Snippet #1366235

Ryan struggled for a moment, writhing on the cold concrete floor of his cell. Cracks resounded as his unpadded bones impacted the unfeeling surface. His legs and arms flung wildly, his eyes were shut tight. Eyelids crushing each other in sunken holes as his mouth gaped in a unending silent scream. Agony rushed through his body, summoned from his mind like a flood. His skeletal chest rose and fell violently, his breathing erratic and swift. His thrashing slowly ceased, leaving a twitching body against the cold, hard floor. A pause came about him, his mouth and body relaxed. Yet his lids were still closed, manically rolling eyes visible beneath their pale expanses. The nightmare plagued him, some unfathomable horrors consumed his mind. In a sudden jerk his hands flung to his eyes, his mouth ripped open, a grating sound escaped. The scream of a hoarse, dry voice. His fingers clawed his flesh, dragging as his skin. They passed his brow and dropped into his sockets. They began to press, fleshless bones pressing into the soft tissue of his eyes. Long ago his scream had ceased to sound. All that accompanied the blood ripping from his eyes was unnatural silence as his nails dug deeper, trying to tear the dream from his mind.

A yell ripped from Ryan's mouth as he flung his body from his prone position. Beneath him was not cold concrete but vile dirtied cloth. Sheets upon a cot. His body trembled uncontrollable from the memory of his nightmare. He could feel his sanity hanging by a thread, his nightmares plagued with chaotic thoughts of loosing control of his own soul. Having his mind ripped from his grasp was his greatest fear. Every moment he closed his eyes he could see the horror of madness waiting. Yet the sight of his familiar cell offered him no release. No comfort for he knew that this reality was a torment mirroring that of his own creation. Eventually they would return and take him, force him to embrace the darkest corners of his mind and indulge in his nightmare. How he lasted to this moment was a epic myth beyond comprehension. He stilled his shaking muscles, his shoulders stooped and head slummed, exhausted. The sound of grating metal suddenly echoed around the claustrophobic box. The ex-soldier recognised it as the common sound of the shifting heavy machinery unlocking his door. They had come to present to him his darkest thoughts, as they had so many times before and will continue to do until he finally snaps.

He looked up to see the white figure approach to drag to his inevitable doom. Yet there was nothing in the open doorway, Blackness conquered beyond the frame. From the blackness a figure emerged, yet it was not a figure. Billowing clouds of Darkness sweep into the room, roiling across the far wall. Ryan could feel it touching his mind, his eyes widened in fear. Scrambling, the ragged man thrust himself back, against a wall. Trying to escape the terrible presence. He couldn't, the room seemed to shrink, the more he pushed back the more he was propelled towards the essence. It billowed forwards, filling the corners of the room. Finger-like tendrils flowed out of the mass, probing towards him as his space became smaller. His heart pounded to escape his chest and the form. The first of the dark tentacles touched him. He could not feel it but inside his mind he could sense it. It began to fill him, he frantically tried to thrash it away but it encroached unperturbed. Slowly he could feel the tangible emotion enfold him, the Madness flooded his every being, conquering his being. The Darkness enveloped him, only his mind and soul fought out against it. His brain patterns betraying his flesh, willing his unyielding heart to falter and cease. He wanted to die. He needed to die before he lost himself to the Insanity.

Ryan Crawler did not die. He awoke, feeling the stale air from the scrubbers brush his skin and fill his nostrils. He lay on his cot once again. The room empty once again. The horror waiting to begin once again. Fear silenced his nervous system. He was paralyzed.
Unable to move, only to live. He did not want to move, to do so would summon the demons of his thoughts. He wanted it all to end, to have his heart give out then and there. Yet he knew it would not, somewhere there was a part of him that held on. He feared it, he could not understand why he would want to. Did that part of him desire the impeding breaking, was it already lost to sane thought. He was terrified of his own mind, not surrendering to the hope it may be holding him on to the end, the release where he can return to life instead of the simulated death he was living. After what felt like an age the man hauled his starved body from the sheets of his bed. His body had no tension yet his mind was on the edge. Nothing was real to him anymore, he awoke from nightmare to nightmare, only to discover it was another nightmare within another. Reality seemed as far from his as the sunlight was to his forsaken realm. The sudden chaos that began, the blaring of alarms and shouting caused him momentary curiosity but held no sway within him. No voices emerged from the mist for him to grasp onto, to cling to.