake where they were tightly curled in on themselves in the double chest that was still too big for them. Gasping for air. Shivering. Just as violently as if they really had just been dragged under twenty feet of frigid water.
They'd woken like this so often, for so long. Clawing phantoms off their skin or grabbing at the emptiness around them as though to seize it and force it far, far away. A hostage to images that may never have existed, to grey screams and cries, trapped and buried inside the jaggedy walls and in the deepest, darkest corners of Jesse themselves, impossible to reach.
This seemed to be one of the good days, though. The ones where Jesse got to keep their sanity.
The whitish smoke of living breath drifted upwards through dead air as Jesse pushed themselves into a sitting position, mechanically running bony fingers over the self-inflicted fingernail wounds marring their flesh, tracing the blackened veins that stood out like cicatrices all the way up their emaciated arms. Ugly red scratches and the stained greyish paper of their skin, tinted a sickly purple by the light that spilled from the very ceiling and ground. Jesse was well used to that by now, though, accustomed as they were to the games this place liked to play with its occupants and the labyrinths it carved from what was left of their minds.
Its occupants...
Occupants with an s.
Others. There must have been others, once. Sometimes, when Jesse closed their eyes, the darkness presented the phantoms of distorted shapes, little more than blurry patches of colour, but still there.
Whatever those shapes had been, they wished they could see them again. Even if it was just long enough to pull them into focus. Even if the ghosts ended up coming alive. Jesse couldn't remember what pain had felt like, but pain would still be something. Something was better than nothing.
Wasn't it?
Still...when the shadow of Death comes knocking at the door, sometimes the only way to stay alive (or simply continue to exist, in Jesse's case – not that they hadn't tried over and over to just let that same shadow lead them into sweet, cool oblivion) to take a leap of faith from any window available to you.
So Jesse clambered their way out of their hunched position in the rotting wooden chest, slowly, in a perfunctory attempt to ward off those familiar stabbing pangs that flared white-hot at the slightest of movements. A reminder of the savage hunger forever sinking its talons deep into their insides and the poison pervading their very being, both doing so at a torturously gradual, almost leisurely rate. Not that it mattered much. Physical pain was something they knew, something they could handle. It wasn't as though the sensation was unwelcome anymore.
Some days, it was all they were really sure of.
(Better than nothing.)
One skeletal foot, then another, touched the ragged ground, the twitching in them a mere effect of the tremors travelling under the surface beneath them. Jesse was numb to the chill shooting through their nerves, just as their fingertips were to becoming stained red as they were dragged across the wall in their owner's wake. That blank red stare refused to so much as waver.
They'd know what they were looking for when they found it.
There might not have been any distant footsteps echoing through the endless way before them. There might not have been faint scratching noises or an almost imperceptible flickering of that dim violet glow. None that existed outside of Jesse's head.
Then again, there might have been.
But still Jesse's steps did not falter, not even for a second. They weren't the one with any right to be afraid, because whatever prowled those pathways weren't the ones with deadly potential. Not really.
After all...what is the most dangerous thing that the world has to offer if not someone who has nothing left to lose?
...I'll admit that I'm not quite sure about the way this turned out, but I'll be happy to at least try and continue it if you guys would like to see more.
Just as a sidenote, over the past few months, I've been going through the task of figuring some pretty big things out while having to stay quiet about it because I still live with my family and it's not safe for me to even let on that anything's wrong, which is...about as draining and frustrating as it sounds. However, I managed to pull myself together enough to come out as agender to my friends on November 8th and I feel quite a bit calmer and clearer now, so massive thanks to Ariza Luca, Toni42, LunarTheMooncake and Savannah-the-Caracal for their support :)
Well, I think that's everything for now, so I'll (hopefully) see you guys soon.
(*awkwardly tips hat*)
~ Rainy