I snagged another phrase from that marvelous paradigm of horror series, The Monstrumologist. I do that a lot. Stealing phrases, I mean. Just saying. If Rick Yancey is somehow reading my series and recognizes phrases from his own works, I GIVE YOU ALL CREDIT SIR AND AM EAGERLY AWAITING THE RELEASE OF BOOK 4 WITH ALL MY HEART
I must learn Capricco Farce and Cantarella piano versions or my life will not be complete. I've got a lot of work in for me...
Updating schedule is more erratic than usual because I'm also working on 'Our Turbulent Sea of Peace' with A Field of Starlight, as probably mentioned before.
Review! :D
Nothing is real.
Shut up.
Nothing is real. You're insane, and everyone hates you.
SHUT UP.
They can't see your friends, and they hate you. You have no friends.
I have no reason to believe you.
Your friends aren't real. You're insane.
THEY ARE REAL, YOU WANKER. YOU AREN'T.
Am I? Am I just a figment, or am I birthed of reality?
England was trapped inside his head, screaming and hammering to get out, and the oppressive voice was filling every corner of his mind. This voice was a recurring thing. It happened all the time. Mostly when he was wasted, yes, so it could be nonexistent, but it was just too alive, too...something. Indescribable.
The voice in his head was full of loathing and he didn't trust himself anymore than he trusted it. IT. It felt like it should be capitalized, a full set of tall lines. That's how important It was.
And it will fool you into worshipping it, whispered the still sane part of his mind. Never... And it was drowned out by screaming.
England slammed the palms of his hands against his ears, attempting to beat the voice out. You'll only give yourself a concussion, noted the sanity. And why shouldn't you? lilted the voice. Everybody hates you... It felt like two opposing sides were fighting for control of his brain, and he didn't completely trust them. He was rendered a bystander of his own thoughts...It was not a feeling he liked.
It's not as if he hadn't hallucinated before. It's not as if this hasn't happened before.
America, walking back through the door after the war that had torn them apart. Running forwards to embrace his younger brother, setting up a room for him, and things went back to the way they were. It'd been a week of joy for England. Until one day, France'd come over to annoy him, and asked why he'd had an extra teacup at the table. And just like that, America had shimmered into nothing.
England had stared into his tea, realization like a slap in the face. France had realized something was wrong, that it wasn't his teasing that had needled the Brit into silence, and had left.
Afterwards, the voices resurfaced, louder than ever.
So many fakes, and what was the reality to declare itself the truth?
Things were sliding out of control.
His fake calm cracked like dried mud, and he saw the face of the horror that lurked one-ten-thousandth of a second beyond his field of vision. Madness, both voices whispered, and a third voice screamed. He realized, to his surprise, it was his.
Shards of a field of white roses like new snow-
DON'T GO BACK, ENGLAND.
And the air shimmered and smoked and vibrated, thrumming with the uncurling release of something inhuman, the reservoir of madness testing its bounds, and in the center was-
NO- With a powerful mental wrench, he twisted the very fabric of nowhere and the fearful thing coalescing suddenly sharpened into a well. The well shivered on the lurching ground, the stones oozing blood that spread through the roses. The roses absorbed the crimson, sucking it up through the roots, turning a brilliant crimson, and then wilting to ashes as the arms of blood made their inexorable progress towards him.
The vibrating air was cold, and his breath made fog that added to the boundless whiteness just past him. Nothing was safe here, in this world of pale nothingness, and he could not back up against the fog, nor could he advance to the lake of bloody ashes forming just before him. In his peripheral vision, a gaping, ghostly face coalesced out of the fog, and he leaped away, gasping in fright.
England suddenly became aware of a thumping pulsating thud-up. Thud-up. Like a heartbeat. He raged futilely on the slippery slope of crushed roses. All pretenses of control were out the metaphorical window.
As if to mock him, a window briefly formed in the fog before dissipating.
The air in the rose field stank of iron and metal, or rust, of blood. The black, red-soaked earth gave way under his feet, and he sprang back to safety, ankle-deep in the blood roses. The world was filling with black cracks that splintered even the air, and the heartbeat grew only louder and faster as he swam in the airless miasma below the dripping earth. Gibbering, screaming voices filled his ears and squirmed past his weak defenses until he was awash with his own insanity.
He came up for air - what air, in the world that is all alone- and couldn't move, frozen as he thought he'd escaped it.
There was his house, his garden... England sprinted across, up his front porch, which felt real and solid under his feet and fingers, and nearly whooped for joy, running back to his yard and raking his fingers through the grass. He threw the stems up in the air like confetti.
It was, after all, all a dream, emerging from the chrysalis of tormented nightmares to life. I should probably see a psychologist, he thought giddily. Already the dream was fading from his memory-
Inexpressibly cheerful, England took the old skeleton key and unlocked the front door.
Blood rushed out in a wave, waist high, knocking him backwards, and the cheerful blue sky of moment before darkened to black and gray, a wind rushing through the skeletons of trees that had just withered to winter. He floundered, and suddenly the wave dragged him back indoors, past the desiccated corpses of his companions -not friends, they hate you- hanging upside-down from the ceiling, blank features seeming to accuse him. This is all your fault.
Then the blood splashed half up one of his red-wallpapered halls - why was that ever a good idea, red for the wallpaper- and swirled him around, pausing to batter down a door that hadn't been there before, pulling him straight down a set of stairs until he was just falling, hitting every bone in his body on the way down, and at the very bottom lurked It.
England's wandering consciousness snapped back into his body suddenly, and he'd screamed his already raw throat dry. Blood gurgled in his lungs, and he spat it out, sweat dripping from his face to mix with the red fluid. The holes bored under his skin throbbed with the familiar rhythm; thud-up, thud-up, thud-up. He hissed when his racking coughs jostled the worst nest of burrowing holes, and kept his palms over his ears, fearing a resurfacing of the voices, of It.
Utterly drained, he collapsed, a tight knot in his chest screaming madness, madness, madness.
England seemed to be rational.
He was not.
I feel like I'm terrible at writing these sorts of things...*flails around*