Afraid of the Dark

ç̵hÀptê̵r Ēigh̷ťë̵en

He could still see, hear, and feel, but none of those feelings felt right. The perspective of his vision looked wrong; it was as if he was watching a broadcast of his sight on a screen, and not directly looking at anything himself. As if he was watching a recording from a first-person camera. Everything seemed a little distant, a little unnatural. The way he could hear was wrong; everything was ever so slightly muffled, as if he had gotten water inside of his ear canals which dampened the noises around him. His sense of touch was also broken; everything felt fuzzy and cold, and he had no control over his movements. If he tried to reach out a hand, he wouldn't see his hand move on that screen-like setting before him. The whole situation felt like he was being forced to watch some sort of advanced movie, but he didn't want to be there. Although he couldn't move, he could still speak. At least, he could in his head. Perhaps he wasn't speaking, and was instead only thinking, but either way it was hard. Since he had looked at that green mass of pixels, his mind had become slow and clouded.

But the memory of what his friend had just told him was crystal clear. And it was destroying him.

He could feel something wrapping around his wrists and his ankles, slowly beginning to drag him away to the dark recesses of his mind, away from the screen that he looked out of. He cried, screamed and sobbed, not really knowing what he wanted to accomplish by doing so.

The three American men stared at 'Seán'. "What are you talking about...?" Tyler questioned, unaware that he was taking a cautious step away from the Irish man as he dragged himself to his feet, with a few quiet chuckles. Once he was standing up straight, he leant his head back and stretched out his arms, sighing with great exaggeration as if he had just woken up from the world's best nap. He flexed his fingers, before shaking his body around to loosen his muscles, uncaring about the audience he had before him. The Irish man closed his green eyes slowly, a smirk spreading across his face as he did so.

"He's still screaming..." he said with a masochistic tone, opening his eyes which were filled with glee. "What a f***ing idiot..." With a chuckle, he turned in a slow circle to survey the room which he stood in, taking a few long moments to observe the three men that surrounded him within some sort of makeshift triangle formation, ignoring the questions that he was being asked as he focused on the dialogue going on within his head. The cries of agony and betrayal that he heard were slowly diminishing as his hold upon his host got stronger. It was difficult to subdue him without the use of visible static, but it was still possible considering hallucinations could work just as well.

Whatever was wrapping around his limbs was now wrapping around his head, pushing its way underneath Seán's eyelids and pulling them as wide open as they possibly could, giving the Irish man no choice but to watch as his vision of the screen slowly decayed as they were overtaken by patches of white noise. As he stared at them, his brain became paralysed, but the feeling somehow comforted him. Was this what the voice had said when he that he could sleep and never wake up? Was this the never-ending dream he was promised? He could vaguely feel more ropes or chains or whatever they were going around his body. They felt like veins, for he could feel them pulsing as if something was pumping through them every few seconds, but he couldn't bring himself to look at them. He just watched the static before him and felt as the strange wires pumped against his chest, his heartbeat slowly merging into the rhythm that they moved in. It was as if he had been thrown into a pit of vipers, and they were slowly encasing him. His gag reflex kicked in as he felt them go down his throat, causing him to choke and splutter, but within a few seconds the reflex was dulled, and he couldn't do anything expect feel them move through his body. For a few brief moments, it would burn. It would badly hurt. But those moments were sporadic, and he was too focused on what he could see to really pay attention to anything else.