Abyss (The Man in the Abyss 1)

Scene One: Popping Pills

Abyss

Scene One: Popping Pills

Julie walks through the branches that stuck out before her. She has no choice but to walk through them. She couldn’t even dodge through them because she couldn’t see. The fog is too thick around her. Hell, she could even put her hand in front of her face and still not be able to see it. Needless, she still walks the damp ground with her bare feet. The mud squeezes between her toes with every step she takes. Julie doesn’t notice.

She takes another step and she hears a loud splash below. Her vision is useless at the moment, so she just lowers her hand until she feels the cool liquid. She had just stepped into a lake. Or to be more exact, the lake at the bottom of Abyss cliff. How she gotten down the hundreds of feet of the cliff baffles her. She just woke up here and her feet took lead.

Julie keeps walking, ignoring the rising water that’s now up to her knees. She walks until she’s shoulder deep in the dirty lake. She feels the stray leaves and twigs from underneath her as she keeps walking further. She takes another step but abruptly stops when she hears a giggle. Julie snaps her head in the direction of the starling sound. Is there someone here? She wants to ask the words out loud but she would feel insane if all she hears is silence.

Then she hears another giggle from a different direction with a different voice. She sees a shadow dart from the corner of her eye. Then another shadow with the same speed shots before her eyes. She hears more giggles. Multiple giggles. Hundreds of giggles. All with a different voice in a different direction. Hundreds of little shadows dart from one place to another in a blink of an eye.

Julie takes a few more steps forward. Now her feet cannot touch the bottom. She kicks her legs and moves her arms to stay above the water. She hears a nursery rhyme in the distance.

There once was a lonely boy,

He had no mother,

He had no father,

He lived in a shack,

He lived in the abyss,

Once he was a man,

He found a wondering boy,

He took him,

And he was no longer lonely,

He found a wondering girl,

He took her,

He was no longer lonely,

He lived in the abyss with his new friends,

Every day he would find a new friend,

To join his family,

He’s no longer lonely with his big and growing family.

 

The rhyme stops. Julie knew the nursery rhyme by heart, even though she hadn’t heard the thing in years. Her parents would tell her that right before bedtime.

The giggling got louder and louder. Julie’s hands twitch; she has the urge to cover her ears. But her hands are busy trying to keep her afloat at the moment. Then the loud giggling suddenly stops. Julie relaxes instantly and slumps her stiff shoulders. Julie smiles and treads further in the water.

She stops when sees another shadow. Then a face appears in front of her. Despite the thickening fog, she could see the little girl’s features clearly. She girl’s eyes were gauged out of their sockets. So the only thing left is black holes. The girl has a wide grin on her dirty face. Pointy teeth stuck up in different directions in her smile.

Come join us Julie, The little girl's voice speaks into her head. Then Julie feels a hand grab her leg and pull her under the water.

Julie sits up quickly with her hand on chest. Her heart is pounding on her hand. She feels like her ribcage might break from the force. She breathes in and out. In and out. In and out. Julie’s hand wonders on the bedside table for her inhaler. She finds the yellow contraption and greedily brings it to her quivering lips. She presses the tiny container down and inhales the medicine. She repeats the action twice more until she’s satisfied with the dose. Her rapid breathing goes back to normal after a few minutes of deep breaths.

But Julie isn’t done just yet. She reaches for the small bottle of prescription pills. She opens the top and takes out two blue pills. Her therapist prescribed them to her for her severe anxiety.

Julie lays the pills down on her nightstand and picks up another pill bottle. She opens the cap and takes out a large white pill. Her therapist prescribed these for her compulsive OCD.

She lays this one with the other pills and grabs the last pill bottle from her nightstand. She opens the cap and takes out a circular red pill. The therapist prescribed these when she was diagnosed with severe depression.

She puts all five pills in her hand and then shoves them in her mouth. She grabs the glass of water from her nightstand and takes a big gulp.

It’s appropriate to say that Julie is a fucked-up kid. She wasn’t always like this. No, she once had her mother before fate ripped her from her and her father’s hands. Now she’s cursed with multiple mental disorders.

Not that very many people new. Only her father and Damon, her childhood friend, knows about her curse. It’s the same routine every day. Take blah-blah pills in the morning; take blah-blah pills at night. Put a smile on your face even though you want to scream until your throat bleeds. Go out into public pretending everything is fine and dandy, when really you’re in your own living Hell.

Julie has gotten used to this routine, she had years ago. It’s okay though—she didn’t want it any other way. She didn’t even know how to live any other way.

It was only a dream, she tells herself. Just a really vivid and bad dream, she chants again. It has been ‘just a dream’ for weeks now. She had the reoccurring nightmare every night since a few weeks ago. Julie just shrugs off the creepy feeling she got after every nightmare and continues on with her day.

Since it’s already five, Julie gets up from her bed and stretches her arms. She takes another sip of her water and walks into her bathroom. She stares at the mask face in the mirror. Blue-green bruises form under her tired eyes. The lack of peaceful sleeping has really had a bad effect on her.

She turns the faucet on and splashes her face with the cool water. She repeats this until her face is numb from coldness. She lifts her head back to stare at herself in the mirror.

The face of girl in her nightmare stares back at her, with the same pit-less eyes and jagged teeth smiling a sinister smile. She jumps up and falls back onto the wall behind her.

Julie rips a hand towel from the towel hanger above her. She scrubs her wet face forcefully. She’s satisfied when she feels her face burning from the scraping of the top layer of her skin. She hesitantly gets back up from her spot on the tile floor. She looks into the mirror again and sighs once she sees her red face is the only one staring back at her.

Now she’s hallucinating! All of this fuss over some stupid nightmare is having way too much control over her life. Julie shakes her head forcefully at reflection.

“You are not going crazy! You may be messed-up mentally but most definitely not crazy!” She instructs at herself in the mirror. She’s surely going insane now. She’s talking to her own reflection! She shakes her head a last stubborn time.

“Not crazy.” She says once more with a fake smile.