There was only black

One night I had a very vivid dream that I found to be interesting. Upon waking I decided to write it down. You decide if I was right.

            Bleak.  The only word able to sum up their surroundings and their moods though even bleak was by far an understatement.  Summer had long since set in, but no one would guess it after seeing the bare trees.  The land was not quite forest and not quite prairie, but somewhere in between.  The trees were sparse and looked as though they had never so much as seen a leaf.  The ground was little better.  The few areas that actually had grass, rather than just gray dirt, were brown and dying.  The entire place seemed to cry out ‘death’.  The sky shared this.  It seemed to be one continuous cloud in various shades of gray.  They knew this place sheltered no living thing, save them.  They knew theirs would be but three more unnoticed deaths here if they did not leave soon. 

            Why they were here in the first place, no one knew  What they did know is they had known each other for years and were determined to help each other get out.  Evan and Blake knew more than Brandon about this place, but none knew much.  Rising from his kneeling position, Brandon held a rope in his hands that was spotted on the ground.  The trio’s eyes followed the rope to find its ends: one tied to a tall pole, while the other ran into the ground under the pole.  Brandon began pulling the rope, curious as to what was under the ground.  Evan could remember hearing about this though he could not seem to recall what was on the other end of that rope.  Whatever it was, he knew it should not be brought to the surface.  It came to him, and his face paled.  As though remembering the same, Blake’s face promptly followed suit.  Before either could voice a warning, the pole toppled. 

            Seconds passed that seemed to take hours, but soon a dog appeared out of the hole.  Evan released the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding, then stopped.  The dog seemed…wrong somehow.  The white fur seemed cloudy almost, and the hair, though plentiful enough to give the illusion of an actual dog, appeared to cling to bone rather than flesh.  The dog growled and ran toward the three.  In the same instant, they turned to flee.  As they did, the ground beneath their boots shuddered and began to crumble near the pole, chunks of earth falling into blackness.  The crumbling spread in a circle centering around the pole.  Brendan’s foot caught on the breaking ground, and the blackness swallowed him.  Glancing back, the remaining two noticed the ground was only falling a few feet after crumbling, but that was not all that was going on.

            As earth fell, more things rose.  They seemed to be people, only people with a gray color to their skin, in dirty, torn clothes.  Formal clothes that apparently were soiled and torn from plenty of time being buried underground.  Evan grimaced.  Formal clothing?  Buried underground?  These people wore funeral attire.  These people were dead!  Dead or not, they were now alive enough to be slowly pursuing the two. 

            Evan and Blake paused on the front stairs of a farmhouse they stumbled upon to catch their breath and look behind them.  Only two of the dead were near them.  The dead ones stopped several feet away from the live pair.  Both wore black suits and shared the same gray skin, however one was a good head taller with black hair to his shoulders, and his mouth was sewn shut.  The shorter had no hair and seemed to stoop as he stood. Evan assumed the shorter was older when he died.  The taller picked up two pieces of wood: one short and hollow and the other was pointed on one end and small enough to fit inside the first.  The tall dead man positioned the hollow piece on the shorter’s half closed fist and slid the second piece inside.  He then pulled the older man’s thumb back, pushed his pointer finger back and pushed the pointed stick out the front of the hollow wood.  Evan realized what they were doing.  The "younger" dead man was teaching the other how to fire a gun; miming the hammer being pulled back and the trigger squeezed.  Just another way to kill us, Evan thought, great. 

              Evan and Blake burst through the front door of the house and out the back…and stopped.  A short, white fence ran along the edge of the yard between the house and barn, with a densely wooded area just after the fence.  A woman wearing a black dress adorned with gold chains, golden hair framing her pale face stood there in the yard, apparently unshaken by the army of dead approaching the farm.  Before either of man could get a word of warning out, though, she called a name Evan could not make out, and into the yard leaped the strangest…man Evan had ever seen.  His head was bare except for a long ponytail of black hair rising from the top of his head.  Evan assumed the man was also dead, but his skin was brown rather than gray.  He also looked like the strongest man Evan had ever encountered, but it was all lean muscle that Evan could see on his bare torso.  Strangest of all were the two shorter arms that grew a few inches below his larger arms.  The woman looked at the strange man and pointed toward Evan and Blake.  This strange, new, dead man moved far more quickly than the others, pushing Evan against the house wall before he knew it.  Evan yelled out the only thing he could think of, “Blake!  Run!”  The dead man turned to look as Blake ran, and Evan used the opportunity to kick him in the back of the knee and tumble free.  The man focused on Evan, clearly angry about being hit.  It had worked.  Evan knew he was no hero, but at least Blake would escape this place.  All Evan had to do now was kill one dead man.  Was it possible to kill someone already dead? 

              The dead man pulled a knife from the back pocket of his black pants.  The man tried to bring the knife down into Evan’s head, but Evan blocked the man’s forearm with his own, wrapped his free arm around the man’s bicep, clasped his hands and twisted his arms until the man was pulled off-balance and dropped the knife.  Evan scooped up the knife and stabbed the man.  The man only smiled.  The knife had bent upon hitting the man’s skin.  He had to have skin like stone for something like that to happen.  Evan threw the knife into the woods; it was useless now.  The man picked Evan up and threw him through a window into the house.  He ran out of the house only to find the man pull a large piece of glass from the broken window.  Evan turned to run but a pain shot through his leg.  He looked down and saw the piece of glass sticking through his leg, apparently thrown by the dead man. 

              Evan fell to one knee and the man picked him up and held him off the ground against the wall of the house.  The golden haired woman approached with a hammer and two metal spikes, probably found in the barn during the fight.  Still holding Evan off the ground by his throat, the man pulled one arm straight away from his body, and the woman drove one spike through it.  Pain shot through Evan.  The man pushed the other arm out to the other side, and the second spike was driven in without hesitation.  Evan would’ve begged if he could’ve formed words amid all that pain.  The man let go of his throat, and Evan hung on the wall by the spikes in his hands.  Picking another large chunk of broken glass, the man returned to Evan.  He swung the shard.  A line of red appeared on Evan’s chest.  Swing after swing resulted in line after line of red.  Pain filled Evan.  Pain buried all else in his mind.  He couldn’t even scream.  Pain was Evan’s entire world.  His vision began to darken, but Evan could still barely see the man swinging.  All Evan wanted was the darkness to take him, to free him from this pain.  Slowly.  Slowly the darkness crept over him.  There was only black.     

           

Author's Note

Keep in mind this is just a rough draft of my dream. It's written as it spilled out of my head that day.

Reviews

[Lauren Marie]

I feel like this could become a novel. It's good for a rough draft.
You can easilly omit almost all of the commas in this because they really aren't needed.
I always love description so more, more, more is what I always say. :)
It's a good concept so far and definitely one that you might pursue?
Overall good job. It was an enjoyable read and (for the most part) I could picture everything clearly.

[:)]

I like this. I also find it amazing you can so vividly describe your dreams as my slumbering encounters read more like a first grader's coloring abilities...

Nice write...

[Matthew Kult]

Trevor,

An excellent showing and congratulations. I can see this turning into an epic tale, it has a creative edge. Excellent work.

Regards,

Matthew

[Tina Kline]

I think you did a great job getting this dream down and into a story. Dreams can sometimes lead to some really great writings.

[HorrorMaster]

Very good story

[Sean M. Addams]

very vivid dream... great detail in this!! overall i thought this was very interesting story ..sometimes are dreams make our best writes... most of stephen king's stories comes from his dreams... keep up the great writes..

[Closedown]

You have frightening dreams. I'm just saying - I would have way more angst if this is what my subconsious was doing at night.

[loowzerX]

Despite its length, I love this. amazing stuff :)

[Caitlynxoxo]

I can't believe this is a rough draft; it's incredible! I'm so curious about Blake! And the ending was really well written! the only suggestion i really have is that you could do without so many commas; sometimes they aren't exactly needed. i have the same problem with semi-colons lol :) all in all, this was a great story!

[watch_the_world]

This is amazing :)

[Shin]

WHOA DUDE! This was awesome for a rough draft, I love how it ended, it was so thrilling, I wonder what happened to Blake though, maybe he escaped, maybe he didn't.