u/Undone_I_Was

Small bells jingled in the distance. Chimes of unknown origin that mingled in the sounds of dark. A candlelit altar, underground, built of brick and stone. No windows, no sounds of wind or rain from outside. Circles drawn in blood all around me. Chants echoed in reverse. Scrolls and sheets of paper drifted in a spiraling wind, too many words written on them, too many to read.

I was screaming, but my mouth was sewn shut with hair. I could taste them every time bitter and oily. I had just turned five. It was my birthday.

I was tied to the altar. Wet paper stuck to my skin, saturated in ink and blood. Each sheet bore a single wretched name. I could feel it bleeding through the pages onto me. Twelve figures stood around me. Blood red robes hung from their bodies, drawn over with strange symbols and childlike scrawl, like a toddler had gone mad with ink. Oval shaped obsidian black masks covered their faces, but those voices… my mother. My father. My aunts and uncles, cousins. My brothers and my sister.

Family. Blood.

Confused, I tried calling out to them. Why were they here? What were they doing? I thought I would be okay since it was them… but something was wrong. There was screaming not mine, theirs. My mother's mask fell to the floor. She was turned inside out through her mouth and eyes, like meat pulled through a sieve, every bone in her body cracking as it did. My father's skin seared crisp black and cracked with no flame. My brothers were split in half, then half again, until they became cubes of flesh diced meat suspended midair, blood still flowing between the cubes as if veins were there. Still alive. Still in agony.

One by one they began bleeding from their eyes, mouths, and ears. They collapsed. The pages flew at them like starving birds. The ink bled off the paper, devouring them, seeping into their skin, dissolving them down into the cracks in the stone floor. Just like that it vanished.

A moment passed in silence. Only a moment.

Something came back up through the bricks. Like a giant, wet, black worm… or a living letter about to be written. It lunged at me, landing on my chest with a giant wet sound. Ink splattered my upper body. It screamed and so did I. My legs kicked and thrashed trying to get it off me. It burrowed into me. Every drop of ink boring holes into me. Singeing my flesh as they dug to my core. Sucking up the wet paper stuck to my skin. A sound like slurping congealed milk.

Only one page was left behind. It seared itself to my chest. Like a brand. Like a curse.

Burning hot pain. My eyes poured with tears. I pounded my head against the altar again and again and again. I tried screaming without success, my voice strangled by the threads. I tasted them with every choke of air. I looked down at my chest. The name was gone. The holes were gone. The candles went out. Silence devoured the room. For a moment I sat there trembling, listening to my own heartbeat. My heels hurt and bloody from grating against the cold stone. I closed my eyes, wishing it all away. Wishing the nightmare to end.

I opened them.

A burning forest. The smell of ash and charred ink in the air, the faint waft of cooked meat. Everything a tanned color like a storybook. The ground felt like paper, crunching as I moved. The trees were screaming a high pitched wailing emanating from them, hurting my ears. I could feel them writhing in pain, burning forever. Every movement from them made a sound of dried leaves crunching. There were rips and burns in the pages of the landscape, revealing pulsating flesh underneath. The fire danced, joyful at my return. Demons surrounded me, amalgamations of body parts and faces. Uncanny faces, molding themselves in real time like clay. They were trying so hard to look like people but they just couldn't. Letters and loathsome symbols pulsated on their bodies. Then all went quiet. Even the fire emitted no sound.

A voice whispered: "Welcome back, little prince."

There, from the shadow and storybook shading… it moved. Long, lanky, but elegant. With grace. Like a poem… but this one spoke of pain. Obsidian black mask, polished and featureless. My own fear twisted and reflected in its sheen. Its body was like a gargoyle's, but where wings should have been were chains made of jawbones and tendons. Its tail was a scroll, unrolling with every step. Its skin was like dried parchment stretched thin over bone, constantly written and rewritten with symbols and words sealing my fate. Languages I didn't wish to know, seeping into my brain. Its arms were too long, with too many joints. Four smaller arms lined each side, each holding a quill that never stopped writing midair.

He was the rightful owner of that wretched name.

Arsurae Lullula.

I ran. As fast as I could I had to get away. It was all I could do. The sounds of wrinkling parchment rose with every step. Everything I touched screamed with a fear and pitch unlike anything before. The ground moved beneath my feet like flesh, as if I were stepping on someone's back, feeling the flesh move and collect in wrinkles of stored fat. Faces pressed up from beneath it, difficult to make out through the parchment.

Panting, my legs hurting, I looked behind me. No one. Still I ran, through forests of burning storybook trees, tripping on drawn rocks and small holes. The screaming grew louder behind me before it turned to… joy. Laughter. The trees, the shrubs, the rocks, the ground, the faces underneath it all laughing. As if the landscape had found the funniest thing in the world. Right behind me.

I looked back through the trees still nothing, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was there. The ground gave out from under me. I was falling. I hadn't noticed the pit in front of me. I landed on a pile of my own bodies. All dead. All with horrified faces. A demon came crashing down onto my legs, breaking them instantly. An abomination of limbs, body parts, and sheets of metal like armor given form. No head in sight. I screamed a scream full of soul and terror and everything I had tried to hold in.

The demon shoved a slab of metal through my skull. Crushing my head.