Hey, everyone! I have officially finished a weeks worth of writing prompts, and I have to say that I’m pretty pleased with the results. I know that a few of you are enjoying writing these as well. Today is my response to Prompt Number Seven on my list that is as follows: Write about one of your most frightening nightmares.
I decided to take a dream – one of the very first dreams that I can remember having, back when I was in kindergarden. I shaped it a little differently, but… I hope you enjoy it!
The Cry of the Innocent
The world was a wash of black and gray, but it had been the only world that she’d ever known, so it was nothing strange to her. She walked, though she didn’t have a real purpose, and she moved, though she wasn’t sure as to where she was going. She only knew that she couldn’t stay still… that to stay still was to accept death.
She wasn’t ready to accept death.
The town came into sight in front of her, and she closed her eyes for a moment, a small sigh escaping her as she looked at the spindly houses, full of darkness. There were no lights in the windows – she wasn’t even certain that there were people who lived there anymore… but she trudged forward anyway.
The first sign that there were people living in the little town was the dirty, littered streets. Garbage, scattered here and there, with small children who had smaller still waists chasing after it as though they could somehow find a meal amongst the debris. Instantly, her heart ached – she’d been a small child once, and a small child with a smaller waist. She’d known what it was to be hungry in a world of black and gray, and she ached to know that the children in front of her had to know that feeling as well.
One child turned into two, and two into a dozen. And soon they were all around her, and all that she could do was look at the small circle of them as they ushered her forward, as though she had some purpose. They ushered her forward to the center of the down, where a great contraption rose high in the square. It was like a gallows, but instead of a hanging rope, there were two cuffs. She wasn’t sure if they were for wrists or ankles, but whatever the children wanted with her – why they had her here in front of the great machine was an answer that she didn’t wasn’t.
Still, their dark and hollow eyes looked up at her expectantly, and she couldn’t simply turn them away. They wanted something, and she could do something to help them. It was obvious… and it felt like her voice was the first sound that had spilled into the town in ages when she finally let the question spill from her throat.
“What do you want?” But it wasn’t an accusation. It was a plea – tell me what you want. Tell me what I can do to help. I need to know.
They still stared up at her expectantly, not speaking. Maybe they couldn’t speak. Maybe they never had before. But one small body left the crowd, and he returned with a dark bottle, with darker liquid that sloshed inside of it. His small hands were filthy, bones covered in flesh and nothing more as they lifted the bottle to her. He looked with expectant eyes, and his small lips pursed.
When she didn’t take the bottle, he thrust it up again, black eyes imploring until her fingers took the bottle out of guilt if nothing else. He smiled then, and his teeth were dingy and broken… and her heart broken for the fact that the children were more ravaged than she’d ever been, and she didn’t see an adult in sight to take care of them.
She was probably the closest thing to an adult that they’d seen in a long, long while… because it was clear that there weren’t any in the town. Where the child had gotten the black liquid, she wasn’t sure. Where the structure in front of her had come from, she didn’t know. She only knew that a dozen tiny eyes were looking at her imploringly and waiting for her to raise the bottle to her lips. With a frown and trepidation only trumped by pity in her heart, she brought the bottle to her lips and swallowed the vicious liquid.
It burned instantly, and it was almost too thick to swallow, like black sludge that meant to coat her stomach and strangle her from the inside out. The little eyes continued to look up at her, black and hungry… and tiny, cracked lips didn’t smile as she waited for whatever reaction they’d expected from her drinking the fluid.
It took a moment for the pain to start – it was in her stomach, though, and it spread through her ribs, through her stomach, up her throat. It burned like bile, but all the more vicious, and she let out a small whimper of pain, looking at the little faces around her.
Only at that sound did they smile… and only at that sound did she see that all of their little, broken teeth were sharp, and their dark eyes weren’t just hollow… they were black.
She tried to step forward, to step out of the crowd of them, but they didn’t let her move. Small arms were stronger than they seemed, and they kept her in place as she pushed forward… they pushed her down when her knees became too weak to hold her in place. Those little faces weren’t so sad anymore – the darkness in their eyes was a malevolence that frightened her, made her feel like something wrong was about to happen.
Her body was too weak to fight it though, and one small frame climbed up the structure in front of her. She couldn’t move her body, but she could roll her head to the side enough to see that the cuffs pulled down from the structure on a rope and that they were made to strap around your ankles. The pain in her gut nearly blinded her to whatever else was happening, though. She opened her mouth, tried to scream… but something black simply bubbled at her lips, and one of the children quickly darted down, a dry tongue lapping at the liquid.
It took ten of the dozen to hoist her into the air, and by then she was internally sobbing from the agony in her stomach, the numbness in her body, but there was no sound to spill from her lips. There was only the pain and one single tear that slid from her eye and fell into the basin that the children carefully positioned beneath her.
She opened her mouth to scream – to try to. To beg. To do anything to make this stop.. and this time, it was more than just a little black liquid. This time, it gushed forward from her stomach in a font. It was sticky, black – it clung to the back of her throat and left her feeling empty on the inside. It spattered hard into the bucket, and the children instantly rushed forward. Greedy fingers dove in and started to lap at the black sludge like cats with cream.
Meanwhile, she felt like her insides were dissolving away – and maybe they were. Her very life was spilling from her lips, and the children stepped back for a moment as another wash of black poured from her throat as she hung upside down, spilling into the basin, feeding the town that she’d pitied.
Those little black eyes peeked up at her, and she saw that the nourishment didn’t make them bright. It made them swirl darker. Their broken little teeth were stained – one more rush of black liquid poured from her throat… and she felt her lungs give out. She couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t hear the beating of her own heart.
She couldn’t do anything other than to wonder why this was her fate – why this was how she had to leave this world. A small face looked up to her, stained with that black liquid… stained with her dissolved insides, her dissolved essence.
“Thank you.” The little voice said, but it wasn’t kind. It was the voice of a devil, a demon… and its teeth were black as it grinned up at her, completely aware of her pain, and completely apathetic to it.
One more tear slid from her cheek, and she closed her eyes. The pain in her stomach was fading now… and there was still no beat from her heart.
There was only nothing, stained and sullied with the image of vicious little eyes hidden behind the cry of the innocent.
So, there we go. That was a little dark. Basically, what I remember of that dream was going to a black and gray town and being fed a poision that made my insides liquify and everything that I was spill out of my mouth… and that’s what the people there ate. I think I’ve actually written about this before, but I give it a bit of a horror twist.
I honestly can’t wait to see what you guys come up with, though, because I’m sure that it’s going to be just as terrifying as that. I find that more often than not, our nightmares are truly telling of what horror is, because our brain isn’t inhibited by the light of day.
Until next time guys!!! Keep reading and writing, and keep being absolutely awesome!
Author Amanda McCormick
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