Allright, so here's something for the collab!
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A Stain Against the Sky
By
Ryan Carell
At first, I thought it was a trick of my eyes. Against the sky loomed a smog-grey shadow cast by nothing I could see; a blossoming stain reaching its black tendril fingers outwards to grasp at the nearby clouds. A part of me wanted to dismiss it as an illusion; a part of me wanted to run far, far away, until my legs cramped and I could run no more. Fighting fiercely against those parts, though, was a third, infinitely larger part; a part that couldn't even bear to look away.
An hour had passed, and still I stood there gazing. I should say I'd have been a queer sight to a passer-by, but strange in its own right, there'd been none that whole hour. Though I'd been merely awed at first, towards the end of the hour a malicious unease had begun to seep ice into my veins. Demonic questions crept about inside my skull. Just what, exactly, was this dark blemish floating in the heavens? How did it come to be there? Was this some hellish omen from a world beyond my own? With each new thought came another twang of terror. I was now convinced that my doom was certain and imminent.
With a sudden start, I realised the horrible origins of the mark, and I flushed bone white. In my loins I could feel the thunderous hammering of my heart. Still, with my terrible new knowledge, I remained paralyzed as though my feet were encased within the very concrete upon which they rested.
As I stood there, frozen with eyes wide, the stain ripped wide and out poured my most horrifying nightmares. Echoed in the sounds of my very own ragged breaths could be heard the cackling laughter of the Devil himself. Monstrous black talons shot forward to grab at me, crimson drops of innocent blood dripping from their tips. I opened my gullet wide to scream, but loosed only a hoarse whisper.
There was an earth-quaking rumble within myself and I could feel the horrors forcing themselves into my throat. Each fraction of a second was an eternity of torture as the walls of my throat were torn into fleshy ribbons. At once, the pressure became too great and the cartilage exploded. I could see, soaring through the air, shards of myself. Splattering to the ground below; the squelching was a sound so absolutely terrifying that my bowels moved. The pain was such that I collapsed, convulsing.
As I lay there, raped by fears so terrible and true that only my own fragile mind could have conjured them up, I wondered at the power wielded so casually by the mortal intellect. Had I slept perhaps a few nights -- laid my cerebral kingdom to rest and let loose upon the imaginary denizens of my psychic realm the demons that now walked my true world -- I am certain my psyche would not have shattered open and summoned forth such a fate as this.
Oh yes, projected against the sky I had glimpsed the worst fiend of all.
Luis
i should look into this whole storybook collab stuff.