(Orig) Darkness Falling - Oneshot
A/N: This was a writing exercise in horror. I believe I failed.
Title: Darkness Falling
Genre: Horror (?)
Warning(s): Character Death, Mild Mutilation
Summary: When life narrows down to the facets of a disco ball, events are set spinning.
---
Kate gulped the shot of liquor down before gesturing the bartender to pour another. She was sure she couldn’t think or see straight because her boyfriend, Mitchell, was draped over her best friend and was moving against the counter right next to her. She tilted her head, and everything swam.
“Woah,” someone said behind her, catching her just as she was about to fall off her seat. “I definitely think you had too much to drink.”
The bartender just scoffed and moved on to another person who arrived and was waving him down.
Kate turned around to look at the person. She squinted her eyes. Why was everything out of focus? The arrayed ambient light show was indistinct, which was odd because she had the best vision possible. Did she hit her head? That was a little implausible since the person caught her by the arms before any other impact occurred. Neither could she be drunk. She can handle her liquor very well; Kate can drink any of her friends under the table, and drive well to boot.
“Do I know you?” she asked, slightly slurring her “n” sound.
A laugh. It sounded like a girl’s. “Not really. I met you when you were volunteering at the haunted house tour some time ago. I remember you because you helped me find my little brother, Silvanus, who got stuck up that really creepy, thousand-year old or something tree.”
“Oh! The boy who was afraid of trees, right? He was a funny guy.”
“The very one.”
Kate could sort of make out the features, but the person was much too far away. She leaned closer. “So, what’s your name? I’m Kate.”
“Laura. Pleasure to meet you. But really, you’re drunk, and I think that imbibing any more alcohol is going to be detrimental.”
Kate didn’t argue and allowed herself to be dragged along by Laura. Laura, from what she could ascertain, was a girl a little younger-looking than her. Which was strange, because the age limit for the rave was 18, and today is Kate’s eighteenth birthday.
“How old are you?” she asked, trying to clear her mind. She wanted water right now. Where was Mitchell? He was always carrying water, which he suggested could be an alternative to lubricant with raised eyebrows; everyone always laughed at his joke.
Laura’s face shifted into what she assumed was a smirk, but she couldn’t be certain. “Not telling.”
Kate snorted but did not push the issue further. Instead, she pushed the offending tangled bodies out of her path with her foot, kicking them for good measure. She really needed some water.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To the V.I.P. room. I got tickets to get in.”
“I bet you stole them.”
“That’s harsh. I am honestly telling you that I received them.”
“You just said you got them, which can implicate you for your using force and theft.”
“Your mind is really sharp for a drunk.”
Kate rolled her eyes exasperatedly. “ ‘M not drunk, okay, Laura?” She shifted her weight on her feet, deciding to act childish and stubborn by refusing to budge.
“What now? Don’t you want to see the glorious V.I.P. room?”
“I don’t want to engage in anything outside of the law.”
“I believe you.”
Kate grumbled to herself in her mind. Laura was probably a native of this area, with the strict moral sense that permeated their uptight being. She, thankfully, was a foreigner to this area, and was exempt from the customs’ inspection.
“By Jove, I want some water.” Kate looked around. Her eyes were a little more focused.
“Jove?”
“Yeah, Jove. Got a problem with that?” Natives, she said to herself in her mind. She grabbed a boy walking hurriedly past her. He was wearing an oversized black, hooded sweatshirt, and thick pants and black boots reminiscent of army uniforms. “Get me some water,” she ordered him. “I mean it.” She glared at him, who glowered back but trotted toward the refreshments.
“I hope they haven’t spiked the drinks just yet. I want to flush out all the alcohol before I touch the real stuff,” she muttered to herself. She didn’t see Laura flashing a gesture at the boy, who repeated it back.
“What were we doing again? We should hurry up because I need to find my boyfriend and friend. I think they’re still at the bar.” Kate fought a yawn; instead, her eyes watered, further blurring her vision of Laura.
“We can wait for the water, if you want.” Kate thought about it, and agreed. They pushed the heated couple off the ragtag bean bags and sat themselves on them. The pair didn’t notice them, continuing their ministrations right before them.
“Ugh, how shameful,” Kate remarked. Laura chuckled.
“You foreigners don’t know how to enjoy a good time. Raves are when we let loose and have fun. That’s what they are for.”
She shrugged at Laura’s comment, preferring to watch the glow stick show on the stage while holding her hand to her temple. If she responded, it would definitely be a prejudicial reply, which wouldn’t look good for her Reputation so soon after attaining hard-won points.
The boy soon came back, his movements sloppy and jerky, as if he forgot how to walk in his boots, or the boots were too large. He held two cups of a clear liquid in one hand, holding it by the rims, while the other was clenched with something. He gave her the two cups.
“That’s unhygienic,” she said, scowling. Kate drank a large gulp of it anyway. Then promptly spat it out. “Uhh, forgot how bad water tastes after several shots of liquor.” She took small sips to accustom her tongue to the taste.
The boy held out his other hand to reveal a small needle and two pills.“Everyone gets one or the other,” he explained sourly.
“No need to be so nasty,” Kate remarked absently, running over her options. “Hey, Laura, which do you think is better? You must know this place really well, since you have V.I.P. passes.” She didn’t turn to look at Laura, but studied the items in the outstretched hand.
Laura caught the boy’s eyes and smirked and raised an eyebrow. The boy’s unhappy glare deepened. Never breaking eye contact, she said, “Take the pills. You can save some for later if you need to. You might catch something if you take the needle, and the kid looks too stupid to know what is inside the needle.”
“Fine.”
A very loud cheer drew their attention away. The boy took this opportunity to scamper. A person dressed head to toe in black with two pairs of meter and a half long glow sticks. He shouted, raising a roar in response. He repeated it, and the response grew in volume. If the room wasn’t lively enough, it sure was now. All the listless people who slunk around the walls joined the masses to shout. The drug addicts were roused from their self-imposed slumber to add to the cacophony.
“What’s happening?”
“The best part is starting. You should take the stuff now. It’ll add, heighten, your experience to make it much more memorable.”
Kate looked at Laura dubiously. She faintly wondered why Laura herself wasn't complying, but shrugged the thought away. She knocked one pill anyway and pocketed the other, hygiene be damned. The effect was instantaneous. She could understand why everyone was joining in if they could feel the same as she. She could see the vibrations in the air, feel all the pulses in the room, hear, taste, smell; it was sensory overload, but by dear Jove did she want more.
“Come on, we’re going to enter the V.I.P room, else wise these passes will expire.” Laura grabbed her arm and proceeded to drag Kate towards their original destination. Kate stumbled several times, wincing every time.
There was a bouncer, who nodded his head upon seeing Laura and Kate and did not bar the entry towards the stairs leading to the rooms. Kate walked up them slowly. The banister, Laura joked, was going to rip off because of all the weight Kate was leaning on it. She ignored the jab at her weight. She wasn’t self-conscious like others, and did not need to argue.
At the top, she finally reached the last step and entered the end of a long corridor lined with one large, rectangular window in her left and a few doors with a few black-clad people standing guard on her right. Laura took her to the end of the corridor and pushed the wall open. As the wall revolved, Kate saw faded red splatters. Her mind at that moment sharpened to the point of sobriety. Only people involved in criminal activities would be so audacious to have blood on the wall and not clean it up.
“L-”
Laura pushed Kate forward, making her stumble and wince and lose her mental faculties again. In the expansive room, she could feel those otherworldly sensations again.
“Laura. You brought another one.”
She turned around to see the Leader. “Yeah. What of it?”
“Why?”
“Because she’s the one.”
“I doubt you. You’ve always kept saying that with every other person you have brought. Your capabilities are in doubt, with or without those reports in mind.”
“Silvanus.”
“What about him? He’s not even real. You said so yourself.”
“That’s exactly my point. She could see him.” Laura felt smug at seeing the widening eyes.
“Laura? I feel giddy for some reason. It’s wrong.” Kate giggled in spite of herself. “I need to find Mitchell. We need to leave. We’re leaving tomorrow early in the morning.” She couldn’t see anything except glowing lines.
“Are you sure?” the Leader harshly whispered.
Laura bit back irritably, “I assure you that at the time she was perfectly sober.” Adopting a pleasanter tone, she told Kate, “Sure, since you need to. If you ever need help, just call me.”
She hugged Kate, secretly taking out the remaining pill. The Leader handed her a soaked cloth.
“It’s nice to know that you love--Mmmphf!”
Laura had shoved the pill into Kate’s mouth and covered it with the cloth. Kate struggled before finally falling limp. Laura glared at the Leader. “Are you going to help me?”
He rolled his eyes. “Sebastian.” The sullen boy from earlier peered from behind him. “Get the boy and girl. They are for the usual method. Laura, what do you want done to the girl? From the looks of it, she hasn’t come into maturity yet.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she responded. “She can still be harvested.”
While they were conversing, Kate was dreaming. She dreamed she was happy. So what if she wasn’t with Mitchell anymore? She was fine by herself. It was how it always was. “Self-sufficient Kate” was her motto, and always will be. That meant getting up for her daily duties.
She opened her eyes. Instead of being greeted by her ceiling, she saw an intricate pattern of glowing lines or pipes. She looked around. Those pipes were everywhere. Further away, she could see little bobbing blobs of misty color. She looked in front of her, and screamed.
Huge and hulking monstrosities of one hazy yellow colossus that had the sharpest details possible and an ashen whale blue one. They were leering over…her body?
Was she really dead by a few drinks? Surely this was only a hallucination. The water must have been spiked…
The scream had alerted the monsters to her presence, and they stared at her. Then they floated toward her. Her first thought was she didn’t want to die, and her second was she wanted to fight back. Nay, she had to fight back. Self-sufficiency, and all that. A great idea she would execute except for one problem: she didn’t know how to fight monsters.
She sarcastically mused that she must have skipped the section involving instructions about how to fight floating monsters in the tourist guide manual. She would have snorted at the idea of it, but there were more pressing matters to deal with.
The blue one reached out a hand towards her. Kate covered her head and screamed with everything she had, hoping that someone would answer her.
“For the love of Jove, help me!”
There was only silence, but she was sure she heard a muted roar and a distant scream. Raising her head, she saw the outstretched arm reduced to a nonexistent stump. She looked to the side and saw splatters of murky blood on the wall. What was going on?
Laura was screaming in pain; her entire right arm was missing from the shoulder joint to the fingertips. She didn’t know how it happened. It, her arm, had just disappeared.
Kate, getting a sense of her newly found power, looked over at the puke-yellow hellion and wished it would suffer also with her whole being. It crumpled in on itself, the details diverging into a blob like the ones further away unaware of their situation.
The Leader was covering his stomach where there was a gaping hole. Blood was leaking from between his fingertips and clenched teeth.
She had power, and it was euphoric. Giddy with the idea and feeling of it, Kate took a deep breath, and wished and wished and wished. She wished what she had always wanted to happen: “Everything, everyone…Go. A-WAY!”
The ground was shaking. The crowd initially welcomed it, believing it was a new addition to the party, until the tremors increased and the ceiling began falling. People then panicked.
After righting himself from his fall, Sebastian looked toward the tower, wondering what was going on with the controls. This shouldn’t be happening, he thought as he was roughly pushed against on all sides. In the end after fruitlessly fighting against the rushing people, he followed the surge towards the exit.
May as well live, he told himself. The Leader would probably be alive anyway. No one can kill him. That’s why he is the leader.
The cavern, after a final shudder of falling rocks, collapsed.
---
Kate watched the image in the facet of the glass until it faded. She must be drunk if she was seeing things in her liquor. She ignored the make-out session occurring to her right of her boyfriend Mitchell being obscene with her best friend. She forgot why she came after all those shots, which couldn’t be that she wanted to spend time with her boyfriend with a chaperone when her boyfriend was blatantly cheating on her with the said chaperone.
“Hey, do you want to dance?”
Kate did not turn to see who spoke, but immediately responded after hearing it as curt as can be: “No.”
“Why not? It’s a rave, a place where people have fun.”
“I don’t care.”
She heard laughter. Annoyed, Kate turned her head to see a female slightly younger than her, which should be impossible because the age limit to the rave was 18, and Kate had just turned 18 seven hours ago.
She had a strange feeling of déjà vu.
“Who are you?” she asked rudely. After a pause, she hastily added, “I’m Kate.”
She received a widening smile with knowing eyes. “Laura.”
Title: Darkness Falling
Genre: Horror (?)
Warning(s): Character Death, Mild Mutilation
Summary: When life narrows down to the facets of a disco ball, events are set spinning.
---
Kate gulped the shot of liquor down before gesturing the bartender to pour another. She was sure she couldn’t think or see straight because her boyfriend, Mitchell, was draped over her best friend and was moving against the counter right next to her. She tilted her head, and everything swam.
“Woah,” someone said behind her, catching her just as she was about to fall off her seat. “I definitely think you had too much to drink.”
The bartender just scoffed and moved on to another person who arrived and was waving him down.
Kate turned around to look at the person. She squinted her eyes. Why was everything out of focus? The arrayed ambient light show was indistinct, which was odd because she had the best vision possible. Did she hit her head? That was a little implausible since the person caught her by the arms before any other impact occurred. Neither could she be drunk. She can handle her liquor very well; Kate can drink any of her friends under the table, and drive well to boot.
“Do I know you?” she asked, slightly slurring her “n” sound.
A laugh. It sounded like a girl’s. “Not really. I met you when you were volunteering at the haunted house tour some time ago. I remember you because you helped me find my little brother, Silvanus, who got stuck up that really creepy, thousand-year old or something tree.”
“Oh! The boy who was afraid of trees, right? He was a funny guy.”
“The very one.”
Kate could sort of make out the features, but the person was much too far away. She leaned closer. “So, what’s your name? I’m Kate.”
“Laura. Pleasure to meet you. But really, you’re drunk, and I think that imbibing any more alcohol is going to be detrimental.”
Kate didn’t argue and allowed herself to be dragged along by Laura. Laura, from what she could ascertain, was a girl a little younger-looking than her. Which was strange, because the age limit for the rave was 18, and today is Kate’s eighteenth birthday.
“How old are you?” she asked, trying to clear her mind. She wanted water right now. Where was Mitchell? He was always carrying water, which he suggested could be an alternative to lubricant with raised eyebrows; everyone always laughed at his joke.
Laura’s face shifted into what she assumed was a smirk, but she couldn’t be certain. “Not telling.”
Kate snorted but did not push the issue further. Instead, she pushed the offending tangled bodies out of her path with her foot, kicking them for good measure. She really needed some water.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To the V.I.P. room. I got tickets to get in.”
“I bet you stole them.”
“That’s harsh. I am honestly telling you that I received them.”
“You just said you got them, which can implicate you for your using force and theft.”
“Your mind is really sharp for a drunk.”
Kate rolled her eyes exasperatedly. “ ‘M not drunk, okay, Laura?” She shifted her weight on her feet, deciding to act childish and stubborn by refusing to budge.
“What now? Don’t you want to see the glorious V.I.P. room?”
“I don’t want to engage in anything outside of the law.”
“I believe you.”
Kate grumbled to herself in her mind. Laura was probably a native of this area, with the strict moral sense that permeated their uptight being. She, thankfully, was a foreigner to this area, and was exempt from the customs’ inspection.
“By Jove, I want some water.” Kate looked around. Her eyes were a little more focused.
“Jove?”
“Yeah, Jove. Got a problem with that?” Natives, she said to herself in her mind. She grabbed a boy walking hurriedly past her. He was wearing an oversized black, hooded sweatshirt, and thick pants and black boots reminiscent of army uniforms. “Get me some water,” she ordered him. “I mean it.” She glared at him, who glowered back but trotted toward the refreshments.
“I hope they haven’t spiked the drinks just yet. I want to flush out all the alcohol before I touch the real stuff,” she muttered to herself. She didn’t see Laura flashing a gesture at the boy, who repeated it back.
“What were we doing again? We should hurry up because I need to find my boyfriend and friend. I think they’re still at the bar.” Kate fought a yawn; instead, her eyes watered, further blurring her vision of Laura.
“We can wait for the water, if you want.” Kate thought about it, and agreed. They pushed the heated couple off the ragtag bean bags and sat themselves on them. The pair didn’t notice them, continuing their ministrations right before them.
“Ugh, how shameful,” Kate remarked. Laura chuckled.
“You foreigners don’t know how to enjoy a good time. Raves are when we let loose and have fun. That’s what they are for.”
She shrugged at Laura’s comment, preferring to watch the glow stick show on the stage while holding her hand to her temple. If she responded, it would definitely be a prejudicial reply, which wouldn’t look good for her Reputation so soon after attaining hard-won points.
The boy soon came back, his movements sloppy and jerky, as if he forgot how to walk in his boots, or the boots were too large. He held two cups of a clear liquid in one hand, holding it by the rims, while the other was clenched with something. He gave her the two cups.
“That’s unhygienic,” she said, scowling. Kate drank a large gulp of it anyway. Then promptly spat it out. “Uhh, forgot how bad water tastes after several shots of liquor.” She took small sips to accustom her tongue to the taste.
The boy held out his other hand to reveal a small needle and two pills.“Everyone gets one or the other,” he explained sourly.
“No need to be so nasty,” Kate remarked absently, running over her options. “Hey, Laura, which do you think is better? You must know this place really well, since you have V.I.P. passes.” She didn’t turn to look at Laura, but studied the items in the outstretched hand.
Laura caught the boy’s eyes and smirked and raised an eyebrow. The boy’s unhappy glare deepened. Never breaking eye contact, she said, “Take the pills. You can save some for later if you need to. You might catch something if you take the needle, and the kid looks too stupid to know what is inside the needle.”
“Fine.”
A very loud cheer drew their attention away. The boy took this opportunity to scamper. A person dressed head to toe in black with two pairs of meter and a half long glow sticks. He shouted, raising a roar in response. He repeated it, and the response grew in volume. If the room wasn’t lively enough, it sure was now. All the listless people who slunk around the walls joined the masses to shout. The drug addicts were roused from their self-imposed slumber to add to the cacophony.
“What’s happening?”
“The best part is starting. You should take the stuff now. It’ll add, heighten, your experience to make it much more memorable.”
Kate looked at Laura dubiously. She faintly wondered why Laura herself wasn't complying, but shrugged the thought away. She knocked one pill anyway and pocketed the other, hygiene be damned. The effect was instantaneous. She could understand why everyone was joining in if they could feel the same as she. She could see the vibrations in the air, feel all the pulses in the room, hear, taste, smell; it was sensory overload, but by dear Jove did she want more.
“Come on, we’re going to enter the V.I.P room, else wise these passes will expire.” Laura grabbed her arm and proceeded to drag Kate towards their original destination. Kate stumbled several times, wincing every time.
There was a bouncer, who nodded his head upon seeing Laura and Kate and did not bar the entry towards the stairs leading to the rooms. Kate walked up them slowly. The banister, Laura joked, was going to rip off because of all the weight Kate was leaning on it. She ignored the jab at her weight. She wasn’t self-conscious like others, and did not need to argue.
At the top, she finally reached the last step and entered the end of a long corridor lined with one large, rectangular window in her left and a few doors with a few black-clad people standing guard on her right. Laura took her to the end of the corridor and pushed the wall open. As the wall revolved, Kate saw faded red splatters. Her mind at that moment sharpened to the point of sobriety. Only people involved in criminal activities would be so audacious to have blood on the wall and not clean it up.
“L-”
Laura pushed Kate forward, making her stumble and wince and lose her mental faculties again. In the expansive room, she could feel those otherworldly sensations again.
“Laura. You brought another one.”
She turned around to see the Leader. “Yeah. What of it?”
“Why?”
“Because she’s the one.”
“I doubt you. You’ve always kept saying that with every other person you have brought. Your capabilities are in doubt, with or without those reports in mind.”
“Silvanus.”
“What about him? He’s not even real. You said so yourself.”
“That’s exactly my point. She could see him.” Laura felt smug at seeing the widening eyes.
“Laura? I feel giddy for some reason. It’s wrong.” Kate giggled in spite of herself. “I need to find Mitchell. We need to leave. We’re leaving tomorrow early in the morning.” She couldn’t see anything except glowing lines.
“Are you sure?” the Leader harshly whispered.
Laura bit back irritably, “I assure you that at the time she was perfectly sober.” Adopting a pleasanter tone, she told Kate, “Sure, since you need to. If you ever need help, just call me.”
She hugged Kate, secretly taking out the remaining pill. The Leader handed her a soaked cloth.
“It’s nice to know that you love--Mmmphf!”
Laura had shoved the pill into Kate’s mouth and covered it with the cloth. Kate struggled before finally falling limp. Laura glared at the Leader. “Are you going to help me?”
He rolled his eyes. “Sebastian.” The sullen boy from earlier peered from behind him. “Get the boy and girl. They are for the usual method. Laura, what do you want done to the girl? From the looks of it, she hasn’t come into maturity yet.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she responded. “She can still be harvested.”
While they were conversing, Kate was dreaming. She dreamed she was happy. So what if she wasn’t with Mitchell anymore? She was fine by herself. It was how it always was. “Self-sufficient Kate” was her motto, and always will be. That meant getting up for her daily duties.
She opened her eyes. Instead of being greeted by her ceiling, she saw an intricate pattern of glowing lines or pipes. She looked around. Those pipes were everywhere. Further away, she could see little bobbing blobs of misty color. She looked in front of her, and screamed.
Huge and hulking monstrosities of one hazy yellow colossus that had the sharpest details possible and an ashen whale blue one. They were leering over…her body?
Was she really dead by a few drinks? Surely this was only a hallucination. The water must have been spiked…
The scream had alerted the monsters to her presence, and they stared at her. Then they floated toward her. Her first thought was she didn’t want to die, and her second was she wanted to fight back. Nay, she had to fight back. Self-sufficiency, and all that. A great idea she would execute except for one problem: she didn’t know how to fight monsters.
She sarcastically mused that she must have skipped the section involving instructions about how to fight floating monsters in the tourist guide manual. She would have snorted at the idea of it, but there were more pressing matters to deal with.
The blue one reached out a hand towards her. Kate covered her head and screamed with everything she had, hoping that someone would answer her.
“For the love of Jove, help me!”
There was only silence, but she was sure she heard a muted roar and a distant scream. Raising her head, she saw the outstretched arm reduced to a nonexistent stump. She looked to the side and saw splatters of murky blood on the wall. What was going on?
Laura was screaming in pain; her entire right arm was missing from the shoulder joint to the fingertips. She didn’t know how it happened. It, her arm, had just disappeared.
Kate, getting a sense of her newly found power, looked over at the puke-yellow hellion and wished it would suffer also with her whole being. It crumpled in on itself, the details diverging into a blob like the ones further away unaware of their situation.
The Leader was covering his stomach where there was a gaping hole. Blood was leaking from between his fingertips and clenched teeth.
She had power, and it was euphoric. Giddy with the idea and feeling of it, Kate took a deep breath, and wished and wished and wished. She wished what she had always wanted to happen: “Everything, everyone…Go. A-WAY!”
The ground was shaking. The crowd initially welcomed it, believing it was a new addition to the party, until the tremors increased and the ceiling began falling. People then panicked.
After righting himself from his fall, Sebastian looked toward the tower, wondering what was going on with the controls. This shouldn’t be happening, he thought as he was roughly pushed against on all sides. In the end after fruitlessly fighting against the rushing people, he followed the surge towards the exit.
May as well live, he told himself. The Leader would probably be alive anyway. No one can kill him. That’s why he is the leader.
The cavern, after a final shudder of falling rocks, collapsed.
---
Kate watched the image in the facet of the glass until it faded. She must be drunk if she was seeing things in her liquor. She ignored the make-out session occurring to her right of her boyfriend Mitchell being obscene with her best friend. She forgot why she came after all those shots, which couldn’t be that she wanted to spend time with her boyfriend with a chaperone when her boyfriend was blatantly cheating on her with the said chaperone.
“Hey, do you want to dance?”
Kate did not turn to see who spoke, but immediately responded after hearing it as curt as can be: “No.”
“Why not? It’s a rave, a place where people have fun.”
“I don’t care.”
She heard laughter. Annoyed, Kate turned her head to see a female slightly younger than her, which should be impossible because the age limit to the rave was 18, and Kate had just turned 18 seven hours ago.
She had a strange feeling of déjà vu.
“Who are you?” she asked rudely. After a pause, she hastily added, “I’m Kate.”
She received a widening smile with knowing eyes. “Laura.”