Chereads / The Journal of Insanity: Retroscope / Chapter 4 - Awakening (1)

Chapter 4 - Awakening (1)

The boy awoke to find himself in the garden. Before him lay an endless expanse of blossoms, their colors more vivid than he could have ever dreamt of. Each petal glistened in the radiant sunlight, creating a vibrant mosaic of reds, pinks, and blues against the calming greenery. A cool, gentle breeze carried over the sweet aroma of the flowers, drawing him ever closer to its tangible embrace. A wave of bliss wafted over his soul as the boy walked. The world he'd known his whole life, now all but felt some distant memory as he was relieved of all his pain and sorrows in its immersive tranquility. Butterflies flitted around him in a whimsical ballet, their vibrant yet delicate wings shimmering as they drifted from bloom to blossom. The soft melodies of chirping birds blended in harmony with the occasional rustling of leaves and the humming of honeybees.

Marveled, the boy strode forth, deeper, his keen senses long since overwhelmed by the sheer beauty and enormity of what enveloped him. This was a paradise beyond words, one where time held no meaning, an eternal oasis to soothe his aching heart. But even amidst this serenity, he was assailed by a deep sense of loss, as if he was forgetting something crucial, something that must never be forgotten. Regardless he paid it little mind as he walked on ahead.

How many hours had it been since? Or had it been days instead? The boy didn't know. He'd only ever marched ahead since. He felt his body afloat as his legs carried him forward in some listless whim of their own. He walked on, never feeling any hunger, thirst, fatigue, or sleep. The scenery moved as he did, hardly ever changing. The seeds of doubts forming in the back of his mind were slowly taking a more tangible shape as a question began to dawn on him,

'Who am I? What am I doing here?'. He just could not recall, the hint of uneasiness in his heart becoming stronger with every passing moment. Although it seemed important, there was something else that demanded his immediate attention. A woman clad in pure white strolled only a little ahead. Although he only ever saw her back, he could tell she was a heavenly beauty. She shone as the moon amidst the garden of colors, her long silver hair fluttering behind her back, her Quinceañera dazzling a radiant white, her figure receding ever farther as he watched. He almost wondered why he'd never once noticed her until now.

"Wait! Wait please!", He mustered up the courage to call out.

She did not look back, in fact, her pace seemed even faster now, however, he could not give up. 

"Hey!"...he gasped as he shouted louder "Wait Up!"

For all he knew, she might know the answers he sought so desperately, yet she never once looked back. His pace hastened, he even began running at one point, and yet her silhouette only ever grew more distant. 

"Wait! Please!"

Her figure had since faded deep into the greenery. He murmured as he fell to the ground.

"Damn it!", He cursed as he lay flat on the grass, gasping for breath after the long chase. 

Yes, he was beyond exhausted, but there was not to drop of sweat to be seen on his pale, smooth skin. His long bobby black hair fluttered back and forth as he tried to pull himself back up. His deep black eyes looked hollow in confusion. He cursed, cursed, and cursed some more until his throat choked in pain as in thirst, and his limb thrashed around in an unquenchable fury dismantling any bushes or flowers, frustrated at his powerless ignorance.

Something finally seemed to change. The change seemed subtle at first but became more vivid with time. The garden where the hour of the day never once changed throughout his stay now fell under a pall of ominous darkness. Just as how drops of black ink diffuse in clear water, sinister darkness began to fester at several corners of the midday sky, slowly yet surely dying it all black. Within minutes darkness had swallowed up the sun, the once so radiant garden now visible only as mere shapes of wriggling shadows in its veil of darkness, as an eerie silence now loomed over the garden. The birds sang no more. The change was noticeable enough to make him return to his senses. 'What's going on?', he thought to himself.

He walked ahead for some time. No, it was the only way he could walk towards having long lost his sense of direction.

"Hello? Anybody there?" He asked, but as he expected, nobody responded. He howled again and again until his howls became panicked shrieks. Yet all his desperate wails went unanswered. 

No, there was one if you could consider calling it so.

Shadows wriggled as the ground below began to lose its texture, slowly, becoming ever softer. The beautiful bushes that once dazzled his eyes with their bountiful radiance were slowly morphing into fleshy amorphous shapes as an ominously glowing red fluid oozed out some of them, spewing over the ground. The scent of iron loomed thick in the air, mixed with the stench of rot and decay. The entire scenery around him was gradually molding into a rotting hellscape.

He ran. He ran fast. He ran fast without ever looking back. Yes, none of this was real, it could not have been real. All around him, the scenery had since morphed into a point past recognition. The sky had long been stained pitch black, offering little illumination. Mysteriously, however, he could make out just enough of his surroundings to bask in its horror. The ground he walked on now resembled decaying flesh, even as pulsating veins coursed through it. His steps occasionally sloshed over the puddles of rotten blood and puss as he ran, blisters covering his feet as the splashes of acidic pus sizzled through his skin. Wherever he ran to, he found himself surrounded by rotting flesh, still warm and pink, wriggling and squirming in ominous ways, some of it slowly devolving into writhing pouches. His unnaturally sharp senses screamed danger every passing second. However, there was little need for it as some of those fleshy pouches had burst open, giving rise to groaning husks of bipedal simians that chased after him.

"Damn Zombies!", he uttered in disgust. 

He hadn't actually intended to voice those words aloud. A vague sense of deja vu assailed him, yet outrunning his fervent pursuers took precedence. 

As the rotten wombs gave birth to these decaying corpses, they shriveled up emitting putrid steam, eventually melting away into viscous blood, flooding the ground. Wherever he ran, groans followed; growing ever louder as the horde chased after him. 

He gasped for air but the stench made him unable to breathe. His trachea and lungs were being inflamed by the acidic fumes. His movement was becoming sluggish, unbearable pain seared his legs as he braved through the flood of glowing sanguine and rot that'd caught up to his knees. Despite it all, he pushed forward. Hopefully, it'd slow down the horde chasing after him as well. He thought even as he endured his pain for the faintest hope of salvation that surely lay ahead, that lay just ahead.

How long had it been since? Probably only a couple of minutes, even though he felt like an eternity had passed. He dragged himself forward as tears welled up in his eyes. He had little strength left to scream, even now the acidic blood covering everything up to his chest was eating away at his flesh. His unnatural regeneration speed is what kept him from dissolving like the blobs of flesh that'd once surrounded him, and even that seemed to falter by the second. His body moved only on sheer survival instinct, his drive was what kept him sane. For all he could see, as far as he could see, he was standing alone in a sea of crimson-hot steaming blood, with not a single soul in sight. His misery was far from over still,

The pitch-black sky was melting away raining down drops of black fluid, several hundred times the size of ordinary raindrops. Even as he felt his body dissolving away he watched it unfold. As those drops poured on the gleaming blood, ominous shadows emerged from the points of contact, all around him, slowly taking on the shape of humans.

He had no strength left. His hands and feet had since dissolved in the bloody acid revealing his bony white skeleton. His body had suffered an even worse fate. Drowned in despair the boy resigned himself to his destiny. He walked no more as he waited for them to catch up to him. On closer inspection, they resembled black smoke more than they did humans, shadows barely molded into diffused, naked, twisted shapes of men, women, and children with hardly any notable features besides their heads having bloomed into giant smoking tentacles revealing their gaping mouths clobbered in spiral rows of serrated teeth, dyed pure white, a stark contrast to their otherwise appearance. They howled in pain, and anguish as they lunged at him, piling up one over the other as they choked his throat.

He drowned in the sea blood as he was strangled and pushed violently, deep into the sea of gore. Even his face began to melt away like the rest of his body did long ago. He could breathe no more, his consciousness slowly fading away in their lethal embrace. He could hear distant whispers, resentful as they were furious, calling out a name, to a single name …

"Adrian! Adrian!"