It's been a while, so I thought I'd share a little writing. The story has been tweaked but not been scrubbed clean. This is the opening segment of a Darkfall short story titled, The Wellspring.
Here goes:
The look of excitement on her face quickly turned to one of disappointment and then horror. For Zeus had packed the box full of all the terrible evils he could think of.
– An ancient Greek myth
The man felt as though he had died, yet somehow managed to claw his way out of the grave.
His entire body ached as if crashing and burning at the end of a weeklong drunken bender, and the dull-edged pain throbbed to the rhythm of his pulse. The man’s joints were stiff and sore, and they felt swollen as if over-exerted for an extended period of time. His mouth was arid, and his tongue was dried leather. His skin was tender to the touch, and, hell, even the hair on his scalp hurt.
What the hell did I do?
The man’s head was filled with clumsy and convoluted thoughts, improbable and disjointed notions. The electrical impulses in his brain traveled slowly along the neural pathway as though the synapses had been filled with thick, dark molasses. His mind couldn’t keep pace with the random, jump-cut images that flickered like some French avant-garde film.
He remembered logging in at the lab and prepping for the workday, everything routine and normal. He and Felicity had planned to review the data in a controlled artificial test environment. It was all computer-generated sims based on actual results, so there had been no need to suit up. They would spend the day in front of high-def plasma monitors.
She was late, which was so unlike her, and he decided to grab another bottle of water from the cafeteria. In his mind he saw himself stand up from the work station, turn and then …
Nothing.
He sighed raggedly, the rush of air sounding as if his breath had passed over sandpaper, and closed his eyes. He pressed the lids down tightly and scrunched his face to hold them that way as tenuous seconds ticked by slowly. The man hoped the effort would speed up the lazy neurons and slow down the frantic visions.
It didn’t work.
The man opened his eyes and found himself on the floor of a dimly lit, small room, roughly eight-foot by eight-foot by eight-foot. With the exception of a narrow door with neither a handle nor knob in the middle of one light-colored wall and a large pane of mirrored glass – presumably a two-way mirror – on the side opposite it, the cell-like cube was empty. There was no chair, no table, no sink, no toilet, no nothing.
With a labored effort and a pained grimace, the man rose unsteadily to his feet. Once upright, he swayed gently to a non-existent breeze and hoped he wouldn’t collapse to the floor. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, repeating the exercise a couple more times.
As he steadied himself, he realized his clothes were gone, replaced with a white, lightweight disposable coverall that felt more like paper than fabric. His shoes and socks were also missing as he stood barefoot on the smooth cement floor.
The muscles in his legs protested as he stepped toward the door. An examination provided him with little insight, leaving him both frustrated and confused. There was no visible way to open – or close – it, and, when he ran his hand along the surface of the door and wall, he found them to flush with no discernable difference. The man pushed on the door, but it didn’t budge. He pushed harder and got the same result.
With a frown, he faced the mirrored glass on the opposite side of the room.
“Good morning.” It was a male’s unaccented voice. ... See more
