(no subject)
Death’s Door
I step down the stairs, the air around me growing moister, warmer, like entering a boiler room. My eyes struggle to see what lies below as shadows dance across the walls, escaping the light from my dim candle. My feet slide along the slick stairs, and cautiously I take slow, measured steps. I remind myself to breathe, as the heavy air is nearly suffocating. At the foot of the stairs, my eyes make out the faint silhouette of a door, and my heart begins to race. My hand reaching for the door, I blink away the sweat dripping down my face. My fingers meet a warm, tacky substance instead of cold iron as my hand wraps around the handle.
With a resounding squish, the door pulls open and I’m trampled by a gust of morbid air. With a gut-wrenching twist my knees buckle under me as I fight the intoxicating stench assailing my nostrils. Trying to avoid vomiting, I taste rotting flesh as the stench overwhelms. My eyes water and I try to see. Frantically, my hands search the damp stone floor for the candle. The darkness begins to overcome me. Sweat sticks to my body. I rise, and I can feel my knees begin to buckle again. The pounding in my head refuses to subside; my mind swirls in the darkness. Slowly, my eyes adjust to the gloom and my staggered breathing calms. Amorphous shades of gray slowly turn into shapes. Piece by piece I can make out small details. The room finally comes into focus, and abject horror overrides curiosity. Warm urine runs down my leg.
My heart beats. Faster, faster it pounds on Death’s Door. All around lie rotting corpses on the wall, the ceiling, slumped on the ground. Their bodies mangle together, an odorous, warm, entanglement of limbs. Welts and bruises cover the skin in deep shades of purple, oozing along the scarred corpses. Maggots, hundreds of them, crawl along the bodies like animate skin. The bodies on the wall were shackled, faces to the stone. The skeletons backs were arched; heads tilted back as if screaming in pain. Screams that never left this room. On a single wall were weapons racks. Maces, axes, knives, and whips were just a small number of them. Dull and grime covered, they glisten red even in the dimness of the room. Blood. My body shakes; suddenly I feel cold despite the rising heat. I yearn to escape, but my feet have become dismembered from me. Shadows in my mind come to greet me, their wicked smile burns like fire. My body convulses, twisting and turning, the flames searing my body. Consciousness slips away.
I groan as the world filters through my eyes. My body is dangling, and down below I can see the bodies. My mind slips in and out of darkness, and I struggle to stay awake. The shadows just grin and laugh, and tell me to join them. So tempting, their call is. I feel myself leaving, all feeling lifting away from me. My fear dissipates, and I hang there in the darkness.