You are floating in perpetual blackness. Lost in a dreamworld you cannot escape from. There is nothing. No smell, no sight, no sound. Just an overwhelming feeling of dread.

Suddenly, light breaks through your sight, blinding you for a moment. When you can see, you find a skeletal figure floating in the middle of a beam of light. A large straw hat blocking its downturned face, spindly legs and arms poking out from ragged clothes. It is a Skull Kid; a sad, cursed being. An evil aura emanates from the creature, filling you with fear.

Like a puppet, the skull kid turns upright, jerking slightly with every movement. Its face is revealed. A mask stares back at you. Heart-shaped, worn wood- purple and red paint the color of blood peeling off of it. Ten spikes spear out from it, each one sharper than thorns. Soulless eyes stare at you from the horrifying object, glowing with intensity and malicious intent. Immediately, you can tell it is a cursed object; the very source from which your soul is filling with such terror.

Ominous clacking and rattling sounds echo from the body as it moves. Colors blur and your eyesight moves in and out of detail as the creature moves slowly towards you. You are frozen. You cannot run. Jerkily, the head trembles back and forth, horrid noises reaching your ears as you vision sharpens for just a second and you can almost see blood dripping from its wooden yet very much alive eyes.

Clacking. Wood. Sheer horror. Your eyesight is fading out once more, until all you can see is two menacing orange eyes glowing out of from the blackness. They blur, rattling back and forth, back and forth. You feel like you are suffocating. You can't breathe. Your entire essence is being sucked away into the blackness. There is nothing you can do. You keep fading, fading away. Fading… fading…

A child's voice interrupts the horrible, horrible noise, shuddering, shaking. Giggles burst forth, the eyes shaking harder until your whole world feels like its spinning. Laughing… laughing… laughing…

It won't go away. The noise takes over your hearing. It keeps getting louder, louder, louder, until it becomes deafening in the darkness. You want to scream, "Stop! Stop it!" You can't take it anymore.

Screaming, crying, please, let it stop…

All noise pauses. A chilling chuckle breaks the silence, feeling as sharp as a knife cutting through your spine. A new face appears, sharp teeth glinting from a mouth formed into a grisly grin so wide it looks like the face is almost split in half. Angled, glinting eyes peer at you, seeming to stare into your very soul. It looks like a crude, horrific mask. The chuckle resounds again, echoing ominously in your ears. The face fades away, words lingering behind from a mouth that never moved.

You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?

Inspired by Theophany- Time's End.