by Krishandra Murphy

As the sun became darker, and the sand reflecting in the sunset, the man walked to the village with the stone walls that look like it was made centuries ago. With what looked to be different types of symbols that he didn’t recognize, he tried to find a way in, but he felt like he was being watched as he looked at the wall. Then just as he was thinking, he heard a hollow sound of the stones moving one after another. As he looked on, he moved inside the village walls only to be greeted by many people with gifts and praises, but only when he first arrived, many people greeted him but a few other people looked at him with a crooked smile. Almost, as if, like they were trying to hide something down below.

After the encounter, with the villagers, he came back the next day with a present of his own, but not as much as they had given him. Which confused him, due to their generosity for a stranger. It was almost as if they treated him like royalty, making him statues and such in an old building. Where they would dress up with gold and copper, making the building almost look like an emperor’s courtroom, but he still felt something was wrong. It felt to him ever so empty, and one room, which no one acknowledged, looked rusted and cracked with tints of red seeping through the cracks and on the rusted stone tiles. If you looked closely enough you could see phrases and symbols, like nothing he would ever see here. The closer he would get to the room, it seemed to empty out and many people would drag him away into conversations, like it was normal, but the way they looked at him you would think it was a mad show. A mad show with drool and sweat on their forms, while it would soak into their clothing, almost changing in color as the substance interacted with each other. As he was about to leave again to explore, people booed him and asked him to stay, with some of them balling with tears in their eyes but smiles still on their faces. He politely declined, and went on his way away from the city for now.

But, curiosity got the best of him, as he walked on the tiles again he wasn’t greeted by friendly (If you would call it that) faces, because they just stared at him with nothing more but an empty face and such. He tried to enter the building, but the people went in front of him, however none of the people moved. When he tried to get in, but he looked again, he noticed a few less people and chanting below in the sand, causing it to seem like quicksand. It kept him feeling still like he was almost drowning, and as he tried to leave, everything turned black and the sun beating on his back with people now surrounding him, as he looked on he felt panic and he couldn’t breathe, because the people he  thought he knew, now making him feel like he was losing alone and dark.

As he woke up, he was clothed in white clothes, as he was being carried to the crimson rooms with the rust attaching itself to the room. Almost like it was the only thing holding the room together, as the door opened he was carried into the dark hallway, to him it looked almost like it was a blank page, full of nothing. As he reached the end of the tunnel he was placed in the middle of the room, and what he saw was a thing of nightmares. He looked around to see blooded corpses with some of them sticking out with broken bones and marrow seeping out of the bodies, all dressed in the white clothes, all carved with symbols and some words, including “Not the one, not our savior, FAILED FAILED.” And as he tried to get up, he tried get up he suddenly realized that the bones on his legs were shattered and collapsed into themselves, while being dragged. It became clear to him all he wanted to do was scream but he couldn’t. Because his tongue was cut out and bleeding on the floor, and his jaw nearly bashed in, all he could do now was to watch as the leader of the group, just smiling and clearing his voice to the masked people in black, with splatters or red on the sides of them in different styles, like the walls he previously seen when he first arrived.

“Welcome to what everybody has been waiting for, the time is now, where we have to show our savior our praise and try to summon him with this new defined spirit so he can bless us.” He heard the old man in white say these words, to another person beside him, whispering in his ear with his blonde hair somewhat coming out of the hood blocking his face.

“Now could someone please give me the knife so we can start the ritual of the mighty god” demanded the old man, still standing up while the  yells of his people, and the blonde haired boy, with the golden knife that was still crimson blood stained. Now the blonde man who’s hair that he had seen came out of his hood, walked up to the now broken and beaten gasping, almost sobbing man, and then the blonde haired man raised up the knife as he sunk it deep into the collar bone, dragging it all the way down, until his intestines poured out. This created the blood, that now the people down below had smeared amongst each other, it seemed catoutic. Now at the side of the wall where his body was dropped onto the hook, he was about to lose his breath for the very last time. That was until he noticed the rusted brick right next to him, and with all his might and everything he had left, he had punched the wall with all the force he had gained. Suddenly, the chanting grew louder, the brick fell causing all the others to fall. Also after the brick fell it caused sand to collapse in the room, with the chanting that suddenly stopped. Then they noticed the sand, and suddenly they all began to laugh and scream, in a panic because the room filled up with sand. He looked at the old man, and the blonde man with his tinted hood. And as his lifeless body was still on the crimson hook, with the others hanging on the hook with very little life left, he opened his mouth and said with blood pouring out of his eyes the following:

   “Hope you see your savor in hell, you damn demons” As he closes his eyes, and opens his mouth, welcoming the sand to choke the last breath out of him. And he would not let the wound be the one to take him.