Unnamed, Collaboration

Original Work, My contribution to a Colab Piece I'm doing with some friends. This is the first chapter of what will become a conglomerate novella. Feedback is much appreciated. Warning though, this is fairly light compared to some other works of mine but it is still not really a happy lovey dovey story. Read at your own risk of mental scaring.

Chapter 1

Gabrielle didn’t like people, they were loud and overbearing. He didn’t care for their problems, their fears, their hopes, or their dreams. To him, people were simply bags of conscious flesh that the world would do much better without. Gabrielle walked along the cracked and jagged concrete path and shrugged his shoulder forward to bring his slipping backpack back into line. He watched the crowd walk around him, staring out coldly from his mismatched eyes, one deep, dark black, one the palest blue; polar opposites, but both windows to the same tortured soul.

To say Gabrielle’s life had been unpleasant would be an understatement and the source of this great misfortune all emanated from solitary source. His stepfather figure who miraculously gained custody of a younger Gabrielle after murdering his mother in a drunken rampage, a charge for which he was acquitted after all possible witnesses disappeared or suddenly gained amnesia, even Gabrielle’s own testimony was thrown aside due to “Delusional Trauma”.

After that young Gabrielle became his stepfather’s slave, mind and body. Any torture that came into his stepfather’s drunken fancy was inflicted, en masse. Gabrielle was beaten, burned, cut and raped which are fairy tales in comparison to the long horrendous list of unthinkable pain and humiliation put to Gabrielle each waking hour. He had Gabrielle carry out not only all household chores but also meaningless busy work designed to exhaust him and keep him docile. All these things Gabrielle carried out as he was aware of what his step father was capable of and shuddered to think what action he may take should Gabrielle ever disobey him.

His stepfather enjoyed the dominance that came from inflicting pain on the small boy but knew that such things were mostly frowned upon in society, so he kept Gabrielle hidden away and locked up like a prisoner undergoing his daily tasks and beatings under the guise that the boy was much too disturbed to be introduced to normal society.

This routine continued; day in, day out. Until one such day Gabrielle could take no more. His step father stood over him with a long chef’s knife; Gabrielle before him, his shirt torn from his body to reveal his bare, battered torso. His step father went to work with the knife, slicing at Gabrielle’s flesh but not too deep as that the boy would bleed to death.

In the glint of the downward stroke of the knife Gabrielle saw his chance, he grabbed the arm that had caused him so much pain and twisted the knife from its grip. Claiming the weapon from the floor Gabrielle turned the knife on its original wielder, plunging the blade deep into his chest. The blood erupted from the cavity; spraying forth in massive torrents and Gabrielle relished every moment of this most divine of showers, rejoicing in the warm hot liquid dribbling down his face and the salty, copper taste in his mouth.

But such things were in best left in the past; Gabrielle could only afford to look to the future. So he walked on along that concrete path to his University. It was then he noticed something out of the corner of his eye; people, five of them all crumpling the ground. All in unison as if the marionette playthings of an unseen child all discarded at once. A dozen passerbies rushed to their aid, Gabrielle kept walking without a second thought other than on the bizarreness of the scenario.

Gabrielle arrived at Uni late, he didn’t care. He already had full understanding of the material, he simply showed up as a formality and for something to occupy himself with during the course of a day, he had a job but had no use for the money he earned other than necessities for “learning” or living. So with no other interests he occupied himself with University; payed for in entirety by series of scholarships.

Gabrielle plodded into the lecture room and slumped down with his notebook (to keep up the illusion that he was actually studying to account for his brilliant marks). The words of the lecturer echoed off the walls, interrupted only by the scratching of pens on paper. This is how Gabrielle lived; a droll, uneventful existence that he was quite content to live out as a relief from the horrors of his youth.

The lecture ended. Gabrielle rose and left his seat. He felt weary, He decided on returning home to sleep. He started down the halls towards the exit, that’s when he saw it. A door, just an ordinary door, but Gabrielle had sworn there had never been another door there and Gabrielle was sure to be constantly aware of his surroundings. Something\beyond the door silently called to him, willing him to open the door, daring him.

Gabrielle stood stunned.
“Have I finally gone mad” he wondered. Gabrielle stood staring at the door. The voice was not a voice as it carried no physical sound nor was it a thought thrown into another’s mind by some form of extra sensory projection it was a feeling, a force of power urging him to open the door, screaming, pulling him in. Gabrielle ran.

He bolted from the University determined to put as much distance between him and the door as possible. The voice that was not a voice still called to him gradually growing fainter with each step but never subsiding. He arrived at his apartment slamming and locking the door before flinging himself on to his bed certain that his original plan of sleep would spare him the torments of the thing behind the door’s urging. It didn’t the voice that was not a voice found him in his sleep.

Gabrielle awoke. Looking around he was alarmed to find that his bed had gone along with his apartment and city, replaced by a barren wasteland plain stretching on to eternity as far as the eye could see. The sky was tinged red as if dawn or sunset yet no sun was visible in the sky, no clouds either. The wasteland held no landmarks, structures or plants in any direction; it was just an infinite, endless stretch of bare ground.

Gabrielle fell to the ground in pain, writhing and kicking. It felt as if all the pain inflicted in his past at the hands of his step father had returned all at once in a never ending torture. When Gabrielle found the strength to look up he saw the door, standing alone in the wasteland, wide open and from within the voice that was not a voice was laughing.

Gabrielle jolted upright covered in cold sweat. He was back in his apartment; the nightmare had seemed so real, so vivid. The voice that was not a voice had returned and with its return Gabrielle immediately knew that this is what it would be like every night until he bent to the will of the thing behind the door. So be it. It was just a door; no harm could come from opening a door. “This only exists in my mind and cannot escape from therein” Gabrielle thought “The sooner I open it, the sooner I will be at peace.”

The voice that was not a voice subsided as if pleased with Gabrielle’s decision. Despite the voiceless will falling silent, Gabrielle was still aware of a presence. The thing, whatever it was, was watching him just in case he should change his mind.

Gabrielle walked briskly along the path in the morning, determined to get his business with the door over and done with. Today there was no crowd, in fact not a soul was to be seen anywhere. The city was a ghost town. It would seem Gabrielle got his wish of the world being devoid of people.

Gabrielle arrived at the University and immediately stormed towards the door. Taking a deep breath he laid his hand on the cool steel handle and pushed down. The door swung inwards revealing a spiral staircase, much older than would be possible for such a University, leading downwards into the earth. The voiceless voice returned, this time coaxing Gabrielle to walk down the stairs into the dark.

Gabrielle took a step forward and then another, walking down and down into the depths of the earth, feeling his way blindly grasping the walls, taking cautious steps as to not fall and tumble down the stairs that for all he knew stretched to eternity perhaps even further.

Gabrielle was now no longer sure if it was his own will or that of the voiceless voice that urged him forward, spiralling down to some unknown goal. It was then he came to it: a cavern in pitch dark yet what dwelled within could be seen as if on the clearest day. Its malice and power burned its image into the eye. The thing Gabrielle now stood before cannot be described or imagined by any means conventional to the human race. It was all that was ugly, all that was impossible. This was evil. Gabrielle understood that this was the source of the voice that was not a voice and the source was old. Very old. Older than mankind or any God that mankind put its faith in. This was something not meant to be seen by mortal eyes. Gabrielle felt his mind begin to break; the trauma of the contact with this thing was too much of an ordeal. Yet Gabrielle was unable to move, rooted to the spot forced to witness the horror before him. Insanity seemed a comfort and Gabrielle was willing to accept it with open arms...

Then instincts kicked in. The bodies chemical composition brought on the options of fight or flight, that oldest of survival methods. Gabrielle chose the latter and bolted up the stairs he had come in on. Heart pounding, chest exploding he ran to be free of the thing he had seen, let the pain of the dreams come, Gabrielle had experienced much worse torture now.

Breaking free of the stairs, Gabrielle sprawled on the hard floor halls of the university. Something was wrong. Gabrielle could feel it. It was night, even with the time on the stairs that much time could not have passed and there was worse. Blood. Blood stained the halls in every direction. Some fresh, some congealed over the course of time but it was all unmistakably blood.

Gabrielle ran again, out of the building out of the university. Everywhere life’s most precious of liquids spilled along with strewn pieces of flesh scattered across the scenery, torn and bloody and now unrecognisable as a part of a human except for the odd arm or leg. Gabrielle occasionally saw a group of ragged and bloody survivors, but did not stop to question them. He ran onward.

Gabrielle had no clue on where he was going. He just wanted to get away. He turned down an alley only to run straight into a person knocking Gabrielle to the ground. Gabrielle looked up to see a tall figure dressed in a long black coat. A large broad brimmed hat pulled slightly forward adorned the figures head and on its face a grinning white opera mask hiding all features save two violet eyes.

Those two violet globes sparked with recognition. “Gabrielle...” the voice sounded deep and hoarse and barely a whisper belonging to a person of either gender. “Gabrielle” the figure repeated from behind the mask “There is something you need to know.”[/i][i]