Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new idea of mine that hit me a few days ago, at around 11 PM or so and thus the idea caused to me write about 2k words to end up at this starting point. I am dedicating this story to one of my real life friends that I know on here - actually, the only one I know in real life - named RouttMeister. He and I have been through a lot, and it was his birthday just a few weeks ago, so a very, very late birthday present if you will. This is called, 'The Hell That We Built' and I know that the title is quite freaking foreboding, but it features Luigi and Lucina, so what can go wrong? Enjoy the first chapter, #1: Vernacular. *P.S, there's a little thing you're going to notice about their name... it is absolutely intentional.*
The Hell We Built
Chapter #1: Vernacular
He stares. He stares harder. He is staring with such a ferocity that the lines begin to blur together and waver over the other, zany waves and lines that break and destroy the fragmented rules of illusion and sight. He looks up, he looks up and he looks up so far that his neck starts to hurt, and it is a pain that sits lowly beneath the neck and rises up through the spinal cord.
He's wondering when all of this happened, hearing the noises that come from the other side. It's a massive wall, an obstruction that literally seems to have come out in the middle of the night. Crimson coated bricks, a height that rivals Mt. Everest, and a length that goes on till the edges of the Earth. Everywhere he looks, there's walls around him, a purgatory that he's forever stuck in, where there's only one direction left to go, and that's up, up, up till there's no more. A white stasis of nothingness, a place that he misses with all of his heart. He misses the nothingness.
The man sighs to himself, wiping his brow. Though the sun has gone to sleep under the horizon, it is still hot and muggy outside under the navy expanse of the sky. He's in his backyard surrounded by three walls that go on for an eternity, an infinity that does not loop but steadily goes on and on and on. He hates the color red. Why did these walls have to be red? Of all the colors in the world, someone picks red? Why?
He muses the question to himself, as he takes a seat up against the far-right wall. Going inside, back in his dreary home with the muted gray walls and the blaring of static on the television is too much of a bother. He'll wither away in nature as the flesh decomposes off of his skin, and he'll take in the scent of fresh daises and emerald green glades of grass as he sits. He rests his head back against the wall, letting his hair brush up against the coarse stone. The man can feel the grooves, the portions that are smooth and bolstered and painful; he can feel it through his synapses that curl up and down his spine. Is silence supposed to be this torturous?
There's nothing around him, he observes. No crickets, no rustling leaves or the gusting of a forceful wind. All he has is this stupid wall and the starry sky above, until hellfire shall pour down from above. He wants something to happen, anything to happen would be the best, actually. He has never done well in silence; his wife could attest to that. Except she isn't here to give a truthful answer. He frowns. He hasn't thought of her in a long time, now that he takes the time to think about it. With her chestnut hair, glowing brown eyes, and a smile that weakens his knees to butter. Her waist, her hips, her hands… and all that remains on the man's lips is a ghost of her name, a name he used to remember. He no longer remembers it, but that's not his fault. The weathering and erosion of the world has caused this, and he is not to be blamed.
Something causes him to stir, the man having dozed off to the lull of nothingness under the watchful eye of shadow for a few moments. He sits up, looking about him. Nothing is amiss in his yard at the very least, with the grass firmly in place, the swing staying stationary, and all the lights in his house still turned off… so what caused the noise? It comes again, sounding as if it is behind him. He looks at the wall, frowning. He has no idea how thick the wall is, let alone how high or how far it runs for. The man frowns, leaning in, putting his ear up against it.
It is the sound of something being shuffled against the dirt, as if something – or maybe someone if he's lucky – is rubbing up against the grass? An animal? A person?
The man's voice is dry and cracks against his throat, with an Adam's apple that feels like a grainy rock being swallowed when he speaks. "Hello?" he croaks. His mouth is in serious need of hydration, and perhaps something to eat, but he keeps himself stuck in his pain because it's enjoyable. "Hello?" he repeats once more.
The brushing stops, and he freezes likewise on the other side of the wall. The man's heart is thumping up against his chest like a drum, a crackle of thunder over a valley, or horse hooves against a sodden ground.
Then, a voice. A whisper, more than anything, but an invoke of human emotion that the man can feel, and he weeps. "I can hear you," the voice says, with a feminine air to it. "Can you hear me?"
For some reason, the man weeps. He has no idea why, truthfully there's a million answers, but he doesn't want to figure that out right about now, it just wouldn't make sense for him to do so. He lets the syllables collide with his eardrum in a euphonic sound, a joyous noise of released emotion until he's leaning up against the brick wall crying his eyes out.
"You're real…" he whispers.
"Of course I'm real," the woman snips back quiet pointedly. "What did you expect me to be? A statue?" The man wishes to respond to that with something cheeky, but he keeps his mouth shut. Instead, he opts a question.
"What do you think these walls represent?"
A pause, with reflection underneath that by the way the pause is carried out. "I don't know. These walls weren't here before, were they?"
"They weren't up last night."
"Is it like a prison? I can only go in a certain straight path as large as my house…" the woman trails off, and he's afraid that she's left him. The bed isn't cold anymore, and he wants to invite her – goodness, he hasn't spoken to anyone in months, is this what humans sound like anymore? – and just throw his arms around her. He looks down at his hands.
Dirty, rugged little beasts of hands they are, with scars and sores and black marks over them that hurt and hurt until there's nothing else but scorched flesh. They've done dirty things, things the man regrets when the cloth tears, or the cold feeling of the crowbar slams against something that is soft.
"Hell…" he says.
It turns out the woman he's been speaking to never left. "What?" she asks.
"It's a hell," the man whispers once more. "We're stuck in this fifty-foot block, and there's nowhere else for us to go. A hell that we can't climb out of, or outrun… we're stuck here."
"I didn't do anything to be put here."
"I did…"
"And what would warrant a torture like this?"
"You'd be surprised," the man chuckles to himself. A pause. "What's your name?"
He's taken aback by the answer, not expecting it be to something he's ever heard before. "Lucy. Yours?"
"That's funny," the man laughs nervously. "My wife's name is Lucy."
"You have a wife?"
"Yes."
"Oh. That's nice. I'm glad you love her."
He frowns. He never said he loved his wife, and he actually never, truly said that he even had one, and if he did that her name wouldn't necessarily be Lucy. Part of him wants to spill forth what his name is, but that may be betraying everything he's known about himself. He licks his lips and spills it without thinking of the consequences. This is something he's unable to lie about. "Louis."
"Nice name."
"Thank you."
"My husband's name is Louis."
The man's blood turns to ice. Is this a joke? Did she say what he thought she said? Unless this is a drawn-out prank, what would be the chance that his name happens to be the name of her husband, and that her name is the name of his wife? The odds? He finds it peculiar, but then remembers that he doesn't have a wife, so all of this must be some sort of freakish coincidence.
"I'm glad you love your husband," Louis says, using the same tactics she had on him, hoping it'd draw out the same emotion in him that it had in her.
"I never said I loved my husband."
"And I never said that I loved my wife."
"I thought you didn't have a wife," Lucy interrupts him. Louis looks at the wall with horror. Those words hadn't left his lips, it is a thought dancing in his head. How did she...? "The wall told me," she continues. "It told me that you were lying to me about having a wife."
"But I do have a wife!" Louis argues.
"No you don't. Another lie, the wall said so."
"I can't hear the wall!" he retorts.
"And that's because I'm not lying," Lucy smarmily replies with a sniff. Louis looks up at the starry sky with a frown. All of this… this incident and encounter, has to be the strangest thing he's ever been a part of.
It's what irritates him so when Lucy accuses him of lying. He actually does have a wife named Lucy with her dark hair and her gorgeous figure, gracing the eyes of men and beast alike, and for her to sit here and call him a liar? How dare she! Walls don't speak! Walls don't continue forever and ever without an end. "I'm dreaming," Louis says to himself with shut eyes, and then he pinches himself for effort. "This isn't real. None of this is real."
"You're not dreaming," Lucy speaks up. "This is real, Louis. All of it."
A tear threatens to slide down his cheek. "How did you hear-"
"The wall told me."
"Well, the wall can go to hell."
"I thought you said that this wall was hell."
"I don't know what I said," Louis snaps. "Better yet, just ask it yourself! It seems that you have this entire innateness with speaking to walls! Leave me out of it!"
He sits there in his spot, with legs squeezed together, knees brought to his chest, and a gaze pointed upwards at the sky. So, in his current state, he's trapped in a fifty by fifty-foot section of a brick wall that he cannot see the end of whether it be the height or length. He's speaking to a woman named Lucy which is the name of his wife, even though he really doesn't have one. This woman – Lucy, call her by her name damn it – has a husband named Louis, and apparently, she can talk to the wall as if the wall can hear his thoughts.
Something out of a fantasy story. Louis thinks about getting up and going to bed, as he can tell it must be near midnight and sooner than later he'll start to get sleepy. Going to bed and thinking about everything will really make the world easier in the morning. Trying to deduce this madness off of one cup of coffee and a half-eaten Danish is hard.
He does know this, though, and he hopes the wall can hear him. It is hell. A hell that he's stuck in with nowhere else to go, no one to turn to except for this crazed Lucy woman that he severely hopes can go and retire herself, so he doesn't hear her whining.
Can someone build a hell by themselves, for themselves?
Louis isn't so sure anymore, but he's never been right about anything. Just ask the wall and Lucy, they have all the answers.
"Yes," Lucy exhales quite suddenly. "I agree with you, Louis."
"About?"
"The wall itself. I didn't do anything to be stuck here, but this is hell. The hell that we built."
Oh.
That's reassuring.
Lalala, there we are! That's the end of the first chapter, Vernacular! I am really in love with this piece and where I'm heading with it. I hope that the Lucy and Louis part didn't throw you off... as it it's Lucy - Lucina, and Louis - Luigi. I'm writing it to a similar style as my story Native, for those who haven't been acquainted with that piece, it's a 5 chapter, 10k piece detailing Roy and Robin as a couple struggling through financial issues, marital issues, and a whole shebang of other things, and I admit it is probably my best - if not one of my best pieces - that I've ever written, and I hope this follows suit. RouttMeister, I hope you liked the piece as well, and there'll be more to it in the near future. Thank you all so much for reading! Leave a follow or a favorite if you wish to hear more, and I'll be blessed if you do. Have a great day! Love you all! Bye!
~ Paradigm