The Whirlpool

A Chapter by JacobMarloe

Their calls came at him from every direction through banks of fantastical mists, which glowed with a frosty florescence. The voices beckoned him to join them in an eerie song and threatened him with vile hissing when he shied away in fear. He hated this mindless courtship it confused him. “I need to get out of here” he shivered out in a heavy cloud of breath that swirled and mated with the all encompassing mists. Tensing the muscles in his legs he shot out through the caliginosity, charging the unknown blind and exhilarated. He felt young. He felt free. He felt he could outrun this fate.

As he ran the mists rapidly dilapidated into a soft bright dusting. His steps became hard and labored. Nothing in this place made sense yet yet it all seemed to be familiar though clouded and uncertain much like the murky dew that now lay at his back. It had become quite, almost silent, only a swishing sound that his feet seemed to be making remained. And as he progressed even that seemed to abate into a muffled resonance now emanating from his legs. A sudden easiness had crept up his body and fluttered through his arms like a cloud of birds birthing from a wood ascending to and bursting out his fingertips. His limbs dove out finding a summery water that folded and pressed over his body, like a warm blanket. He glided through the pleasant thermal medium as he took stalk of his new environment. The bulky mists had jetted past him leaving a shinning plume of white exhaust that had settled into a brilliant haze. It gave off a wonderfully inviting temperature that pierced and licked at the liquid serenity that enveloped his body. His movements no longer produced sound, the creatures were no longer chanting, it was wholly and blissfully silent. He felt as if he were afloat on top a cloud of ecstasy with his head hanging back gazing up into the empyrean atmosphere that hung just on the surface. It calmed his soul to gaze into the gleaming haze.

But, as he coursed through the balmy currents something caught his attention. So strange, it was drifting, hanging on the the edge of his sight. It looked like a clearing, and yet, it was dark and formless, like black vapors rising into his glimmering white sky, fading out at the horizon. Fear crept into him. He started to retreat. It reacted. Somehow it had sensed his intentions, lashing out instinctively, stretching out its ebony fingers with a zealous speed concentrating on his location with frightening speed. It skimmed his back with an arctic blast of air nibbling at his flesh as it ran up the length of his spine, sending the tiny hairs on the nape of his neck into attention. It skewed up over his head rushing towards the heavens making contact at the center in the pearly essence. It hit like an ink filled balloon, blackness splattered out threatening to consume all source of illumination. He stared at this spectacle paralyzed with confusion and absolute horror. “No, please no more” he whispered as he cowered down into the water until he was submerged right below his nostrils. His thoughts of reasoning ran around outside his head like rats on a sinking ship bumping into each other hysterically trying to find a way back in as the sky switched into reverse gear, sucking itself back up as it swelled into a sphere of deathly hollow. He waited as an animal waits to be slaughtered for its meat, wide eyed aware of the situation and powerless to do anything. He waited for the butcher's hand of doom to reach out and grab hold of him squeezing the life from his petrified state, flinging his empty husk into the darkness. But it did not. Instead it spun around in a single smooth gesture as its surface inherited a glossy tone as if it were being laminated. Beneath the sphere's new shinny coat an inky pool swirled vigorously pressing against its boundaries bending its shape slightly forming into an oval. The glossy skin simultaneously began pealing back bottom to top revealing a seething core, it pulsed with life fluttering back and forth like a crazy looking for his sanity.

There was no where to go, no way to escape his body stiffened and he sank all the way under the water. The eye of darkness in the sky threw its gaze upon the remaining haze vanquishing it with devilish scrutiny. In a blurred water filled blink of his eye it had become pitch black. His comfortable blanket had been stripped away, and he now lay in a sea of sorrow; blinded by the absence of light. What he beheld or, rather, what he could not behold, was an absoluteness so completely overpowering, he felt as if his mind were suffocating. He grappled for relief as if there were a light switch somewhere that he could just switch on. He swam until he had used all the air in his lungs which felt like they had shriveled into raisins. He stopped, surfacing he hunched forward and collecting all his might as he forced the cool chill of the night-stricken air into his collapsed lungs, inflating the hot, fleshy bags. Flinging his main back he shot out the heated essence in a magnificent howl, like a wolf crying into the nothingness for its love to come and brighten his night sky. When she had not shown her pale dreamy face he shrank down to the bowels of his capacity. Sinking into a fathomless oblivion.

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