1

Jack woke up completely naked, surrounded by darkness, chained to a gigantic pillar, and lying in a puddle of his own blood. He’d woken up in strange places before, but none of them were this odd. This wasn’t even the thing that freaked him out the most. The most shocking thing about his unique situation, was that there was a gigantic iron spear piercing his chest, yet he felt no pain. He could feel it there, slightly tickling his body when he breathed, but only tickles, nothing more. Jack was no doctor, but he was pretty sure he should’ve been dead. Like, super dead.

Even though everything from his dilemma told him he was totally alive, like the fact that he was conscious and breathing, he still felt like a living, breathing, corpse. His skin was snow white, and his veins were blue and visible. Not a single part of his body was even remotely warm. He couldn’t move. All he could do, was sit there.

His eyes darted around nervously as he came to the realization that he was trapped in a state of paralysis. There was a frustrated sensation all throughout his body that fueled panic in his mind. The panic grew more and more as he struggled to move something, anything, in his body. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not get a response.

Great! He survived a spear through the chest, but, by the looks of it, was probably going to die of starvation. He’d rather have died a quick death from the spear rather than slowly wait for death to come and take him. No, that would be far too sad of an ending for him…far too…dull. He refused to accept that he was going to die here.

He was going to stop the panic in his mind and use all his power and force to move his arms and legs. He focused and once again attempted to move his limbs. For a while there was nothing, which urged him to try harder. After a minute or so of frustrated, attempted flailing, suddenly, his arms flew backwards, and his legs curled toward him with horrific crunching sound. The movement sent pain throughout his body. He screamed at the top of his lungs. Every movement of his body pained him dearly.

Now he felt the spear in his chest. Now he felt the pain. He knew he had to get it out of him. His arms, moving stiffly, and still cracking and snapping, fastened their hands around the spear, and pulled. The spear slowly came out of Jack’s chest, which caused him so much pain that he screamed loud enough for it to echo throughout the large dark room that held him captive. When the spear came out and landed on the cobblestone in front of him, the pain went away instantly, leaving behind a sore spot in his bloody chest.

The blood that surrounded him started flowing towards him in a tiny stream, and traveling up his body into the wound. He could feel the blood surging through his veins in the most unnatural way. The blood was cold, and spreading through his body quickly. It traveled from his chest, to his shoulders, and from his arms to his hands, where it became visible. On the palm of his right hand, written in blood, was a tiny dot. Written on the palm of his left hand, also written in blood, was a sentence.

Find her.

           Needless to say, Jack was seriously confused. He couldn’t even begin to understand what this could mean. He frantically gasped for air as his eyes darted around the dark room, suddenly feeling very paranoid and frightened. He saw nothing but darkness and the stone walls around him, but he trusted his gut more than his eyes.

The chains that bounded his chest to a pillar turned into ash, and evaporated into the air. Jack collapsed to the ground feeling weak and lightheaded. The longer he laid there, the more alive he felt. As time passed, his heart beat faster and harder than before, his mind more focused. By the time he regained his strength, his time on the stone pillar felt less like reality, and more like a dream he’d had long ago. His breathing steadied and slowed as he sat up his body, which no longer snapped and cracked when he moved.

Jack’s head filled with confusion and fear. He’d never been more confused in his life. Or at least he thought he hadn’t. He seemed to be drawing a giant blank when it came to the events that happened in his life. He knew his name, who he was, what he was like, but he couldn’t for the life of him recall anything he’d done or seen. He had no sort of memory of anything he’d done before waking up. There had to be something before this. If this was his genesis, it sure didn’t feel like one.

Not before long, the room began to fall apart brick by brick, revealing a large black void of darkness. The process started with the walls, with the bricks individually descending slowly and gracefully into the darkness below. It then spread to stone floor, leaving nothing but a small, thin, floating platform about the size of a table separating him from the darkness. It seemed to be illuminated in the darkness. Apart from his own body, this was the only thing he could see.

Jack didn’t dare move out of fear of falling deep into the intimidating abyss of darkness and unknown terrors. The pillar he had been on only moments earlier had disappeared. His heart skipped a beat as the sound of falling and rearranging bricks ceased, leaving nothing but the sound of his own panicked breathing.

Jack was, once again, very confused. Hundreds of questions flew through his mind. Was this some sort of hell he’d been placed in? The whole thing was obviously way above his level of comprehension. But then again, he was pretty sure anybody put in this situation would be just as confused as he was.

He steadied his breathing for the first time since his resurrection to listen to what he perceived as silence. To listen to a voice, a sound, something to follow, anything to do other than just stand here overlooking the darkness.

He put his head to the stone floor in an attempt to hear something other than silence and was horrified to find what he was looking for. The clear sound of a woman’s screams, both shrill and terrifying. It was the most horrific kind of screaming that sent chills down your spine when you hear it suddenly hit your eardrums.

Jack covered his ears in a futile attempt to block out the sound, but it still rang clear in his head, echoing around, making it impossible to think. The screams grew louder, and louder, and pained him inside, causing him to fall to the ground. He heard another scream inside his head, somewhat deeper and filled with even more pain than the woman’s, only to find that it was his own.

He couldn’t feel what he was doing. His body seemed to respond before his brain could send out commands. It was as if the scream was affecting his brain, causing his reactions to slur. His arms and legs flailed violently. He was in complete disarray to the point where his vision began to blur, and he thought he would pass out right there on the ground. Then, it stopped, leaving only his screams of pain echoing in the void.

The silence didn’t last. Not before long he began to hear murmuring all around him. In the abyss, in in a similar style to the scream he’d heard, above him, to his left and right, all around him were voices whispering in hushed voices. Yet, when he looked around, he saw nothing.

Finally, there was a clear voice in his head. Although distorted and filled with reverb, he could identify it as a woman’s. “You’re crazy! I swear to God you’re bipolar.” The voice cut short and glitched away before emanating from a new direction to his right. He heard some guy muttering in disagreement in the background. “You stay away from us. You keep your evil away from us. I never want to see your face ever again. Do you hear me?”

The woman’s voice cut off suddenly, and was replaced with a loud audible yelp. The man’s voice boomed, but everything he said was fuzzy and incomprehensible. The girl yelled, until suddenly she didn’t. The halt of her screaming was accompanied by a loud thump.

Then everything cut off abruptly, leaving an surreal-like echo in the abyss, as soft whispers began down in the darkness below. It was impossible to hear what all of them were saying, but they were definitely saying something. Jack stared off over the edge of his tiny little stone platform in a shock induced trance, wondering how anything so bizarre could possibly be real.

Despite not being able to see much in the darkness, he briefly searched for the source to the whispering.

Thousands of bricks of stone returned from the abyss amongst the whispering of a thousand voices, ascending slowly. As the bricks approached, the whispers grew, sounding like unpatterned wailing of his name. Thousands of whispers crying out for either his help, or for his head. Which one that was though, he did not know. Their voices haunted him, silently screaming in a whisper, “Jack! Jack!”

The hissing voices, growing in volume, sent shivers down his spine. The bricks began to diffuse and disperse. They flew through the darkness, building terrain off in the distance. All around him were little blocks of land being built in mid-air, creating the illusion of a solid surface.

They began to interlock and connect with his platform, forming walls much bigger than the ones he’d been surrounded by before. But the bricks were made of a material closer to concrete than stone. The bricks were broken, and deteriorating, and each one was splattered with either tiny specs of blood, or graffiti drawings and stains of unknown substances.

Billions of specks of dust now arose from the abyss, forming dirt to rest below the stone platforms outside his room of cement. It was as if an entire world was being built around him and his tiny stone platform in the air. The particles and stones moved faster and faster as the voices grew in volume, creating an almost deafening display of somber wailing. They frantically moved to connect with one another, the flying specs of dust becoming more like a wind storm, and the bricks, as well as other materials like wood, iron, and metal moved through the air like bullets from a gun.

He was almost entirely enclosed in the small cement room except for a hole in which he could see the world being built. Thousands of things rushing to conceal the dark void, to create the illusion of a world.

Then his tiny hole was covered, and he was alone in the silence, and alone in the darkness. The hole was a part of a moderately sized wooden door on the front wall, or what he assumed was the front wall, all the other ones seemed to look out into endless darkness. Here he was alone in the void, in the apparent niche of the universe, and he heard something that should have been impossible; Something that, simply put, scared the crap out of him, and would have scared the crap out of anyone in this situation: A knock at the door.

He didn’t dare to move or breathe, and even began to question whether he heard what he heard, but then, he heard it again, except louder and more aggressive than the first time. He felt a surging shock on the palm of his hand, and sharply inhaled through his teeth. When he looked at it, below the first message written in his fresh, red blood under the surface of his skin, was another larger one. This one written in harsher, somehow threatening handwriting. It seemed to be a much darker red than the simple and direct message above it. It read:

Do not trust what she says

The knock came again, and startled Jack back into reality…Or whatever this place was. He still wasn’t entirely sure. Whatever was knocking so furiously probably wouldn’t go away if Jack told it to. Was this the girl he was supposed to finding. Had he found the girl, or rather, had the girl already found him. The untrustworthy girl. Someone to share his nightmare with.

He lunged to open the door, which only moments before led to nothing but darkness. He stood behind the door and quickly pulled it open to reveal a long brown wooden corridor, and no one to be seen.

He stepped back in front of the door and wondered whether it would be wise to test the newly built terrain, and dash out to see who had knocked at the door. At first he thought this was a bad idea, but then he realized he’d been standing on essentially nothing but a thin, wooden platform not too long ago. He figured it was probably best to just give up trying to apply logic here.

He stepped out into the hallway. It felt just like solid ground. He wouldn’t have suspected anything if he hadn’t just seen it appear out of thin air. The only thing that concerned him was how it creaked when he stepped on it. He prayed to God that he it wouldn’t give way and send him plunging into the darkness below, which was likely filled with terror and things that shouldn’t exist, but do.Did he believe in God? Eh, he’d figure that out later. If there was a God, Jack was pretty sure what he was doing right now could be classified as some sort of sick torture.

He urged himself towards the ominous opening at the end of the hallway, which seemed a little bit too normal to be true-At least in this upside-down reality he’d woken up in. When he reached the door, he hesitated before going through to see what else was in store for him. He cleared his throat.

“Hello?” He croaked. His voice was disgusting. He expected himself to sound a lot deeper, smoother, and clearer than that, but he ended up just sounding like teenager with strep throat. He wasn’t a teenager. He couldn’t be. He felt like a man, thought like a man. As far as he was concerned he was a man. He had to be.

Christ, he thought. I don’t even know how old I am. He tried again. “Is there anybody here?” He asked. More silence.

Jack closed his eyes and stepped forward, feeling a splurge of unexpected confidence. He stormed through the doorway and entered a gigantic, elegant room with a single waterfall from a hole in the ceiling. The water fell into a small fountain in the middle of the room in a stunning display of beauty and architecture, which he, by all means, did not expect.

Inside the beautiful room was chaos. The room was built like a gently-sloped funnel with the fountain in the middle. He stood n a platform above everything else, out of sight. Below him, he found something that should have been reassuring. He found people. People yelling, screaming, crying, and groaning. He should have been overjoyed at this. He should have been glad to no longer be alone, but it just felt wrong.

The first thing he noticed when he looked at these people, was that they just looked wrong. A little off. Not physically off (well not most of them), but mentally off. Jack saw some things that made him question their sanity. He saw a man laughing hysterically in the direction of the sky at no one in particular, a woman sitting on the edge of the wall of cement hitting her head as she drooled and cried, and an old man that stood motionless with his head resting on the wall.

The second thing he noticed was that they were in metal chains. They were all chained together with their hands out in front of them in handcuffs. What scared Jack more than anything the people did were the things that led them. The only people without chains were humanoids that Jack could only describe as having no faces. It was as if their entire face had been shaved away and they were left with nothing but bare skin in its place. No eyes or eyebrows, no mouth, no nose, no hair…Just skin.

He didn’t know what they were doing, and frankly, he didn’t really care. All he knew was that he didn’t wish to be a part of it. Jack turned around to find nothing but uniformed, white cemented tiles where the door he entered through once was.

He rushed to the wall, feeling up on the tiles trying to find the doorway from which he came, but the effort was useless. He turned around with panic rising inside of him once more, and scanned the room for the exit, and as he half-expected, there was no exit.

He felt a sting on his hand once again, and below the previous message was another warning.

Do not be foolish. You will die.

He turned back to where the door once was, and then took a look back at the warning on his hand. I guess there’s no going back. He thought. Whatever evil force was putting him through this, and there had to be something evil putting him through this, it seemed insistent on him going on. So he couldn’t figure out whether it was really that much of a good idea. The question wasn’t whether or not to go on, but rather, where to go on to.

He looked around the dimly lit room wondering what he would do. He couldn’t help but find himself looking at the mob of people below . He found himself looking at a girl who hadn’t caught his eye before. She stared straight at him with a look of slight confusion and what looked to be sadness.

She seemed sane. She didn’t fidget, or cry, or twitch, or whine, she just stood there looking at him. Looking at him as if she realize the absurdity of the situation as well. Did she understand the absurdity of the situation? Did she share his confusion? She did. She had to.

She looked nervously at one of the humanoids that looked to be the leader of some sort. A big oaf who lifted some of the humans who had facial features into the fountain, where he scrubbed them down with a dirty rag. She then looked back at Jack. She urged him to come down. Jack laughed internally, which looked like him blowing air forcefully out of his nose. He shook his head. She rolled her eyes in disgust.

He thought about jumping down there to save this little spec of happiness from the darkness of this nightmare. But common sense told him it was a bad idea. He seemed to agree with his hand on this one, he did not trust the girl, and she wasn’t making it easy to. What didn’t help were the humanoids. Their entire demeanor had changed since moments before, and they huddled together looking around the room frantically. They all moved around each other in confusion glancing in all directions. Some looked to the right, some looked to the left, but then one of them finally turned their heads up and looked at him. The big oaf humanoid raised his beefy hand, and the chaos below them ceased. The woman stopped crying and the man stopped laughing. Though they stopped doing what they had done before, they quivered in noticeable fear. The big oaf squeezed his hand into a fist, and Jack flew forward off the platform and onto the ground forty feet below.

TO BE CONTINUED