Afterlife [REWRITTEN]

10 - Nightmares

[Xyan]

I looked left. I looked right. I looked everywhere.

Darkness stretched farther than I could see. The only light was my own cyan glow, illuminating a few feet of black before the air was plunged into darkness once more.

I lashed my tail once. I'd been here before. This was the empty dream space I visited in my sleep, a dark void of nothing. Akhet described what it was according to the Spiritbooks - just a blank, empty space, a void where our living memories no longer rested. Just... nothingness.

Except there was something here. I felt a presence. It was dark, it was cold... familiar in a way. Too familiar.

Way too familiar.

"Who's there?" I called into the abyss. No answer except my own echo.

I tried again, only louder. "Hello?"

"I thought you'd guess."

I turned and met the figure that had appeared behind me. A face that smiled with tight lips at me, one sinister white slit of a pupil slicing and dicing my soul into bits as I stumbled backwards in surprise. I caught myself before I could fall. My eyes were glued to him, the spirit only staring silently in wicked amusement at my shock.

"What, surprised?" Gradient chuckled, black knives in his mouth glinting in the dim light as his mouth parted in speech. The scribble over his left eye was almost mesmerizing as I stared at him, drawing my gaze in a distraught panic of the lust for attention. I couldn't see behind it, but I could make out small, colorful dots that flickered every now and then like shadows passing over light.

I couldn't find words. I couldn't find movement. My limbs were frozen, a cold stillness spreading through my body. A few silent moments passed before I managed to utter, "H-how are you here...?"

Gradient flicked his broken, spaded tail, the chips floating off the end following like moths to a flame. "Funny enough, that's not a question I may be able to answer correctly. But I'm here now. So that doesn't matter."

"You're lying."

"I wish I was. I'd like an explanation too, but..." He revealed his sharklike teeth in a devious smile. "I have more important matters on my mind than answers."

I choked as my airflow was (somehow) cut off, pressure around the base of my neck's remains in a thin line encircling it forcing a choke from my mouth. A similar pressure formed at my wrists and my ankles, discomfort sparking in my back as I was suddenly jerked from my defensive position to an upright, stabilized one. I stumbled a bit to the side, my hand flying to the side of my head as a stab of pain erupted through the side of my skull. Following that hand was a white string, tied tightly around my wrist like a tight bracelet and extending upwards until it fades into the darkness above.

"It seems you've trespassed within... what used to be mine." Gradient twirled his finger in the air, and suddenly my feet pulled me along towards him. I inhaled sharply, unable to gain control of my limbs as I walked closer and closer, until my face was inches away from Gradient's. His smile still remained, a twisted display of sharp black teeth protruding in his mouth. "Or, that's what I think. Just a little theory."

I felt one of his frigid claws caress my jaw, just enough pressure for cold droplets of blood to run down my neck and drip onto the collar of my shirt. I couldn't look down or away, I was paralyzed in place. "What do you think?"

"G-get the hell away from me..." The stammer in my voice couldn't be hidden. Whatever confident anger I'd felt the last time I'd seen the turned spirit was gone along with the Gradient I used to know.