Sleeping

[LtCmdr Kennin 0]

A few hours passed. Hours felt like days, and the room grew cold and lonesome. Finally the visage of the ghoulish woman reappeared, flanked by two hideous looking men who appeared like something out of fantasy. Their flesh was brown as the ground, and their hair was long and matted. They smelled of death.

 

"Your fate has been decided."

 

Kennin lifted his head from the blood-warm floor. It felt twice its normal size, and ten times the weight. Squinting, he peered up at the trio.

 

"Take him."

 

The two orcish men gathered Kennin by the arms and stood him. Their hands were coarse and hard, and their grasp was strong. They dragged him towards the door and the spectre of the female.

 

"I had hoped my masters would not make your death... too painful. I never was one for torturing the labpets," she said almost sympathetically as she led them down the corridors.

 

He lay in their grasp, limp and unresisting. Some part of him knew he should fight, but when he tried to form a fist, his knee twitched instead. "What... was that, before... then?" he forced out, needing to do something.

 

At last they came to a wall. The wall quaked and formed a door, opening into a large room. Dark and restless, an overwhelming feeling of dread pervaded the room as the thugs dropped Kennin onto the floor. "May whatever deity you pray to grant your soul freedom."

 

She disappeared with the thugs into darkness.

 

Kennin lay quietly, breathing, listening. His eyes were fastened on the hand he could not see in the encompassing darkness, willing the muscles to flex, contract, obey. One fingertip brushed jerkily over the icy floor.

 

Click. Click. Clack. Click. All around him, noises stirred in the darkness. Clickity. Click. Clack. Movement, the shapeless forms clicked in the dark. Encircling him. Click. Click.

 

He peered into the darkness, though it was futile. Only the soft clicks came back to him; the wall of black was impenetrable. And suddenly. There were eyes here. Hundreds of them, rushing towards him. Eager and hungry eyes and mouths.

 

The baby Scorplings descended upon their prey. In the darkness, a chilling alien laugh hissed between the screams.

 

This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a click.