Rebirth (an original short story)

[Dragonfree]

This was written for my writing class. I'm personally rather fond of it, but you be the judge.




He didn’t know where he was.

He blinked a few times and turned his head; the pitch darkness of the – well, whatever the place was, didn’t change one bit whether his eyes were open or closed. He came to the conclusion he was lying on some kind of a surface, in a sort of a heap, like a ragdoll that had been thrown aside, but that didn’t tell him very much. After feeling it blindly with his hands, he deduced that it seemed to be a rough, rocky cave floor, but that did not tell him very much useful either.

He sat up and tried to remember how he’d gotten there, but everything seemed cloudy. He had a hazy idea in the back of his mind of who he was – he didn’t feel like he had amnesia, at least – but it didn’t seem to be important for the time being. He couldn’t recall doing anything specific in his life, but was still quite sure he had done things. He knew that London was the capital of England, that the French Revolution had started in 1789, that the past tense of catch was caught and that he was of the species Homo sapiens. And he was confident that he knew how to drive a car. He knew how he had presumably learned all those things, but couldn’t recall any particular moment of the process. He pondered the oddity of this for a moment, but quickly concluded that it was not of especial significance and he was not very likely to get anywhere trying to figure it out anyway, and instead turned back to the problem of where he was exactly.

He stood shakily up and found that his body felt weaker than it ought to; had he been drugged somehow? It took him a few moments to realize he was also starving and very thirsty, but he wished he hadn’t realized it because it was only now that it became truly uncomfortable. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and it took some concentration to release enough saliva to get it loose again. He tried to speak, but his voice refused to come out as more than a pathetic squeak.

This was getting quite unnerving.

He made his way aimlessly forward on unsteady feet and nearly fell when he unexpectedly bumped into a rough wall. This, at least, was a start to figuring this cave out: he felt his way along the wall, which was curved, and quickly discovered that the room he was in was unmistakably too round for it to be a coincidence: not a natural cave, then, but some sort of a man-made one. Feeling energized at the thought that he had made some sort of progress, he discovered a rather narrow tunnel leading outwards near the floor, something he could definitely crawl through.

It wasn’t until he was lying down to get through it that he properly became aware of the fact he was naked. He winced, feeling the sharp ridges in the rocky surface sting into his skin in various places, and for a moment seriously considered just waiting in there – even if he got through the tunnel without seriously injuring himself, what would he say to the person he would inevitably have to ask for help once he found them to explain why he was naked and bleeding?

Starving to death in a cave, on the other hand, did not seem like a viable option, and he couldn’t help getting the impression people weren’t exactly likely to find him in there on their own accord. He had no way of communicating from the inside. He had to get out if he was going to live.

That was a sobering conclusion, as he did not recall ever having been in a situation where he had to do something unpleasant to save his life before, not that he was entirely sure he would be able to recall it if it had happened. In a way it seemed like a kind of a divine test of his worth, and that thought gave him the strength to push himself to try.

He lay firmly down and began to push himself in through the tunnel, wincing as the sharp rocks cut him, and prayed for it not to be a very long tunnel. After an agonizing while, he found that it was beginning to widen, allowing him to first walk on all fours, which was considerably more comfortable, and finally to stand up and just bend his head. It was not until the tunnel was wide enough for him to walk comfortably upright that he realized that it wasn’t as dark anymore: there was, quite literally, light somewhere at the end of the tunnel, and a dim reflection of it was making some parts of his field of vision a little more dark gray than the black shadows.

He hastened along; after turning at one point, he could see light falling directly onto a section of the wall ahead, and after practically running towards it and nearly tripping on the way, he finally found himself facing light outside –

Through bars.

The sight flabbergasted him to the point of stopping to stare. A gust of wind twirled the sand outside around, some of it scattering across the rocky cave floor on his side of the thick metal bars; he could feel a faint, pleasantly warm whisper of the same wind stroking his bare skin. He couldn’t see anything outside except the sand, and then a bit further away… something that looked like hewn rock?

He heard noises that resembled animal sounds, but the volume and apparent number of the creatures producing them seemed decidedly odd for animal behavior as he was meant to understand it: he was oddly reminded of hooligans at a football game. It didn’t quite make any sort of connection in his brain. He walked, now slowly and more cautiously – after all, the bars seemed to make it clear that somebody had willingly imprisoned him there – towards the mouth of the cave and found himself irritatingly concerned about preserving his dignity as he did, despite the situation: he feebly covered his privates with his hands and tried to approach in an apologetic manner, already making up the quickest possible explanation in his head, in case he found some rescuers and a way out.

Then he heard something midway between a screech and a roar, deafening, angry and ferocious, and momentarily forgot about all of this as his heart took a sudden lurch in his chest and his balance failed so that needed his hands to support his body against the cave wall.

He waited there for a few seconds, his violent heartbeat audible even through the cries of what he could have sworn was excitement outside, but when the roar did not repeat itself, he inched slowly along the wall, now more concerned about seeing what in the world was outside those bars anyway than about any potential conversational awkwardness later on. He closed his eyes in a brief few indistinguishable words of what might have been prayer or just encouragement to himself – he didn’t really know – and pressed forward for what seemed like quite a long while; then he was startled to find his hand gripping cold metal, and before he had really realized that this must mean he had reached the gate, he had automatically opened his eyes.

His voice appeared to be gone, which was probably a good thing, since if it were not, he would have produced a very unmanly yelp he could never have forgiven himself for. He stared up at the – he’d be damned if it wasn’t a Roman coliseum in its full, absurd glory, and at the spectators crowding the seat rows, and his feeble attempts to convince himself they were human never managed more than to highlight the obvious fact that they weren’t: he saw malicious glee glinting in every yellow, reptilian eye, rows of sharp teeth gleaming in elongated jaws as they snapped in excitement, long tails lashing impatiently around, and this combined with clothes of all things, brightly colored togas draped over their bodies as if nothing were more natural. They waved their short, clawed forelimbs about in wild gestures as they looked at him; the ones that stood had a hunched stance balanced by the tail, and yet they craned their necks all-too-humanly as they stood on tiptoe to see above the heads of the ones in front of them –

He closed his eyes again, pressed himself back against the cave wall, and tried to ignore the cries of obvious dismay that this elected from the audience. This was somebody’s joke; the CGI team for Jurassic Park was using him as an oblivious test audience for the next film, or maybe somebody had slipped him a mind-altering drug at some point – he was quite happy with that explanation, as it could explain the partial amnesia as well. His breathing slowed down a bit. Okay. This was not real. Once he opened his eyes again, all the creepy lizardmen would be gone, and he would be in some sane place like his bed, or maybe raped and bleeding somewhere in an alleyway, but at least not a gladiator in the world of Raptorjesus.

He had no such luck; the only thing that had changed when he opened his eyes was that the lizardfolk all seemed more impatient, and they began to let out loud, screeching noises which quickly worked up to a rhythmic, inhuman chant of demand as more and more of them joined in. That then abruptly exploded into cheering, and something made him more predisposed to consider this a bad thing than a good one; he could not say it surprised him particularly when another terrifying roar pierced through his ears, and in some bizarre way, it felt almost reassuring to have anticipated it.

He had not anticipated that the metal bars covering the entrance to his cave were about to be lifted to allow him to exit, however, and this made him hesitate long enough to see the approaching dinosaur before doing something stupid like running out.

This thing looked far less like the lizardmen than like your ordinary, hunger-crazed Tyrannosaurus rex, and if he would have attempted negotiation with the seemingly sentient audience if the opportunity had presented itself, his survival instinct quickly deduced that this warranted only a strangled scream and a frantic run back into the depths of the cave. He wondered vaguely if Jurassic Park was right about them being unable to see anything that did not move, but in the current situation it really seemed like an extraordinarily stupid movie that would not be worth risking it.

The dinosaur roared after him, and he felt its hot, foul breath on his back; the smell was nauseating, but he held his breath, turned round the bend in the tunnel and there stopped to breathe while looking quickly back where he had come from. He couldn’t see past the blind turn, which made it a bit of an uncomfortable place to watch from; he retreated further in, still panting, and waited for a few seconds. He could hear the T. rex’s annoyed growls, but they did not seem to be getting nearer. After a moment, he dared to go closer again, very cautiously, and look round the corner.

Of course. It couldn’t get this far into the cave. It stood there and stared madly ahead; it roared hungrily as it eyed him and tried to squeeze itself farther in, but couldn’t.

This left him really only one option: to retreat deeper into the cave again. He ran along the tunnel, though cautiously enough to make sure he didn’t fall or hit his head on the ceiling, and stopped only when he would no longer be able to continue without crawling on all fours. There he stopped to catch his breath again, drawing in quick gulps of the rather stale air, and thought over his situation.

He was in a cave.

There was a dinosaur at the only exit.

In other words, he was fucked.

After a blank moment he concluded that there was regretfully little else in the situation to think over, and he looked restlessly around, unable to get rid of the persistent feeling that the T. rex might break in through the ceiling or a weak wall at any moment, or perhaps that they would release a smaller dinosaur that could get in through the cave and tear him to shreds, or maybe that they would just drag him out themselves to hasten his probably no more pleasant death in the jaws of the Tyrannosaurus. Though he felt as if he ought to prefer something quick and messy to the slow agony of starvation, the notion of just being stuck inside a cave, with no dinosaurs involved, seemed like a decidedly more attractive alternative with every moment that passed. He shifted, wondering if perhaps he could go back to the chamber he had started out in and close it off somehow; another roar, sounding distant now, made him jump, crouch down and begin to make his way blindly along the tunnel.

The rocks seemed even sharper now that he was going the other way; they cut into his skin in many places at once, and though he had not really noticed himself bleeding too much the first time around, the air was now heavy with the coppery smell of his blood. He hadn’t remembered the tunnel being nearly as narrow as it was now, either, and it was beginning to be difficult to breathe as he pushed himself through a gap that should have been far too small for him – he felt the sharp edges of the rocks marking deep, long cuts in his chest and hips as he squeezed through – and suddenly found his hands groping thin air.

His stomach took a sickening lurch as he lost his balance, and his legs slipped through the hole even as his feet fumbled to stop his fall; his body slammed hard against the slimy rock wall below before he plummeted on downwards, nightmarish terror overshadowing even the pain pulsing through his entire body after the impact. Four long heartbeats of free fall, and then he hit sand, the tiny grains twirling up and burying themselves painfully into his cuts. He raised his head up, his entire body aching.

Attempting to move his right arm only intensified the throbbing pain, so he wiped the sand off his face with his relatively uninjured left hand and opened his eyes. Everything was swimming before him, but his brain was beginning to process his other senses again, and he realized uncomfortably that the vague background noise ringing in his ears was the mad cheering of the lizardmen, and that the musky smell of rotten flesh around him was the steady, foul breath of the Tyrannosaurus.

He had only a moment to contemplate the physical impossibility of this before his eyes focused upon the filled coliseum, and he turned his head sharply around – his neck stung with pain – just in time before the beast opened its jaws wide.

--

Name: James Randall Smith
Birth: January 19th 1986
Death: September 14th 2027 (automobile accident)
Occupation: CEO
Primary virtues: NONE
Primary sins: Wrath, envy, adultery, blasphemy, bearing false witness
Worst nightmare: Being eviscerated and devoured by dinosaurs (age 7)
Other fears: Reptiles, darkness, caves, falling, helplessness, social embarrassment, muteness

--

He could only scream, and it did not relieve the pain; the cold sky was dark in the back of his fading vision and the scorching sun no more than a dull spot of white, time passing in desperate, pulsing heartbeats and the torturous throbs of pain accompanying each of them, all slashes of claws and tearing of teeth, until everything slowed and there was only the burning agony of prolonged death.

--

Sentence: HELL

--

Darkness. Silence. He blinked. He didn’t know where he was.

He felt the ground experimentally and concluded it was a rocky cave floor. He tried to remember how he had gotten there, but he could not really recall anything at all of his life. He did not feel as if he had amnesia – he still knew facts he had learned, and the memories felt just out of reach. It just didn’t seem like his most important concern for the moment.

He sat up and began to feel blindly around with his hands.

--

“Torture any man for long enough, and it will cease to bother him. He should not know what is coming to him or why he is subjected to it: no man can feel fear and pain as one who has never felt them before.”

[Lune the Guardian]

Wow. An appropriate hell indeed. I like this. I pretty much became the character as I read this, and after finishing, I still have the chills. It may sound cheesy, but the room literally got brighter after the story ended. I felt like I was in the dark cave running from this scary stuff. And now I'm cold and hungry.

I would hate to be that guy. I wonder how many times he's looped on that nightmare. I bet he doesn't remember any of it each time. I think that final paragraph is my favorite part of the whole piece. It's just... creepy. To think that he might have been suffering the same nightmare for ages. And will be forever.

One minor complaint, "but that did not tell him very much useful either"... Is there a missing word somewhere, or did you add too many words? It seems to me like you had two ways of wanting to state your sentence, and decided on one way, but forgot to leave out the other. Was it more along the lines of "but that did not tell him very much either"? Or perhaps "but that did not give him very useful information either"? You get the idea.

One more question - I know this was for your writing class, but what inspired you to write this? Was there a given theme or prompt, or did something else help you to decide to write this on your own? I'm curious. ^_^

[Lady Vulpix]

I think Karin's said it all.

What an awful torture indeed.

[Dragonfree]

Thanks for reviewing. :3

One minor complaint, "but that did not tell him very much useful either"... Is there a missing word somewhere, or did you add too many words? It seems to me like you had two ways of wanting to state your sentence, and decided on one way, but forgot to leave out the other. Was it more along the lines of "but that did not tell him very much either"? Or perhaps "but that did not give him very useful information either"? You get the idea.

No, I'm quite sure this is precisely what I was thinking. As in, it did not tell him very much that could be of use, either. Somebody else has also been confused by the wording of that sentence, though, so maybe I'm just missing something. o.O

One more question - I know this was for your writing class, but what inspired you to write this? Was there a given theme or prompt, or did something else help you to decide to write this on your own? I'm curious. ^_^

Well, it was a very unrestrained sort of writing class - we pretty much just came to class, were given computers and then we spent the class writing, so there were no prompts, themes, etc. at all. I started a couple of things that I got completely stuck on, wanted to begin a new piece but had no idea what I would write about, so I figured I would just put a guy with amnesia in a dark place and then see where that would take me. I'd written past the part where he first saw the lizardmen when I thought, "Okay, I don't know what the hell is going on in this story and I need to figure it out before I write the rest because this is turning out really creepy," and it just sort of came to me in a sudden burst of inspiration. A very backwards way to think of this concept, I know.

[Lune the Guardian]

Hah, I think I know exactly how you feel. A random sentence popped into my head while I was half asleep, and I thought, "Hey, I can write a story with that sentence as its ending!" ...and forced myself to get it up and write it down before I forgot. Kudos for being able to run with a thought and write like that! It was a really creepy story and explaining it as a punishment from hell really wrapped it up nicely, especially that repetition of events at the end.

As for that confusing sentence... "did not tell him very much that could be of use" would be much better worded. Or "did not tell him anything useful". Because, writing style oddities considered, using "very much" and "useful" consecutively still does not make any grammatical sense. ^^ Hope I'm not being nitpicky but that sentence needs to be tweaked somehow.

[mistysakura]

Awesome stuff. Somehow, I figured out the coliseum by the time I read about the bars... I think it was because it reminded me of minotaurs. The description of the setting worked really well, especially the parts with him groping in the dark -- you'd think that would be really hard to describe, but by focusing on his bewilderment and line of action in the dark, it worked. The varying lengths of the sentences and paragraphs (He was in a cave. There was a dinosaur at the only exit. In other words, he was fucked.) was striking and really drove the point home. And the penultimate paragraph... one of the most chilling things I've ever read. If this looping nightmare were hell, God would be damned sadistic.

[Asilynne]

I love this o.o Im usually too lazy to read anything but you made me click on it because it had "short story" in the subject line so I figured why not read while Im procrastinating from my own writing (^-^()) AND I AM SO GLAD I DID!

Heres how my thought process went as I was reading it"

First, with the beginning being as it was I thought it was going to be something similar to a Twilight Zone I saw (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ch...rch_of_an_Exit if youre curious lol) and this was reinforced by the fact that his enclosure was too smooth to be a natural cave. But as the story went on and he found and crawled through the tunnel, I started thinking that the world was an apocalyptic world and that he was the only human left. The animal sounds that made no sense to him gave an eerie feeling, almost like I was there, and the uncertainty of what the creatures were on top of the apparent lack of a direct threat just made it more tense
When he saw the lizard people I started thinking that he had been a captain of a spaceship from earth and that he somehow stumbled upon a roman-esque world of aliens that made him a gladiator because he was an exotic animal, and then this happened:

"Name: James Randall Smith
Birth: January 19th 1986
Death: September 14th 2027 (automobile accident)
Occupation: CEO
Primary virtues: NONE
Primary sins: Wrath, envy, adultery, blasphemy, bearing false witness
Worst nightmare: Being eviscerated and devoured by dinosaurs (age 7)
Other fears: Reptiles, darkness, caves, falling, helplessness, social embarrassment, muteness

--

He could only scream, and it did not relieve the pain; the cold sky was dark in the back of his fading vision and the scorching sun no more than a dull spot of white, time passing in desperate, pulsing heartbeats and the torturous throbs of pain accompanying each of them, all slashes of claws and tearing of teeth, until everything slowed and there was only the burning agony of prolonged death.

--

Sentence: HELL
"

And THAT is my favorite part It seems like this whole story could be like the trailer for a movie or an anime! I love how it kept me guessing right up til the end, and it makes me want to see more, like other peoples versions and also what he did in his life beforehand to deserve it. In short I love this story of yours, keep it up!