Chapter 3
Slight complications
Year 2095
Halle's POV
I stood in a round, white room with only a porthole-shaped window to break up the monotony. The view outside was nothing more than an inky void. Everything was pitch dark, covered, wrapped in layers of black. It seemed as if night had engulfed all my surroundings, leaving me clueless, helpless, as I frantically searched the room for a clue, a hint, that could tell me of the place. Anything, I was desperate.
I didn't know where I was or why I was there. But I knew something or someone had summoned me. I spun around, suddenly conscious of a door, and saw a slight glow, saffron in colour, spilling from underneath the door-frame, mildly illuminating the bare walls of the monotonous room, in which I stood.
Chilled air flowed in with the light and tickled the tops of my bare feet. The purple nail paint on my toe had chipped, making it look as if I only had half a toe, and this seemed to interest me more than the cold hardwood floor and rough splinters underneath. Or rather, I was hoping that it was all just a dream, nothing else, I was trying to not face reality.
The lights went out. The door whooshed open, almost soundlessly, and a huge rush of arctic wind battered my body. The floorboards creaked, as i felt the weight of an unknown mass travel along them to my feet. I couldn't move and I wasn't sure I wanted to, not right now. It was as if I was stuck, frozen in that place.
The lights from outside the room came on again, illuminating the air abrasively. My eyes stung from the sudden brightness that was created. A pounding sound filled my ears, the sound of loud drumming, beats so loud, that they almost deafened me, threatening to burst my eardrums, urging me to cover my ears. I covered them with my hands, protecting them, or at least trying to, in a futile attempt in order to stop the torturous, painful sound, but it didn't stop, no matter how hard I tried, until realised it came from my very heart.
In the doorway I saw a silhouette of a man.
My heart, and the incessant pounding, stopped. And all was silent, at once, as if someone had unexpectedly pressed the mute button, no sound was heard, none at all. The man came for me, a mass of unfathomable malevolence. I screamed and screamed until the black depths of his silhouette was all I could fathom, all I could see. I fell into him, fell into a dark abyss, fell into the darkness, in one never-ending cry.
Until...
