GODS AT THE CENTRE ( EDITING)

CHAPTER XIII, VAXES: WAKING IN DARKNESS

The world was black and she walked in the darkness. It was cold, frightfully chilling, the cold of bodies dead, the cold of emptiness and nightmares.

She couldn't see her hands, nor her moving legs, there was no difference between up and down, just a world of pitch. A vast nothingness.

"Where am I?" She whispered. Her words echoed in the distance, bouncing back to her louder as if in mockery, in a thousand places. "Where am I?!" "Where am?!" the voices in the darkness screamed at her.

She groped senselessly, feeling a familiar chill up her spine-fear.

Am I dead?

Up head a light burst into the dark world. A shred of light in the darkness. She ran for it as the mocking echoes pursued her.

Leave me alone! She almost cried, covering her ears.

Fear and death that was all she felt. She must make it to the light.

The light grew bigger, she saw it well enough now.

She came upon the light. It was a campfire outside a black tent.

The fires didn't flicker nor the wood crackle. All was silent and even the voices had stopped.

Drawn, she moved to the open flap of the tent. There was a light within. Someone was here! In this world of infernal darkness. Who or what?

What sort of nightmare was this? Was this her afterlife. She felt for Meat. He wasn't at her waist! She was naked!

She passed into the tent, warily. There was something familiar about the carpet of lion skin worn out by many comings and going, something about the black brazier that sparked a memory.

Then she heard it. Deep within the tent, kneeling besides a figure on a bed, a girl in a white gown sobbed. Her sobs sounded with an unearthliness that pierced her.

Vaxes approached cautiously. The crying girl had her back to her. Her long black hair shimmered in the unnatural light.

Vaxes came within arm's reach. The girl turned around with alarming speed. Her eyes were pitch black, even the whites! Her tears streamed like rivulets of tar down her pale face!

Vaxes staggered aware that she was seeing a ghost, her own ghost. The weeping girl was her, a younger her!

This was that night! Then the figure was! Oh no!

It all came flooding back as the figure drew himself up with a ghostlike grace. His grave face not softened by death.

It can't be!

His voice came as raspy as steel on stone, rougher than in life. "What are you looking at, girl? I'm dying and you're still ugly!"

He stretched his terrible shaking hands at her and the echoes came again, mocking her. "Still ugly, still ugly..., Still ugly!"

He roared, his laughter was foul, the girl sobbed and she screamed. Her voice filled the darkness and echoed back to her. A wailing banshee.

She ran out, back into the darkness, away from the light while the echoes pursued. "Still ugly... still ugly!"

She ran and ran, lost and senseless in darkness. She fell, tired. She covered her ears as the echoes closed in still mocking. "Still ugly." "Useless" That was her father's.

She groaned and let it out, a heart filled yell, drowning everything else."Leave me alone!"

That's was when she awoke.