It turned out his traumatized state returned once night fell and he refused to sleep in fear of falling back into his nightmare. He didn't really need to sleep though, because the feelings and sounds of his torture in the years of his captivity flooded his mind without the help of dreadful slumber. All the fears he had all those years ago flooded his heart and made it impossible to think straight. His heart hadn't slowed for even a second after everyone went to bed. He felt alone and rejected by the realization that no one really knew what he was going through. He didn't even know what he was going through. Why was he so traumatized this time? He still couldn't figure it out, and it bothered him.
He was sitting in the sewers below Rockefeller Center trying to take in the sounds of rushing sewage and dripping water without thinking about anything. He was having a very difficult time with this and decided to give up and let his mind wander a few hours ago.
His mind had taken a critical hit and was seemingly failing to recover. His thoughts were scattered and unorganized jumping from one topic to the next, arguing with itself, and ultimately making him a stereotypical mess of trauma and insanity, both of which mixed together to form a very concerning mind frame. Lost, confused, and utterly un-useful, along with fits of paranoia and a new symptom of socially handicapped topped off with a nasty case of fear of everything. This line of mental corruption, added to the hallucinations he'd been having, made Skipper increasingly vulnerable and put him well past the brink of sanity.
So as he sat there, leaning against the wall thinking about anything and everything while his mind brought images of his dreadful nightmare into reality, the hours of night slowly trickled away and dawn came and passed and the clock struck seven a.m.
And it had all started with rain, his mind that is. The slow dripping sound of water had reminded him of rain, this was when it was just starting and only the premature stage of rain also known as drizzle. He distinctly remembered sitting in his cell, chained to the stone table as his body doggedly tried to heal itself, listening very carefully to the sound of rain. It had surprised him at first because he hadn't heard it before. To hear the sound of rain in his little cell amazed him and filled his mind with curiosity. If he hadn't heard the rain in the full year he'd been in this dastardly place, then why could he hear it now? Of course back then he had no clue that he had been slowly honing and perfecting his hearing. As a child he just assumed everything was getting louder. Lying on that table unable to move he wondered how hard it had to be raining to make the rain loud enough for him to hear it down in his cell. And then he had wondered why it never rained so hard before. This of course led Skipper to dig deeper into the topic of rain.
He sat with his back against the wall of the sewer wondering why each rain storm was different and why. He wondered why sometimes it rained for a whole week and why it sometimes only rained for an hour. Had Julian been right all along? Were there really 'Sky spirits' that controlled almost everything about life? If so how did they come into existence? Were they once beings on earth just like he was? If they were how did they become sky spirits and what made them so different from everyone else? Or was everyone who passed on turned into sky spirits forever to guide and destroy the world with forces of scientific nature?
Nature, a force to be reckoned with. Tsunamis and hurricanes, tornadoes and rain storms, even volcanoes and earthquakes. All killers of animals and people alike and all caused by Mother Nature. Mother nature. Why was it called that? Why not father nature? What was the difference? Why couldn't it just be called nature? Things would b easier that way. Nature was both good and bad after all. Maybe that's why it was called Mother Nature; because women, especially mothers, could be both loving and quite scary. Women in general could be both angels and devils, that's why they're so dangerous. They reel you in with promises of cookies and warmth and then they kill you. He really didn't trust women; they were very secretive creatures, like snakes.
Skipper wasn't really a fan of snakes either; they were sneaky and felt weird to the touch. Plus the fact that he'd nearly been eaten by a snake once. Savio, yet another evil that had touched his life, like the man with the evil grin.
The image of the man flashed before his eyes sending him into a fit of uncontrolled breathing while the ground began to spin wildly below his body. That man was a symbol of everything bad that happened when Skipper was young. The man terrified him in the worst of ways and brought with him a wave of memories affiliated with the events that occurred by his hand. Where it all started of course was with the melting of his peaceful little town and the murder of his parents. The blood draining from the holes in their bodies was a picture he'd never forget. It was ruby red, as most blood was now that he thought about it, and it didn't rush out or squirt like a fountain of blood, but it more or less drizzled out. It formed beads of dark red on their chests before running down their sides and pooling beneath their bodies. After that it soaked into the snow and ice and remained there for a while. Or so Skipper speculated. But the blood of his parents had been different from his own; the sight of it had been less painful and more shocking than anything else. He just thought of that shock as delayed pain that would really hit him later on.
But at the moment he was caught in a realm of fear that shot through his veins like poison and shoved terror into his mind in such a way that it remained there far after the image had dissipated and fell back to the near depths of his failing mind. His lungs refused to work right and the ground refused to stand still so he was forced to sit there grasping the rough ground and gasping for air like he'd been recently strangled. He had been strangled, metaphorically of course, by the memories and trauma of his own mind. He was in a way torturing himself, yet he couldn't help it. If he had the choice he'd forget anything even happened in a heartbeat, but something was holding onto the memory and wouldn't let go.
The image of torture devices and blood running down the smooth rows of his feathers danced around his vision. He darted his eyes from the ceiling to the floor whipping his head from left to right wildly trying to rid himself of the taunting pictures but he failed and ultimately fell deeper into his terrified state, gasping even harder and trying uselessly to grab the ungrabable ground as his heart rate sped to unbelievable speeds and beat so unbelievably hard that each thump pounded in his skull like bombs going off a million times a second.
His ears were filled with the sound of screams and medieval laughter while the images of torture and blood still danced around his head. The agony of knives and other devices of pain hit every inch on his body at approximately the same time sending his body into a paralyzed state where he couldn't move at all but could feel every blow and cut while watching it happen and listening to the laughter and screaming that came as a consequence. There was also the sight of blood that fell alongside the images of knives cutting into flesh and the processes of breaking bones.
All this time Skipper was begging it to stop. The images and the sounds and the feelings were extremely agonizing and completely terrifying and all he wanted was for them to go away. But they didn't. A sharp, burning pain erupted on his arm, a knife slid over the dark feathers forcing blood to pool at the site of the wound until it rose and trickled down his arm dripping ruby drops to the ground in a rhythmic pattern. Then an impact hit his chest, definitely breaking a few ribs as a ball and chain swung back and forth before his eyes eventually flying back into his chest to cause more damage and of course, more pain. He couldn't breathe suddenly, no doubt a consequence of the conflict with the ball and chain, his eyes wild and desperate as he looked around for someone to help him.
The sewers had disappeared and while deep down he knew he was still there sitting below Rockefeller Center, he could only see the bleak, unlit tunnels of underground torture headquarters of the man with the evil grin.
A tube was violently shoved down his throat and bars were forced through his flippers as pain erupted in both areas. He was able to gasp for breath again, however his breathing was even more irregular and hypervental than it was before. Not only that, but he began to gag, which only lead to less and less air actually reaching his lungs.
The sound of a whip slashed loudly through the air before the pain hit his back. It burned like hot metal and stung worse than anything he'd felt before. More cracks filled the air as the image of the man with the evil grin wielding a whip played in his mind. More sharp pains erupted on his back, burning like metal and stinging terribly. Another knife slid cross his feathered flesh, this time across his stomach. It was a long, deep cut, causing the dark red liquid to form rivers flowing wildly down to the ground where they made a nice little pool of dark red blood.
And then it stopped. The sewers came into view and gradually replaced the weapons of torture and rivers of blood, the sounds of screams and laughter became the flow and drip of filth, and the pains of torture vanished. The terror remained, and Skipper felt an overwhelming sense of paranoia.
It came after the fit of terror and remembrance, while he was very slowly calming himself. He realized that he could enter a realm of pain at any moment from the hands of anyone in the world, and at that moment it seemed that everyone was out to get him. A bat flew through the sewers. It came and went in the time frame of one to two seconds but left Skipper with heart palpitations for a long while. During that time a rodent scurried by, something splashed in the distance and something stomped through a nearby tunnel. With each occurrence the feeling of paranoia intensified greatly. Someone was out to get him. He didn't know why or who or how, but he knew someone was going to get him. They were going to kidnap him and torture him and then they were going to kill him. Why? He didn't know why. He just knew.
So every sound and sign of life found a way to terrify him. The dripping of water became a ticking time bomb for his nerves. Eventually the water droplets would tick one too many times and he'd go completely insane. The sound of a jumping fish sounded like the rise or a submarine from the water, all missiles were locked and aimed on him. The pitter patter of a mouse scurrying by was the march of an army coming to skin him alive and eat him for lunch.
He couldn't breathe and was thrown bitterly back into gasping for breath. He tried to be quiet about it but fear made everything louder than it actually was and he was filled to the brim with fear. He was filled with nightmares added to the continuous replay of the nightmare he'd been having. Nightmares of being torn limb from limb. Nightmares of him being shot and whipped, and cut, and broken, and bruised, and decapitated, and blown to bits, and squished like a bug. Nightmares about a million long and painful ways for him to die, and any one of them could happen at any moment.
But why would they? Why would someone be after him? What did he do wrong? Surely he'd done some ungreatful things in his life. He'd hurt people and left trails of disaster, but that was no reason to kill him or torture him. Everyone dose that in some point in their life, why was he so important. Maybe it was something personal. Who had he hurt recently? No one that he could think of. He hadn't really done much of anything lately. So why would anyone be hunting him down?
Unless of course they had a grudge. But how would they find him? They could be out on a crazy quest to kill him. No one's that crazy though. Well some people are. But why now? It's hardly a time for that. Actually anytime is a good time for revenge, if the person is wild enough. Ok, but who would be wild enough? Anyone could be. No not anyone. Private couldn't be. So not everyone but a lot of people. That doesn't mean anything. No it means something; it means you're gonna die soon. No it doesn't. besides who would look in a sewer. Not a human but you don't live in the human world now do you? No I don't… Exactly, so you're currently in danger. No I'm currently sitting in a sewer. You're also being hunted by some crazy chick with a gun. Who said it was a she? And who said she had a gun? It's just one of the many possibilities. I don't like that one pick a different possibility. Ok..uh…a pod of dolphins are headed down the sewer right now to eat you alive. I don't like that one either. I'm not expecting you to I'm just informing you. Well stop it. You stop it. No you stop it. I said it first. No, I said it first. You did not I-
A loud crash echoed through the tunnel followed by a series of chirps…it sounded like a pod of dolphins. Skippers heart rate increased again and his breathing became very labored and difficult. He was right, a pod of dolphins were coming to eat him.
He jumped up and bolted down the tunnel, away from the carnivorous dolphins. His heart raced his mind went insane, wondering if he was really fast enough on foot to out run dolphins. It was better than being in the water. It was difficult to run because he was still having difficulty breathing right. His lungs still refused to cooperate and just for the heck of it his eyes decided to glaze over. So he was stuck hyperventilating, half blind, terrified, trying desperately to escape a paranoid vision of penguin eating dolphins for nearly two hours as he got himself lost, unlost, and lost again, navigating the waterways of the sewer system of Manhattan.
And it all started with the rain.
I really enjoyed this chapter. It was quite interesting writing from the POV of a Skipper going insane.
I hope you liked it too. ^^
