[EternalPen]

Synopsis: Trey is diagnosed with a deadly virus that is believed to have wiped out the Roanoak colony back in the 1500's. The virus was dubbed "The Croatoan" and there is but one cure. The cure only has a small chance of success but, as Trey is about to find out, the Indian roots of the cure go farther back than even the doctors knew. He must face his fears in his own mind to survive, and ultimately cure, the virus.


***Hell And Its Keeper***

Trey knew he was not supposed to awaken, but he did. He had a will to awaken from his sleep, despite the pain that would burst into life if he did. He wanted to experience pain for he knew that feeling pain was a sign of life. No man has ever lived who did not feel pain, and those who have existed in it lived most.

His eyes flew open and a light burned it his skull that was so bright it-

Nothing. It did not blind him, nor did it burn in his skull. There was no pain at all. He was staring normally up into the sun, and it did not bother him. It seemed like more of a night light than a flaming ball of gas in the sky. He sat up, no pain at all in his body. He was in the center of a lush, green forest, and the wind blew on him.

He felt the wind everywhere on his body, and he realized then that he was unclothed. He thought it odd that he didn’t care, was not ashamed, and did not care to fix it. This was how he was supposed to be, and this is how he would stay. He stood up on the patch of grass he was on, and took a step forward. He felt so light after that one step it almost took effort to keep from dashing around. He jumped with no effort at all, just a few inches off the ground, but his body soared through the clouds with no trouble at all. He felt no fear of the return to the ground and despite the wind rushing around him, he was warm.

He hovered in the sky for a moment before going back down and he could taste the air. It smelled of fresh and new-born honey-suckles and he breathed in heavily to smell the precious air. The clouds around him and the air he was in tasted of milk and Trey found a slightly sugary context to every breath. Every breath was ecstasy.

He fell back towards the ground at a blinding speed, but he was calm. He had done this a thousand times, and was completely relaxed.

A smile exploded on his face, bigger than any time he had ever smiled, and he shouted and whooped in joy and he dashed around the forest, free and flying at an incredible speed.

Then, everything disappeared.

Pain, though not as much as when he had died, seeped into his body slowly. Aches slowly diseased his being and he noticed all the trees were dead. The grass was replaced with dark, purple dirt, and he had itchy, smelly, and soaking clothes on his back now. They reeked of everything he could imagine, and were soaked with blood, sweat, and urine.

He coughed heavily several times and fell over, unable to stand. The dark world he had died in quickly rose into view, and his breath disappeared as if someone had placed a vacuum over his mouth. He needed it back, so he shoved and pushed at the invisible vacuum. His arms no longer worked, and they fell limply at his side. The vacuum stopped, and he gasped.

He breathed in, heavily, and didn’t stop until he thought his lungs would burst. He breathed out, then. He was back, and he felt the pain rushing through his veins. He was no longer on the floor but a bench, and his left leg was missing from the knee down.

Trey’s newly regained breath disappeared and he started breathing faster and faster. His leg was really gone! He moved the muscles that once used to control the limb, and it felt as if it had actually moved. From the knee down, it was weightless and felt as if it itched, but just wasn't there. His arm was broken again, too.

Trey noticed he was back in the dark world. He did not want to be here, he wanted to be either home or free, but he was in that hell again. Wallace, his mother, Kyle, Kyle’s crew, and Tracy were all standing around him, and they had all died. Trey figured this was where hell was, and he had arrived. It was made a worse hell by showing him heaven before bringing him back.

Behind them all lay an ominous, black shape. It was pinned to an invisible wall and it stretched across that wall as much as it could. Small tendrils writhed in place and the heads that haunted Trey to jump into the dark world in the first place were sprouting all over the entire thing. One of the heads was faceless; just a mouth. He saw many more like that and they all opened their gaping mouths in a simultaneous silent scream.

Trey stared in absolute wonder and fear as the people that once lived gathered around him.

“Trey, dear!” His mother shouted.

“Trey, Captain!” Wallace said as he grinned.

“Trey, Savior!” Kyle and his crew shouted in unison as they all pumped a fist into the air.

For a moment, Trey was overcome by this wonderful coming home. He was glad to be dead so he could see them all face-to-face.

“Trey, love!” Tracy whispered as tears formed in her eyes.

Trey knew then that, whatever was happening, it wasn’t real.

He remembered, with a slight sting to his heart, that Tracy did not love him at all. She simply trusted him. Trey was only to protect her, but felt he had fallen in love with her as he did so. He told himself many times it was an illusion, but the illusion had either fooled him, or was never an illusion at all.

Trey sat up and realized he was on a dark purple park bench. It was not dilapidated or broken, just dark purple like everything else. It was dusty and smelled old and decrepit, though it was not.

You don’t love me.

Trey tried to say it, and found that his face stung so hard he couldn’t talk. That was what he told himself, but he knew it was a mental problem.

“You…” Trey started.

“Yes.” Tracy finished for him. “I love you, and I’m alive!”

She came to Trey and kissed him.

Trey tasted dirt, smoke, and sugar on her lips. She was trying to mask her true form.

Trey pulled away and found it very easy to say now. He knew it was not Tracy.

“You don’t love me.” Trey said. “And you aren’t Tracy.” He looked at all his other companions and told them almost the same. “You aren’t my friends; I’ve never seen you and you aren’t real!”

All at once they spoke in unison. Their voices melded into one, and it was not misshapen, but melodic. It was melodic in an almost demonic sense. Trey shuddered as they all simultaneously received an intake of breath, and they spoke.

“That didn’t last too long.” They said, “I figured I would have you fooled for at least a month or two, if not a year. Long enough for you're body to rot."

He noticed the faceless heads were mouthing the words as well, and when they finished their statement, they kept their mouths open. The faceless heads stuck long, slender tongues out of their mouths, and the tongues stretched. They stretched first a foot, then two, then six and ten. They stretched until they reached one of the many people that stood before him, and Trey then realized that there was a head for each of them. The tongues wrapped and encircled the waists of their choosing, and began to drag the bodies back to the large mass. With surprising strength, the heads pulled the bodies up, up, up until they were consumed. The heads swallowed them whole, and then took their faces.

He then began to recognize all the other faces on the mass. They were people he knew. His father, his friends, and his pets were the most recent recognitions. The mass began to peel itself off the invisible wall, and the faces wailed audibly in a protest of pain, and pleasure of freedom.

Trey was frozen in spot; he could not move. The beast’s tendrils morphed into long legs and arms that grabbed at the air and scraped along the ground to pull itself closer to Trey. He could move again and he fell backwards. He scrambled to move away from the beast and it kept speed with him without any effort.

One of its arms grabbed and held onto Trey’s only leg and Trey could not move. It came closer and closer, and Trey felt a horrible sense of dread. If he was dead now, what would it be like to die again? Would he be tortured until…

He reached with his good arm and tried, futilely, to work the arm off of his leg. The tendrils threw his arm aside, held him down, and one of them snaked around his neck. It didn’t squeeze, but it ran up his face, to his left ear, and it entered his head. Trey screamed loud, but could only hear out his right ear. Everything seemed to freeze and all his surroundings disappeared into a dark blue void.

A voice whispered to him; the voice that had struck him with fear close to when he had first arrived in this dark world taunted him.

“You’re going to die.” It said. “You are going to die, and you can’t stop it.”

“No!” Trey screamed. “I’m going to-”

“DIE!” It yelled back. “You will die, and not even by the things I make you fear. You’re body belongs to ME and you will die from THAT!? Bah!”

“W-what?” Trey tried to ask, but the voice continued.

“You are ruled by fear. Everything you do is out of fear. Learn because you’re afraid of being dumb. Work because you’re afraid of being broke. Love because you’re afraid of being alone. I’m your fear, Trey, and I RULE you! And yet… yet you are just going to let this disease kill you.”

“But… but what am I supposed to do?” Trey asked. “I CAN’T stop it!”

“Ah, but you can.” The voice stated, and then Trey was back in the dark world, the tendril out of his ear. It was red, and he could feel warm pain running out of his ear.

“Id.” The voice said, “What are you most afraid of?”

Trey looked around himself. Was it possible? Could this place really be…?

He realized it then. He knew he was in his head this entire time, and yet he refused to believe that. But he couldn’t ignore it. The flying ship was his adventurous nature, The empty ship was his loneliness, and this? This was… it had to be the id. The part of his head he never could explore, where his deepest fears were hidden. This thing he faced now was the virus that ate away at his health, and it was an appropriate place for it to hide. In his id.

Trey remembered something then that he wished he had known when he first arrived. This was HIS mind, so shouldn’t HE be able to control what happened? But, at the same time, this was his id. He had no control over a part of his mind he had never explored before.

Then another thought hit him. If this was where all his fears hid, where were they?

Behind him, a rubber horn echoed. He could barely hear it because of his injured ear, but he knew it well. It was the honking nose of that clown that had scared him when he was twelve. He was afraid of what the virus he faced now would do, but feared what the clown would do a bit more. He hadn’t been around the virus enough to know why to fear it, but that clown had cost him three years of therapy. He knew why he feared it.

The eyes on the faces the virus held all shifted. They were searching for something. The clown.

Trey then realized that his body was unknown territory to the virus. The virus was… afraid. It was afraid of what would come; afraid of the power of the human mind.

Then it hit him. It hit him hard. Trey understood that all his worst fears resided here, and that the virus feared what lurked the dark corners here.

Trey feared spiders, and saw them crawling along the faces that protruded from the body of the virus. The virus swatted them off with its tendrils and tried to re-focus on Trey. A clown with razor sharp teeth and a machete lurched out from some place Trey couldn’t see and began viciously attacking the virus. As the virus fought it off, a swarm of bees (Which Trey was allergic to) flew in and began to do sting the heads that plagued the virus. A Rottweiler which Trey remembered as “Toro” came rushing towards the virus from behind.

All the things Trey feared came forth when he remembered them. Yet, they were fighting the virus. Trey didn’t know why, but he searched his mind. He wanted to find the thing he was most afraid of. The fear above all his other fears.

He knew it then, and it appeared before him. Like the sun rising on a new day a bright light broke through the sky. It blinded Trey and spoke with a deep and commanding voice. The voice, though it spoke gibberish, seemed to command what be done in his mind. The bees, the dog, the clown, and the spiders all at once became stone. The bees fell from the sky like hail, the clown toppled over, and the dog whimpered and ran before it, also, fell over and froze. The spiders clung tight and turned to stone. Their legs clung to the virus, and the virus’ skin began to turn to stone also. It screamed and wailed and the entire body of the beast turned to stone.

The tendrils that held Trey’s leg were petrified, but Trey hadn’t turned to stone. The virus fell backwards and hit the ground very hard. It, and its tendrils, shattered into pebbles. Trey scrambled backwards and the bright sun lit the dark world. Trees sprouted, and birds flew by. The world turned into how he saw it when he had died. The sun grew ever brighter until it whispered into Trey’s good ear, “Do you believe?”

And Trey awoke. He was in his apartment floor. His leg was back, his arm was healed, the scratches in his back and stomach and ribs were healed, and his ear was normal again. He felt no pain.

He tasted that horrible medicine in his mouth. He looked up at his alarm clock. It was beeping incessantly and read six o’ clock. He looked out his window, and the sun was just rising. It shone through his window, into the mirror, and was shining on his face. He blinked a few times and rolled over. He fell off of his bed and hit the floor.

Trey stood and looked around. He was home again. He was safe again.

He could almost feel the virus eating at him, but that feeling was gone now. Completely. He felt healthy, he felt refreshed, and he felt new. He felt, overall, cured. He didn’t need a doctor to know that he was cured, and that The Croatoan was gone.

He was back in his home, the virus was gone, and he had never felt better.

***

Trey took a shower, brushed his teeth, threw on fresh clothes, and headed out the door. He wanted to let the doctor know he was cured, and how the cure worked. Maybe this could help others? Maybe it could help them be prepared for the process of the cure, and to know where to go and what to do?

He skipped breakfast, but the Ford wouldn’t start again. He decided to walk.

Trey knew that, during his destruction in his id, he had learned many things. He learned some of his fears, and ultimately, his biggest. He feared God the most. He did not know whether God was a real entity or not, and that was why it had asked him if he believed. It had turned his fears to stone, and destroyed the virus completely. It restored his id to its previous state, and awakened him.

Trey also realized that his fears fought for him before they were destroyed. All of his body, including his fears, had fought for him to protect their dwelling. His biggest fear had somehow reverted his id back to what it was, also. His id was a place where his biggest desires and most favorite pleasures resided. It was a place of rest and peace. It housed his worst fears only when the virus destroyed the holding cell they were kept in. The beautiful place had been destroyed and wrecked and all living things killed by his fears that were released. It was not the virus’ doing.

Trey took a turn down an alley for a shortcut. He was tired, so he stopped and leaned against the wall. He smiled. This was all working out for him. He was cured, he could help cure everyone else, and he had explored his id. None of those things had ever been done by a mere human.

He thought back to when he had died, and wondered why he returned to his mind. He didn’t know, but liked it. It was almost like Dues Ex Machina; a god from the machine. What Trey liked to think, though, was that it was all him. His mind was strong, and it had the will to live. He had the will to live so much so that his mind thought he had died, reverted everything it could to normal, and began to shut down. Trey wondered a few times if what he was in after he died really his reverted id, or a glimpse of the afterlife…

“Got any spare change?” a gruff voice sounded from behind him.

Trey looked up to see a homeless man standing up about ten feet from him.

“I have something better!” Trey said, “I have a CURE, my friend! A CURE!”

The man withdrew a gun and pointed it at Trey.

“I need cash.” He grumbled, as if he were only half aware of what he was doing.

Trey was shocked, but could take no chances. He held the cure in his knowledge. He had to spread it. He reached into his back pocket, withdrew his wallet, and tossed it on the ground next to the old man’s feet. He raised his hands up and began to sidle against the wall back to the road.

“Hold it!” The old man yelled. He bent down, picked up the wallet, and rummaged through it. He grabbed a fistful of dollar bills out and shoved them in his jacket.

“Here,” He said to Trey, “Take back your wallet.”

Trey hesitated, and walked back. He grabbed his wallet, wanting his license back, and nodded. The old man pistol-whipped Trey and Trey fell onto the ground.

“Sorry, but you would tell the police who I am; what I look like.” The old man told Trey, “Can’t have that, can we?”

He slammed the pistol against Trey’s skull over and over until Trey blacked out. The old man continued to beat him until Trey’s hair was matted with blood and a visible dent was in his skull. Trey bled and bled until someone noticed and called the police. An ambulance came and took Trey to the hospital, but all of this was in vain.

He was resuscitated, but not before the damage could be reversed. Trey could only babble and gurgle. He had lost his mind. It had been far too damaged to fix.

He was placed into an asylum, he wore a straight jacket, and his eyes never focused on one thing. He simply babbled about fears and a virus and someone named Tracy. When asked simply questions like, “Are you hungry?” He would only reply with something along the lines of, “The cure, I have the cure!”

And he did, but he could not share it.

He was insane.

***THE END***

NOTE: An Epilogue follows this chapter.

[Peppy]

Pretty good. Though I thought Trey deserved a better fate. Well, all that really matter was the journey. He learned what was necessary to grow. The chapters were entwined in a good sense, but in vague way.

The best thing about the story was the symbolisms. I enjoyed interpretting them. It was kinda fun to me.

Well, as for the setting and descriptions, you needed to pay a little more attention to them. Sometime they contract with themselve. Sometimes it's unclear on what you are trying to say. Some need a little meat and some needed less meat--you've got to keep track of what will help the story along. EDIT, EDIT, EDIT, you need to practise--like you would do a school essay or something.

He had a will to awaken from his sleep, despite the pain that would burst into life if he did.

the

He jumped with no effort at all, just a few inches off the ground, but his body soared through the clouds with no trouble at all.

You're trying to say too much. Try breaking it down.

For a moment, Trey was overcome by this wonderful coming home.

home coming

Trey then realized that his body was unknown territory to the virus.

[EternalPen]

Thank you for reading all of it! I know it was long, but thanks! ^_^

By the way, thank you for your input and don't forget, THERE IS AN EPILOUGE. Find it, it may make Trey's fate seem a little less... horrible. ^_^