seltin the champ
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This is just a short weird fiction/horror short story. Its my first attempt at writing something like this, so id like some feedback when and if possible.
*Ahem*
Prologue: They were called the ones who played games. They lurked in a dark other-dimensional plane, waiting for the time when one of those hairless apes known as humans would permit them their pleasure. Their pleasure was, quite disturbingly, messing up the human mind, twisting it, wracking it with madness. And now, after millennia, or was it merely seconds? Time had no meaning to them. All they knew is that now, a human ripe for playing was uncovered. They slithered out of their shadow realm and into our world....
Chapter 1: The scoffing dreamer.
Dave Webster and his friends were at a bar. It was well past midnight and they were still there, looking for escape in the bottle, or worse, pleasure. Their topic of the day was ghost stories, as Halloween was rapidly approaching. The tale currently being spoken was some yarn about vampiric blood-crazed spirits that possessed humans. Dave privately thought those things were stupid. He was here for the booze. He found escape from the daily grind of his life in a beer bottle. It was the only was he could get rid of that strange, and persistent, feeling of longing that was his constant companion since the 6th grade. He ridiculed all this stuff. And these weren’t even his real friends. It is true they had been friendlier than many people, and he kind of liked them, but they were all either co-workers or people that had pity on his near alcoholism. None shared his longing feeling or his dreams of things impossible. And so he still found himself here, every night, to drink their fears and pain away. The next story, though, caught Dave’s attention. It was the guy he liked the most of the lot, Tom, who told it.
“They say that when people show certain qualities, or faults, they attract the attention of certain spirits. Those entities can be good or evil, though most often the latter. No one knows who they take an interest in, but its never average Joes or Janes. It has to be someone special…. The last guy who got hit by them was someone whose name only passed down as Bob, was an office worker in the 1950’s. Nothing outside the ordinary, except the fact he had the occasional depression. One day he started having these weird dreams, and heard voices in his head, saying “Game!” Game!” And he nearly went nuts. He sought answers, paid palm readers, mystics, but nobody could give him what he sought. He killed himself by jumping of his town water tower, screaming that he did not want them to get him, and that time was almost up. They never could figure what was wrong with him, if he had any brain diseases, or if he was just plain nuts, or if these spirits things had gotten to him. No one knows.”
“Well, guys, what do you think?” asked Tom.
“I think it was better than most of this other trash.” Dave replied. Then he added, “I got to go, early day at work tomorrow.”
“Aw c’mon Dave, stay a while!” And other similar phrases hit him. But he went home. He fell asleep after some two hours of tossing and turning, and had some odd dreams. Right before he fell into deep sleep, he heard a sibilant, yet forceful, whisper. “Play our game, Dave Webster.”
Chapter 2: The Mind’s scattering.
Dave awoke with the biggest start of his life, and that is not much to say. He is not a very fear-prone man. He was sure he heard the voices. He listened intently, and there it was again! “Play it, Dave, you know you want to.”
“LEAVE ME ALONE!” He shouted.
“Oh, we will not. Not until your pathetic little alcoholic mind agrees to be our plaything. That won’t take long, from what I see. Not very stubborn, not very particular. Another brainless slave of the corporations. Like that other one, Bob.”
Now Dave was freaking out. He remembered the story told by Tom. He ran out of his room, screaming at the top of his lungs to drown out the whispers in his head. He ran out of his house, in the hope that the city noises would erase the noise emanating from his skull. He thought he was still dreaming. He saw that it was not yet morning. He checked his watch, and saw that it was almost 3AM. He ran around in the streets, screaming like a madman to try and get rid of the voices. He tried to get his bearings, but horribly failed. He was going mad with fear and desperation. He wanted to see someone else, anyone that he could talk to.
“You want to talk to someone, Dave Webster; oh we’ll give you someone. If in return you will agree to play our game.”
“I do not want your stupid game! Get out of my mind! You can’t do this!”
“Oh yesss, we can. We have been doing it for years now, and we are not going to stop because of one ape. But here is your someone!”
Dave saw a shadow around the corner of the alley he was in. A female voice rang out. “Spare some change, friend? I can make you happy.”
“Yes, anything, just… just talk to me, tell me I’m not insane”
“Okay… you are not crazy, now, about that change…”
“HIT HER.” Came the voices in his head. Not controlling himself, Dave launched himself at the homeless harlot, and obeyed the command. When she was a moaning, bloody mass at his feet, he gave in.
“Ill play your game! Just don’t make me do this again!”
“All riiight, Webster. Go out there, in the town square, and tell me what is wrong. If you get it right, me and my brothers will let you go and stop this interference.” Dave rushed into the square, and started enumerating things.
“The water tower’s bad paint job?”
“No”
“The graffiti?”
“No”
“How there are no birds?”
“No”
“The not working fountain?”
“No”
After a couple of more guesses, all he heard was the tick tock of a clock inside his head. But he knew they were not gone. He found a payphone and called Tom.
“Hey Tom! PICK UP!”
“Hmm… whhaaa?
“In your story, what was the game and how did it end?”
“The guy died because he did not find what was wrong in time… Now go to bed and let me sleep.”
Again the voice:
“Hurry, Webster. You have until 4:45 AM!”
Chapter 3: Something wrong with the sky.
Dave Webster rushed to and fro from every street in the city, not even bothering to ask the voices in his head what was the wrong thing. He just thought, and they heard it. The answer was almost always undeniably a resounding no. It had the effect of nearly driving him mad. Little did he know what was in his head. The one who played games had found their next victim. They fed on his madness, but they too, longed. Longed for a mind capable of withstanding them. They wanted to play, after all.
So they gave a hint to Webster.
“Go to the top of the water tower, the one Bob leapt from. Surprised he was in this town? You don’t have time for surprises, Dave. Go there, and if you have half an intelligence it should be obvious.”
Dave ran a mad dash trough the town. He happened to pass by Tom’s house. He ran up and rang the doorbell.
“Tom! You got to help me! Drive me to the water tower!”
“Uhh, why the hurry, Dave? Come back in the morning, I think my story frazzled you.”
“I’ll give you a hundred bucks! Now just come!”
They drove to the water tower, Tom being puzzled at Dave’s weird behavior. Dave felt the moonlight on his face, but it felt different… colder. They got to the tower and Dave opened the door, slammed it, and ran to the ladder. He started climbing, but about halfway up, he fell. He hit the ground hard, and it felt like he broke a few ribs. Tom rushed out of the car.
“Dave! Are you ok? Let me call 911!”
“No time! I have to get up there!”
He shrugged off the injury, despite it being excruciatingly painful, and finally made it up top.
“All right, what is it? Is something wrong with the town? Tell me and leave me alone!”
“Quick, Webster, look up at the skyyy.”
He looked up, and suddenly it was so obvious.
“There is a moon! But the stars! They are gone!”
“Time is up, Webster.”
He looked at his watch. 4:46. All he saw were shadows rushing at him, and then, blackness.
Epilogue:
Today at around 4;50 in the morning 911 responded to a call from one Tom Hinchley. He said his friend had just fallen from the water tower. Paramedics pronounced Dave Webster dead at the scene. To understand his strange behavior, they called in psychiatrist Bill Huxley. He said that from the descriptions… absolutely nothing was wrong with the deceased.
< Message edited by seltin the champ -- 8/19/2010 21:37:46 >
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