eldalieva
Harem Frishna, Keeper of
the Blue
Registered: Apr
2002
Location: Losin' it. Oh wait, LOST it.
Posts:
43 |
SERIOUS ANGST
WARNING
Two hours of
wild chat have led me to post this. I think it fits in well
with the mood of our Imladris meltdown
misery.
Nightmare
You don’t know how you
got here, but you’re here, alone in this unsettling room of
stone, where even the bit of daylight from the two narrow
crevices that suffice for windows seems to cast a lurid glow.
You slowly turn in a circle, feeling unspeakable things
(bones?…blood?) crunching under your feet, the hem of
your dress dragging through a layer of appalling squalor. Best
not to think about it.
A thought whispers in the back
of your mind: something is wrong. Of course it
is---after all, you don’t know what you’re doing here or how
you came to be here, but that isn’t quite what’s scratching at
your mind.
You hear a sound in the corner of the room
and you turn in that direction and that is when you realize
that you are not alone. Someone is lying curled up on
the floor in the corner.
You cross the room, trying to
ignore the sound of unseen creatures scuttling out of your
way. When you reach the corner you fall to your knees, your
hand over your heart, making a small exclamation of shock and
dismay.
Placing your hand gently under Frodo’s head you
pull the filthy strip of cloth out of his mouth and oh, dear
heaven, there’s fresh blood on it…he must have bitten through
his tongue or his cheek when they pushed it into his
mouth to keep him quiet and you quickly drive this unwanted
image from your mind. As you pull it away it leaves a shiny
track of blood and saliva across his cheek and although he
gasps in reflex he does not rouse from unconsciousness.
Enraged and repulsed, you throw it aside and wipe his face
with the clean edge of your sleeve. You hold his face in your
two hands and kiss him and his mouth tastes of blood and tears
and grime.
Lifting him up under his arms (and oh, how
light he is, how he is fading away), you lay him against you,
holding him with one arm around the waist, cradling his head
on your shoulder.
“Oh my dear, oh my dear…” you
whisper, rocking him against you, burning tears of anger
rolling down your face. How dare they? How dare
they?
Frodo stirs and moans in his throat and as he
comes back to himself he begins to thrash against you in a
panic.
“No, no, it’s just me…” you whisper urgently and
wrap both arms around him so he will know he is
safe.
But he pushes away from you, hard enough so that
you fall backwards and when you sit up you see he has backed
himself against the wall. He crouches there, with his knees
pulled up against himself, breathing in great, hitching gasps,
staring at you in terror.
“It’s me,” you say
imploringly, “It’s me, it’s all right…please…”
“No…no…”
is all he can say, shaking his head in denial, bewildered by
fear. He shudders so violently you can hear his teeth knock
together.
“Please, it’s all right,” you inch forward on
your hands and knees, barely moving, knowing that any sudden
movement will startle him.
He says nothing but stares
fixedly at you, watching your every motion like a cornered
animal. You reach him and place a hand on his
shoulder.
“It’s all right,” you lie. “It’s me.” You
place your other hand on his face. He stares into your eyes
and you cannot tell if he knows you or not, but his breathing
has slowed and the awful trembling that wracked him a moment
ago has subsided to a tremor.
You take the chance of
frightening him again and wrap him into an embrace. He slowly
eases, exhales, and lays his face down on your shoulder.
Relieved, you stroke his hair murmuring a litany of comforts.
Wait, something is wrong… comes the thought
again.
And then you realize it.
Sam
should be here, not you. You don’t belong here. Sam
should be here by now, and if he’s not, something has gone
wrong, something is terribly wrong.
As if in unbidden
answer to your thought, you hear a sharp report behind you,
the sound of a trapdoor slamming back against its hinges.
The Orc that comes through the opening in the floor is
the biggest you’ve ever seen…the only one you’ve ever
seen this close and it’s a sight you could have lived happily
without for the rest of your life. It seems to suck every bit
of light into itself and you can smell it from across
the room, a feral mix of hot iron and blood and filth.
Behind you, Frodo recoils against the wall and the
thought in your mind is no longer a whisper, but a scream,
full of awful truth: It’s gone wrong! Sam is dead! The ring
is reclaimed! You cannot save him!
You see the
Orc’s eyes narrow in the dimness and fix on
Frodo.
“You’re going now!” it roars with mirth and
crosses the wide room in two thunderous steps.
You
throw your arms out to shield Frodo but the Orc takes no
notice of you…how can that be?…and its arms pass…they pass
through you to reach out to Frodo and lift him up under
the arms, pinning him to the wall.
You can do nothing…
you are a disembodied spirit, powerless, only capable of
bearing mute witness to this horror. What are you? The
lingering phantom of one of the many who died in this room? A
hallucination, a figment of Frodo’s imagination, conjured to
bring himself some comfort in this extremity? What difference
does it make? You cannot save him.
“They found your
trinket on your little friend’s body,” it says and Frodo
closes his eyes and rolls his head back against the wall as a
dreadful groan of despair shakes his entire frame. “You made a
mess of whatever you were trying to do. But don’t
worry…we’re not done with you yet.”
The Orc
throws Frodo face forward onto the flagstones. It wrenches
each of his arms up and back and binds his wrists
together.
“Get up.”
Frodo lies on the floor
beneath the Orc’s splayed legs, his arms bound behind him. You
run to him and crouch down, putting your face against his,
knowing that he can hear and see you, hoping to offer
some comfort, something…anything...
“Frodo…Frodo…!”
He opens his eyes and stares
through you and his eyes are empty of all except horror and
the death of hope. You can hear him whispering something
desperately.
“Le nallon si di-nguruthos… le nallon
si di-nguruthos… le nallon si di-nguruthos.”
“What
is that?” the Orc asks with derision, looming over him. “Do
you think you can call up the spirits of your allies? They
can’t even save themselves anymore! Now GET UP!!!”
Frodo’s only motion is to turn his forehead onto the
floor and begin sobbing Sam’s name over and over
again.
“I have to carry you. I don’t have to listen to
you.”
The Orc grabs a rag up off the floor and, pulling
Frodo’s head up by the hair, shoves it down his throat. Frodo
gags helplessly as his face contorts in pain, tears running
from his eyes. The Orc hauls the almost-lifeless form over his
shoulder and starts for the trapdoor.
“No! Stop!” you
shriek, knowing the futility of it.
The Orc, halfway
through the trapdoor, stops suddenly and surveys the room with
a suspicious look on its face, as though it did hear
you. There is no sound other than the rasp of Frodo’s
strangled breath over the Orc’s shoulder.
The Orc
grunts, satisfied that it heard nothing after all, and
descends through the door, slamming it shut. You will never
see Frodo again. They will torture him beyond madness. The
ring is on the hand of its master. All is lost. You throw
yourself on the trapdoor and howl…..
You can hear your
own wail echoing in your head as your eyes snap open in the
peaceful darkness of your own room. You lie there for a
moment, letting your breathing and heart slow. You touch the
bed sheets, the pillow, your own face, to ascertain their
reality.
The coolness of the room feels like a balm
against you when you sit up. You swing your legs off the bed
and walk swiftly out of the room without even stopping to put
on your wrap. You pad down the hall in the dark, your hand
trailing along the wall for guidance, until you come to
Frodo’s room. You let yourself in and take a deep shaking
breath when you see the silhouette of his form on the
bed.
You don’t want to wake him, but you have to be
sure. Kneeling down by the side of his bed, you touch his
face, his hair. You hold his face in your two hands and kiss
him and his mouth tastes of honey and cream and nectar.
You open your eyes and see that he has awakened. “What
is it?” he asks.
“Nothing…nothing…are you safe? Are you
all right?”
“Of course I am…what’s wrong?” He touches
the side of your face.
“I just needed to make sure,
that was all.”
“I’m fine,” he says almost laughing.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m all right.” You
kiss him again, holding it longer this time, reluctant to let
him go. You sigh with relief and rest your forehead against
his. “Everything is all right.”
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09:27 PM
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