A story for a story

I made these only a short while ago, but was opposed to posting them for the reasons that I really only made these short stories as something to help flesh out a main character I have in a much larger story I'm making. Seeing as I can't really contribute to this community in many other ways besides stories and story ideas, I decided to post these to reaffirm the usefullness of my presence. For I cannot see much point of remaining if I am only here to ogle others works, and likewise the skill which is poured forth into them.



I have, many times, restored others from a litter of scars, scabs, and wounds to their former glory. Many find it the best moment of their life, having resigned their lives to being restricted to their homes for the rest of their life, only to find themselves reunited with a hand. With both hands. With a foot, long since gone. I cannot bring back the dead, but as long as they live, there is always a chance that they may live beyond that second. Except for disease and death, I can mend any affliction.

But as those moments when they find themselves whole once again, and the joy that it brings them, comes, it reminds of a contrast to my old, wizened self. Specifically, it reminds me of one time, long ago, when I was without much age. I was scarcely of any height. I was looking at a small stream which flowed from farther up the mountain to a point not too far from my home. I was puzzled. The question for me was, “Where did the water go?”

That was terribly puzzling for me. While I gave where the water came from little thought, I found it strange that all that water, year, after year, after year, could merely fall into a hole in the ground, yet never fill the hole. Surely there were no such holes?

From there, my fascination was drawn from the water to the hole. I started to marvel at this hole. I wondered what it felt like to fall down a bottomless hole. Maybe it would be scary. Maybe it would be so slow and boring, I’d fall asleep. I didn’t know, and I couldn’t know.

I gazed at that strange hole for so long, eventually I ended up falling in, and I finally knew what it felt like to fall down that bottomless hole.

It hurt. As the water went through twist and turn, twist and turn, I was jarred and struck by rocks of all shapes. I couldn’t breath, and the pain blinded. With each surge and kick to reach air, I was thrown down again to the bottom taunted, tormented, and hurt.

The ground underneath me gave way to nothing, as the water threw me against a stone, half-submerged in the water. I held onto that rock for the longest time. Time flew by, or so I thought. I didn’t know. I held on until I couldn’t, and then…

Nothing happened. I was surprised.

I looked around to find the waters around me still. I had ended at a small lake, underground. As I gazed upon a small alcove not far from where I was, where could have some sort of reprieve.

I kicked off the rock, and grabbed onto the lip of the alcove, heaving myself with difficulty onto the small bit of ground untouched by water, and waited a while to catch my breath. And then I cried.

Having cried till I could cry no more, I fought off sleep to find someway out of there. My mind was frenzied, but I could stay awake no longer, and I let both mind and body rest.

As I woke, despair rang out in that enclosed space. My plight seemed without an answer. But as time wore on, I noticed that the light within the cavern was changing. Where it had been darker, I became brighter. Thinking that someone had found me, I called out, asking them to come and take me back home. I received no answer.

I stood up, sore but capable, and tried to find the source of the light. My eyes rested firmly on the glimmer from under the water itself. With apprehension, I gazed at it a while, unsure. But before long, I once again dropped down into the unknown, rushing to find the lights source before I drowned.

It was coming from a hole. A small one, but one I could fit through. I gave it no second thought. I swam through, and reached for the sky as I saw morning light.

I broke the surface, and I found myself next to the shore of a lake. With the feeling of wet sand beneath my hand I felt happy. I was free; never again to be trapped in the dark chamber which I had felt had come close to becoming my tomb.

That happiness was one which sticks with you forever, as it has with me.

Excerpt from the journal of Maghris, last of the village of Mhak Als



I cleared the corner and hid. I could do nothing else. Here came the soldier one by one. Mindless, affectionless, and dogged. They marched past in perfect unison, as if gears of a perfectly oiled machine, or, better yet, cells of a single organism. And thus past me marched the mindless one thousand…

No, not one thousand. One thousand and one. He was among them, like a shadow hiding behind a warm body, in a desperate bid to escape the sun. He was with them, of them, through them… but while the rest knew each others mind perfectly, none of them knows his. And although he walks with them, he is no friend of theirs, but a plague, a rot, a cancer, infectious and disruptive. But even compared to such company, he had something the rest had not. Malice. It is both the weapon and the master of the blade, with a energy, although hollow, like the heat of any furnace. Such… malice.

I had come to insure that the small ones would not encroach on our lands. Along with many others, I rose up to throw back those who had disrespected life itself, with the un-life which they perpetrated under a false mask of benign intent and sophistication. But even in his darkest fears, I did not such a… thing to be, and the small ones to be so oblivious to it! To be oblivious to this nightmare!

Even now, its smell permeated the air like thick perfume. It was like the hot scent of carrion. However this warmth had no kindness to it. Even death was kinder. The smell had the generosity of an erupting volcano, with the cold intent of a frozen wasteland. It was, in a word, an absolute. Worse yet, this absolute despised anything less than absolute, and even then anything different than it. It had clear intent enough. Anything that was not of itself, of the void yet full, of chaos, it obliterated.

The hollow sound of the 1000 marching finally went past, before ending in the distance. In the same moment that it ended, the thing of malice came closer. Perhaps it had decided to not reveal itself to those… mechanics. Perhaps it enjoyed meddling in this chessboard game of mortals, before it smashed the board and all the pieces with a hammer, returning all to sweet, sweet oblivion.

It was here.

It slowly crept up. As he watched, sections of the walls cracked a popped, until screams of agony ruptured from within the confines of those metallic prisons. Intimidation. That was new.

It walked hunched over, tapping at each pore of the building, as if wanting to keep track, before stopping as if finding a surprise. It could have reached within any of those screaming pits and pulled forth anything, I’m willing to bet, but it waited before pulling forth something which was not even recognizable.

Then I recognized it. Within the strange pattern of strange flesh I picked out two faces. And then another two. And then I recognized them as everyone I ever knew or cared for. It didn’t care to nonchalantly do people on at a time. In one hand it had everything that mattered to me. Not merely my parents… my father… but all I had ever known. With what almost seemed to be pleasure, he went through the process of making me suffer with gusto. The kind old elder was the first to go. His head split in half as if cleaved with a rock. And with that first signal, all the rest went down at once, with such ferocity as if to leave the mass unrecognizable once more in mere instances. The brutality frightened. The nearby prisons erupted in the screams of the throes of death, each killed by this thing. The brothers and sisters I wished to save were smote with a thought. This thing was not only cruel, but sadistic. This was not even something I would call chaos. Having seen this brutality, I lay frozen in fear. How did those seconds go by? Yet with all the slow mumbling of time, this phantom seemed to go faster. Its raiment fluttered as if being torn by a hurricane. It loved this. It enjoyed it. The world fluttered as well, as if my time had come. The nightmare drew closer…

And suddenly a shot rang out. The bullet sped through me and shattered my right arm clean off before I realized what had happened. The world returned to its rightful color, as the thing disappeared, leaving the devastated sack of flesh behind. “Damn you, monsters! Death to all of you!” came a shout as one of those small things, one of the ones who looked to be of high position, prepared to fire once more.

Of course they would call us monsters. We fight their oppression, but that only gives them excuse to exterminate us. If the small ones never lived, we would have no reason to use our fangs and claws. And they alone give us reason enough. They are the monsters.

I was not in any mood to debate with flesh and steel, at that moment. I ran, as hollow as one could be. The shock of those few moments prior held me still in fear, but a more primitive part of me ran from death, from chaos, and from that thing.

I pray that the time I spent in fear of that creature will be my last. I do not want to endure that horror again. But If I do have to face that monstrosity, I have little idea what I could do to stop it…

Excerpt from the journal of Maghris, last of the village of Mhak Als