Prolapse
1
The lights were low and milky. I sat in the room, keeping to myself, as people walked around me. I watched them pass like worker ants, single minded and ignorant of my presence. To them I didn't exist. I was only another obstacle for them to walk around. A rock in the stream parting the current of their progression.
I was making myself known whether they acknowledged me or not.
A man walked by me with sharp blond hair that cascaded over his left eye. It was all the rage, the newest fad. I scoffed to myself, running my fingers through my wavy brown hair and tossing it back. My hair was one of my few prides, entirely natural.
I began to think of what the people might be doing, where they could be going. Many people went through the Center. Everyone in our town, at least, and a few others. The Outsiders, the ones from places far away that we had never heard of. The ones with marvelous stories of intergalactic flight and battles against Star Cruisers and Battle Ships.
This was their rest stop. It was my home.
I relaxed myself, letting my body flow over the wooden chair's legs and pressing my back hard into the leathery cushion. With a yawn I closed my eyes, I didn't need to worry about my safety here.
A robot guard flew over my head with its long metallic pincers clawing the air in front of it. It wasn't like anyone would actually try something dangerous, they were there for an effect. The mayor had installed them a few years ago saying that the visitors would be at a greater ease during their rest here. And that, of course, was his main concern. All of our business was conducted with outsiders yielding great exports and a small margin of imports. It was worth it, though. We mostly exported raw material; gold, silver, aluminum, platinum; and we received highly advanced technologies of which we would never be able to produce on our own.
We had an entire world, why not trade off a few materials for the common good?
I had my eyes closed but I could still imagine the great wave of people pushing through the giant building. They would go from check to check getting all of their body parts examined and their bodies inoculated to any terrestrial viruses. And, of course, any foreign diseases were destroyed immediately. That wasn't too much of a problem, though.
Not many people knew why I sat where I did and I normally caught the same face staring at me more than once. It didn't bother me, I had a job to do and I was going to do it.
So I sat on my chair and watched as people passed me by. Humans, mainly, but occasionally the Buggles who, as their name suggests, looked like over sized flies shoved into human clothing. It was quite a disgusting site, their extremities jutting out of their orange and white shirts like mountains erupting across their thorax. I didn't even now what the appendages were for, I doubt they knew it themselves.
I shifted my body upward, I had been sliding too far down the chair to the point in which my butt had almost entirely fallen off and the ground was looking awfully near. But as I pushed myself upward something strange happened, I felt myself descending. All of my insides suddenly rushed up into my throat and for a moment I felt as if I was going to hurl. And I looked frantically around to see that everyone was still moving around me, not noticing that I was falling away and slipping into the unknown.
"Someone! Help!" I called out. My voice hadn't even been heard, the shuffling and groans of the Outsiders muted any noise that tried to overpower them. A concrete slab covered my vision in front of me, I looked up to see the sun directly overhead. A bird flew across it and for a moment I though as if it was coming to save me. Then the panel slid over and everything went black.
I realized after a moment that I had not passed out, although that would have been preferable to the blank silence that was in front of me. My eyes created ghastly white shapes in the air in front of me. I hadn't a clue what was there, was the concrete slab still blocking my escape or was something else there dooming me forever? I didn't dare to reach out and touch it.
I grabbed the chair, feeling as if it might slip out from under me in any moment. And I sat there in darkness knowing that I was still descending from the constant grinding I heard below me. But where was I descending to?
My mind ran through the possibilities. I had been working there for ten years. Had it been the anniversary of ten years that day? Who knew. But I had been doing the same job the entire time and I must say that I enjoyed it. What may have been torture for most people was something I throughly enjoyed. Watching people, and Buggers, seeing how they behaved. I watched how they moved and studied how they talked. I would create stories about their lives and occasionally listen to one of their own stories of cosmic struggle and glorious victory, how many of their stories were true was something I never dared to wonder. They kept my mind awake and alive, my imagination churning with new ideas.
I began to wonder if this descent into the abyss was reality. Perhaps I had fallen asleep and that this was only a dream from my wild imagination. But I had never seen such a vivid dream and I had never been able to consciously think in my dreams. It was real, there wasn't any denying that. But why? And where was I going?
I sat apprehensively in the chair for hours, or, at least, what felt like being hours. I didn't have a way to check the time and i hadn't even known what time the descent began. I began to grow restless, pawing the chair for some type of lever or button that could save me. Nothing. I even thought about trying to clime my way up but I decided that was impossible as well. I would never be able to climb that distance and even if i could the top was still sealed.
As all my hope had almost faded I stopped. I was still in the darkness, still clutching my chair, but we had finally stopped. The scraping noise vanished like a distant memory slipping away into the darkest chasms of my mind. I was relieved, but only for a moment.
What had caused me to stop? I was still in the dark, still lost, still miles below the surface, and still without any idea of why I was brought down there.
Then I started moving again. No. I wasn't moving, the walls around me were. They were all sliding up. I placed my hand against one to be sure and the smooth brick caressed my finger, glad to feel something beside my sweat encrusted chair. Something was happening, entire walls simply didn't move up on their own, especially when there were tons more of brick on top of them.
The walls scraped upward slowly, more slowly than I had moved downward. But there was another noise. A noise so far in the distance that I could hardly hear it. It was almost like a high pitched beep. But then I realized what it was. People were screaming, the ground was pushing them into the ceiling.
There was a sonorous gong. The ground stopped moving and the screaming ceased. My eyes were wrenched shut. I could imagine all of those people being squished by the strength of the floor. They would have pushed against it, trying with all their strength to subdue its approach but they were inevitably doomed. The Buggles and the Humans. The Space Cadets and the Star Heroes. All gone, all destroyed in moments. It would be a hell of a clean up job for the custodians.
The floor began to move back down and I descended as well. A light was shining below me through the cracks. It stung temporarily but my eyes adjusted. Finally I was going to know what was going on.
All those people had been killed. But I had been saved.
The light intensified and my hands grabbed the corner of the chair. Terrified could not explain how frightened I was, the abyss had disappeared. I had descended into the white light. I was descending into Heaven. I thought about the Hell above.
The light formed around me as the platform escaped the tunnel at last. The light was blindingly bright and I locked my eyes shut so they had a bit more time to adjust.
The room was empty. The walls were a pristine white, an almost blinding white. I shielded my eyes but the light seemed too develop from space itself. I looked around the room, the room I had traveled to through the empty corridor, and the room in which brought me a respite from inevitable death. I looked around the room.
But there was nothing.
I turned around but my chair and the lift had disappeared. I was trapped there, wherever there was.
My sleep cycle remained, somewhat, and it allowed me to keep track of time. I grew tired soon after checking the room for any possible escape and fell asleep. I was trapped. Life was hopeless.
Hunger became a problem on the third day. I woke up with the feeling of a knife piercing through my taught flesh into the empty shallows of my stomach. I was becoming desperate.
My throat was parched and my stomach was empty, those could not compare to the pains of loneliness and boredom. I laid on the floor for hours, occasionally tossing and turning and once in a while falling asleep to be cast into the realm of nightmarish horrors.
In my dreams I watched as the Humans and Buggers fought against the lifting floor, their bodies trembling in exertion as they pushed against the ceiling. They went strong for a while, the floor had pretty much stopped advancing. But the amount of strength exerted had it's toll. The man I had seen with the blond hair dropped to his knees panting. His arms quivered and sweat glimmered over his popping veins. Men continued to fall, and then the Buggers. Most had given up at that point but a few struggled to stay alive. I watched as their faces contorted, they bulged out slightly like a balloon that had been filled with too much air. And then they pop with a shower of red, all was silent.
My dreams forced me to stay awake. I couldn't face their reality again, but being alone wasn't much better.
I paced back and forth, my mind burning from nothing. Emptiness placed a cold weight on my neck. I felt light headed but at the same time as if I was falling dorward and spinning wildly. Then Toast came. He kept me alive.
"Hello, Penn! Penn Ropener!" He called for me, I looked up. I searched the room but I couldn't see anyone visible. "Penn Ropener! Hello!"
"Who's there?" I shouted, my head snapping back and forth.
There was a small giggle, "It's me, Penn! Toast! Remember me! Come on!"
There had been a figure in my childhood once on a cereal box that I often bought. Perhaps that was whom he speaking about. But that meant that the voice was coming from my own mind, I was going insane.
"Leave me alone!" I shouted. I doubted it would work, not many cases of psychosis are corrected by shouting one's self. "I don't want to talk to you," That was a lie as well. Even if he was a figment of my imagination I did enjoy the company.
"Penn. I could never leave you. Never."
"Good," I closed my eyes.
What progressed next was very strange. Toast began to bring up things I had never even heard about, but he had won my trust from hello. I was desperate.
"Penn, I'm glad we're here together. We shouldn't worry, though. Tyne will save us."
"Mayor Tyne? Why would he save us?"
"Oh, Penn. Mayor Tyne is our hero! He made this world everything that it is today. It's those Outsiders that did this to us!"
"Yes," I nodded, "Mayor Tyne will save us. The Outsiders are bad."
"We should get rid of the Outsiders, they want to take over our planet. They want to take it away from us," Toast's voice was an eerie high pitched squeak. Imagine a mouse talking and then raise the shrill a tad.
"Yes," I murmured. My stomach was causing me to keel over onto my my knees. The pain was surging back and forth from place to place in my chest.
"Penn, are you okay?" I heard Toast's voice from far away. It became fuzzy, like he was speaking through cotton.
I remember throwing up and then collapsing my head on it. It was soft and comfortable, much better than the hard floor. I had passed the line of sanity if I was still behind it, then I passed out.
My dream was a still image of Mayor Tyne standing illustriously on a podium with his short fingers sticking into the air making a peace sign. His shorts, rotund body looked as if it could roll of the stage at any moment but in my mind he was being worshiped as some sort of hero. Fat slob, I thought, and pain coursed through my body like an electric current that reached it's way down to the smallest tip of my toe. My mind was being reeducated, I realized why I was there.
"Penn," Toast's voice whispered through my mind like an echo in the cataracts of mountains, "Penn, someone is coming. The Outsiders are coming to get you, don't let them! Mayor Tyne won't be happy!"
I suppose I would've resisted you when you came into the room, my mind was weak and Toast's persuasion had been all that was needed to control me, but my stomach was too empty and my throat too dry. Mayor Tyne hadn't expected you to rescue me.
I passed out on the journey up again. I remembering being fed something warm that tasted slightly like bread. Then we reached the surface.
And here I am in your ship.
1
The lights were low and milky. I sat in the room, keeping to myself, as people walked around me. I watched them pass like worker ants, single minded and ignorant of my presence. To them I didn't exist. I was only another obstacle for them to walk around. A rock in the stream parting the current of their progression.
I was making myself known whether they acknowledged me or not.
A man walked by me with sharp blond hair that cascaded over his left eye. It was all the rage, the newest fad. I scoffed to myself, running my fingers through my wavy brown hair and tossing it back. My hair was one of my few prides, entirely natural.
I began to think of what the people might be doing, where they could be going. Many people went through the Center. Everyone in our town, at least, and a few others. The Outsiders, the ones from places far away that we had never heard of. The ones with marvelous stories of intergalactic flight and battles against Star Cruisers and Battle Ships.
This was their rest stop. It was my home.
I relaxed myself, letting my body flow over the wooden chair's legs and pressing my back hard into the leathery cushion. With a yawn I closed my eyes, I didn't need to worry about my safety here.
A robot guard flew over my head with its long metallic pincers clawing the air in front of it. It wasn't like anyone would actually try something dangerous, they were there for an effect. The mayor had installed them a few years ago saying that the visitors would be at a greater ease during their rest here. And that, of course, was his main concern. All of our business was conducted with outsiders yielding great exports and a small margin of imports. It was worth it, though. We mostly exported raw material; gold, silver, aluminum, platinum; and we received highly advanced technologies of which we would never be able to produce on our own.
We had an entire world, why not trade off a few materials for the common good?
I had my eyes closed but I could still imagine the great wave of people pushing through the giant building. They would go from check to check getting all of their body parts examined and their bodies inoculated to any terrestrial viruses. And, of course, any foreign diseases were destroyed immediately. That wasn't too much of a problem, though.
Not many people knew why I sat where I did and I normally caught the same face staring at me more than once. It didn't bother me, I had a job to do and I was going to do it.
So I sat on my chair and watched as people passed me by. Humans, mainly, but occasionally the Buggles who, as their name suggests, looked like over sized flies shoved into human clothing. It was quite a disgusting site, their extremities jutting out of their orange and white shirts like mountains erupting across their thorax. I didn't even now what the appendages were for, I doubt they knew it themselves.
I shifted my body upward, I had been sliding too far down the chair to the point in which my butt had almost entirely fallen off and the ground was looking awfully near. But as I pushed myself upward something strange happened, I felt myself descending. All of my insides suddenly rushed up into my throat and for a moment I felt as if I was going to hurl. And I looked frantically around to see that everyone was still moving around me, not noticing that I was falling away and slipping into the unknown.
"Someone! Help!" I called out. My voice hadn't even been heard, the shuffling and groans of the Outsiders muted any noise that tried to overpower them. A concrete slab covered my vision in front of me, I looked up to see the sun directly overhead. A bird flew across it and for a moment I though as if it was coming to save me. Then the panel slid over and everything went black.
I realized after a moment that I had not passed out, although that would have been preferable to the blank silence that was in front of me. My eyes created ghastly white shapes in the air in front of me. I hadn't a clue what was there, was the concrete slab still blocking my escape or was something else there dooming me forever? I didn't dare to reach out and touch it.
I grabbed the chair, feeling as if it might slip out from under me in any moment. And I sat there in darkness knowing that I was still descending from the constant grinding I heard below me. But where was I descending to?
My mind ran through the possibilities. I had been working there for ten years. Had it been the anniversary of ten years that day? Who knew. But I had been doing the same job the entire time and I must say that I enjoyed it. What may have been torture for most people was something I throughly enjoyed. Watching people, and Buggers, seeing how they behaved. I watched how they moved and studied how they talked. I would create stories about their lives and occasionally listen to one of their own stories of cosmic struggle and glorious victory, how many of their stories were true was something I never dared to wonder. They kept my mind awake and alive, my imagination churning with new ideas.
I began to wonder if this descent into the abyss was reality. Perhaps I had fallen asleep and that this was only a dream from my wild imagination. But I had never seen such a vivid dream and I had never been able to consciously think in my dreams. It was real, there wasn't any denying that. But why? And where was I going?
I sat apprehensively in the chair for hours, or, at least, what felt like being hours. I didn't have a way to check the time and i hadn't even known what time the descent began. I began to grow restless, pawing the chair for some type of lever or button that could save me. Nothing. I even thought about trying to clime my way up but I decided that was impossible as well. I would never be able to climb that distance and even if i could the top was still sealed.
As all my hope had almost faded I stopped. I was still in the darkness, still clutching my chair, but we had finally stopped. The scraping noise vanished like a distant memory slipping away into the darkest chasms of my mind. I was relieved, but only for a moment.
What had caused me to stop? I was still in the dark, still lost, still miles below the surface, and still without any idea of why I was brought down there.
Then I started moving again. No. I wasn't moving, the walls around me were. They were all sliding up. I placed my hand against one to be sure and the smooth brick caressed my finger, glad to feel something beside my sweat encrusted chair. Something was happening, entire walls simply didn't move up on their own, especially when there were tons more of brick on top of them.
The walls scraped upward slowly, more slowly than I had moved downward. But there was another noise. A noise so far in the distance that I could hardly hear it. It was almost like a high pitched beep. But then I realized what it was. People were screaming, the ground was pushing them into the ceiling.
There was a sonorous gong. The ground stopped moving and the screaming ceased. My eyes were wrenched shut. I could imagine all of those people being squished by the strength of the floor. They would have pushed against it, trying with all their strength to subdue its approach but they were inevitably doomed. The Buggles and the Humans. The Space Cadets and the Star Heroes. All gone, all destroyed in moments. It would be a hell of a clean up job for the custodians.
The floor began to move back down and I descended as well. A light was shining below me through the cracks. It stung temporarily but my eyes adjusted. Finally I was going to know what was going on.
All those people had been killed. But I had been saved.
The light intensified and my hands grabbed the corner of the chair. Terrified could not explain how frightened I was, the abyss had disappeared. I had descended into the white light. I was descending into Heaven. I thought about the Hell above.
The light formed around me as the platform escaped the tunnel at last. The light was blindingly bright and I locked my eyes shut so they had a bit more time to adjust.
The room was empty. The walls were a pristine white, an almost blinding white. I shielded my eyes but the light seemed too develop from space itself. I looked around the room, the room I had traveled to through the empty corridor, and the room in which brought me a respite from inevitable death. I looked around the room.
But there was nothing.
I turned around but my chair and the lift had disappeared. I was trapped there, wherever there was.
My sleep cycle remained, somewhat, and it allowed me to keep track of time. I grew tired soon after checking the room for any possible escape and fell asleep. I was trapped. Life was hopeless.
Hunger became a problem on the third day. I woke up with the feeling of a knife piercing through my taught flesh into the empty shallows of my stomach. I was becoming desperate.
My throat was parched and my stomach was empty, those could not compare to the pains of loneliness and boredom. I laid on the floor for hours, occasionally tossing and turning and once in a while falling asleep to be cast into the realm of nightmarish horrors.
In my dreams I watched as the Humans and Buggers fought against the lifting floor, their bodies trembling in exertion as they pushed against the ceiling. They went strong for a while, the floor had pretty much stopped advancing. But the amount of strength exerted had it's toll. The man I had seen with the blond hair dropped to his knees panting. His arms quivered and sweat glimmered over his popping veins. Men continued to fall, and then the Buggers. Most had given up at that point but a few struggled to stay alive. I watched as their faces contorted, they bulged out slightly like a balloon that had been filled with too much air. And then they pop with a shower of red, all was silent.
My dreams forced me to stay awake. I couldn't face their reality again, but being alone wasn't much better.
I paced back and forth, my mind burning from nothing. Emptiness placed a cold weight on my neck. I felt light headed but at the same time as if I was falling dorward and spinning wildly. Then Toast came. He kept me alive.
"Hello, Penn! Penn Ropener!" He called for me, I looked up. I searched the room but I couldn't see anyone visible. "Penn Ropener! Hello!"
"Who's there?" I shouted, my head snapping back and forth.
There was a small giggle, "It's me, Penn! Toast! Remember me! Come on!"
There had been a figure in my childhood once on a cereal box that I often bought. Perhaps that was whom he speaking about. But that meant that the voice was coming from my own mind, I was going insane.
"Leave me alone!" I shouted. I doubted it would work, not many cases of psychosis are corrected by shouting one's self. "I don't want to talk to you," That was a lie as well. Even if he was a figment of my imagination I did enjoy the company.
"Penn. I could never leave you. Never."
"Good," I closed my eyes.
What progressed next was very strange. Toast began to bring up things I had never even heard about, but he had won my trust from hello. I was desperate.
"Penn, I'm glad we're here together. We shouldn't worry, though. Tyne will save us."
"Mayor Tyne? Why would he save us?"
"Oh, Penn. Mayor Tyne is our hero! He made this world everything that it is today. It's those Outsiders that did this to us!"
"Yes," I nodded, "Mayor Tyne will save us. The Outsiders are bad."
"We should get rid of the Outsiders, they want to take over our planet. They want to take it away from us," Toast's voice was an eerie high pitched squeak. Imagine a mouse talking and then raise the shrill a tad.
"Yes," I murmured. My stomach was causing me to keel over onto my my knees. The pain was surging back and forth from place to place in my chest.
"Penn, are you okay?" I heard Toast's voice from far away. It became fuzzy, like he was speaking through cotton.
I remember throwing up and then collapsing my head on it. It was soft and comfortable, much better than the hard floor. I had passed the line of sanity if I was still behind it, then I passed out.
My dream was a still image of Mayor Tyne standing illustriously on a podium with his short fingers sticking into the air making a peace sign. His shorts, rotund body looked as if it could roll of the stage at any moment but in my mind he was being worshiped as some sort of hero. Fat slob, I thought, and pain coursed through my body like an electric current that reached it's way down to the smallest tip of my toe. My mind was being reeducated, I realized why I was there.
"Penn," Toast's voice whispered through my mind like an echo in the cataracts of mountains, "Penn, someone is coming. The Outsiders are coming to get you, don't let them! Mayor Tyne won't be happy!"
I suppose I would've resisted you when you came into the room, my mind was weak and Toast's persuasion had been all that was needed to control me, but my stomach was too empty and my throat too dry. Mayor Tyne hadn't expected you to rescue me.
I passed out on the journey up again. I remembering being fed something warm that tasted slightly like bread. Then we reached the surface.
And here I am in your ship.