Morning all. Ready to see what the last prompt of the week brings? Excellent. Then let’s jump in. Timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go.
That was not what I was expecting. I like it, but it isn’t in my normal vein. Still, could be fun.
Friday, March 27th: He stared with growing horror.
He stared with growing horror. The hole was getting bigger. It started off as a tiny thing, a pinprick which could in theory be ignored. Except it was impossible to ignore. It reminded him of a childhood school project. He took a black piece of construction paper and used a pin to create holes in the shape of star constellations. He then placed a light behind it to see the stars emerge. This was the opposite. Instead of seeing light coming through the pin prick holes darkness seeped from it.
It spilled out, somehow darker than dark. It was as though darkness had all the life sucked out of it. The darkness that shone through the hole had an almost viscus quality to it as though it had become dense, condensed somehow as it was stripped of life and breath.
To see it sent shivers through his body and dries his mouth to sand.
And now the hole was getting bigger.
He could hear the scrabbling on the other side of the wall now. Something with sharp talons or teeth or both was working on the hole from the other side, enlarging it.
It was still small. It had gone from a pin prick to the size of one of those pearl heads on the pins his grandmother used. She claimed they were easier to extract from cloth. The hole was the size of one of those plastic pearls.
Still not enormous but many times larger than before. And more darkness was spilling from it. It fell to the ground, the stream of it coming through and being too heavy to float, it pooled on the ground just this side of the wall. The edges were hazy dusty but he was certain the center of the pool was growing deeper, denser. It had mass.
He couldn’t look at the center for too long because it made his stomach clench and everything he ate want to climb out of his belly and spew from his mouth. He didn’t vomit but that was mostly because he thought opening his mouth in this room would be a bad idea. He thought breathing in this room was a bad idea.
As it occurred to him, he backed away towards the door. He couldn’t focus on the center but he couldn’t turn away from the edges. He couldn’t turn his back on it.
He counted floor tiles as he backed away. He wanted to be able to tell conclusively if the spillage was spreading when he returned.
He knew, despite everything, he would return. He had to know if it was spreading. He did not know what would happen if it filled the room, if the thing on the other side managed to claw its way out.
He knew he should tell someone one. He just wasn’t sure who he should tell, or what they would do. He had a friend who worked in construction, but he somehow suspected adding a layer of plaster over the hole would do little to stop what was coming through.
‘Another wall maybe?’ he thought a he reached the doorway. ‘Stone maybe in front of this wall.’
This wall was stone as well. He pictured his friend Gary laying a new stone wall in front of this one. He then pictured the darkness dribbling out of the hole and filling the space between the two walls. He didn’t think that was a good thing either. It made him think of explosive gases building up in air pockets.
He didn’t know what would make this ignite, but he could see an explosion occurring.
Ten til Midnight 