. . .
" I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium. "
–H. P. Lovecraft.
. . .
Elle thinks she was on the verge of waking up when she heard it: the faint sound of what seemed to be like water splashing all over the floors, more than feeling it actually hitting her skin, mind not quite registering the sudden cold seeping within her.
But then, Elle’s entire senses immediately jolted straight into awareness when the sudden force of a resounding slap struck her squarely on the face without any sort of warning to be said.
For a scary moment, it was no more than a distant throb, followed by a faint, incessant, slight ringing in her ears, echoing over and over again as the sharp feeling of the cold suddenly struck her full force, it slithers and burns throughout every inch of her body, making her shudder.
It… it was odd and frightening, a hazy sort of feeling to be woken so abruptly that way, an aching that her mind was distantly aware of but couldn’t quite connect or process the way as quickly as it should… and even the strike itself almost feels like it wasn’t there, wasn’t even real in the first place, no better than an unwanted press of something solid and painful landing abruptly on the cheek.
And a bluish sort of glow flickers on every side of her still dimming vision, tiny half-burnt candles situated precariously close to the cold, slab of rock she was lying on, far away, hazy…
Everything feels like a dream.
…But not quite.
Shadows that looked like fingers, shadows that looked like claws appeared to be reaching for her, long and sharp–they twist and dance through what little light there is around her.
And Elle has no idea where she is, has no idea how on earth she even ended up here… in this place–wherever this is. The last thing she literally remembers was walking home from school, on the way to the subway and… and then there was nothing.
A bubble of panic rose up within her at that.
…What the hell happened?
As soon as she can manage, Elle immediately tries to strain her neck to look over the side with desperate, sluggish efforts that soon proves to be more trouble than it was worth it when her already blurred vision fades to a startling black at the next second, the faint ringing in the back of her mind soon growing louder, followed by a brutal pounding in her head that makes her wince–the promise of a growing headache.
A weak groan went past her lips, quiet and unbidden, as a cool gust of wind suddenly blew over her bare form from… from somewhere. It felt like nowhere and everywhere and–!
Wait.
This smell…
It reminds her of the sea.
No, wait a minute. That couldn’t be right. That couldn’t be possible. The city she lived in, her… her home was nowhere near the sea or any sort of beach–!
And goosebumps immediately formed all over her bare skin as Elle felt her entire body shuddering more than fear, more than the cold itself at the sudden realization, insides practically coiling and churning with dread and nausea as bile steadily rose in the back of her throat.
Tears gathered in the corner of her eyes.
She didn’t know where she was, let alone even remembered how or why she ended up in here. Why was she even here?!
Something flickered past her half-shut (since when she had even truly closed them?) eyes and Elle cautiously tried to open them, momentarily blinded by the sudden darkness of the room she was in as she hurriedly tried to blink back her tears.
Bewildered, Elle squints at the strange, bluish sort of glow now hovering directly in front of her–above her… it looks nothing like the glow coming from the set of tiny candles surrounding her.
This one was so much larger, deeper and darker like the ocean itself had been gathered right above her, perfectly round as the moon in the sky but speckled with strange hues of colors she could not even name, let alone tell apart for she could have sworn she had never seen this kind of shade in her entire life before.
Nothing seems to quite process the way it should the longer she stares, her tired mind trying to make sense of just what on earth is she even looking at…?
The strange pattern within the circle looks more and more like an iris reminding her of a snake or a cat but… but the patterns within it continued to ripple like water, forming shapes after shapes and she couldn’t quite make the sight before her connect with what her mind knows, let alone what it could comprehend. Just simply looking at it is making her head hurt even more.
The ringing grows louder.
And she was faintly sure her ears are bleeding now.
“Little girl…”
Elle physically flinches on the spot, she would have literally jumped right out of it, away from the voice (and far away the… the strange glow that has now blinked out of existence–) if it weren’t for the chains clanging and rattling loudly over restrained limbs that has grown quite numb at how tight they had tied her in.
She hadn’t realized she was even tied up in the first place… not until the strange figure that had been situated somewhere above her head, had suddenly spoken up in a deep, raspy voice:
“…are you awake?”
And when Elle doesn’t respond immediately–too shocked that she wasn’t alone, too scared what this could possibly mean for her–she was struck without any sort of preamble yet again.
Startled but enraged, Elle tries to look up into the one who had just slapped her with a glare but the man beats her to it as he roughly grabs her by the face and all but forces her neck to crane backwards, right into his direction, never mind the way her bones vehemently creak in protest, veins bulging out in an effort to accommodate the painful position she was now forced in as the back of her head digs painfully on the cold slab of rock.
The man sneers, “Are you finally awake now?”
Defiantly, she grits her teeth.
She just woke up and now she’s in real pain. She’s hurting and she doesn’t know where the hell she is. She doesn’t even know why she is here!
Something wet and slimy brushed over her ankle.
Elle jolts, one of her legs instinctively kicking up.
She couldn’t get away.
Her mouth opens, meaning to scream but her jaw feels too loose, too hurt like she had been punched. It feels like it might come off any moment now but… but the man was screaming too.
Wait.
Why was he screaming?
Elle’s perturbed gaze flew right back to the man, and she sees more than hears him mouthing words she had never heard let alone know of before and then.
The man shouts more than he actually speaks the barely coherent words, on and on–garbled, like a broken record forcing itself to play, Elle couldn’t quite make sense of what he is talking about but strangely enough, she thinks he wasn’t even actually talking to her.
There are things touching her all over, she suddenly realizes, when the man’s screaming cuts off as abruptly as it began into a barely-there hum, a softly sung melody that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand. There was something sliding sickeningly slow and heavy, like thick syrup sliding all over across her skin now–her legs, her stomach, her arms, to her chest and it crawls up and up to her neck–until the man releases her face as the thing stops right just beneath her chin, a cold, wet feeling that feels too heavy, too suffocating and too close for comfort to be even considered as a caress.
Elle couldn’t quite make herself look.
Because it feels like fingers but not quite or maybe they were hands gripping and poking at her face, or maybe it was worms or snakes or, or–
Something blinks down at her from above.
She blinks back at it, mouth falling open.
And everything around her suddenly looks out of sorts. Far and away… going into a startling focus only to fade in and out of it like reality itself was some sort of broken television.
The humming grows louder.
On and on, it goes.
Dimly, Elle thinks it sounds like more than one person.
She can feel something warm and thick dripping down the side of her neck now, agonizingly slow. The bleeding in her ears has never quite stopped after all this time.
Her vision continues to blur for a moment or so as it frays around the edges. And her tired eyes blinked once then twice before dazedly flitting over from above then below and then from side to side when looking at the thing above her proves to be far too much, but it stays, it doesn’t go away even as she tries to look away and she swears she really does try to look away but the image doesn’t go away. It is burned in the back of her mind now, even as she tries to screw her eyes shut, the patterns within the never-ending ocean of blue swirling and bleeding seamlessly together into colors she had no idea how to tell apart, let alone what to make of.
She sees but she doesn’t–couldn’t understand what she is seeing right now. For this is something life on earth wasn’t supposed to see, let alone be able to fathom.
“Is… is that…?” she mumbles.
…is that an eye?!
Elle’s entire body jolts once more when a thick, damp cloth is abruptly wrapped around her face before her vision could even properly right itself, completely blocking her from seeing anything.
On and on it goes around her head.
As the cloth presses so insistently over her eyes that it actually hurts, she feels more than hears the flat, slab of rock she had been chained on being held up and moved away.
. . .
They intend for her to die.
Probably… but that’s the only thing she can think of.
Elle… really doesn’t know, doesn’t even have so much as an inkling of an idea as to what is going on here. Does she even want to? She couldn’t even understand what’s going on with these people’s minds.
She wasn’t even sure if they are really people.
. . .
When the cloth was finally ripped right out from her face, Elle couldn’t quite stop the pained whimper when she feels the way the cloth burns and tears through already reddened skin.
“Open your eyes,” the same man whispers.
She does.
. . .
And Elle swears that when she looks… as in, really, really looks–she immediately finds herself regretting it.
This time, she couldn’t help herself–she screams and screams and screams until her throat burns and hurts so much that her voice abruptly breaks off with sorrow and terror, her screams dying into nothingness as everything around her turns black once more because it was all too much.
Elle passes out, like the little lights that she doesn’t notice being blown off one by one around her, like the too-small bones of the long dead children crunching beneath their feet.