Time Itself

prologue

There was a steady breathing, pouting lips almost like a woman's curling down in a frown in a mist of blacks and reds and the shadows cast around them illuminated the life. There was a formless lung squeezing in battle, the breaths clawing their way up the throat pipes that disintegrated every waking second only to reform more mutilated than the last time.

The light into the room was soaked up by the being, a living shadow walking among the shattered souls of the Hospital for the Mentally Ill.

The weak body was wheezing and breathing heavily in the bed, skin yellowing and long black hair splayed out on a pillow that was too stiff to be comfortable and the sheet was put on terribly wrong. His eyes were closed, lids concealing smoky grey orbs that could see the red of the light through their skin shield. Eyes that could see as a shadow clouded the light and a wave of hot and cold enveloped his body all at the same time.

The drugs in his system to help with the stitches were wearing him down, making him tired but the shadow knew he could feel it there. Two shadows broken and shattered into spiderwebbed pieces communicating in body language. A lonely language that host and parasite shared.

It was a nightmare, the shadow was. A living Nightmare that shifted from person to person and Caleb was the first real host. Not really a victim, but not unharmed.

The call of sleep invaded Caleb's mind, but the Nightmare was a call battling with natural instincts.

A ghostly hand of unnatural form, twited and mangled, passing over the most sensitive parts of the body and the weakest parts of the mind as it reached deep into the heart and soul. The infection began in the lungs, black veins and shadows spiderwebbing out up to the heart and down into the stomach and Caleb almost convulsed at the feeling of a sudden weight filled his body.

The beating of his heart slowed, almost to a flatline before the rhythm sped up dramatically. His young body was shaking harshly, head rolling back as he let out a weak cry and the infection spread to the very edges of his body and finally his brain.

The young teen that was in the hospital for a drug overdose, a troubling end to a dispute with parents; that child was dead now. The only remains were the fractured mentality of the young boy and the body that would only continue to age and grow. The problem for many years later in the future and Nightmare was pleased with this vessel.

But that was a problem for another story.