Little Nightmares

The Prison Part 1: Waking Up

A faint, high drone rung through Six's ears. A small white light broke the murky darkness that fogged her vision. Dark blue surls circled around the peripherals of her vision as the drone grew louder and louder. The light slowly took form. A humble brown dress materialised before Six, from the surls that danced about her a black head of bunned hair manifested atop the dress. The light grew brighter as the figure turned its head. Two black, lifeless eye holes stared back at Six. She watched frozen as the plain Kabuki masked formed itself the structure of a blank, white face. The Lady hovered over, the dressed gently rustling against the thick air that permeated the room. Six wasn't sure if it was a room or not, yet she gave it little thought as it shook. The closer the Lady came the more uncontrollable and violent the seizures were until the face came right up close to her. It came into her, Six seeing only the snow white face and pitch black eyes that stabbed into her soul. The drone spiked into a blood curdling screech then stopped instantly.

With a breath of life Six came to, her heart racing, sweat soaking her body, making her low hanging fringe cling to her face. It took her awhile before her breathing steadied itself, before she recognised where she was, or at least where she wasn't. The room was dark, with only a faint blue light coming from way up above giving Six some vision in her damp quarters. Old dirty and ragged clothes lined the inside of the massive leather bound briefcase she found that she was sleeping in. With it's lid propped open, she jumped out and grimaced at the foul stench that assaulted her nose. The walls were made of panels of metal, not well put together, each panel over lapped the other and made a mismatched sheet of almost chess board like design. Great tall pipes, not much wider than she was, steamed and rattled as they climbed higher and higher into the sky...or whatever was above Six. She could only see an eternal chute that kept going up and up and up and up, never stopping. The bright light above her, almost made it hard to see detail as it nearly blinded her dark adjusted eyes. The air around her was damp, her almost oversized yellow raincoat protected her from the massive water droplets that pittered and pattered on the floor like an explosion. The raincoat belonged to her mother. Before she got lost, Six's mother gave it to her before she went skipping off into the rain. Her mother was a rather tall woman, though not as tall as many other women Six knew. The jacket almost entirely covered Six's face, the arms were only just too long - her fingertips poking out of the sleeve ends - and the bottom of the rain coat came down to just above Six's knees.

She wanted to go deeper, look further into the darkness, but was afraid of what might jump out. She was still shaken by the nightmare she had only recently woken from. A feeling of terror still filled her body, as any nightmare would to a little child. But she was determined. Her parents had always said she was fierce, strong willed, and stubborn - mainly the latter. She tried not to think about them. She was in a strange place where she had never been and this was no dream, at least as far as she could tell. It didn't feel like a dream, or nightmare. Just a terrible new reality. As she took a step forward she slipped on some slime and the greasy moss pulled her balance from her, forcing her to land face down on the floor. Once she hit the ground, the shock within her hands hurt furiously, as well as her head that collided with the ground when her hands slid away due to the dampness of the room. But as she lay there, close to tears, poking into her side was a square object. Reaching into her pocket she grasped the small metal thing and pulled it out before her. It was a lighter. Her father's. Her father was a smoker but he tried quitting. Every year he said he would stop, but never did. So Six stole his lighter. She knew he could always get a new one, but ever since he lost it he had forgotten about smoking all together. He saw it as a convenience rather than a loss.

Six lit the flame to the lighter, and instantly the area around seemed to glow. She looked down, some of the slime still clung to her foot and could feel it ooze between her toes. She looked around the suitcase for any shoes, but there was none. She was left in her underwear, vest, and her mother's oversized yellow rainjacket. She sighed, wiped the slime from her foot with a huge ugly coloured tie and pressed on. The room only had one exit, a large corridor that hid itself around a corner. As Six walk through, she tried not to kick the empty cans lying about her. Damp old newspapers clumped soggily to each other along the walls and against big cardboard boxes. The boxes were tall, rectangular, and had a handle hole on either side, just below the lid. As Six went on, the pipes grew larger and larger. The width of some were larger than an oak tree stump with valve handles protruding from not only the pipes, but the walls themselves, many in nonsensical positions. Steam hissed from the fixings, the ground grew dryer. The dripping of water now far behind her. Then a dead end. That was it. A wall. Nothing else. No path ways, ladders, stairs. Just a wall. Two pipes crawled their way up it in snake like curves but that was all. Six shook her head and turned back, to see if there was something she missed. Another way out. At first she was calm, but by the third run through the bleak corridor she began to panic. Running through, slipping so many times on the floor than her feet could barely keep up. By the ninth run she was back to the same dead end. Six collapsed onto the floor. She was alone, trapped. She crawled up into a ball and cried. The sweat dripping down her face mixed with her tears and dripped onto the floor. She thought about her mum, her dad, her home, her friends. Then the slow death that would come from starvation. She was already starting to feeling hungry. She didn't know how long she had been without food, or how long or far away from home she was. Alone and lost. That was all she thought, and the unfamiliar sounds of the prison like corridor merely echoed it back to her.

Then a whistle. A faint, almost mute whistle came from close by Six's head. She sat up, and crawled around the pipe she had placed herself near and found a small 'C' shaped handle. Pulling on it, a miniscule hatch opened up from the floor. The whistle became a deep windy sound, like a storm as air shot up into Six's face, making her hood fly back over her head. Six couldn't see where it led. She thought about throwing her lighter down, but then if it was too deep then she would be without a lighter. And either way, up here she would starve. Other than this hatch, there wasn't a single nook or cranny Six could see anywhere. She took in a deep breath, and jumped.