'Astral' World collection: sometime in the past: Veronica's Story (part 1): 1716 words
I'm not quite sure where this fits in yet, but I am working on a timeline for this collection, so hopefully I'll know soon.
Slowly Veronica walked towards the building she could see in the distance, as she attempted to work out where she was. People spoke of doorways that led to other worlds, but she had always thought they were stories, even though there were said to be people who disappeared and never returned. It was possible she might become one of those stories. There was nothing there to show the doorway she had stepped through, so it was likely she would never find it again. Sighing, she ran a hand through her hair, wondering whether anyone would really miss her.
The building got closer and Veronica began to feel something. She wasn't entirely sure what it was, but she found herself thinking that, maybe, it wasn't a good idea to go to the house. Stopping, she looked around. There was no other shelter she could see. If it existed then she would have to go searching for it and right at that moment that idea didn't seem like a good one. Finally she pushed away the feeling, because she knew she had no choice about where she went. Survival came first, which meant a roof over her head followed by food in her stomach.
As Veronica stared at the building, still with doubt niggling at the back of her mind because she didn't know what she would find there, she literally forced herself to start walking again. Her body didn't seem to want to, but she was in control, not her body, so she kept going. Every step took seemed more difficult than the one before. It was tempting to turn, to walk in the other direction, and hope that she found the doorway home. She didn't though. Trying to find the doorway again would kill her, one way or another.
Veronica had no idea how long it took to get to the building. She felt like she had been running for hours because all of her muscles ached and her lungs were burning. In any other situation she would have given herself time to relax, but she knew she couldn't. The niggling doubt had turned into a voice screaming in her head that she should run away, which was almost impossible to ignore, so she focused her entire attention on the door in front of her.
To begin with it seemed like any other house door. It was made of some sort of wood, with a brass or copper handle on the right hand side and a door knocker in the middle. When Veronica touched the handle it changed. First the handle faded away, followed by the knocker, and then the entire door lit up. The light was so bright she had to shield her eyes until it faded away. At first all she could see was spots from the light but when her sight returned she could see that the whole door was covered in symbols.
“Interesting...” Veronica muttered, running her fingers down the door.
None of the symbols were cut into the door, so it was obviously some form of magic that had been used to create them. Magic also explained the voice that was still screaming in Veronica's head that she should run. Unfortunately, she had no experience with any forms of magic and she didn't recognise any of the symbols. She thought for a moment. If she couldn't get through the door then her only option was to get in through one of the windows.
Stepping backwards wasn't an option because Veronica knew she would just want to run, so she walked sideways to look at the first window. There were three large panes of glass and she knew it would be easy enough to break one of them, but she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to. She glanced at the door. Magic wasn't something she really wanted to get involved with, although it didn't seem like she had much of a choice.
With one hand Veronica wiped the window and attempted to see what was inside the house. All she could see was darkness. Biting hard on her lip she thought about how to break the window. She didn't think she was strong enough to break it with her hand or elbow, but she knew she couldn't step away from the house because she wouldn't be able to keep ignoring the screaming. Every second she stood there she could feel herself getting weaker and she was going to run soon, unless she could get into the house.
A rock would be helpful, but Veronica hadn't seen one during her journey to the house. When she thought about the landscape she realised she hadn't actually seen anything apart from flat ground. There were no trees, no rocks, no mountains and no rivers. It was strange. Not really important, although it did help her to ignore the voice for a short time. Finally she decided that the only thing she could do was try to break the window.
To begin with all Veronica seemed to do was make a noise. She kept hitting the window with her hand, first her fist and then the heel, but she didn't seem to be getting anywhere near breaking the glass. At the same time the voice in her head got louder, which made her think that it had been created to deter burgulars. Most burgulars would have been gone before they even got to the window, so it seemed kind of pointless, and those who did make it to the window would have some tools to make the job faster, which would make it easier to ignore the noise. Sighing, she switched to her elbow, because her hand was beginning to hurt, even though she was beginning to think that the glass might have been made unbreakable with magic.
When it finally did break it shattered. Big pieces of glass fell inside the room and Veronica felt like her body was about to run. After all the work she had done to get into the building, that her painful elbow and hand attested to, she was not going to let any spell stop her from actually entering it. She pulled out as many of the shards that still remained at the bottom as she could, because she didn't want to hurt herself when she didn't know if she could fix the damage, before using her hands to boost herself into the room.
Once Veronica was inside the voice stopped. Relieved, she looked around the room, needing to know where she was. The front door was to the right of her but there was no doorway that side of the room. Instead there was one door directly in front of where she was standing, which looked to be locked by the same magic that locked the front door, and another door to the left of her. She knew she wouldn't be able to get through the locked door, so all she could do was go through the other one and hope that it would lead her to a kitchen or somewhere with food, because the room she stood in was entirely empty.
Veronica did think, for longer than she felt she should have done, about staying in the empty room. It was shelter, which was better than nothing, but if she was going to survive she needed food, and she didn't want to try leaving the house in case that voice started screaming at her to run. She didn't think that she could fight it off again, because her entire body felt tense and she knew that she would run if she heard it again. Knowing that she wasn't fully in control of her body terrified her. Running into unknown territory would end up with her being dead, and she didn't want to be dead.
Warily, Veronica walked to the door that wasn't locked, waiting for it to do something. She didn't really want to explore the house, but there was nothing else she could do, and she needed something to keep her mind off thinking about what had happened, or what might happen next. Thankfully the door didn't change when she touched the knob. That didn't mean there wasn't something terrifying behind it, so she opened the door slowly, ready to slam it shut if anything happened.
Again the room was empty. Without stopping to think what that meant Veronica walked towards the next door, which was to her right. It was the only door in the room and she was grateful that it wasn't locked with magic. For a moment she thought the door might change, because the whole thing vibrated when she touched the knob, but it didn't, so she opened it even more slowly than the previous one.
Nothing else happened, but Veronica couldn't help thinking that something had changed when she touched the knob. She didn't have any idea what it could be, and she wished she did because she disliked not knowing things. Sighing, she looked around another empty room, wondering what had happened to cause whoever had lived there to take everything with them when they left. Glancing out of the window, she took in the land around the house and thought it could be living in a wasteland that had gotten to them, as she couldn't imagine living there for very long.
Another door was directly in front of Veronica. Going through it was the only choice she had, but she really was feeling more and more uncomfortable as she made her way through the house. It wasn't anything like the voice she'd had in her head, because that was external, and she knew that the uncomfortableness was internal, caused by the fact that she was in a house full of magic that she couldn't understand.
The door didn't vibrate when Veronica touched the knob, but that didn't stop her from worrying there might be something dangerous behind it. Slowly she opened it, wishing she had some sort of weapon, just in case there was something, or someone, behind it. Not finding anything didn't mean that the next room would be safe, or the one after that, and opening the doors was getting more difficult, even though she knew if she was going to survive she didn't have any choice.
© K A Jones 2011
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