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It feels as though I have been trapped in this infernal maze forever. Cursed to roam these halls like a gerbil through a maze. I’m so familiar with my surroundings, the walls seem to blend into one another and my eyes are slower than my feet, yet it must only be a few minutes since I was released again into this latest torture. I’ve not yet been spotted, so I take a breather and rest against a wall to get my breath back, letting my guard down for a few precious seconds. The wall is sticky with blood and sweat, like it’s had a million bodies pressed against it, gasping for oxygen like me. After a while, you begin to wonder if you have a life outside this world; it wasn’t long ago that I forgot whether I had a wife and kids or not, and it wasn’t much longer after that I stopped caring. I don’t know my name, and it’s only flashes of my heavily bruised face in cracked mirrors that I pass that reminds me what I look like. I do not look good. If I did have a wife, I wouldn’t want her to see me like this. The corner of the wall begins to feel to comfortable, so I ready my weapon and cautiously make my way into a depressingly familiar corridor.
All you can hope for when entering a new area is to see four blank walls, that’s what keeps me moving. Empty. Thank God. Nothing but dust and rocks and the ever-present smell of death that’s saturated the walls. I wipe the sweat from my eyes with my sleeve when my heart flutters and I panic, swinging round to confront my attacker but instead butting my rifle into thin air. Still on edge, I spin 180 degrees with my weapon level with my eyes only to have my crosshair hover over the closed door at the end of the corridor. I can’t remember which direction I came in and for a moment, it overcomes me and I picture my body lying in an impossible heap on the floor with an increasing pool of blackness oozing from it, eyes staring up at the ceiling longing for some otherworldly clue. The only noise I hear reverberating around the room is the sound of my gun belt shaking, and it’s when the walls start pulsating and closing in on me that I decide it’s time to get out of this enclosed space before it consumes me. I move north with a quickened step, open the north door with a slow creak and make the right decision.
You begin to befriend emptiness after a short while, it can be the only thing that keeps you sane. I start to grow in confidence, the shaking stops and my boots begin to carry me without me even having to tell them directions. Another corridor, another door; everything in this place looks the same, it must have been designed this way to install a sense of paranoia in its inhabitants. It works. The feeling of getting lost is enough to make my stomach turn over – the last thing you want is to be wandering around the halls haplessly when you catch a bullet in the back of your head. Even here, there’s more dignified ways to go. Like going out fighting, all guns blazing as they say. I pick up a clip someone’s been kind enough to leave on a table, load it into my rifle and kick open the door, ready to face anything that dwells behind it.
In the middle of a room is a sorry pile of flesh and bones, one that at least ten minutes ago was alive. I pump a few rounds into it just to be sure, check the rest of the room for signs of a trap then go in closer to investigate, the poor soul’s blood splattered up the walls and covering the ground in a sickly orange hue. I rifle through his pockets for food and ammunition, but find nothing. It’s a boy, really, no older than sixteen, hands still gripped to his gun but the terrified gaze painted across his pale face tells me he never had a chance to use it. Peppered with bullet-holes, his body juts out at awkward angles, the flickering lamp behind me casting a demented shadow against the facing wall. There’s no time for compassion. I can’t stop to think if there was a brain behind those eyes, whether he was like me in trying to survive or whether he would have filled me with lead the first chance he got. I begin to stand wearily, having been in this position so many times before, when I hear the faint sound of footsteps. I stand bolt upright, alert and ready. This is it. Showdown. End game.
I’ve lost count of how many bodies have fallen by my hand today alone. You get used to it after a while, it feels natural, if you can believe something as ridiculous as that. I don’t remember the first one I killed, it must have been so long ago, but I must have passed the stage of fear quite a while back; in fact, seeing a body slump to the ground now gives me a giddy thrill, a minute feeling of power within this confined space, almost like I’m doing what I’m told, being a good student for teacher. Perhaps killing others is what will get me out one day. The fellow at the other end of this room might just be my ticket out of here. He’s about to find out how far I’ll go. Eyes closed and heart thumping, I drop my shoulder, turn and advance.
He fires the first shot, which whistles past my head and shatters a gas light behind me. I unleash a volley of fire at him, aiming low and rising up, but he flits from one side of the room to the other, spinning around my bullets and returning his own, one of which catches me in the arm. I dive for cover, landing on my mangled limb, the pain ripping through me as I fire blindly around the corner, listening to the sound of my bullets tear up the surroundings and the satisfying noise of flesh withering. One each. We’ve both taken hits, but we can both take it; after a while, even a gunshot wound doesn’t even register. The room is quiet but for the sounds of our breathing and the shatter of glass and brick as it falls from the wall. My ammo is low, only two shots left. I figure I have one for him, and maybe one for me. Almost in unison we rise and charge each other, and the room suddenly becomes alive again.
I’m hit in the stomach by a wave of bullets and I feel the bile seeping into my bloodstream as the room flashes red. I aim as best I can at my adversary, but my bullet sails past his head and I drop to my knees defeated, knowing I can’t possibly reload and fire in the time it’ll take him to finish me off. A shadow looms over me. I look up and a smile forms on his face, a face I’ve seen so many times before, I see it when I sleep and I see it on the face of everyone I kill. He levels his rifle at my head and says something in a language I don’t understand. This is it, release. At least I went out fighting.
Click.
I can still see his face, though my eyes are closed.
Click. Click clickclickclickclick.
When I look up, I see a different person standing in front of me, his face the colour of stony grey, a confused grimace upon his face, no longer smiling but cursing his weapon in the same alien language . His gaze meets mine, and for a split-second there’s mutual compassion, a feeling that the end is finally upon us. I hesitate no longer, raise my weapon and spit a bullet that clocks him straight between the eyes, his body jerks backwards and he spins like a ragdoll, smashing into the boxes behind him. I don’t bother to check his body.
A booming voice floats through the air, informing me that my enemy is dead. I don’t know who the voice belongs to, or where it comes from but I’ve heard it before, many many times. Is it God? I honestly can’t say. I’ve no concept of God anymore. All I know is that should I ever come across the person behind the voice, this ethereal figure that’s been toying with me for as long as I can remember, it’ll be the last time I ever turn a gun on another living being before I turn it on myself.
Everything slows down and comes to a halt.
Black, a long pause, then light.
It feels as though I have been trapped in this infernal maze forever.
All you can hope for when entering a new area is to see four blank walls, that’s what keeps me moving. Empty. Thank God. Nothing but dust and rocks and the ever-present smell of death that’s saturated the walls. I wipe the sweat from my eyes with my sleeve when my heart flutters and I panic, swinging round to confront my attacker but instead butting my rifle into thin air. Still on edge, I spin 180 degrees with my weapon level with my eyes only to have my crosshair hover over the closed door at the end of the corridor. I can’t remember which direction I came in and for a moment, it overcomes me and I picture my body lying in an impossible heap on the floor with an increasing pool of blackness oozing from it, eyes staring up at the ceiling longing for some otherworldly clue. The only noise I hear reverberating around the room is the sound of my gun belt shaking, and it’s when the walls start pulsating and closing in on me that I decide it’s time to get out of this enclosed space before it consumes me. I move north with a quickened step, open the north door with a slow creak and make the right decision.
You begin to befriend emptiness after a short while, it can be the only thing that keeps you sane. I start to grow in confidence, the shaking stops and my boots begin to carry me without me even having to tell them directions. Another corridor, another door; everything in this place looks the same, it must have been designed this way to install a sense of paranoia in its inhabitants. It works. The feeling of getting lost is enough to make my stomach turn over – the last thing you want is to be wandering around the halls haplessly when you catch a bullet in the back of your head. Even here, there’s more dignified ways to go. Like going out fighting, all guns blazing as they say. I pick up a clip someone’s been kind enough to leave on a table, load it into my rifle and kick open the door, ready to face anything that dwells behind it.
In the middle of a room is a sorry pile of flesh and bones, one that at least ten minutes ago was alive. I pump a few rounds into it just to be sure, check the rest of the room for signs of a trap then go in closer to investigate, the poor soul’s blood splattered up the walls and covering the ground in a sickly orange hue. I rifle through his pockets for food and ammunition, but find nothing. It’s a boy, really, no older than sixteen, hands still gripped to his gun but the terrified gaze painted across his pale face tells me he never had a chance to use it. Peppered with bullet-holes, his body juts out at awkward angles, the flickering lamp behind me casting a demented shadow against the facing wall. There’s no time for compassion. I can’t stop to think if there was a brain behind those eyes, whether he was like me in trying to survive or whether he would have filled me with lead the first chance he got. I begin to stand wearily, having been in this position so many times before, when I hear the faint sound of footsteps. I stand bolt upright, alert and ready. This is it. Showdown. End game.
I’ve lost count of how many bodies have fallen by my hand today alone. You get used to it after a while, it feels natural, if you can believe something as ridiculous as that. I don’t remember the first one I killed, it must have been so long ago, but I must have passed the stage of fear quite a while back; in fact, seeing a body slump to the ground now gives me a giddy thrill, a minute feeling of power within this confined space, almost like I’m doing what I’m told, being a good student for teacher. Perhaps killing others is what will get me out one day. The fellow at the other end of this room might just be my ticket out of here. He’s about to find out how far I’ll go. Eyes closed and heart thumping, I drop my shoulder, turn and advance.
He fires the first shot, which whistles past my head and shatters a gas light behind me. I unleash a volley of fire at him, aiming low and rising up, but he flits from one side of the room to the other, spinning around my bullets and returning his own, one of which catches me in the arm. I dive for cover, landing on my mangled limb, the pain ripping through me as I fire blindly around the corner, listening to the sound of my bullets tear up the surroundings and the satisfying noise of flesh withering. One each. We’ve both taken hits, but we can both take it; after a while, even a gunshot wound doesn’t even register. The room is quiet but for the sounds of our breathing and the shatter of glass and brick as it falls from the wall. My ammo is low, only two shots left. I figure I have one for him, and maybe one for me. Almost in unison we rise and charge each other, and the room suddenly becomes alive again.
I’m hit in the stomach by a wave of bullets and I feel the bile seeping into my bloodstream as the room flashes red. I aim as best I can at my adversary, but my bullet sails past his head and I drop to my knees defeated, knowing I can’t possibly reload and fire in the time it’ll take him to finish me off. A shadow looms over me. I look up and a smile forms on his face, a face I’ve seen so many times before, I see it when I sleep and I see it on the face of everyone I kill. He levels his rifle at my head and says something in a language I don’t understand. This is it, release. At least I went out fighting.
Click.
I can still see his face, though my eyes are closed.
Click. Click clickclickclickclick.
When I look up, I see a different person standing in front of me, his face the colour of stony grey, a confused grimace upon his face, no longer smiling but cursing his weapon in the same alien language . His gaze meets mine, and for a split-second there’s mutual compassion, a feeling that the end is finally upon us. I hesitate no longer, raise my weapon and spit a bullet that clocks him straight between the eyes, his body jerks backwards and he spins like a ragdoll, smashing into the boxes behind him. I don’t bother to check his body.
A booming voice floats through the air, informing me that my enemy is dead. I don’t know who the voice belongs to, or where it comes from but I’ve heard it before, many many times. Is it God? I honestly can’t say. I’ve no concept of God anymore. All I know is that should I ever come across the person behind the voice, this ethereal figure that’s been toying with me for as long as I can remember, it’ll be the last time I ever turn a gun on another living being before I turn it on myself.
Everything slows down and comes to a halt.
Black, a long pause, then light.
It feels as though I have been trapped in this infernal maze forever.
A pleasure to read. Excellent.
UW.
UW.
I enjoyed this, but unfortunately I read Black Glove's comment before the story, and it gave it away for me.
D'oh!
D'oh!
Those poor computer game sprites trapped in fragging hell... If in the unlikely event the theory that we go to the afterlife closest to our hearts when we die is true, then some may find themselves in this nightmare predicament.
It feels as though I have been trapped in this infernal maze forever. Cursed to roam these halls like a gerbil through a maze. I’m so familiar with my surroundings, the walls seem to blend into one another and my eyes are slower than my feet, yet it must only be a few minutes since I was released again into this latest torture. I’ve not yet been spotted, so I take a breather and rest against a wall to get my breath back, letting my guard down for a few precious seconds. The wall is sticky with blood and sweat, like it’s had a million bodies pressed against it, gasping for oxygen like me. After a while, you begin to wonder if you have a life outside this world; it wasn’t long ago that I forgot whether I had a wife and kids or not, and it wasn’t much longer after that I stopped caring. I don’t know my name, and it’s only flashes of my heavily bruised face in cracked mirrors that I pass that reminds me what I look like. I do not look good. If I did have a wife, I wouldn’t want her to see me like this. The corner of the wall begins to feel to comfortable, so I ready my weapon and cautiously make my way into a depressingly familiar corridor.
All you can hope for when entering a new area is to see four blank walls, that’s what keeps me moving. Empty. Thank God. Nothing but dust and rocks and the ever-present smell of death that’s saturated the walls. I wipe the sweat from my eyes with my sleeve when my heart flutters and I panic, swinging round to confront my attacker but instead butting my rifle into thin air. Still on edge, I spin 180 degrees with my weapon level with my eyes only to have my crosshair hover over the closed door at the end of the corridor. I can’t remember which direction I came in and for a moment, it overcomes me and I picture my body lying in an impossible heap on the floor with an increasing pool of blackness oozing from it, eyes staring up at the ceiling longing for some otherworldly clue. The only noise I hear reverberating around the room is the sound of my gun belt shaking, and it’s when the walls start pulsating and closing in on me that I decide it’s time to get out of this enclosed space before it consumes me. I move north with a quickened step, open the north door with a slow creak and make the right decision.
You begin to befriend emptiness after a short while, it can be the only thing that keeps you sane. I start to grow in confidence, the shaking stops and my boots begin to carry me without me even having to tell them directions. Another corridor, another door; everything in this place looks the same, it must have been designed this way to install a sense of paranoia in its inhabitants. It works. The feeling of getting lost is enough to make my stomach turn over – the last thing you want is to be wandering around the halls haplessly when you catch a bullet in the back of your head. Even here, there’s more dignified ways to go. Like going out fighting, all guns blazing as they say. I pick up a clip someone’s been kind enough to leave on a table, load it into my rifle and kick open the door, ready to face anything that dwells behind it.
In the middle of a room is a sorry pile of flesh and bones, one that at least ten minutes ago was alive. I pump a few rounds into it just to be sure, check the rest of the room for signs of a trap then go in closer to investigate, the poor soul’s blood splattered up the walls and covering the ground in a sickly orange hue. I rifle through his pockets for food and ammunition, but find nothing. It’s a boy, really, no older than sixteen, hands still gripped to his gun but the terrified gaze painted across his pale face tells me he never had a chance to use it. Peppered with bullet-holes, his body juts out at awkward angles, the flickering lamp behind me casting a demented shadow against the facing wall. There’s no time for compassion. I can’t stop to think if there was a brain behind those eyes, whether he was like me in trying to survive or whether he would have filled me with lead the first chance he got. I begin to stand wearily, having been in this position so many times before, when I hear the faint sound of footsteps. I stand bolt upright, alert and ready. This is it. Showdown. End game.
I’ve lost count of how many bodies have fallen by my hand today alone. You get used to it after a while, it feels natural, if you can believe something as ridiculous as that. I don’t remember the first one I killed, it must have been so long ago, but I must have passed the stage of fear quite a while back; in fact, seeing a body slump to the ground now gives me a giddy thrill, a minute feeling of power within this confined space, almost like I’m doing what I’m told, being a good student for teacher. Perhaps killing others is what will get me out one day. The fellow at the other end of this room might just be my ticket out of here. He’s about to find out how far I’ll go. Eyes closed and heart thumping, I drop my shoulder, turn and advance.
He fires the first shot, which whistles past my head and shatters a gas light behind me. I unleash a volley of fire at him, aiming low and rising up, but he flits from one side of the room to the other, spinning around my bullets and returning his own, one of which catches me in the arm. I dive for cover, landing on my mangled limb, the pain ripping through me as I fire blindly around the corner, listening to the sound of my bullets tear up the surroundings and the satisfying noise of flesh withering. One each. We’ve both taken hits, but we can both take it; after a while, even a gunshot wound doesn’t even register. The room is quiet but for the sounds of our breathing and the shatter of glass and brick as it falls from the wall. My ammo is low, only two shots left. I figure I have one for him, and maybe one for me. Almost in unison we rise and charge each other, and the room suddenly becomes alive again.
I’m hit in the stomach by a wave of bullets and I feel the bile seeping into my bloodstream as the room flashes red. I aim as best I can at my adversary, but my bullet sails past his head and I drop to my knees defeated, knowing I can’t possibly reload and fire in the time it’ll take him to finish me off. A shadow looms over me. I look up and a smile forms on his face, a face I’ve seen so many times before, I see it when I sleep and I see it on the face of everyone I kill. He levels his rifle at my head and says something in a language I don’t understand. This is it, release. At least I went out fighting.
Click.
I can still see his face, though my eyes are closed.
Click. Click clickclickclickclick.
When I look up, I see a different person standing in front of me, his face the colour of stony grey, a confused grimace upon his face, no longer smiling but cursing his weapon in the same alien language . His gaze meets mine, and for a split-second there’s mutual compassion, a feeling that the end is finally upon us. I hesitate no longer, raise my weapon and spit a bullet that clocks him straight between the eyes, his body jerks backwards and he spins like a ragdoll, smashing into the boxes behind him. I don’t bother to check his body.
A booming voice floats through the air, informing me that my enemy is dead. I don’t know who the voice belongs to, or where it comes from but I’ve heard it before, many many times. Is it God? I honestly can’t say. I’ve no concept of God anymore. All I know is that should I ever come across the person behind the voice, this ethereal figure that’s been toying with me for as long as I can remember, it’ll be the last time I ever turn a gun on another living being before I turn it on myself.
Everything slows down and comes to a halt.
Black, a long pause, then light.
It feels as though I have been trapped in this infernal maze forever.
All you can hope for when entering a new area is to see four blank walls, that’s what keeps me moving. Empty. Thank God. Nothing but dust and rocks and the ever-present smell of death that’s saturated the walls. I wipe the sweat from my eyes with my sleeve when my heart flutters and I panic, swinging round to confront my attacker but instead butting my rifle into thin air. Still on edge, I spin 180 degrees with my weapon level with my eyes only to have my crosshair hover over the closed door at the end of the corridor. I can’t remember which direction I came in and for a moment, it overcomes me and I picture my body lying in an impossible heap on the floor with an increasing pool of blackness oozing from it, eyes staring up at the ceiling longing for some otherworldly clue. The only noise I hear reverberating around the room is the sound of my gun belt shaking, and it’s when the walls start pulsating and closing in on me that I decide it’s time to get out of this enclosed space before it consumes me. I move north with a quickened step, open the north door with a slow creak and make the right decision.
You begin to befriend emptiness after a short while, it can be the only thing that keeps you sane. I start to grow in confidence, the shaking stops and my boots begin to carry me without me even having to tell them directions. Another corridor, another door; everything in this place looks the same, it must have been designed this way to install a sense of paranoia in its inhabitants. It works. The feeling of getting lost is enough to make my stomach turn over – the last thing you want is to be wandering around the halls haplessly when you catch a bullet in the back of your head. Even here, there’s more dignified ways to go. Like going out fighting, all guns blazing as they say. I pick up a clip someone’s been kind enough to leave on a table, load it into my rifle and kick open the door, ready to face anything that dwells behind it.
In the middle of a room is a sorry pile of flesh and bones, one that at least ten minutes ago was alive. I pump a few rounds into it just to be sure, check the rest of the room for signs of a trap then go in closer to investigate, the poor soul’s blood splattered up the walls and covering the ground in a sickly orange hue. I rifle through his pockets for food and ammunition, but find nothing. It’s a boy, really, no older than sixteen, hands still gripped to his gun but the terrified gaze painted across his pale face tells me he never had a chance to use it. Peppered with bullet-holes, his body juts out at awkward angles, the flickering lamp behind me casting a demented shadow against the facing wall. There’s no time for compassion. I can’t stop to think if there was a brain behind those eyes, whether he was like me in trying to survive or whether he would have filled me with lead the first chance he got. I begin to stand wearily, having been in this position so many times before, when I hear the faint sound of footsteps. I stand bolt upright, alert and ready. This is it. Showdown. End game.
I’ve lost count of how many bodies have fallen by my hand today alone. You get used to it after a while, it feels natural, if you can believe something as ridiculous as that. I don’t remember the first one I killed, it must have been so long ago, but I must have passed the stage of fear quite a while back; in fact, seeing a body slump to the ground now gives me a giddy thrill, a minute feeling of power within this confined space, almost like I’m doing what I’m told, being a good student for teacher. Perhaps killing others is what will get me out one day. The fellow at the other end of this room might just be my ticket out of here. He’s about to find out how far I’ll go. Eyes closed and heart thumping, I drop my shoulder, turn and advance.
He fires the first shot, which whistles past my head and shatters a gas light behind me. I unleash a volley of fire at him, aiming low and rising up, but he flits from one side of the room to the other, spinning around my bullets and returning his own, one of which catches me in the arm. I dive for cover, landing on my mangled limb, the pain ripping through me as I fire blindly around the corner, listening to the sound of my bullets tear up the surroundings and the satisfying noise of flesh withering. One each. We’ve both taken hits, but we can both take it; after a while, even a gunshot wound doesn’t even register. The room is quiet but for the sounds of our breathing and the shatter of glass and brick as it falls from the wall. My ammo is low, only two shots left. I figure I have one for him, and maybe one for me. Almost in unison we rise and charge each other, and the room suddenly becomes alive again.
I’m hit in the stomach by a wave of bullets and I feel the bile seeping into my bloodstream as the room flashes red. I aim as best I can at my adversary, but my bullet sails past his head and I drop to my knees defeated, knowing I can’t possibly reload and fire in the time it’ll take him to finish me off. A shadow looms over me. I look up and a smile forms on his face, a face I’ve seen so many times before, I see it when I sleep and I see it on the face of everyone I kill. He levels his rifle at my head and says something in a language I don’t understand. This is it, release. At least I went out fighting.
Click.
I can still see his face, though my eyes are closed.
Click. Click clickclickclickclick.
When I look up, I see a different person standing in front of me, his face the colour of stony grey, a confused grimace upon his face, no longer smiling but cursing his weapon in the same alien language . His gaze meets mine, and for a split-second there’s mutual compassion, a feeling that the end is finally upon us. I hesitate no longer, raise my weapon and spit a bullet that clocks him straight between the eyes, his body jerks backwards and he spins like a ragdoll, smashing into the boxes behind him. I don’t bother to check his body.
A booming voice floats through the air, informing me that my enemy is dead. I don’t know who the voice belongs to, or where it comes from but I’ve heard it before, many many times. Is it God? I honestly can’t say. I’ve no concept of God anymore. All I know is that should I ever come across the person behind the voice, this ethereal figure that’s been toying with me for as long as I can remember, it’ll be the last time I ever turn a gun on another living being before I turn it on myself.
Everything slows down and comes to a halt.
Black, a long pause, then light.
It feels as though I have been trapped in this infernal maze forever.