I was a young man, content with my lot in life, with a happy family. I had a job, I was pulling in enough money to keep my family going. I wasn't rich, but I got by.
I worked as a biologist - that is, I was a scientist studying nature. I also was working on a project that would reveal links between plant chemical effects on the brain and the ancient Druid groves.
I was at the site of an old grove, taking samples, when the unspeakable happened.
Unspeakable, because I do not remember it. All I remember, if I think very, very hard, is the faint memory of pain blazing through my head, and a solid clunk.
When I woke up, I was tied with my hands behind my back. My head was in agony. Of course I panicked.
Of course I could not move.
A man was standing there. He seemed to almost shine with black light, but it was unholy... he felt wrong.
He leaned down and touched a finger to my head. The pain grew even worse, but I felt something else happening.
I felt something else, sharing my skull, something else inside my mind.
I was more terrified then than I have ever been.
I managed to reach, ever so slowly, one of the syringes I'd been filling with dew samples. I used the tips of my fingers to squirt the substance into his face. While he spluttered, I pulled myself to my feet and ran, my hands still tied behind my back.
I felt the entity being torn... ripped in half. I still felt it within me, but it was weakened, dormant.
The man shouted. It was the first time he had spoken. His voice was deep, deeper than could possibly be natural, and I sensed two minds working in concord.
"Stay where you are. Do not move."
I ignored him, and ran like all of Hell's denizens were chasing me. As I reflect on it, it was close to that.
The man made no attempt to follow me. It puzzled me at the time, but when I returned home I realised just why.
My family were dead.
Their bodies were mangled, torn corpses.
My wife was headless, her head staring unblinking from where it rested on top of the television. My son's body I found in the bath, all four limbs hacked off and his eyes put out. They had put him through terrible agony before they killed him.
Worst of all, my daughter. I found her in the kitchen.
She would not speak, although she did not appear harmed.
I opened her mouth and found what made me throw up.
They had forced a glass bottle down her throat. She had choked to death.
There was a piece of paper in the bottle. It read simply:
'Do not continue your research, unless you enjoy coming home to this.'
I have spent the four years since them investigating. I will kill the Dying Man. I don't care if there are fifty thousand pieces; I'll hunt them all down and enjoy every last kill.
Because nobody touches my family.
I worked as a biologist - that is, I was a scientist studying nature. I also was working on a project that would reveal links between plant chemical effects on the brain and the ancient Druid groves.
I was at the site of an old grove, taking samples, when the unspeakable happened.
Unspeakable, because I do not remember it. All I remember, if I think very, very hard, is the faint memory of pain blazing through my head, and a solid clunk.
When I woke up, I was tied with my hands behind my back. My head was in agony. Of course I panicked.
Of course I could not move.
A man was standing there. He seemed to almost shine with black light, but it was unholy... he felt wrong.
He leaned down and touched a finger to my head. The pain grew even worse, but I felt something else happening.
I felt something else, sharing my skull, something else inside my mind.
I was more terrified then than I have ever been.
I managed to reach, ever so slowly, one of the syringes I'd been filling with dew samples. I used the tips of my fingers to squirt the substance into his face. While he spluttered, I pulled myself to my feet and ran, my hands still tied behind my back.
I felt the entity being torn... ripped in half. I still felt it within me, but it was weakened, dormant.
The man shouted. It was the first time he had spoken. His voice was deep, deeper than could possibly be natural, and I sensed two minds working in concord.
"Stay where you are. Do not move."
I ignored him, and ran like all of Hell's denizens were chasing me. As I reflect on it, it was close to that.
The man made no attempt to follow me. It puzzled me at the time, but when I returned home I realised just why.
My family were dead.
Their bodies were mangled, torn corpses.
My wife was headless, her head staring unblinking from where it rested on top of the television. My son's body I found in the bath, all four limbs hacked off and his eyes put out. They had put him through terrible agony before they killed him.
Worst of all, my daughter. I found her in the kitchen.
She would not speak, although she did not appear harmed.
I opened her mouth and found what made me throw up.
They had forced a glass bottle down her throat. She had choked to death.
There was a piece of paper in the bottle. It read simply:
'Do not continue your research, unless you enjoy coming home to this.'
I have spent the four years since them investigating. I will kill the Dying Man. I don't care if there are fifty thousand pieces; I'll hunt them all down and enjoy every last kill.
Because nobody touches my family.
I sympathize. I understand where you're coming from more than most. There are two problems, aside from the fact that dimensional bleeding may mean there are fragments you can't reach.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, it sounds like you have your own fragment. They've been known to absorb each other and grow in power. How are you going to prevent this?
Secondly, what are you planning if you do succeed in killing all of them except the one inside you and you still maintain control? Suicide? And how do you intend to ensure the one in you doesn't infect whoever finds your body?
And then there's the fact that if you come after me because of Bob I *will* defend myself. I've had worse than you come for me and I'm still here. They aren't. Some of them are buried in several garbage bags after going through my wood chipper.
So, four. There are four problems.
Five, but I implore you to come after me. You'll just be another fragment that adds to my power.
Delete- The God of Fear
Who wouldn't hate an eldritch being, I get that!
ReplyDelete