Jaston had dealt with a few strange happenings in his early life, but nothing especially out of the ordinary. He had kind parents, always devoting their time to helping him with whatever he needed. His mom would wake him for school, and on weekends, she’d give him the most delicious pancakes he’d ever tasted. Weirdly, enough, He doesn’t remember much of school now, not even a friend. Not even the other students. Not even the teachers. Not even the homework. Not even the school’s…name… Still, a joyful life was one he was lucky enough to have lived. But, when he was somewhere between 11 and 12 years old (he doesn’t exactly remember when,) he woke up late at night, after a horrible nightmare, in which a darkness took over the area, a shadowy figure emerging from the darkness watching him, lunging forward, opening a wretched claw, then swinging it down, as- and then he woke up. When Jaston_ woke up, strangely, the entire house seemed to be darker than usual, and the dark felt darker, if that makes sense, and felt like a poison to be in. “Must’ve been that bad dream,” he told himself, sure that his nightmare made the dark seem scarier. Jaston_ walked down the hall to his parent’s room so he could tell them about it, carefully stepping with a quiet “creeaak” every step. But about halfway down the hall, his shadow moved, and seemed to have run off, dashing down the hall. But the way it moved, it was clear it wasn’t his own. He hurried down the hall to tell his parents, not bothering to be quiet anymore. Stomp, Stomp, Stomp, BAM! He hit his head on the wall, must’ve ran too fast to see where he was going. As he got up, he felt that something was wrong. The bedroom door… It was… gone. Must’ve been a wrong turn? He turned around in hope, only to see every door in its rightful place, except his parent’s. It was just a wall. It made no sense, how would it become just a wall? He searched for an answer for a while, then went back to bed, as if sleeping would somehow fix his dilemma. Jaston_ couldn’t sleep though, instead, he stayed up through the night, thinking of what happened and how it could’ve happened. Midway through the night, he felt that same poison of the dark, but it felt stronger this time, and by moving around, he knew that he felt it regardless of whether he was in the dark or not. It continued to grow slowly, seeming to grow with the darkness, and with the volume of the creaking sound coming from the hallway. Wait, what was that? [CONTINUE BELOW]
Jaston got out of bed quietly, and walked into the hall, staring into the inky abyss. None of the lights worked anymore, adding to the darkness. He could hardly see a thing in the hall, and his heart pounded like a beast trying to escape its cage. Again, quiet, the “creeeeeeaaaak”. “H-hello?” …No reply. Suddenly, there was a sound like a massive centipede rushing down the hall like a train, but when he looked ahead, he saw nothing moving, only the dark. Then suddenly, emerging from out of the shadows, out of thin air, a dark figure standing tall in front of him, like the nightmare. It sprouted eyes to watch him, like that nightmare. It grew a black claw from the darkness, sharp enough to cut cement, like the nightmare. The wretched claw raised high, hand opening, like the nightmare. He knew what was next. A horrible, horrible slashing sound cut through the silence. He tried to scream, but nothing came out of his mouth, for there was too much fear in him. He tried to open his eyes, but he only saw half, fear creeping along his body. Jaston_ felt the right side of his face, a river of blood, his fear building up like a volcano. He looked down, and he saw it, a sphere on the floor, covered in a dark red. His fear consumed him. Looking up, the shadow was gone. He tried waking up. Obviously he’d wake up to see his parents with full vision. Obviously his mom would wake him up for school with her pancakes. Obviously this was all a dream. But that was not the case, he continued to live this never-ending nightmare. By the next morning, he was already hammering the wall down, a repeated banging noise echoed across the house. It was noon, and he’d almost finished, but he was completely drained. “Come on, just a bit longer. Just a bit longer.” His arms were giving out, his legs wobbled like leaves in the wind. “No, just, a.. bit…. Long- Then all he could see was the darkness of his remaining eyelid. Jaston_ woke up far away from home, in a different house, with his right arm black, the house empty, and abandoned. Yet somehow, there was always food on the table when it was time for a meal. He tried to leave to find his parents so many times, but he’d get lost. Every time he’d get lost and was forced to sleep away from his new home, he’d wake up in his new bed. After a while of living in the place, he knew there was no way he could go home. Nothing around for miles looked familiar. After longer, he stopped questioning the food that appeared on the table. He stopped trying to find his old home by venturing, trying to go out to find his parents, and trying to escape. There was no point. Until he started tinkering. Jaston_ always had a knack for tinkering, and was good with random parts, so when he found out that there was a junkyard, his hope returned. After experimenting with parts from the junkyard, he was ready to leave. He took some food and water from each meal, the parts he was too full for, and put them into a bag over the course of three days. After preparing water and food, he left the spirit to stick with some other unlucky kid, and sacrificed all he had in that new house. He sacrificed the bed, the food, and the house entirely as he lit a match and dropped it. He took a step through his own creation, less of a portal, more of a gateway, that would hopefully take him immediately to his old home and his parents. But like all the luck he’d had over the past three years, it came up short. It took him somewhere that he’d never seen nor heard of, the machine blowing up in the process. However, from the very first moment he came into the new place, he felt better. The poison feeling of the darkness seemed to be eternal after the night he lost his parents, but now, it was like it had vanished. When the night comes though, he feels it again, but not as strong. He also feels different in a way he can’t describe, almost like some strange new force in him. “Probably just because I don’t feel poison anymore,” he tells himself. Whatever the case is, that doesn’t change the place he’s in. Now he’s stuck in this new place with no way home, or at least until he finds another way.
