Story: Chimera: Class of 666
Part: One "Waking Up"
She was inside a cathedral; a peculiar mishmash of architectural styles, but not without beauty. Until she really looked, really looked, and then the oddities crept up on her. Walls jutting out at strange, impossible angles. Stairs that led up and down at the same time. Doors on the ceiling that opened to reveal more doors. Rows of pillars holding up nothing. Position was nebulous, and distance unreal. The more her mind recoiled from the absurdity, the more the place unraveled at the seams. It was a collection of optical illusions, but there was no shutting the book and walking away.
There was a table made of darkened metal in front of her, a piece of paper lying flat on its surface. It was mere feet away, it was miles; there was no way to tell. She did not know what was on the paper, but something inside compelled her to reach it. Another cruel joke; she ran towards the table until her legs burned, until her breath grew heavy from exhaustion and fear, but it never drew any closer. One footstep after another, echoing endlessly through an alien landscape. Time dilated; a moment became forever. She was still running, but panic was catching up. And there were other things, following close behind . . .
Whispers. They oozed out from the walls, from the floor. She couldn’t tell if she was hearing them or feeling them. All she could say for certain was that the voices had a slick, oily texture. . . and they were close to human – so close that they were made even more repugnant by the similarity. Laughing, lording over some victory over her, maybe just that she was forced to perceive them. Why was she still running? Her leg muscles were shredded, worn down to the bone. With horror, she realized that running was no longer her choice. Her body was just an object, hurtling through space by someone else’s accord . . .
Her leg muscles twitched involuntarily, and she jerked awake. It took a few moments to process that she was lying in her bed, buried in the covers. Immediately, she sat up and threw the covers off her legs. All whole, all intact, the impressions of hideously maimed flesh made them tingle almost subliminally.
She had very few dreams, and still fewer nightmares. There was something deeply disconcerting about this one . . . it was a little too intense… and now the waking world felt somehow less immediate than the place she’d just left. Better not to think about it. This was like any other dream; given time, little pieces drifted away until the substance of them was forgotten.
But hours later, the impression of this one still hadn’t faded and the day was muted and less coherent than the dream. She moved in a fog.
21 November 2013
For the sixth night in a row, she was having the nightmare. For the sixth night in a row, she was waking up in utter terror and in a cold sweat. The impact of it should have numbed by now, but if anything it had intensified; there were days when she could think of nothing else. Knowing that the dreams would come, that they would come and she wouldn’t be able to do a thing to stop it, not even scream. Knowing that time would stretch to accommodate, so that a single dream could seem to span for days. It was getting to her, and she was beating herself up mentally for that but it only seemed to make things worse.
But it wasn’t real. Vivid, but not real. It could be shrugged off. It could be ignored. It had to be.
She was at the weekly calculus study meeting, punctuated as always by the meows of Grace’s half-dozen cats. Pop-tart wrappers and popcorn were strewn around the table. Grace and Briana were nose-deep in their math books, diligent attempts at tackling integration somewhat undermined by their habit of randomly bursting into giggles. Alex had long since finished the problems, and was tapping his pencil on the table in signature fashion, not even attempting to mask his boredom. He yawned, and stood up to refill his glass of root-beer. Briana had speculated that Alex came to these meetings mainly for the free snacks; he certainly didn’t need the study help.
She was dead to the entire scene, and had been that way for twenty minutes. Even with finals coming up in a few weeks, she was strangely unmotivated to do anything about the unfinished problems in front of her.
“That’s weird looking.” She jumped. Alex was behind her, looking over her shoulder with an odd expression on his face.
“What?”
“Your drawing. What is that, anyway?”
Her hand was clutched around a pen, a pen she had no memory of picking up. Her homework was now a mass of black ink and ugly, jagged lines. There was something deeply off-putting about the picture they formed; just looking at it was physically nauseating. The perspective of the drawing was utterly incoherent, alien and distorted, but it faintly resembled the insides of a pointed building, like a cathedral. And somewhere in the middle of it all, there was a little figure running. She shuddered.
“I have to go.”
“Why –?”
She had her things and was half-way out the door before he could finish his sentence.
26 November 2013
She had googled symptoms of sleep deprivation:
Muscle Aches… check.
Tremors… check.
Irritability… check.
Hallucinations… check, otherwise how else could she explain what she had seen today?
It was in Creative Writing class, just before lunch. The bell rang, and in seconds students were pouring out into the halls. Exhaustion made her slow and listless; it took her longer than the others to gather her things and walk to the door. She was in a total fog and then –
Through the doorway reality fragmented, as though sections of the space in front of her were somehow cut into sections, ragged lines of demarcation. With growing horror she watched her classmates walk through it, oblivious, watched them split into pieces, watched their insides fold open as they traversed the breaks.
The worst part was that none of them seemed to realize what was happening to them. . .
She blinked and was looking at a perfectly normal doorway. But as much as she wanted to, she was having trouble convincing herself that it had always been that way. The hallucination felt more lucid than the time that followed and came before.
Eighteen messages on the answering machine and every one told her the same thing: she was sick, wrong, unclean. Some came from people she knew; family members, friends. Some came from total strangers with voices that sounded wrong. They knew everything; her doubts, mistakes, well-worn insecurities, dark places in her mind. They picked her clean. She shouldn’t have, but she listened to them all.
At five, her mom got home and immediately saw the pain she was trying to hide. Frowned and pulled her into a hug. “What happened?”
“I came home . . . there were messages . . .” Her voice hitched unexpectantly and no other words came out. She walked over to the answering machine, and hesitated for a few seconds. It felt so shameful, but she was sure that showing someone else was the right thing to do; it had all gone on long enough. She balled up all her courage, ignored the shame of what would be uttered, and pressed play.
“You have no messages.”
2 December 2013
She didn’t need to dream to have nightmares anymore.
The days were all running together, an endless barrage or small torments. And every day, there were shifting walls. Hallways that zigzagged and changed directions at random. People who folded into themselves. Objects that suddenly had too many sides – or too few. New messages left on her answering machine when she came home. Before bed she always had to listen to them. Their judgment pressed down on her, almost physically.
4 December 2013
She was curled up in a ball on her bed, shaking. Trying to remember the events of the day. Failing. She couldn’t remember a thing. What she had done. What she had said. Whenever she thought too hard about it, got a little closer to the memory of the last few days, a tidal wave of panic came and swept it away.
There was one thing she could still see clearly, even now. One particularly vivid image that kept playing on repeat. The dark outline of a cathedral, and rising up behind that, a tower . . .
5 December 2013
Her parents thought she was taking drugs. They had told her as much that night, in a heated and deeply uncomfortable conversation at the dinner table.
She didn’t blame them. What were they supposed to think? Her behavior lately had been nothing short of erratic, and all she could offer in the way of explanation were increasingly feeble pleas that nothing was wrong, they rang utterly false to her own ears too. Their guess was wrong, but the truth wasn’t any easier to swallow. She was going insane. It was the first serious argument they’d had in years. She didn’t blame them.
But it still hurt.
10 December 2013
Her teacher was saying something cruel, words spilling out of his mouth like smoke and sludge. If she had permitted herself to listen, it might have broken her at last. Instead, she was thinking about the argument last week and the eerie silence that had fallen over the house afterwards. Mulling it over. Assigning blame to herself. That was breaking her too, but at least it was real. Wasn’t it?
Her train of thought was cut short as her teacher walked through the rows of desks, handing everyone a sheet of paper. Miraculously, the letters on hers did not shift or bend as she looked at them. Calculus final. Already? She had completely lost track of time and day in her descent into lunacy. They hadn’t seemed especially important.
Without warning dread rose in her like a tidal wave. Then utter, consuming terror. Her breath caught in her throat. There was something strange about the paper, something familiar. She had the perverse, twisted need to look closer, but instead she shut her eyes. And then –
She was inside a cathedral; a peculiar mishmash of architectural styles, but not without beauty. Somehow there was indescribable symmetry in the dissonance. Her position here was nebulous, and distance was lying to her; it was a collection of optical illusions, but there was no shutting the book and walking away. And then it all changed – or maybe it didn’t, but now she just understood. Shifting, blurry lines hardened, becoming concrete and rigid, sharp enough to cut. Perspective had meaning again. Distance was telling gospel truths.
Part: One "Waking Up"
Chapter: One "The Final Exam"
Authored by:
Hannah Nyland (The Irreverent Revenant)
All Rights Reserved.
Chimera:
Class of 666
By Hannah Nyland and Jerad
Sayler
Part 1: Waking
Up
“I neglect God and his
angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of
a door; I talk on in the same posture of praying, eyes lifted up, knees bowed
down, as though I prayed to God; and if God or his angels should ask me when I
thought last of God in that prayer, I cannot tell. Sometimes I find that I had
forgot what I was about, but when I began to forget it I cannot tell. A memory
of yesterday’s pleasures, a fear of tomorrow’s dangers, a straw under my knee,
a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain troubles me in my
prayer.” - John Donne
Chapter 1: The Final Exam
Jamestown, North Dakota
16 November 2013
She was inside a cathedral; a peculiar mishmash of architectural styles, but not without beauty. Until she really looked, really looked, and then the oddities crept up on her. Walls jutting out at strange, impossible angles. Stairs that led up and down at the same time. Doors on the ceiling that opened to reveal more doors. Rows of pillars holding up nothing. Position was nebulous, and distance unreal. The more her mind recoiled from the absurdity, the more the place unraveled at the seams. It was a collection of optical illusions, but there was no shutting the book and walking away.
There was a table made of darkened metal in front of her, a piece of paper lying flat on its surface. It was mere feet away, it was miles; there was no way to tell. She did not know what was on the paper, but something inside compelled her to reach it. Another cruel joke; she ran towards the table until her legs burned, until her breath grew heavy from exhaustion and fear, but it never drew any closer. One footstep after another, echoing endlessly through an alien landscape. Time dilated; a moment became forever. She was still running, but panic was catching up. And there were other things, following close behind . . .
Whispers. They oozed out from the walls, from the floor. She couldn’t tell if she was hearing them or feeling them. All she could say for certain was that the voices had a slick, oily texture. . . and they were close to human – so close that they were made even more repugnant by the similarity. Laughing, lording over some victory over her, maybe just that she was forced to perceive them. Why was she still running? Her leg muscles were shredded, worn down to the bone. With horror, she realized that running was no longer her choice. Her body was just an object, hurtling through space by someone else’s accord . . .
Her leg muscles twitched involuntarily, and she jerked awake. It took a few moments to process that she was lying in her bed, buried in the covers. Immediately, she sat up and threw the covers off her legs. All whole, all intact, the impressions of hideously maimed flesh made them tingle almost subliminally.
Relief washed over her, but she had
very little time to dwell on it. Her clock read 7:40; she was expected in her
first class by 7:50. She swore, breathless, got out of bed and threw on the
first clean clothes she could find. Then she stumbled downstairs; her legs felt
strangely rigid today . . .
She had very few dreams, and still fewer nightmares. There was something deeply disconcerting about this one . . . it was a little too intense… and now the waking world felt somehow less immediate than the place she’d just left. Better not to think about it. This was like any other dream; given time, little pieces drifted away until the substance of them was forgotten.
But hours later, the impression of this one still hadn’t faded and the day was muted and less coherent than the dream. She moved in a fog.
21 November 2013
For the sixth night in a row, she was having the nightmare. For the sixth night in a row, she was waking up in utter terror and in a cold sweat. The impact of it should have numbed by now, but if anything it had intensified; there were days when she could think of nothing else. Knowing that the dreams would come, that they would come and she wouldn’t be able to do a thing to stop it, not even scream. Knowing that time would stretch to accommodate, so that a single dream could seem to span for days. It was getting to her, and she was beating herself up mentally for that but it only seemed to make things worse.
But it wasn’t real. Vivid, but not real. It could be shrugged off. It could be ignored. It had to be.
22 November 2013
She was at the weekly calculus study meeting, punctuated as always by the meows of Grace’s half-dozen cats. Pop-tart wrappers and popcorn were strewn around the table. Grace and Briana were nose-deep in their math books, diligent attempts at tackling integration somewhat undermined by their habit of randomly bursting into giggles. Alex had long since finished the problems, and was tapping his pencil on the table in signature fashion, not even attempting to mask his boredom. He yawned, and stood up to refill his glass of root-beer. Briana had speculated that Alex came to these meetings mainly for the free snacks; he certainly didn’t need the study help.
She was dead to the entire scene, and had been that way for twenty minutes. Even with finals coming up in a few weeks, she was strangely unmotivated to do anything about the unfinished problems in front of her.
“That’s weird looking.” She jumped. Alex was behind her, looking over her shoulder with an odd expression on his face.
“What?”
“Your drawing. What is that, anyway?”
Her hand was clutched around a pen, a pen she had no memory of picking up. Her homework was now a mass of black ink and ugly, jagged lines. There was something deeply off-putting about the picture they formed; just looking at it was physically nauseating. The perspective of the drawing was utterly incoherent, alien and distorted, but it faintly resembled the insides of a pointed building, like a cathedral. And somewhere in the middle of it all, there was a little figure running. She shuddered.
“I have to go.”
“Why –?”
She had her things and was half-way out the door before he could finish his sentence.
26 November 2013
She had googled symptoms of sleep deprivation:
Muscle Aches… check.
Tremors… check.
Irritability… check.
Hallucinations… check, otherwise how else could she explain what she had seen today?
It was in Creative Writing class, just before lunch. The bell rang, and in seconds students were pouring out into the halls. Exhaustion made her slow and listless; it took her longer than the others to gather her things and walk to the door. She was in a total fog and then –
Through the doorway reality fragmented, as though sections of the space in front of her were somehow cut into sections, ragged lines of demarcation. With growing horror she watched her classmates walk through it, oblivious, watched them split into pieces, watched their insides fold open as they traversed the breaks.
The worst part was that none of them seemed to realize what was happening to them. . .
She blinked and was looking at a perfectly normal doorway. But as much as she wanted to, she was having trouble convincing herself that it had always been that way. The hallucination felt more lucid than the time that followed and came before.
28 November 2013
Eighteen messages on the answering machine and every one told her the same thing: she was sick, wrong, unclean. Some came from people she knew; family members, friends. Some came from total strangers with voices that sounded wrong. They knew everything; her doubts, mistakes, well-worn insecurities, dark places in her mind. They picked her clean. She shouldn’t have, but she listened to them all.
At five, her mom got home and immediately saw the pain she was trying to hide. Frowned and pulled her into a hug. “What happened?”
“I came home . . . there were messages . . .” Her voice hitched unexpectantly and no other words came out. She walked over to the answering machine, and hesitated for a few seconds. It felt so shameful, but she was sure that showing someone else was the right thing to do; it had all gone on long enough. She balled up all her courage, ignored the shame of what would be uttered, and pressed play.
“You have no messages.”
2 December 2013
She didn’t need to dream to have nightmares anymore.
The days were all running together, an endless barrage or small torments. And every day, there were shifting walls. Hallways that zigzagged and changed directions at random. People who folded into themselves. Objects that suddenly had too many sides – or too few. New messages left on her answering machine when she came home. Before bed she always had to listen to them. Their judgment pressed down on her, almost physically.
There were things she couldn’t run from. And
whispers. Always whispers. No one else
seemed to notice, or care. She was alone, it was all she could do maintain a
façade of normalcy as cries of anguish caught in her throat. Her mind was being
split between two worlds, one nightmarish and alien, the other hauntingly
familiar. She didn’t know which world was which anymore.
4 December 2013
She was curled up in a ball on her bed, shaking. Trying to remember the events of the day. Failing. She couldn’t remember a thing. What she had done. What she had said. Whenever she thought too hard about it, got a little closer to the memory of the last few days, a tidal wave of panic came and swept it away.
There was one thing she could still see clearly, even now. One particularly vivid image that kept playing on repeat. The dark outline of a cathedral, and rising up behind that, a tower . . .
5 December 2013
Her parents thought she was taking drugs. They had told her as much that night, in a heated and deeply uncomfortable conversation at the dinner table.
She didn’t blame them. What were they supposed to think? Her behavior lately had been nothing short of erratic, and all she could offer in the way of explanation were increasingly feeble pleas that nothing was wrong, they rang utterly false to her own ears too. Their guess was wrong, but the truth wasn’t any easier to swallow. She was going insane. It was the first serious argument they’d had in years. She didn’t blame them.
But it still hurt.
10 December 2013
Her teacher was saying something cruel, words spilling out of his mouth like smoke and sludge. If she had permitted herself to listen, it might have broken her at last. Instead, she was thinking about the argument last week and the eerie silence that had fallen over the house afterwards. Mulling it over. Assigning blame to herself. That was breaking her too, but at least it was real. Wasn’t it?
Her train of thought was cut short as her teacher walked through the rows of desks, handing everyone a sheet of paper. Miraculously, the letters on hers did not shift or bend as she looked at them. Calculus final. Already? She had completely lost track of time and day in her descent into lunacy. They hadn’t seemed especially important.
Without warning dread rose in her like a tidal wave. Then utter, consuming terror. Her breath caught in her throat. There was something strange about the paper, something familiar. She had the perverse, twisted need to look closer, but instead she shut her eyes. And then –
She was inside a cathedral; a peculiar mishmash of architectural styles, but not without beauty. Somehow there was indescribable symmetry in the dissonance. Her position here was nebulous, and distance was lying to her; it was a collection of optical illusions, but there was no shutting the book and walking away. And then it all changed – or maybe it didn’t, but now she just understood. Shifting, blurry lines hardened, becoming concrete and rigid, sharp enough to cut. Perspective had meaning again. Distance was telling gospel truths.
Whispers fell silent. Everything was silent, even her mind. The chaos
faded and left her thoughts perfectly still. It was only then that she realized
that this was not a cathedral, but an ascending spire. Cold. Iron. Resolute. She
was in a knotted fist of calcified consciousness. She was seated at a table, a
piece of paper laid out flat before her. It was blank. She felt the pen; it was
a needle of wrought and rusted metal that flowed into her veins.
With
a steady hand, she signed it, and the world as she knew it shattered.
Her eyes opened wide.
A piece of a girl died there, in that
church. I was there. I was her.
No comments:
Post a Comment