Presence Awoken

Chapter 5 - Cursed

There it was. He could feel it. It was a stiffness.

A weird... light feeling.

What was it, he wondered.

He was stiff, lifeless, and yet... totally light.

His body felt as if it were drifting away, ascending, transcending, going somewhere it had never gone before.

He felt a disconnection, like his soul, body, and his mind had all manifested into totally separate entities.

What was this feeling? He couldn't stop asking himself in his sleeping mind.

What was happening?

Where was he going?

Carpe diem dum potes.

Carpe diem dum potes.

Carpe diem dum potes.

"Gah-!" Danny screamed as he rolled off the side of his bed, and hit his head on the bedside table, causing his lamp to drop onto the ground.

"The hell? That's gonna leave a mark... maybe two."

He placed the lamp back on his table and rubbed his eyes as he stood up, and then came to a bizarre realisation.

"Huh-? Why is the-?" As Danny swiped open his curtains and took one look outside, he could tell something was wrong.

The sky... was red. A crimson red. Not black, filled with stars, like the night sky usually is, but it was red. Red and starless. Red and lifeless. Red and hopeless. What was going on? Where had Danny woken up? Was he still in his normal home? It sure seemed like it but, it was also uncanny, too.

He then looked down, and further around, and noticed something even odder.

There were no streetlights. There were no cars being driven around. No people on late-night walks. No lights in any houses. No life. There was no life. No civilisation. No humanity. No reality. What was going on? Where had Danny ended up?

"Oh... hell to the fucking NO!" He shouted as he lunged a dirty pile of clothes at his wall, out of pure uncontrolled rage.

"Ah- ah- AHHHHH!" He continued to freak out, as he rushed out of his door, and straight into his dad's room when he came to an even freakier realisation.

His dad was not in his bed. It was totally empty.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!?"

Danny could not contain his intense emotion. He felt destroyed. He felt hopeless. He felt terrified. Everything that could've possibly gone wrong, had. The streets were empty, the sky was a blood-curdling crimson red, and now, his dad was gone.

It was then, that things seemed they could not possibly get any worse.

And somehow, they did.

A bellowing growl could be heard from outside, not far from his house either. It sounded like a bear, or a wolf, or really any kind of creature that you could classify as predatory.

"No. No. No. Fuck off! Fuck off! FUCK OFF!!! FUCK RIGHT OFF, I SAY!!"

Danny's desperate attempts at diverting the creature away were wholly futile, as he could hear its scaling legs continue to crawl up the street.

He was scared, mortified, terrified.

But if he simply sat there and cried, that creature would quickly find him, and who knows what would happen after that.

"I'm gonna... I'm gonna KILL whatever that is outside!! Right now!!"

Without a further word of self-motivation, he rushed downstairs, and frantically darted his eyes around his house to find anything that could possibly pass as a weapon.