burrowsofblood

[burrowsofblood]

Blood seeps through my fingers

And splatters

Like a inkblot

I see truth

In the mess

[burrowsofblood]

Bob wondered if anything existed outside anymore, or if it ever did. Maybe the world he knew was just a dream and this nightmare mess of a room was all that ever was. It couldn't even be called a kitchen anymore. The tiles, once white, were painted red with all the various injuries he'd suffered over the years. A stray knife falling seemingly into reality. Glass shards hidden in a glass of water placed inches from his parched lips. A grease fire bursting from an oven long since dead. He was reliant on the kitchen for food. It always waited until he'd nearly succumbed to hunger, slipping in rotten slivers of what he hoped was meat. It felt gritty on his tongue like rancid sand coated in slime. Each time Bob swore he wouldn't eat it but each time he gave in. The only hope he had left was that whatever held his life in its hands like the tendons of a living puppet, would finally have the mercy to cut the strings and let him fall.

Okay so I had a thought.

Move been thinking a LOT about the concept of houses that are haunted not by ghosts, but by the house itself.

But thinking about that I had an idea. What if the house didn't hate you, but one specific room does instead.

Moving into a normal home and all is well until... the kitchen starts to seem off. It's small at first, knifes left out on the counter, lights left on or off, the occasional missing bit of food.

But it's gets worse.

One night after work you head to your bedroom only to.. walk into the kitchen instead, almost without realizing you did. Walking out nothing has changed, you just, ended up here instead.

But soon that becomes a problem. Walking into the kitchen when you swore you were walking out the front door. Slipping in the hallway only to find that you sit up inside the kitchen. Going to use the restroom at night and walking into the dark kitchen on the other side of the house.

You don't know why you keep ending up there, it's seems impossible, but it keeps happening.

You can't leave the house anymore. Anytime you do you end up back with the marble countertops and humming fridge. You start to wonder if you have ever left the kitchen at all, maybe you've never even been to the other rooms.

Your out of food now. Having eaten everything the kitchen had for you. With a knife left out on the counter, maybe it's time to give the kitchen its food back, maybe then it will let you leave.

Anyways! Sorry if that way bad TwT I don't write much but I'm hoping to change that!! Just little ideas and all that

[burrowsofblood]

Burrows of Blood and Shadow

Hi! I'm sticking the first two chapters of my novel up here. Have fun! Chapter 1 The Dream Surfer The dreamers dreamt all the time, free to go anywhere, to be anything, to see worlds outside themselves, inside themselves, and beyond themselves. The Dream Surfer joined them on their journeys. While he visited people during their sleep, he didn’t care for surface dreams and their fragmented images of inner turmoil or outer annoyances, silly tales that held their own logic, or nightmares and their temporary fear.

He liked delving deeper, to share the memories of dreamers while they busied themselves with slumbering thoughts, to see their innermost joys and all the special truths they kept stored away in private corners of their hearts.

He was just a dark green silhouette with no life of his own, so he lived through these people, sharing the happiness he could never have himself: new love, old love, the birth of a child, the simple pleasure of a flower, the triumph of a job well done. He saw it all through their eyes and it almost filled the unending void in what he assumed to be his soul. Almost.

The Dream Surfer wasn’t even sure if all the people he visited were sleeping. Maybe none of them were sleeping. How could he even know? It wasn’t like he floated up to bedrooms like some unseen specter. The Dream Surfer never left his world. It was a large expanse of blackness with doorways crafted of items that hinted at what sort of experience he might have.

He wasn’t sure what his world or even he was comprised of, or why he seemed to float endlessly in a realm where his only escape was the temporary exit into the minds of others. After millennia, he really didn’t care. But while he didn’t care about the mechanics of his situation, he still cared about finding out who he had been and how to finally move beyond the confines of this realm.

He hadn’t even fully explored it. There was one area he didn’t dare touch, a place filled with things more bitter than the darkest nightmare. The dreams dreams and memories reeked with the scent of dangerous rot, and even a glimpse in its direction told him he really didn’t want to know what went through the heads housed within.

Still, the Dream Surfer was growing more and more tempted to plunge their depths, to see if maybe the parts of his world and beyond that he feared were what would finally give him what he had been searching for his whole time of being — the wholeness everyone else took for granted.

He wanted to be real, to feel his own feelings and share his own joys, not just taste the dreams and memories of others. Maybe, just maybe, the only reason he could never break free from this prison of nothingness was because he only ever experienced the pleasure of the world and not the pain. Sure, he experienced the occasional frustration of a bad day at work, or even the grief of a lost loved one, but he shied away from anything he found too unpleasant, too dark. But if those untried paths of depravity truly were the final piece of the puzzle, the final lock on his cage, he wanted them — no matter what the cost.

So he traveled past the laughter, the tears, and the wishes, and went straight for black pathways of crawling things, whispering insanity into crevices of filth. There were no doors here to go through, or gates or archways, only holes, burrows that varied in appearance but all had a deep sense of gelatinous dark.

Black smoke hovered over one burrow like dense fog made of shadow. He sat on the edge and slowly slipped inside. The darkness enveloped everything as he slid down into the mind of someone else. It was a familiar sensation, but…harsher, more viscous. His own thoughts stripped the further he went, peeling like layers of an onion, until perspectives merged and he no longer knew himself. Chapter 2 Night Night The shadows crept along the floor, casting shapes that only children ever feared. The young girl edged farther under her covers. The shadows laughed ‑ a wispy sound like ice that drew in the surrounding heat. The child’s eyes widened and she gripped the sheets. The laugh repeated. She dove for safety under a pile of stone-eyed stuffed toys sitting in the middle of the bed.

Sleep well, little babe. And dream of faraway. Where covers cannot save you, and night eats all the day.

The girl’s whimpers filled the air, and the shadows took a taste — much too bland. They slithered closer and drew in memories, random and shattered —

A doll.

A face.

A monster.

A doll with black coal eyes and a sparkling pink dress. It was dragged along the ground by the girl as she raced off to a new adventure.

The face, a woman’s face — a mother — always had a smile and brought warmth and comfort with a gentle embrace. The girl sat at a table as the smiling woman set down a tray of chocolate chip cookies.

The monster was a cartoonish wolf with large, too-blunt teeth. It was nothing more than a mild fairy tale, hardly worth half a mouthful of fear.

That would change.

With just a little twist, a bit of a turn, anything could become a meal. The shadows twisted into one another, forming a cruel parody of the girl’s mother. It stood tall in the room, sharp jagged teeth spilling from its mouth. Wolfish eyes peered down at where the girl hid, holding a writhing, living duplicate of the girl’s doll in a sparkly pink dress. The doll reached its cloth hands out, calling the child’s name in a soft, sweet voice.

Don’t hide away, my precious child. No harm will come to thee. Your little dolly’s calling you. Open your eyes and see.

The girl slowly pulled the animals away from her face. She opened her eyes, crying out at the twisted vision of her mother. The living doll screamed in the child’s voice, while the shadow mother brought it to her mouth and devoured it whole. The girl opened her mouth to scream, but the sound turned to icy mist and floated silently away.

There’s no one here to save you, or take you to their breast. The time of love is over, now comes eternal rest.

The child scrambled up, but shadows twisted again into a shapeless blob, blacker than night. Multiple arms formed and pushed her into the mattress, smothering her with a chill.

Tears ran down her immobile face and one drop rose into the air until it landed on a forefinger of the twisting shadow form. It placed the tear on its swirling lips and smiled. Delicious.

The shadows untangled themselves and seeped into her pores, bringing fresh new fears. These weren’t the nightmares of children, or even the matured terrors of those that called themselves adults. These were real — solid — the fears that fears were made of.

They gave her the awareness of what hid behind the edges of her dreams, behind the faces of her family, behind the faces of the world, and beyond. She saw the lurking, sucking, dying things that inspired hatred and fed off fear. She saw the string of lies they spun, choking the love that kept her warm, killing the light her parents showered her with. She saw the battle that was all but lost, how the hungry beasts of the world beyond had nearly broken through, and only a thin layer of wavering light kept them at bay.

The shadows showed her themselves and fed on the shattering of her innocence. Delete Created with Sketch.

The Dream Surfer emerged from the burrow, coughing up foreign thoughts until he regained himself. The Dream Surfer wasn’t sure what to think of the tale. It was too strange, too new. It was as if he had stepped into darkness and come out the other end unharmed. It was a fun-house mirror casting the memories he’d seen before in a crooked fresh light.

Childhood. He didn’t remember if he had one of his own, but he’d experienced many childhoods of others. Happy children running to their parents, crying over skinned knees and lost balloons. The slow-building grief of encroaching adulthood, mixed with the exciting promise of freedom. There were innocent memories in this tale as well, but the shadows had twisted them into something misshapen and threatening. How much more twisted could the world get? How much more could it bend?

The shadows themselves were something new. He’d never encountered anything beyond humans. The Dream Surfer always thought he was the only non-human entity that existed. Were there other beings out there? Creatures far more strange and interesting than a couple of shades? Maybe he’d find things out here that he thought were only fiction. Or…things far beyond even that.

This journey was already starting to show potential. There was so much to learn, so many chances to find a way to finally gain his freedom. The Dream Surfer couldn’t wait to see just how much the burrows had to show.

He scanned the other burrows. One burrow had moss and grass spilling from the top. Dotted along the earth were sharp metal teeth, as if it was a mouth waiting to slam shut. The Dream Surfer dove headfirst inside.