Short Story #1 DRAFT
Falling. Falling down a space that my brain can’t decipher between a small tunnel or a deep, echoing chasm. I try to scream but my body restrains me in preparation for a catastrophic landing that will happen in an unknown amount of time. There was nothing but darkness after my torch had fizzled to nothing. My hand had lost its grip for the torch as I had tripped into this hole I’m falling through seemingly endlessly.
It’s now noticeably more damp and humid as I plummet to who knows where. Maybe I’m finally nearing my death I had predicted at the start of this fall? It continues to grow harder to breathe, feeling more like a hot steamer blowing right through my airway. I splash. I’m subsequently enveloped in a wet, somewhat jelly like substance. I know for certain now I cant scream, my brain struggles to try and find a possible solution to 1) why I am not dead and 2) why this jello material swallowed me whole and is now glowing. I can feel it slowly squishing and hopefully directing me out of itself. I quickly am spat out and now stand on a sole patch of grass softly lit by the jello lake above me.
Most of the area surrounding me is still quite dark and seemingly endless. My eyes are trying their best to adjust to the extremely dim environment around me when a small speck of light is moving rapidly my way. The footsteps of this creature sound as if they are sprinting away from a disaster. Falling to the ground in fear I slam my eyes shut and cover my ears, preparing for the worst when I feel a gust of air pass around my body. My eyes burst open to a child around my age, 16 or 17, holding what seems to be an oil lamp in their right hand and waving wildly at me with their left. With a huge smile on their face they lend me a hand so I can get up. My heart rate slows as now I know I’m no longer alone, but a flood of questions ring across my brain. Why is there another human here? Who are they and how did they get here? How did I get here and why are we both even alive after going through whatever hell portal that was?
Before I could even utter a word they yanked me back in the direction they came from. Now I am scared all over again because we are running into the darkness with just a small oil lamp that produces enough light to just see the floor right beneath us as we run. The ground is mostly dirt with some pebbles here and there. There’s no way of knowing if this is a path other than the fact the person holding my hand is very confident in the direction they are leading me. In the small amount of light we have I can examine what this person dragging me along looks like, at least from the back. Their hair is curly and extremely bouncy as we run along, they are also wearing a white pirate looking blouse covered in dirt marks with a vest over it and some pants that have been tied up to be shorts. This person seems like they might have been down here a long time given the disheveledness of their clothes, I can only imagine what I look like right now.
After running far enough to where we could no longer see my original entrance point, we slow to a gentle pace as a new landmark comes into view. The mysterious person tightens their grip on my hand just barely to the point of it beginning to hurt me, but we continue to walk. Although I may not know this person who rescued me I can most definitely feel the change in their emotion and body language as we approach what seems to be an abandoned village. They start to lead me towards the outside of the village completely bypassing the large path going straight through the middle. As we walk by the homes I can tell why their body language changed. It’s eerily almost silent with just the sound of our footsteps to fill the silence along with the ambience of the soft ringing in my ears of being quiet for so long already. Their gaze never even shifts inward towards the village, just blankly staring forward into the darkness ahead.
