I wrote this short piece for the Shroud of the Avatar (new MMO, see previous post) writing competition, it was mostly rushed so not as polished as it could be. I still like the idea so I may re-write it or edit for use elsewhere. The concept was that the piece had to be about the underworld in the mythical realm in which the game is set.
I was aiming for something dark but not horror or gore. Enjoy!
Cool air tickled her throat, the salty breeze licked through the shutters and penetrated the damp bedding. She coughed with each gust; a chesty roar followed by a spittle blood when her mouth was full. The sun blazed into her dank room every time the wind pushed its way in, her head thumped and throbbed. Her face was burning yet her legs shivered. A chesty cough forced its way out.
The shutters clanged and clashed against the wooden wall, each time they opened the heat of day burst in and cleansed the putrid air. Each time the shutters closed a shadow drew across the room; the dirt and dust danced their turbulent waltz across the floor and up the bed.
It had been… a day… or was it days since someone last visited? It must have been the smell, she thought. They won’t be able to stand the smell of blood and puss, the smell was even displeasing to her. The smell wasn’t the worst, they were nothing compared to the aches. Why did she have to suffer?
Her stomach growled and she coughed again. ‘I must not cough,’ she told herself, ‘blood coughs only come to bad girls, and I mustn’t cough bad unless I want to be known as a bad girl. I’m a good girl, so why must I suffer?’
Footsteps crept along the hallway. The floors creaked as the person came closer. Was it the doctor? His tonics also tasted so foul but anything was better than lying in bed. The door rattled and opened. Her father entered the room alone, he held his kerchief across his mouth and clutched a vial of brown liquid in his other hand.
He dropped his kerchief and reached down to grab her chin, he forced the vial to her mouth and splashed the liquid out. It raced down her throat and spluttered over her chin. “Good girls don’t cough blood,” he told her, “we’ll fix you up or you’ll be taken to the underland. You don’t want that do you?”
She shook her head as best she could. Her muscles ached so much that she wasn’t sure if she actually moved her head or just thought about it. The liquid made her choke, she coughed and coughed until her throat was clear. When she stopped she saw that her father had left. Her eyes closed as the footsteps faded into the distance. “You’ll be taken to the underland,” she heard his voice in her head.
The floor felt like a shifting deck in a storm; up then down, around and up, down, up, up, down. One hand pushed against the wall while the other lunged for the side of the bed. The hessian drapes battered against the wall like torn sails whipping against their mast. The room darkened, her vision blurred, her heart raced, she tensed her muscles trying to resist the nauseous sensation that grew inside her.
The coughs begat the wind in the sails; the sneezes gave life to the hail; her perspiration became the rain. The room flew high, her stomach lurched with the airless feeling one gets when they jump from a perch. As quick as the flight began the bed came crashing down: a rock against hard stone floor. No give, just hard impact. A loud sonorous roar preceded the cracking of the wooden bed posts.
Her eyes opened to total darkness. The sensation of spinning hadn’t left her. She tried to figure out where the bed had landed. A cleaner taste of air surrounded her, an unfamiliar crisp and saltless flavour that suggested she was no longer by the sea. The stone floor underneath was cold to step on but slowly she pulled herself up. Her legs were giddy and barely held her but the desire to cough was gone.
Coal could not be as dark as this place. No, coal had a glimmer to it. Sometimes you could see it shine when the light hit it just right, but that wasn’t true here. There was no light or sound. The wind had gone and with it the smells and tastes of life. Wherever this was, it was a new sense of nothingness.
A creaking sound ignited in the distance but it echoed several times. This had to be a room of some kind, or perhaps a cave. First a sliver then a large crack revealed a gush of light from above. It was a familiar brightness, it had the same white hue as moonlight. After a brief moment of blindness her eyes settled upon a stone orb no more than ten paces away. Upon the rough granite-looking surface she saw the outline of blue letters appearing, and she knew it once they were the runic symbols of the ancients.
“Sarla,” a male voice boomed from the stone, “forsaken daughter, why have you come here?” The runes shone brighter everytime the voice spoke.
Sarla couldn’t find her voice. At first she wondered how he, or it, knew her name. Did all such beings know her name? Did they know everyone’s name? “I..” she stammered at first then found her courage, “I don’t know.”
“You journey into my lair yet you do not know why? Did you not chose to come here, oh coughing daughter of Maxwell?”
“I… well, I was… in bed, and I was coughing and father shouted at me to stop coughing but I couldn’t,” Sarla sniffed and restrained her tears.
“You coughed up your blood when you were told not to, and now you find yourself here, am I to believe it was an accident?” the voice shouted, “you waste my time with your petty snivels.”
“But… but.. I did not chose-”
“Silence!” the cave shook so hard that it threw Sarla to the floor. The spherical stone dimmed and turned quietly on its axis. “You may leave now.”
“Leave? But how do I leave? Am I not dead? Father said that when I die I will be taken to the underworld to meet the ancients. He said that if I did not stop coughing then I was sure to die. I tried, you must believe, but I just couldn’t stop. He left me there on the bed. How can I go back?” Sarla could not hide her confusion, she had only just got here. It was here that she was supposed to accept her fate. That is what father had told her must happen.
“By accepting a forfeit in your place. To live you must sacrifice another and when you wake up it will be so,” the voice was calm and the glow of the stone dimmed to total darkness. Sarla was once again standing in the dark.
“Who will be sacrificed? And how can I just wake up if I am dead?” Sarla’s voice echoed in the cave, “Answer me! You must answer me. Who shall take me place? Who?”
The crunching sound of a collapsing mast behind Sarla made her jump. A blast of warm air rushed against her face, it had picked up a wash of dirt from the floor and forced her to close her eyes. When she opened them again she was back in her room. The shutters were open. Sarla looked out onto the blue-green ocean in front or her house. The coughing was gone. The pains were no more and she was standing straight back in her own room. She felt cured. It was a miracle. She was cured.
“Father, I’m cured, I’m cured. the coughing has gone. I’m cured!” She yelled with glee, “Father?”