You Can’t Escape the Dark: Guest Post by A.J. Locke
So far, I’m still here! Wait . . . what?
You can’t kick me off my own blog!
Er . . . well, The Peasants are sending me back to bed. But, the good news is I have a story from A.J. Locke, that is sure to inspire some good dreams (Bwahaha . . .).
You Can’t Escape the Dark
The door swung open and darkness literally spilled in, as though the shadows outside in the cold, blistering night had taken tangible form and now rushed through the room like tidal wave from the darkest part of the ocean. The wind that accompanied it snuffed out every candle I had lit, and I realized just how pathetic my attempt to keep the darkness at bay had been; this was the type of darkness that could swallow the sun; there was no candle flame that could withstand it. I backed up until I was against the wall, trying not to choke on fear as the shadows slowly snaked up the walls and over the floor, blanketing everything.
Tendrils of dark wound around my feet, burning my flesh, burrowing inside me, and though the pain was severe, I refused to scream. Now the darkness started to recede, and I was dragged out of the house. This was what happened when you escaped from hell; they always found you, and they always took you back.
I caught the barest glimpse of the moon before the shadows pounded me through the earth, so I felt like my insides were trying to explode out of my body. My ears pulsed with screams; the kind of screams that could only come from souls spending their eternity in burning flames, unable to escape the nightmares that existed only to torment them. As I was driven deeper and deeper, I felt the solid form I had managed to regain slip away until I was nothing but a soulless shadow myself.
When I stopped falling, the shadows receded, but fire burst up around me and reminded me that there was no true escape from this. It was a reminder I will have eternity to endure.
I had crawled out of hell to try and make my way back to him, because the thought of never seeing him again was worse than all the bloody torment hell could inflict on me. He was the reason I was here in the first place; I had sold my soul to hell so that he could live. So that he would not have to endure this.
“For you I have fallen into hell to lie in its darkest corner for eternity; burning in agony with the damned…” My voice was a raw wound that would never be healed.
A shadow rose above me and took shape until a devil blacker than the darkest abyss sneered down at me. His eyes were fire, his teeth were bloody swords, and his kingdom was the one I had tried to escape from.
“I told you what would happen if you tried to escape.” All of a sudden my body started to solidify, but that wasn’t a good thing. A solid body was easier to hurt than an incorporeal one. His clawed hands were around my throat, puncturing me, bleeding me, and he pulled me up while fire continued to char and melt my skin.
“I would do it again,” I whispered as he dragged me away. “I would do it again…even if it were only for a dream of you…”
The worse thing about being tortured when you’re dead is that you cannot die to escape it.
Bio:
A.J. Locke knew early on that she wanted to be a writer, penned her first novel at fourteen, and hasn’t stopped since. Creating is her passion, and other than writing she enjoys drawing, painting, graphic design, and any other creative whim that may take her. Her debut novel, Affairs of the Dead (Adult Urban Fantasy), will be released by Etopia Press in 2013.
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