Vitreous Nightmare (Art and writing, I guess...)

Prompt No. 3 - Volai

 

 

 

 

At the time that Stanley had left for Lyra, his mind was in a terrible state. The long season of storms had left him inside, isolated in the cold, dark cabin of his home.

And with the rain, came the deer. He hated when the deer came. He knew it wasn't his, but really Mahlke's sentiment, because Stan's aversion to the creatures began when Mahlke became a parasite on his consciousness. The automatic shock of fear and the creep of hatred was something that. seized Stan's body whenever he saw one, and when he saw a herd it was as if he couldn't control himself. The thing that scared him especially on this last occassion was that he lost that control altogether. His physical self and mind seized with such dead terror that he could no longer think; only watch. He saw his own body ransacking his own house for something he didn't have: a hunting rifle. The deer outside his window were driving him mad, and as the unconscious deed continued, he felt blurring that certainty of what he knew was and what he wasn't. He watched as his mind began thinking that the deer had a reason to be rid of, and as his mind turned, the agency of his actions aligned with his thoughts and he could control himself again.

So, Stan went to Lyra to escape the unbearability of home.

What he did not know was Lyra's principal species were essentially deer.

Upon observing this, he wandered off into the most deer-devoid landscape he could find; that is, where he no longer saw the translucent animals; where there was no forest; where there was no vegetation. He lived off the masses of dried stockfish stuffed into his satchel and the condensation that coalesced on crystals in the morning and the puddles that formed in the depressions in the ground. He was wandering without reason, without purpose, looking for nothing. He grasped and pulled in the seemingly infinite stretches of silence of this minerallised landscape. The prismatic struts didn't speak, but some of them were warped in a way where they whistled a detuned, deformed sound. But it offered no conversation, no judgement of his character, no questioning of his mind's inner function. For once, Stan's brain was not screaming on fire with five thousand fearful thoughts. Just one. That one dammed thought.
The deer.

He could come across one at any time.

And he could be consumed by Mahlke's desires.

So when he noticed that single deer stalking him as he walked upon the ridges, with the wind and the distant crystal whistle in his ears, the fear mutated instantaneously into a impairing tension that ran up and down his spine, chasing circles in the pit of his stomach.

He pretended not to want to look over his shoulder, and resisted every opportunity. But he knew it was there. Mahlke was holding every tendon tightly like the reins on a horse, and Stan's walking slowed to a stiff crawl. The fire of fear built higher, until Stan felt like he was burning with a fever of dread, straining at his skin, threatening to rip his body apart and flee on its own.

It was at that point that Mahlke made him stop. Stanley just knew it was him that shut down every muscle function that would allow Stan to ignore this following entity.

Stanley turned around, but really it was Mahlke making him. Stanley didn't want to know. Mahlke did. Mahlke wanted to know with a burning passion. Maybe Stanley did want to know, but he knew it was the consequence of Mahlke not having a separate consciousness from him. When Mahlke thought, that was the singular mind's reality, conviction, and action.

So when Stanley turned around, what he saw was a distorted being, one of those glassy deer, but its eyes, its horns, and its gait were of an anomalous nature. Instead of horn-like prisms that emitted brightly reflected and amplified light, it possessed an antler-like formation of such prisms attached to other prisms, which sputtered flickers of light here and there. A secondary set of antlers, made of a dark glassy material and appearing as if glass-blown, wound parasitically around the first pair, with a set of veins embedded inside that pulsed a magenta power. Its eyes were set into the ends of tubes, gleaming silver like a fish, round abysses cracked into the middle. Teeth peered out, the creature's lips seeming half-formed.

And Stanley couldn't help himself any longer. He shouted at the thing, which was watching him intently a short distance away,

"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!"

His voice came out strangled, not quite his own, and that one fear turned to two fears. What had Mahlke done to him? What was Mahlke, and what was he? The force was already controlling his movements.

The creature continued staring, perfectly aware that Stanley was perfectly aware that it had been following him. It nonchalantly continued his approach, and Stanley's fear peaked. But he couldn't move. Mahlke held his feet down and his fear down, the terror slowly turning to a repressed thirst for violence.

Mahlke hated deer.

Stanley tried to pull away from this line of thinking, but it was sticky and he couldn't help but feel some of the anger was real, just like how he couldn't believe his own fear of deer when it all started.

Once the creature reached a short distance, short enough to hear its breathing, Stan was using all of his strength to not lose control. His body trembled in fear and hate, and he couldn't stop the background thoughts of somehow mutilating this non-flesh creature.

I see you, says the deer in his mind. Are you enjoying it? You must be.

Stan realises that the deer has some sort of telepathy, and that he isn't hallucinating. He swallows thickly, his head buzzing like a hive of agitated hornets.

"I don't know what you're talking about..." he replies, unable to look into the deer's eyes.

Does it make you... uncomfortable? Don't you feel how your clothes don't fit you in the same way, how your breathing doesn't hold the same cadence? Your heart, trying to beat harder with different fibres?

This strikes a nerve hard with Stan. It seems to hint at...

"I'm me. What do you mean?" He wants to disintegrate. He doesn't want to exist. The world doesn't feel real. His hands twitch suddenly, being held so still and so tightly.

Fear three, a third fear which presides at the root of his subconscious at all times.

 

I know of it. Your consciousness may have moved on, into this body, but you found it again, didn't you?

You're just another variation on the same form of awareness.

This is why you have not gone insane.

 

Stan drops the façade. "I'm not him! He's a vengeful spirit, I'm a regular bird!"

 

You are the same consciousness. Your life from another time has not moved on. 

You have met him again. You have met you.

I see darkness in your future.

There will be no relent once the quest for revenge begins. The desire is inevitable. You will like it whether you like it or not. Let your fear go. It's artifical. You do not need it. Because you will either die in this shelter of fear, living against what you'll become, or you will live as what you'll become.

 

The creature's eyes begin to glow.

 

This will all be over soon.

 

Stanley feels a sharp wave of pain overcome him, and it all rolls into darkness.