Lab C: Chapter 4 - In the Belly of Shadow
Glossy, meaty, dark eyes glisten in the flickering red flame of John’s lantern, surrounded by a seemingly endless plane of decrepit, covered, dusty, torn and out right gaudy furniture nestled clumsily between wall papered support beams. Were only it not so dark such that John could appreciate looking into an infinite abyss.
“Ah,” he says, looking down at Lily, “Think we found something” as he jiggles his red lantern. The body which the eyes are set into is an inky black tarry humanoid shape. “And he has been through some shit.” He picks at his teeth with his tongue, his unblinking eyes fixed on the inky dude.
Lily lets out a big stretch, and lazily walks in front of John. He tilts his head curiously as he follows. The inky dude is sitting on its butt, holding its knees, watching John with a low glare. As he gets closer, the inky dude shifts and our guy slows.
John lifts a leg and lets out a sharp fart. The inky dude’s chin recoils, more out of surprise than anything. He smirks, “Sorry, that was rude.”
He gets 50 feet from the inky dude and sets his bag down. The inky dude puts its hands down, and arches its back, like a cat. John looks around and sees shadow heads popping out from behind furniture to see what’s going on.
“And so is this unfortunately.” he says as he pulls out the sand pot again and draws a 10 foot wide circle around him. Once it’s finished, he looks it over, walking from edge to edge and peering over it. He nods to himself, it’s a good seal.
The inky dude crawls closer to him, so curious. The shadows gaze lazily between the inky dude and John.
John gets on his knees and takes great care to draw an intricate series of runes and various crosses along the outer edge. He pretends not to notice the inky dude inching closer and closer.
Undulating fingers inch towards him, flexing out the sharp, chipped, layered finger nails that peak out of the muck giving it form.
“I promise you,” John says, not looking at it, “this stuff works. It’s from my father’s favorite beach.” The inky dude lightly recoils again, not moving it’s hand. It’s head rolls back as its eyes stay plastered on John.
The runes and crosses come together to form the outline of a body. A human body. John’s body. He daintily bops around the empty spaces to get his feet perfectly into the position. He rests his back pack in an empty space he left near his feet.
Bending to the left, to the right, he stretches his sides while taking deep, DEEP breaths. He glances over at Lily whose lazily watching him from atop a rather regal looking lounge chair.
“You got me, right?”
Lily nuzzles her head into the cushion and blinks slowly at him, but is no where near falling asleep. He hopes.
He reaches into his bag one last time and pulls out a walk-man with big heavy head phones, and a large fishbowl helmet. The helmet rests between his legs as he gets the headphones snug and happy on his head. He reaches into his red robe and produces a baggy of crushed, dried, something.
He breaths out and takes in his situation one more time. Starting with the flickering lamp resting outside the circle, he looks to the horizon and he sees swaying heads mosey towards. He scans around the room and they are, everywhere. He sighs then looks to the inky dude popping a squat right at his feet. It looks up at him and blinks curiously, before poking at the sand line, making a small hill with the sand it pushes back.
“Ah!”
It recoils, holds its hands, looking at him. John huffs, smiles.
“I’m telling you. It works REALLY well. Ok?”
The inky dude tilts its head at him, then looks back down at the sand and tilts its head the other way.
A lamp crashes to the floor behind John. He turns back like a drunk who just noticed he’s in the middle of the street because there’s head lights on him. A shadow dude lazily pushes the fallen lamp out of the way with its unthinking steps. Our guy looks it up in time to see the top of its head flops backwards, exposing rows of loose teeth, thick teeth.
John groans. Looks down at his sand. The inky dude is making another small hill by lightly pushing at the sand.
John clutches his eyes tightly, groans more. He doesn’t want to. He really doesn’t want to. He takes another deep breath, eyes closed.
They snap open and he dumps a pile of the dried stuff into his hand and he slams it into his mouth. He dumps another pile into his hand and slams that back too. He hits play on his CD walkman, gets on the helmet, and lays himself down to fit inside the outline perfectly.
“1…..1……..1…1……….1……..1…..” he hears.
“1……” deep breath, “1……..” he says back. The area him gets darker and darker…
—Dear Reader—
I’m sorry to cut you off but I just wanted to affirm with you that this next part is certainly about to get odd. This is my best attempt at recreating, with words, what I saw while remote viewing our friend here’s adventure in C-477B. It may, in fact, be hard to follow, and I assure you, it was hard to follow as I watched but if you promise to do your best to follow… well I will do my best to explain what I saw him see.
Now then…
—Back to it—
