Nothing surrounded on all sides, massive, powerful, dangerous, frightening...
SILENCE!
Serge screamed, convulsed, went still, was silent. The menace of the nothingness seemed to fade, like darkness giving way to pre-dawn. It hurts, he thought he whispered. Please, stop...
It will destroy you.
He could...god, he could feel it: clammy cold hands. Dead skin. Cadaverous, rotting, half-preserved, brown-aged skin, clamping tight around his throat. He couldn't breathe. Stop... He choked. Don't...
I will destroy you.
Breathing was far beyond him. He was still alive, certainly, but he wasn't breathing-- just watching, while those strange undead hands, cool mist, substantial but having no real substance, crushed the cartillage that housed his voice. But if it had done what it felt as though it had done...
Be quiet, Serge.
How could he be screaming? HELP! HELP ME! Someone...ANYONE! Please... Because he was most definitely screaming, breath or no, voice or no.
Just be quiet.
Perhaps he wasn't actually making any noise? Sometime in between being grabbed and being crushed, he'd failed to notice as the light grew brilliant, almost blinding all around. Where were they? He screamed as hard as he could, it felt like his throat was going raw. Somebody help! Let me go, dammit, help! Help! HELP!
But there really wasn't any sound, here. None at all. The light began to fade again while he shrilled, panicked, as loudly as he could, and never made a sound.
Stop it.
To his own great shame, the helplessness, being clutched there in the middle of the nothingness by dead hands that smelled of mint and preservation, finally broke down his pleas into weeping. He sobbed and begged, and pride be damned, but the hands still would not let him go.
Stop.
Time froze.
Everything stopped.
Nothing. Not even darkness.
