CHAPTER SIXTEEN
11
Flickering light, then nothing. Nothing but nothingness. End of the tape.
I get up from my spot in the center of the empty room and try the door.
Still locked.
I'm still trapped.
I turn around just in time to see the nothingness drain away from the room as the flickering light reappears.
My memories rewind, and even though I must have seen the images a thousand times in the past hour, I have to watch it all again.
Screeching, Scratching, a small mute countdown announces the beginning of the next session, then there's an image.
Summer two years ago.
Dad. Sunset. Warm wind on my cheeks.
Fast forward. Skip the following one and a half years.
Dad. Coffee can.
Dad's ash in his favourite coffee can.
Seizure.
Fast forward. Skip the few following weeks.
Briefing room. Kelly. Me.
Enter.
I don't take my eyes off of Kelly's back as I hesitatingly follow her into the briefing room. The icy feeling I get at the idea of meeting the General grows even colder, as if I swallowed an entire fridge.
Fear.
F-e-a-r. Four letters.
'The only contact a true Mogadorian has with fear is if he spreads it, never by experiencing it himself. A true Mogadorian is not afraid of anything or anyone, on the contrary, fear is one of his biggest allies.' Page thirty, paragraph two, third sentence of the great book.
Applying this to me, you'd think this section was a lie at first.
My whole life is one big cardboard castle of fear, threatening to collapse right on top of me at the slightest opportunity, burying me under countless layers of unsolved problems.
Once you look a little closer, though, you'll realize that the phrase only states that 'a true Mogadorian' is without fear. A true Mogadorian, that's not me. Nope, not me. Definitely not me. Far from it.
Dad was a true Mogaodrian and Kelly is a true Mogadorian and every single other person I know is a true Mog, but I am not. No matter how hard I try, I will never be one.
Which proves the great book is absolutely correct once again.
When our great leader, Setrákus Ra, wrote the great book, he made no mistakes. And neither may I now.
Make no mistakes. Take no risks. Keep your secrets safe.
It's hard to keep such things in mind when fear is trying to push them out again.
After all, the cause of all my fears are my secrets.
Because, by definition, secrets have to stay secret to be secrets, that's why they're called secrets. The name explains itself. I like that. It's simple. I like simple. Simple is easier for me to understand. Simple is easier for everyone to understand.
Simple. I like simple.
I don't like secrets, though. No, not secrets. Secrets are bad. Secrets lead to fear, and fear leads to seizures. And seizures are weakness. Mustn't be weak. Make no mistakes. Take no risks. Keep your secrets safe.
My fear won't just disappear, though, unless my secrets are lifted. In that case I have nothing left to fear, because somebody finding out who I really am will most likely get me killed.
My fear will live on, then, until the day my secret is unravelled. And so will I; I will live on, until the very same day.
In a twisted way, my fear is the only thing keeping me alive.
If, after my fear is gone, I got nothing left, then fear is everything I have right now. Which means I'll have to hold on to it. Simple as that.
I like simple. It makes everything manageable, even for me.
I gasp as I look up from Kelly's back for the first time in minutes and find myself in a dark, cramping place.
A bad presentiment stirs in my chest as I realize I'm already inside General Andrakkus Sutekh's briefing room.
Flickering light, then the tape stops.
I don't know whyt. It hasn't reached the end, there still are about five more minutes to go. It never stopped in the middle before, never. Something must be different than the last times.
Then: Words.
Words in the distance.
Then: A voice.
A voice calling my name.
I try to listen more closely, but the harder I try, the further away the voice seems to move, until it's nothing but a distant echo, hardly audible.
And then, as suddenly as it stopped, the tape turns back on again.
I am lost. I am doomed. I am never going to see the sunlight again in the eternal desolation of the briefing room.
The thought-suppressing horror of this place suddenly comes crashing down on me. There are no windows at all; the only light comes from a source I can't quite see in the center of the room. It sends gloomy, yellow clouds of light billowing through the thick air.
Smoke rises from boiling cans with all kinds of poisonous liquids, stinging in the eyes. Knives, guns and various other instruments of torture carelessly lie around on the floor in big piles, and it's so dark in here, I almost step on some of the sharp objects a couple of times.
But Kelly is always there for me, silently warning me just in time before I make a wrong step.
I like Kelly. Yes, Kelly. Without her I would be in a fix.
Slowly we cleave our way through the maze of strange objects, as Kelly leads me along the massive piles of the strangest things I have ever seen. Modern Mogadorian inventions, the newest weapons, extremely advanced technological devices, you name it. It's all tossed aside on gigantic stacks, like toys thrown away by a kid with way too rich parents.
I stop for a second to examine one particularly shiny blade at the top of a pile. It sparkles oddly, even though there's no light falling on it. I'm about to ask Kelly about it, but when I look up again, she is already several feet away, almost fading into the dark background.
A sudden screeching noise somewhere behind me sends a shiver down my spine. I stop dead in my tracks as I toss my head from side to side, trying to find out where it's coming from. The gloomy light sends menacing shadows of all those cruel looking instruments dancing on the walls, faking movements all around me. There always seems to be a shadowy figure lurking around at the corner of my eye, observing me out of hungry eyes, preparing to strike once I don't pay attention. But every time I turn to see if someone's there, there's nothing there but dark emptiness.
The cold shivers running down my spine have turned into icy chills by now, but I'm way too scared to shake them off. Scared that the room will swallow me if I make one wrong move.
When I'm not looking, all those weird instruments seem to reach out for me with their long, crooked fingers, trying to get hold of my ankles and to pull me backwards, away from the direction where Kelly is disappearing into the dark twilight of the briefing room. Dead insects that are pinned up along the walls seem to come alive and start crawling towards me. A crescendo of muted threats collapses onto me and still I'm not able to do anything.
I'm a fly, caught in a spider's web, unable to move a single muscle without only getting deeper into the mess. And it won't take long until the big, fat spider waiting for me in the center of the web notices what a delicious little fly just hit the hay.
The only thing that keeps me from being sucked into the dark vortexes of the briefing room right there is my fellow fly, my guardian angel, the spoiled princess of Ashwood, Kelly.
I can already feel the beginning of a seizure clutching at my guts when suddenly out of the darkness Kelly's face appears.
"Come on," she whispers, taking my hand and helping me up from the floor. Once again, I hadn't even notice I wasn't standing on my feet anymore.
"You know that you can't show weakness," Kelly adds and glances over her shoulder, in the direction the noise that scared me just a few seconds ago came from. "Not here. Not in front of my father."
For a second we keep floating like that, her still holds my hand and me trying to stand without her help. Without her help. Without her help I would be nothing. I take a quick glance at her face, the only familiar spot in this entire room.
Then I nod, a silent promise not to show weakness again, which we both know I won't be able to keep. Kelly gives me a disapproving look, then she shakes her head and turns back around. Not letting go of my hand this time, she leads me further into the menacing lands of the briefing room.
Stop. The tape stops.
No flickering light, not even the nothingness after the flickering light, it just stops.
I don't understand.
The image of my memories is still there, it just doesn't move anymore.
As if it's frozen.
As if there are other things that I need to turn my attention to, rather than combing through my memories.
I jump up from my spot in the center of the empty room and try the door.
Still locked.
I'm still trapped.
And then: Words.
Words in the distance.
And then: A voice. The voice
The voice calling my name
Only this time it's different.
This time I know whose voice it is.
And this time, Kelly sounds far more desperate than before.
Hello everybody!
Very long time no see, I guess.
Instead of the usual excuses, I'll just talk about something else today. The process behind this chapter, for example.
It actually was planned to be a lot longer, and I got most of the rest already written down, but I just couldn't stand not updating anymore, so I thought I'd cut it right here and turn the rest into another chapter. I know, it's not much for all this time I haven't been updating, but I just felt if I don't get this out today, I'll never get it out.
So here we are, I hope I'll keep the writing up for a bit longer this time, but I don't promise :P
Oh yeah, one more thing. Despite the next book in the sequel coming out this week(!), I decided to stick with writing this damn story, 'cause I got a lot of actually half decent ideas about the plot and random twists and tons of cliffhangers and stuff... So I'll just carry on with this.
If anybody actually cared reading through all this, congratulations. Thanks for baring with me, I know it ain't easy. Leaving a comment down below will sure as heck motivate me to try and finish the next chapter, though =)
In the end, I wish all of you a wonderful time, especially with the fall of five, and thanks so much reading my story =))))))))