Released - short story by @SelahJanel

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Released

Short Story by Selah Janel




selahjanel.wordpress.com

Shadows crept along the wall as velvet grey fingers seared right through the mortar between crumbling bricks. The longer Morgana stared, the more her suspicions were reinforced. The crawling, skittering veins and puddles of effervescent nightmares were not attacking the wall, but were coming from it.

"I stared too long," she murmured, as if to convince her terrified logic that she was still alive. "I looked too closely and saw into The Wall. Somehow it saw me." Past scrawled orange graffiti, under the brick, Morgana had seen it. And it had been trapped safely away, because it was evil.

She'd been warned to ignore the Cobbington Village Wall. No one remembered when or why it had been built across Shepherd's Field, but the entire village population was content to let the whole place fall to neglect if it meant they could ignore The Wall.

"I just had to go for a walk," Morgana whimpered, unable to move or even blink away from the skulking, oozing touches of the vile nothing that leaked out. "I just had to listen to the talk shows and change things up a bit. I couldn't just be content watching a movie, eating dinner on my own, and falling asleep on the couch." What had seemed a horrible prison sentence even thirty minutes ago was suddenly heaven; why had she been so stupid as to long for more than her humdrum, cashier, sweat-suit life?

The black entity that The Wall had held captive for so long oozed and splatted onto the grass. It sucked the life and color away as it claimed the good and simple of everyday life into its clutches. Morgana watched numbly as the ground, the air, the ants at her feet screamed and shriveled into grey nothing. "All I wanted was something different!" she stammered as the tendrils crept towards her toes. "Why did I have to go outside today?"

The rippling darkness chuckled and slowly flowed over her feet like spilled porridge, devouring her beat-up sneakers in its cold, blank grasp. She choked back a cry when the slimy ice feeling gripped her ankles.

"This is better," the living tar streaming over her feet burbled into her mind. "They tried to hold me back for so long...now I'll use you to return to Cobbington. We'll both break free from the village, you and I." Morgana tried to scream, but the horrible realization that at least her life would finally be interesting actually made her smile as her thoughts stopped becoming her own. For its part, the darkness growled its thanks before everything Morgana knew faded.