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Writer
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Wales
Gender: Male
Posts: 43
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Cavern...
Alright, remember flesh? Well here's the better, updated and heavily altered version of it. To those who read the last one, it has an extended ending, I threw out Lazarus almost completely, and I altered a few bits here and there.
I really appreciate critique, or else I wouldn't be so determined on this one piece. I've posted it in critique and advice, but ironically I've noticed it to be the forums with the worst ratio of comments : views. It's finished now, I'm not changing this anymore than what I have now, I'd just really like to know what people think of it, so I can use it as guidance later on. Tell me if you think the first bit of horror is better than the second bit. (before he finds the bone vs. the bit after he finds it.) Or if it's all shit. I can't make better pieces without guidance, please! It's not very long, so if you like Lovecraft and fancy a bit of horror, you'll like it.
Sorry for being a comment whore.
Cavern
Nathaniel waded into the cavern and looked around.
There was darkness, and although He had a slight field of view because of His flash light, He could make nothing out.
He sighed and leaned down to grab at a button by His waist. White noise broke in to his ears and He let go instantly,
“Bloody hell, fucking suits,”
The next time He pressed it, the white noise was softer and went away in a second,
“What's there?” were the words that met Him.
“Fuck all, it's dead, completely dead.”
“I doubt that, have a better look.”
He now stood bored and waiting, slightly curious He increased the intensity of His flash light and started to look around with interest. There were a few slabs of stone but that was it, they held nothing of His attention yet He knew hundreds of scientists would be fascinated as the stones were clearly carved by hand.
The concept of 'hand' made Him laugh, whatever carved it had no hands or certainly nothing resembled hands.
A voice came from the earpiece,
“What's the story then?”
“Rocks, rocks and more rocks. We found better things in the southern excavation, what's so fucking important about this one?” and He continued to look around.
“Because ninety per cent of the darker half is still unexplored, we need to have a look at it all,” and there was a pause.
“So Lazarus, do you like?” Nathaniel said,
“Huh?” And Nathaniel spoke louder this time,
“Do you like what we've found so far? I haven't heard your opinion it?”
“Well, I think it'll be pretty shocking to find out that we weren't the first to try and colonise this planet,”
“I guessed that long before we lost contact with Earth,”
“Mmmm....yeah I know, the evidence was there all along. Maybe they left when the moon's orbit became geosynchronous, but it's odd. Any evidence is all in the dark half of the planet, where the moon constantly casts a shadow.”
“Maybe they liked cold and darkness?”
“Maybe....aw I don't know.” and the ear piece fizzed slightly.
“Yeah, so we've found rocks. Ooooh, what's over here?” Nathaniel said and in an eccentric manner tried to run over to another set of rocks in a corner, “Look, I've found pictures! And writing!”
“What?”
“Look, writing.” And He adjusted the camera in the suit.
“I can't see, there's no signal. Are you sure? That's a helluva find if it is writing.”
Nathaniel adjusted the camera and spoke,
“Looks like this will be interesting, what does it say? Can you see? I tried to adjust it...”
There was a pause, Nathaniel had His arms folded and impatiently threw them to His side. His right arm fell against the button and let out a raw white noise into His helmet,
“Shit!!” He shouted and squeezed His eyes tightly shut, in anger He punched His head violently and heard a crackling noise as the ear piece became warped and broken. Finally the noise lost it's volume and became inaudible.
“Fucking dammit! Lazarus, are you there? Can you hear?”
He continued to dance for a while as the pain in His ears dulled down and He spoke calmly,
“Can you hear me !!?” He gave up and looked around.
“Come on, man.” he muttered and fiddled with the earpiece for a moment. He lost his temper,
“LAZARUS!?” And he frowned within the suit.
Leaning over He continued to examine the rock, the writing appeared to resemble the modern western/latin alphabet and He ran His fingers over it, it occurred to Him just how major this find could be. Unfortunately it was completely illegible as it was in a different language and He couldn't make heads or tails of it.
This truly was a great find and He laughed hoping that it'd lift the weight of the recent bad news of his earpiece.
Normally, Nathaniel hated visiting the darker region of the planet, and had many times declared it damned out right chilling. Even though He had been known to dwell in dark rooms for hours at a time processing photos. The issue, He claimed was never lack of light, but His deeper belief that the darker side of the planet was there to dampen out light, that it was there to eliminate warmth and joy and that any life there had it's soul sucked right out of it.
This superstition had become slowly more common amongst other investigators and explorers.
And so, in light of an amazing discovery and a claustrophobic situation, He found Himself very frustrated. He didn't dare want to leave it lying there, as any researcher might claim it as their own if they happened across it. After all these tunnels stretched for miles.
“So how am I going to move this?” He spoke to Himself.
“I'm not! That's how! Aw bloody hell...” And He frustratingly turned around and swung His arms.
“Lemme try again.” He muttered and pressed the button at His waist, a muffled white noise sizzled out of the ear piece, “Hopefully it can still send, as long as He can hear,” He said to Himself as a reassurance and then turned His head to the microphone, “RIGHT, I CAN'T HEAR YOU! BUT THIS IS URGENT, MAJOR DISCOVERY, NEED HELP MOVING IT. THIS IS FIRST CLASS FIND, I REPEAT, OF HIGHEST PRIORITY!”
And then He let go and the noise stopped.
There was silence.
He turned and the washing of His legs in the water sent it's echo out and for a few seconds He made Himself aware He was the only living thing which could ever hear that noise.
It was going to be a long wait.
It was a very long wait, and He found Himself becoming frantically unnerved in the presence of nothing and no one. At first He thought of lush green fields and the sun, but it just made Him jealous of others who didn't have to do these awful excavations.
Nathaniel, had slowly found himself thinking of the situation as an emergency and He scolded himself for doing so. The cold of the water had started going through the suit and had become horrifyingly chilling against His shins. The severity of the cold wasn't the problem, but it made everything around him uncomfortable and nervous and therefore he was very afraid.
It was like anxiously being sat in a neighbour's house while soaking wet, when all you dream of is heat, warmth and a home. And of course, it was bloody scary.
In the end, He surrendered to the knowledge that it was in fact an emergency. No one was coming and he'd spent four hours sat in the deathly lonely cave with nothing but a flash light to company Him.
The most important thought that anchored Him to the room was the knowledge that there were infinite numbers of routes in the caves and it was very easy to get lost but nonetheless He started to wade out of the cavernous room. The water was shin high and slowed Him down, but He pushed His legs harder against the water.
It pushed harder back.
The darkness fell upon Him and at first He ran His hands across the wall next to Him, but while catching His breath He looked up and saw that the lighting was pitch black without the flash light, meaning He couldn't tell where He placed His hand so long as His head pointed forward.
He didn't like it.
He tried to walk for a while with His hand firmly against the stony walls, but bulky gloves meant He had no real sense of what His hands were touching. In the end the risk of not knowing where His hands were got to Him, so He let go and took His chances with falling over.
Suddenly the thought pinched at Him, and He tightly squeezed His eyes shut as He realised He had no idea of where His legs were either.
The hallway backwards held only fog.
Forwards and backwards, He could tell no further than what the flash light permitted and it's easily diluted glow made things even harder to see.
His heart was beating and as He waded left to right the shadows would move to a rhythm, and as His heart beat faster He walked faster. Unwittingly, He noticed that the rhythm of shadow was out of place with His walking, and He'd pause for a few seconds.
The shadows fell rightly where they should.
He'd tell himself that by walking faster, the shadows moved faster and would seem out of rhythm as His eyes would be confused.
“Shit,” He muttered and tried to continue.
Something inside of Him, didn't want to go back and it fought hard to make sure the caves behind Him were a scarier prospect that the ones in front of Him so that naturally He'd go ahead. But it just made Him feel He was being chased, and with out warning He realised His mask was steamed up as He'd started breathing out of His mouth.
“Jesus, no, no, no,” He said and looked around, the idea of sitting down was terrifying and simply couldn't be done. Continuing was the only possible choice, even with disrupted vision.
His jaw shook.
Noticing something ahead He stopped, frightened to the bone He remembered the shadows being out of rhythm and felt His chest go light and stomach drop with dead weight. He blinked and even though His fists were clenched so tightly the muscles underneath pinched and cried slightly, He kept on walking.
To a relief beyond measure, it didn't move and it wasn't animate and it wasn't some horrendous deviation of life that his imagination had made him think.
In fact, it was a slab of stone and nothing more. Well, a particularly large slab and it forced him to pause as it was obviously not man made. It didn't seem like a rock either. It curved outwards and seemed perfectly smooth in it's shape. Not jagged and irregular like a stone. It was caked in mud, and looking up he noticed that it actually continued further up and then he noticed it continued further down!
Thin capillary like roots sprouted from the mud and made it seem stuck to the slab, He tore it off and underneath was a smooth strand like texture that almost resembled wood but denser.
The colour was ivory and for a moment He stopped to think, he turned and stared down the eternal abyss of the fog and in an act of fear He stood closer to the slab as He felt less exposed, but He kept asking why it seemed so odd.
To get a sense of proportion He tried to touch either side at once and couldn't and He then stepped back again.
“Fuck, it couldn't? Could it?”
A weight like sense fell upon him as it occurred to him what He was looking at,
“It's a rib...” And he stopped breathing and didn't blink, “It is...shit...it is, it's a rib.”
Suddenly, the hallway behind him seemed a thousand times scarier than they had before. His mask was still steamed up and no matter how hard he tried, there was no way he could slip his arm up to wipe it. Not without making problems worse.
But things got worse regardless.
Occasionally, people never knew how, but wind would pass through the tunnels. Everyone wanted to be there when it happened because you could trace it to new openings and a lot of the time that could mean a door.
However this time, when Nathaniel had his eyes fixed upon the slab of bone in complete awe he noticed liquid shadows play upon his own and there was no sign of joy or relief. His body swivelled on the spot and he looked at the dancing fog, it would jump and play according to winds that he couldn't feel or see.
And for a moment, they looked alive.
A branch of fog swam closer to him and he stared at it as it reached at him like a hand, He brushed it aside with his arm and continued to stare. Finally, he moved, his foot set down amidst the fog and moving it in all directions and pushing it higher up and around him.
Every time he moved forward, the spot behind him would become engulfed in the mist and when he looked behind him the smoke pushed hard against the light so as that it may as well be a wall. No where he looked could he find even the slightest sign of familiarity so that he may even estimate his position.
He would try to brush aside the fog with his hand to see the wall, but he'd have to turn his head to do so and the light would concentrate entirely on the wall, and then his body that still faced the hallway would be exposed to darkness.
And now with the fog accompanying the darkness on his left and his right and with every step he'd take it dancing and acting accordingly swallowing his last footstep and approaching his heel, he found himself running away from it in a clumsy frantic manner. And no more was there the radio to help him now, with each step of his panicked run his feet would collide with the ground and the earpiece bobble on his cheek and send out a little bit of noise as a reminder of his isolation.
It was overwhelming, and he stopped.
“Just fog,” He muttered...
Just a rib as well, he thought.
He looked eye to eye at the fog and waved his arm through it so as to prove there was nothing special. If it wasn't for his mask he would've even tried to blow at it!
He laughed and took a step back.
“Just fog...” And he continued walking and tried to pay no attention to the playful fluid fog ahead of him.
But the thought of the rib was still with him.
Obviously it was a fossil, and must've been quite ancient, and maybe the decaying microbes on this planet had a different effect on bones than on Earth so as that it retained it's ivory shade. It wasn't anything too special, just an amazing find with a macabre twist!
The cold by his feet was still prominent and even though he shook with cold, he tried to loosen himself up. His arms were no longer tightly bound to his sides and he even tried to place his hand on the wall.
If only to be scolded by his imagination, as he could imagine walking for moments longer and then pulling his hand back to see corroded and decayed flesh, as if from acid.
Although where this fear was founded, he did not know.
The thought even bit at him slightly, so as that he stopped once more for a breath and leant against the wall in defiance of his imagination. Except that he fell right through.
It occurred to him of just how much the fog could conceal.
Instantly he got up as the muddy water marked his vision through the mask and only God could know what things lay beneath his feet as he walked. He did not want to be in kissing distance of them.
The water dripped off the mask as he stood up and the few moments in the water accomplished making everything seem terrifyingly cold. He was glad, as he may have just found the way out.
There was no way out.
And his oxygen was running low.
And it even occurred to him, that the water may be rising.
Sat in the room, with the stone that was carved upon, Nathaniel had discovered just what loneliness was. Loneliness was not the realisation that minutes had to turned to hours.
Loneliness was the realisation that hours had turned to days. It was also the realisation that you can't call for help, that you are no where near home, and you have no food, and that people may not find your body when you die.
Indeed, loneliness was worse than death.
Knowing that the oxygen levels in the tunnels neared zero, he had taken it upon himself to do the deed.
Sat and slumped up against some rock, waist high in ice cold water that made the inside of his suit seem cold and unloving, he attempted to undo the hatch on his helmet. It eased off, and he breathed in.
It was not an easy death.
The slow descent was resting, that was easy.
The lack of pain, that was easy.
But the sudden inhaled breath that stunk of rotting meat, was not easy as he died aware of the fact that the behemoth rib was not a fossil.
But a fresh and still rotting carcass.
No, it seemed that things were not simple and easy as they had seemed from satellite photos and that in fact they could only get harder. In some way, he died slightly happy because now things were going to extremely easy for him after this.
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