October 2014 Somewhere in Germany
It was an endless, bottomless, pitiless, endless, darkness.
Cain's entire world had been darkness for so long he'd forgotten what light looked like. Never in his life had he experienced such absolute darkness. There were no cracks in the walls, the seem of a door or hinge. No little filter of light. No. All there was was darkness and hunger. A great yawning hunger that had plagued Cain for so long he forgot what it felt like to not be starving, to not feelthe Waking hunger.
He was lying on his back, but it didn't matter. Not really All there was was the void and the horrible dark emptiness all around him. Sometimes he wondered if he was still alive, and then he'd feel his heart beating. It always sounded so loud in here, like a far off drum beat or thunder.
All this wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was that he'd forgotten what the sun felt like. What color the sky was. The sound of a child's laughter. The smell of fresh baked bread. The taste of his favorite dish like the one his father used to make him when he was a boy and he could remember even all these years later. He'd forgotten what his sweet Abel looked now too. All he could remember were hard edges and scared amber eyes. If he'd just held on a littletighter.
It didn't matter now.
He was going to rot in this place forever. He didn't even have it in him to hope anymore. It had been so long. Too long to keep up hope that Abel had just forgotten him in here in a time of crisis. Too long that it could be an accident that he was in here too long.
Instead he just felt nothing.
The darkness and the hunger and the sensory depravation would have been enough to drive anyone mad. And it had. Cain has screamed and ranted and stormed through every inch of this place. He'd broken every bone in his hands and shoulders trying to beat his way out of this hell hole. He'd started talking to himself and saw things that weren't there. Sometimes he had full conversations with old friends who'd been dead centuries. The insanity of no food was the worst. He'd hallucinate grand feasts and jugs of water and and gleaming freshly cooked meat. But then they'd all sort of receded. He wasn't crazy anymore. He was just empty. Empty and hollow and so very tired.
He was sleeping, one of the few things he still did now, too weak to sit up or stand anymore, he didn't even urinate or defecate anymore. There was nothing left. But he could still sleep, and dream, and grasp at what the sky looked like and what grass felt like. He'd woken because of a noise. A noise he wasn't expecting because the only sound in this prison for the past hundred years had been his heart beat, his breathing, and the sounds of his nerves firing. But this was a scrape of a sound.
He looked around with just his eyes, but didn't get up, couldn't really even if he wanted to. He squinted against a sudden sliver of pure, absolute, whiteness. He closed his eyes because it burned to look at. Then the crack opened further and the chamber was bathed in light. Cain opened his eyes and went right into the sixth sense to control the amount of light his eyes took in. His pupils contracted into nearly nothingness as he gazed at what was before him.
He began to weep.
Standing above him was a man with yellow eyes. Cain thought it was death, finally. At last death had finally kept up with him. Or it could be another trick his mind was playing on him. Weakly he reached up to the figure. "Ne-wan?" he asked softly, his voice beyond fragile and barely there. Father? he'd asked. He missed his father. Now he was the last of his ethnicity. The rest were all dead. All gone and he'd never even known them. But maybe in death he could see his father again, see the other Drell; meet his mother.
They said something he didn't understand and he cried more. No, not his father. He also wasn't dead. They reached down and touched him and he didn't realize he had the water in his body for the tears, or the strength left in his body to sob. They picked him up gently and cradled him against their chest and left the chamber, stepping into the light.
He ended up passing out shortly after and woke up hooked up for three machines and several IV drips. He felt much better now, his body finally able to kick in and return him to his natural state of perfection. A proeathan came into the room and their yellow eyes met Cain's.
"You are Drell," they said in hado, the language of the Drell. Very bad hado at that.
"I am," Cain said.
"Explain your existence," they demanded.
Cain sat up, he felt alive. He felt amazing actually. He realized as he sat there that he hadn't just passed out on the way here. He'd gone Under again. Probably his heart giving out from being taken out of that prison. "How long have I been asleep?"
"A week."
Proeathan week. So five days. "What year is it?"
"The fivers' calendar refer to this year as two thousand and sixteen," they said. "Now explain your existence." Cain smiled and looked around. He'd been in that god forsaken prison for over a century. Just thinking he he was already formulating what he was going to do to Abel. "Drell, explain your existence," they demanded.
Cain took off the monitors and looked at the IVs he was attached to. They were all just supplements to feed him basically. He pulled out the needles and got of bed. "A god doesn't answer to the likes of you," he said.
"Drell, get back into bed," the proeathan made to restrain him and push him back into bed. But Cain was as fit as he'd ever been. He was at his peak, like he always was. He tripped the proeathan up and they fell, cracking the back of their head on the tile floor and blacking out. Cain left the room, not giving a shit he was naked.
Several of the doctors and nurses saw him though. He smiled at them and most of them were too surprised to do anything about him. Eventually someone stopped him and they jabbered at him in a proeathan language he didn't know. "I speak hado," he said in hado. He was detained when the nurse he'd knocked out stumbled out of the room and was yelling and pointing at him angrily.
Cain just smiled. It was good to be back.
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