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beefsteakmilkshake-blog · 7 years ago

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The Wall

A sort of in-universe fairy tale that’s part of a larger world I’m working on.

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Once upon a time a boy met a girl near a wall. In a deep, deep forest every day a boy liked to frolic and play. From sunrise to sunset the boy would explore and go on grand adventures, even if they were only grand in his head, and the boy was happy. It was on one of these romps that the boy came across a most peculiar wall. The wall was as tall as the boy three times over, and three times as wide as that. Now, the wall wasn't peculiar just because it was in the middle of a forest. A wall in the woods is rare, but not unheard of. What made the wall peculiar was something the boy didn't discover until he took a close look at it. There was a hole dug through the stone, barely big enough for him to peep through. When he did, he didn't see the forest on the other side. Instead, he saw a field of grass with an open sky.

Now that in itself is peculiar enough, but what was more peculiar was when he walked behind the wall, only to see no hole on the other side. He searched for hours and hours, but couldn't find the other end of the hole. Yet, when he returned to the front of the wall, there it was. He thought this quite odd. He'd never seen such a hole before. When the next day came, he tried to put the thought of the wall behind him. After all, there were so many other things to explore. But soon his curiosity overwhelmed him and he returned to gaze at it again. Soon he was making a visit to the wall every day. Sometimes he would peep through the hole. Sometimes he would try to find the other end. Sometimes he would just sit for hours and hours, staring at it. This went on for more days than the boy could count, until one day when as he approached it he heard a peculiar noise.

As he grew closer to the wall, the noise grew louder. It was a soft and gentle weeping, coming from the other side of the wall. Concerned, the boy quickly ran round the wall, only to find nobody on the other side. It was then that he realized the voice was coming from the hole in the wall. He peaked through the hole, but only saw the same field of grass. The person crying was just out of sight.

"Hello?" He called.

The sobbing stopped. "...Who's there?"

"It's just me." He said.

"Where are you?" Asked the voice.

"I'm on the other side of the wall." The boy said.

"But there is no wall here." Said the voice. "Just the old stones."

That was odd. Maybe the hole had gotten lost. "Why are you crying?" He asked.

"My brother the prince has died in battle." The voice said.

"I'm sorry." Said the boy, and he was. "Is there anything I can do to help you feel better?"

"Just someone to talk to would be nice." She said.

"I can do that!" He replied. "I would like to have someone to talk to myself. It gets lonely here sometimes."

He sat and talked with the voice for hours and hours. Occasionally he peeked through the wall, but he could never quite find her. It didn't matter much to him, though. He finally had someone to talk to. The voice told him many things about herself. How she was a princess who lived in a huge castle with servants and knights and of course, her father the king. The boy was enraptured. He had never heard of such things before. In turn, the boy told the voice about his home, and the forest he like to play in. He was a bit embarassed at how dull his own life seemed compared to hers, but the voice seemed just as enraptured as he. He was so enthralled that hours passed without him even realizing, until the sun started to set and he had to go home.

"Will I hear from you again tomorrow?" The boy asked.

"Of course." The girl replied. She sounded much less sad than before. "I'll be here."

"Good."

And so the boy continued to return to the wall every single day. No longer for the wall itself, but for the voice on the other side. Every day he would sit in front of the wall and talk with the voice for hours and hours, and then at the end of the day they would promise to meet again the next. She would tell him many things; wonderous, unimaginable things about her life beyond the hole in the wall. Her stories made the forest the boy played in seem very small by comparison, but it didn't matter to him; the boy was happy.

One day the girl asked him his name. "We've known eachother for a while, after all. I think it's only proper we learn eachother's names."

The boy pondered for a moment. What was his name? It had been so long since he'd heard it, he wasn't entirely sure he even had a name to begin with. "I don't know."

"You don't know your own name?" She giggled at him.

"It's not funny!" The boy protested.

"You're right, I'm sorry. It's just that I've never heard of someone not knowing their own name before." She said.

"I don't think I have one." he confessed.

"That"s not right." She replied. "A boy should always have a proper name. I guess I'll have to give you one myself."

"Really?" He perked up from his seat. "You would do that?"

"Yes, I'll give you my brother's name. It needs a new home." She said. "Come close, I'll give it to you."

The boy leaned in, nearly pressing his ear against the hole as the girl whispered the name, now lost, through her end.

"Is it a good name?" He asked.

"It is a very good name." She said.

"Then I'll treasure it forever." He said. And the boy was happy.

His happiness, like all things, didn't last forever. The very next day he came to the wall, only to find that it had gone silent again. He called to the voice on the other side for hours and hours, but got no reply. Alone again, the boy wept and fell asleep in the grass.

The next morning he heard the voice again. She called his name, now lost. "Are you there?"

"Yes!" His heart swelled with relief. "Where were you yesterday? I was so worried!"

"The people that killed my brother... they finally reached my home. There were so many, we had to huddle in the castle and hope they couldn't break in, but they did. I got out, but there's nowhere left to go. They're coming for me." The voice was shaking. "My father. My home. Everything is gone. They've taken it, and soon they'll take me too."

Fear dashed th relief from the boy's heart. "No. No, I won't let that happen!" He cried out.

"I just want you to stay with me when it happens." She said. "I don't want to die alone."

The boy cried and pounded his fists against the cold stone. There had to be something he could do. There had to be some way. He had to stop them, somehow. He had to break the wall, had to get through. It was the only way. It had to be. He pushed against the wall with all his might, but it wouldn't budge. He kicked it until his feet were bruised. He bashed it until his horns split like branches from a tree. He clawed at it until his nails tore off and his fingers left bloody streaks on the stone, yet nothing he did would break it.

He heard other voices now. Older, deeper voices, with clanks and clunks and other metal sounds following them. "There it is!" One of them shouted.

"They're here." Said the voice that was his friend.

"No. NO!" The boy shouted. He shouted long. He shouted loud. He would not let this happen. He screamed. The forest shook, and cracks began to spread like worms from the hole. He screamed again; longer, louder. The cracks grew larger. The wall began to crumble. The boy let out on last roar and charged at the wall with all his might.

Once upon a time a boy met a girl near a wall. The boy was happy.

#Fairy Tale #Flash Fiction

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beefsteakmilkshake-blog · 7 years ago

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Inner Gods

Well, I guess I should get started then. Here’s a little lovecraftian pastiche I worked up a while back.

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There may not be many who believe this story. Had I not experienced the events first hand, I myself would laugh such a tale away as the ravings of one gone mad, or at least the dreams of a particularly imaginative story-teller. I tell you now, my kin among the Infinite Ether, that it is true. I tell you this because I love you, and would not wish for such horrors to befall any one of you. One encounter with the grotesque, uniform creatures and their wretched world is enough for all of waking reality.

I am Dgast'ilial. I spawned long ago from the undulating back of the Great Void Ithilial. I have spent my entire existence wanting for nothing. I do not desire the power or omnipresence of my beloved parent, having instead chosen to forge my own path through the endless expanse. I have roamed the chaotic infinity for eons uncountable, merging with and separating from entities both lesser and greater than myself, sharing my memories and emotions with them as they do me. Becoming one greater, before parting ways, each a bit wiser for their experience together. I have been embraced by the warmth and love of infinity. My journey has been far, and my friends great in number. Misery and fear were nearly unknown to me, experienced only as memories of those I have coupled with. I had not truly felt these emotions for my own until I was forced to experience that which I am recounting. That immutable, unforgettable event which will haunt me until my essence thins and I scatter to what lies beyond infinity.

I cannot say for certain when it was that it happened. I had been wandering through the cacophonous expanse alone for quite some time. I was admittedly lonely at the time, but the comforting warmth of the fractals surrounding me brought me no small amount of joy. It was at this time that I felt it. That undeniable, immense pulling sensation. A sense of being brought low, of becoming lesser instead of greater. My essence seemed to gather and was wretched through time and space to a place I can only vaguely describe, perhaps as I was too fearful to note too much, or perhaps because my mind will not let me remember. What I do recall is the sudden and unmistakable sense of suffocation. The space of infinity was suddenly gone. The place I had suddenly found myself in was finite. While the borders of this place marched ever outward in a faint mockery of the endlessness of home, it felt as if instead those walls closed in on me. Geometry had taken on an unspeakable linearity that sent pain throughout my being. Light struck me in blasphemous, unrelenting waves. What had happened to the beautiful fractals which light should have been spiraling out from? Why was the comforting cacophonous chaos suddenly restricted? Twisted in to uniformity? What unseen forces were responsible for the blasphemous nature of this place?

I will admit that in my sudden panic, it took me a moment before I noticed the creatures. Those things, so small yet so utterly wrong that the thought of them still freezes my essence with fear. The creatures. The only way I can possibly describe them is "half-dead," but even these words betray their true blasphemy. Their bodies were all confined to one form. A central chamber from which sprouted five appendages. One was short and round, the others longer and straighter. From two of these appendages sprouted each five more, all reaching out towards me. They kept this form, as unchanging as that of a corpse, yet they moved as though they were alive. They felt. They thought. I could feel those thoughts piercing in to my mind, forcing their way in as if they had no control over it. A screaming torrent of language, alien and incomprehensible was uttered from one of them. They could not feel one another as I did them. They were forced to use those grating noises to communicate. Through the horrific assault of sound, I heard an uttering which could nearly be construed as my name. They tried to utter more of their nonsense to me, though to my dread I already knew of their intentions. These things believed me the key to their ascension. They wished to couple with me, as I had with many before them. To share in my knowledge, and elevate themselves above their peers for purposes unimaginably cruel. Yet many of those before me felt fear, revulsion at my lack of form, and some were even stricken to madness.

In my panic, and in my revulsion I have done something that I had never done before, or intend to do ever again. I had ended life. Each of them, but a speck before me, felt my feral and thoughtless wrath. I tore them apart, reduced them to their most base of essences. Even such essence mocked me with its spherical uniformity, bound together by those same damning forces which chained the rest of that tiny, unfortunate reality. But at least their thoughts had ceased their assault on my mind.

The destruction of the creatures released a great hold on me, and I felt myself returning home. Yet before I returned to the cacophonous expanse, I had a dreadful sensation. I sensed that which of this entire tale still terrifies me the most. For a brief moment I felt them. Though I had exterminated those who wished to become one with me, there were far, far more still left behind and limited as much as their universe but still great in number. They still exist, somewhere in some other reality they exist. I fear that one day they will gather and attempt to bring one of us back to that horrid place. I cannot know for certain, but I send this tale across infinity as a warning to all. Beware these creatures. Do not acquiesce to them. I have felt the hatred that bleeds from their minds. It has tainted me beyond any chance of purity. Because of this I seek no longer to share my mind with my kin, for to couple with others would be to pass that hatred on to them as well. I go now in to exile, to spend the rest of my existence alone. Mark my story, my kin, and mark it well. Fear them.

#Lovecraft #Flash Fiction

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