Deep Cavern, Cliff face on the border of Wing City
His eyes saw explosions that rocked through his lids, forcing his pale fingers to tense against stone, nails that were ripped raw and jagged, stumps of bone on skin that flashed raw in the weak moonlight that poured through the cavern as the man writhed on the ground. Dust piled into his hair, into the immodest cloth that covered his groin, pulling tight against skin that hadn't seen true sunlight in weeks. It didn't help his thrashing that the temperature had plummeted, making this not only a night terror, but one where clouds escaped on panicked breaths, and the tendrils of the chill seeped into his bones, chilling his insides, churning them, shaping them.
He was born anew in the night. He was afraid.
Behind dusty eyelids that squeezed shut, beneath the façade of a babe made man, he saw flashes of brilliant orange. A man swung an infant like a club, the constant bleating of pain from a sacrificial goat, a woman's face morphing from a sand dune. These all were the undercurrent, the constants of his dreams that had shaped who he was. Never did he get the chance to grow from child to man. Never did he get the chance to adjust to his body. Instead, his livelihood and being were stripped from the start. Rather than growing old, the baby's nightmares became the man's. Rather than growing up, the dreams had merely identified until the whimpers were a constant sound.
He was standing atop a frosted hill, now. His feet sinking deep into the snow banks, toes curling with the unwanted chill. His arms wrapped around his frail and tiny body, ribs defined, stomach dipping dangerously against his spine. From the ankles down, his lower body was black and cracked, making him unable to move onward, unable to move back. In the snow in front of him, slithering against the puffy white - so inviting, so dangerous - three large black snakes approached him. They had the eyes of a cat. They had the face...
The face of his father.
Outside the dream, in the cave, he whimpered.
Inside the dream, on that hill, he screamed. The power; the pull at his stomach that usually accompanied the sound not forthcoming, this time. The snakes made their way towards him, whispering their sweet lies as they circled his ankles, slithered up his legs.
"First we strip his flesh and bone, so we can see his innards galore,
And then we bite his tongue right out, so he can scream no more."
The silly nursery rhyme invaded his skull, and the snakes reached his eyes, laughing as the pearly whites of his father opened into a terrifying maw, hundreds of rows of teeth, yawning, reaching forwards to take a chunk-
The one called Forerunner sat up in a violent motion, and the quiet whimpers of the night turned into the violent screams of awakening, as they often did. The power pulled at his abdomen, sending a cone of invisible, deadly sound into the cluster of rocks that made up the archway of the Cavern's entrance. He watched, wide eyed and panting, as the brief shot of sound crumbled the area around it, sending a large pile of rubble crashing to the ground. Throat raw, eyes watering with fear and dust, he staggered to his feet, spluttering.
His lower lip wobbled slightly, threatening a pout as he leaned against the back wall of the cavern, hands on his knees. Behind his eyes, flashes of the dream continued to invade his conscience, distorting his views. The floor of the cavern became a pit of rats for a brief flash, then a pool of ice, before resuming the floor he was standing on.
Moments of lucidity. He lived in these, forty minutes here and there where the world was absolutely clear to him before he was sucked back into a world where everyone turned into his worst fears. Forty minutes of being awake in a day that had 1440.
He allowed his back to slip down the cold stone until he was sitting on the floor of the cave, his head buried in his large hands. Not for the first time, he calculated how long a fall he would have to achieve before ending his own existence. He wondered if his cave would be enough. Judging from the light that shone from the small opening in his mini-cave in, he could still try it.
He could still try.
He scrabbled to his feet, suddenly aware that time was of the essence. He'd been trapped in this for too long, this circle of clarity than depression then fear then clarity. He could do it. He could do it tonight. Hands that were caked with dirt clawed at stones, legs that were tired from tensing and cramped from being frozen were aching and raw. He pushed himself forwards. He could do it. Upwards he went, the stones becoming skulls filled with bats as he watched, a broken and dismembered hand latched on to his face as he gasped for breath. He could end it tonight. He can do it. He can do it he can do it hecandoit.
Atop the pile of rocks and rubble, his father. Holding his teddy bear's severed head, fluff dangling from the hole.
No.
He can still do it. But could he? The man was there. Or was he? Was the forty minutes up? Was it a dream? His father was dead. He had seen him die. Or had he? What if it was in the other 1400 minutes of the day? How would he know.
Father opened his arms, and Forerunner took his chance, galvanized by the fact that hecoulddoittonight. He hauled himself up the last half of the stones (a black dragon's maw, open, and his handholds were teeth) and into his father's arms...
Only to crash and roll down the side of the mountain of rubble, into the open air, rolling to a stop at the bottom of the mound. A shower of debris followed him, but he did not care. The drop below him was more than enough to end it, and he could do it. He could do it tonight.
He closed his eyes in the cool air that alternated between heat and frost. Tears streamed down his dirty, bearded face, his skinny, starved form curling into itself, skin hanging off in loose bags. Just a few moments rest, he decided, his ribs rattling with the effort to breathe. Just enough time to catch his breath. And then he'd do it.
He'd do it tonight.
