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4/6/09

The End Has a Start (dream story)

The End Has a Start
Created by: Aquilus Domini © 2008

1

"I think he's waking up."
"Yeah it looks like it."
Two voices came echoing to me from across a strange room. Apparently I had, at some point, fallen asleep and was just then waking up. There was an oddity about this though. No recollection existed in my mind of how I got there or where "there" even was.
"Where am I?" I asked the two shadowed figures in the corner, having no idea who they might possibly be.
"I wish I knew, but neither of us has any idea what the hell this place is. All we do know is that there's some insane fucker living here that likes to torture people and will eventually be the death of all three of us."
The shadow that had spoken came forward and introduced himself as Armand. His hair was long and black and his goatee was black as well. His voice was low and melancholy, which is what I expected due to his appearance. When the other finally came out of the darkness, I could see that he, too, had long black hair. However, he lacked any sort of beard, but instead had a very different distinctive feature; his deep and intimidating blue eyes.
"Yeah, the crazy fuck with a liking for long hair; he's going to kill me first. Hell, he hasn't even gotten to Armand yet. Every damn night I get dragged out of this room and into another, set on a table, tied down, and finally knocked out. When I wake up I'm always back in here with sores and slash marks all over my body. And they get worse every fucking time!"
You could sense fear and anger in his voice, which was far different from Armand's, low, but definitely not depressed.
Not wanting his friend to go on ranting about how shitty their situation was, Armand quickly changed the subject.
"What's your name?"
For a moment I almost forgot what it was, but it came running back in an instant.
"Aquilus Domini."
"Oh come on, that can't be your real name." said the yet unnamed man.
"True, it's not, but it's what I prefer to be called and what all my patrons called me when I sold them my art."
Armand spoke up, seeing that the conversation could quickly turn into an argument.
"Jessie, leave him be. It doesn't matter what his real name is. Nothing about us matters anymore."
"Fine." Jessie muttered out with a sigh.
For what could have been an hour, there was a great deal of awkward silence. I walked around the room, examining every inch of it. The only light came from a huge arched window. Upon looking out it, I saw that it was winter. Snow covered the ground and there was a woods off in the distance. The trees still had brightly coloured autumn leaves, which made the landscape seem confused. We appeared to be three stories up in what must have been a castle. The exterior walls were constructed of huge stones and there were large doors every five yards along the facade. The interior room was long, maybe 50 x 20 feet. A white door with a brass knob was directly across from the window in the center of the room. After thinking it over, I decided to try the door. Suddenly, Jessie spoke up.
"You can try all you want, but no matter what door you go out, you always end up back in one of the same three rooms. Either here, the living room (where the psycho spends most of his time), or in the room with the cadaver table and medical utensils."
"That's not possible." I stated bluntly.
"Maybe not anywhere else, but here it is. I know, I've tried to leave too." Armand informed.
"Alright, I guess I have no choice but to believe you two."
"Hey, Aquilus, you want to see something else that's weird?" Armand pointed to the window. He and I walked over to it.
"You know how there's a bathroom at the other end of the room? And how it's built so it would stick out the side of the building outside?"
"Yeah."
"Well, look out the window and tell me what you see."
"It's just flat. It doesn't seem possible, but the entire wall is flat." I was amazed and baffled at the same time.
"Yeah, it's flat. I'm starting to wonder if this castle is like the famous house that had the doors that went to nowhere and stairs that went up into walls." Intrigued yet somewhat scared, Armand then said what everyone was thinking...
"I don't think this is real."
"It sure as hell feels real!" Jessie added.
"Well, we can't just wait around to find out if it's a damn dream. If Jessie's being tortured at night by some psycho, I don't think we have any time to waste. Maybe we should start figuring out a way to escape." I felt it was possible and I knew deep down that they thought it was too.
A few minutes went by. All three of us were quiet but we all had contemplative looks. Armand was the first to speak up about a plan.
"I'm thinking that we might be able to get out the window. I know it doesn't have a latch to open it with, but maybe we could break it. We could tie the sheets from the beds together to make a rope, climb out the broken window and then we can make a run for the woods... Tomorrow, definitely, we're going to get the hell away from here. Does that sound good to you guys?"
Jessie and I both nodded our heads. None of us knew whether or not it would work, but we did know that we had nothing to lose.




2

For a while there was no conversation. We all had questions, particularly about how we had ended up in such a twisted place. It took a few hours, but finally I broke the silence and asked what I knew we all wondered.
"How did we all get here?"
Jessie and Armand looked at each other and then back at me. They couldn't remember either.
"We don't know." Jessie said.
"I know I've been here longer than Armand. There's no way to tell time, but I'm assuming I was here about 2 months before he showed up. That's when the psycho decided to make his presence known too. So, I've been here for maybe 6 months.
The last thing I remember is being in an alley way and seeing some chick walk by then I ended up here."
Armand sat silent, just staring off.
"Hey, Armand, what do you remember?" I inquired.
He looked at me bleakly and made the decision to speak instead of stay quiet.
"Honestly, I remember driving to kill my girlfriend's parents. We had planned it for weeks." his voice was sad. "I miss her, but to be truthful, I'm glad I never made it there. I really didn't want to do it, but she felt the need to run away and she said that was the only way."
Jessie and I both looked at him with surprise. He didn't seem like the kind of person capable of murder. Armand saw the baffled looks and turned the attention back to me.
"So, Aquilus, inform us as to what happened to you."
Still looking at him with surprise I gathered my thoughts and spoke.
"I had been on top of a building. It seemed pretty high. I think I was supposed to throw someone over the edge. I don't recall getting to do it though."
After hearing about what happened with Armand, Jessie didn't seem shocked to think that I was a murderer.
"It sucks that we can't remember how we got here exactly. And that we can only remember the moments before going blank... Perhaps we're dead." with the harshest of bluntness, Armand gave us the truth we all wished to avoid.
Jessie, in a bit of a denial, asked how we could possibly be dead. He pointed out that we still ate, drank, pissed and shit. We apparently could feel pain as well, which was something he made very clear.
Despite the facts that Jessie stated, Armand and I could definitely tell that we weren't in the real world anymore. Deep down he knew it too.
"If we're fucking dead, how the hell do you two suppose we're going to get anywhere. The outside could just be an illusion and this oddity of a castle could be our hell for the rest of whatever the fuck eternity is!" Jessie was angry, frightened, and above all, he appeared defeated.
"It looks like it's getting late, maybe we should just calm down and go to bed. Leave all these thoughts for tomorrow." Not wanting to hear anymore, Armand went to his bunk and laid back. Jessie just watched him, disappointed at the fact that his only friend for 6 months wasn't going to entertain his fearful questions.
I sat for a while in one of the three chairs that was against the wall. It looked like a sickly green in what light there was in the room. Jessie's chair was some god awful pinkish hue and the one Armand had been in looked a faded blue. It was an odd thought, but I wondered what kind of weirdo picked out the furniture. The bunks were like standard prison beds, two were bunk bed style and the third was a twin. They all had metal frames, painted the same faded blue as the one chair. In front of the little row of chairs was a small low set coffee table. That piece of crap looked like it was something out of a ghetto dump. Made of some weird wood, it had cracks and splinters galore and looked extremely weather worn. It obviously served its purpose though. There were dishes sitting on top of it. I gathered that Jessie and Armand were fed well and wondered if I would be too if we didn't end up leaving.

After Jessie finally went to bed (he took the twin), I climbed up into the bunk above Armand. I laid there in the quiet thinking about our situation when I suddenly heard footsteps from outside the door. They seemed far away at first but became very close. Pulling the covers over my head real quick, I pretended to be asleep. The door slowly creaked open and a bright incandescent light flowed in. I could see through a small opening in the blankets that a man with long black hair had brought something in and set it on the ghetto coffee table. His next move was toward Jessie's bed. The opening didn't allow me to see Jessie get up, but I could hear his and the other man's footsteps. Once again I caught sight of the long haired man, this time, he wasn't alone. Jessie looked back as he walked out the door and the light quickly bipped out when the man closed the door behind them.

"Don't worry..."
I about shit my pants and rolled over backward when Armand started to talk. He scared the hell out of me; I thought he was asleep and I had gotten very jumpy after seeing what must have been "the psycho".
"He always brings him back in the morning before I wake up."
"So that's the psycho'?" I asked panting, still trying to regulate my breathing after being freaked the hell out.
"Yeah, just go to sleep and Jessie will be back in the morning."
I had questions, but I felt they could wait. Jessie could probably answer them better than Armand anyway. I turned on my side and decided to go to sleep.




3

Morning arrived and I awoke to a trembling figure standing in front of a pool of red on the floor. I jumped out of the bunk, knowing what I was about to see wasn't going to be pleasant but I wasn't prepared at all for what I did see. Armand turned to me as I walked up behind him to get a better look. His eyes were filled with the sickest kind of horror. He attempted to say something, but no words came out when his mouth moved. I moved to the side and viewed what used to be a human body, sitting in the ghastly pink chair.
Blood had pooled all over the floor. It was still the bright happy red of the living. Skin with long black hair connected to it floated on top of some of the puddles. My gaze moved from the floor to the mess in the chair. The head no longer had skin or hair. You could see the muscular structure of the face perfectly. Both blue irised eyeballs hung down to the cheeks, dangling from their retinas. Most of the skull cap was missing, leaving most of the brain exposed. Both ears were gone, as were 3 toes and a hand. A few feet away from the body was a hewn penis on the floor.
For a long time I stood with my mouth gaping. I'd been a contract killer for years but had never seen anything as disgusting as that. Words couldn't adequately describe the condition of Jessie's body. Armand stood staring, frozen and silent. His trembling had gone away. I tried to keep my composure but it was difficult. There seemed to be just the choice of puking or passing out. I didn't even try to make it to the bathroom. Brown liquid flew out of my mouth and landed a few inches short of the carcass. Armand threw up a second later but he didn't even seem to notice it.
Turning away from the horror, I thought about what could happen next. At any given moment Armand and I could end up just like Jessie.
"Armand."
I didn't get an answer from him.
"Armand, come on, say something!"
There was still no reply so I grabbed his arms and shook him, hoping to wake him out of his terrified state.
"Armand, we have to leave!"
The only response I got was a small nod. It was relieving to know he was still close to sanity, but at the same time I wondered if he'd be able to help with the getaway.
I moved to the beds and ripped off the sheets. Armand was watching me as I tied them together into a rope.
"Do think it will work Aquilus? Do you really, honestly, think we'll get away?"
"I don't know, but we have to try. We don't need to end up like Jessie. What a shitty way to go. He was probably skinned before death... We have to do this."
I spoke calmly and somewhat apathetically. We needed to distance ourselves from what happened in order to think clearly.
"Break the window Armand."
My hope was that the task I'd given him would snap him away from his thoughts. He looked for items to throw at the window, but found nothing that would suffice. All the room’s furniture was bolted to the floor boards and the dishes from the table weren’t strong enough to go through. At one point he looked at his hands, then to his feet, as if contemplating whether or not he could shatter it by kicking and punching. We both knew it wouldn't work.
"I think we're going to have to leave the room to find something hard enough to bust the window."
Dread crossed my face. I could feel the colour drain out of it.
"It's not something I want to do either, but it's necessary."
His words came out clear and calm. I wasn't sure if he was still sane. The idea seemed like a death wish but I had no choice but to agree.
"Alright."
Both of us walked to the door. Armand turned the knob and pulled it open. There was a little bit of light coming from a TV in the corner of the new room. A brown and blue plaid chair sat in front of the television. The carpet was a puke coloured form of gold and the walls were pure white. In the chair there was a person with long black hair.
"That's the living room. The psycho sits in the chair all the time watching the same show. The door always leads to this room first, then every other door leads to one of the three rooms and if you go out this door a second time during the day, it takes you to the "cadaver room". It's really very confusing."
I nodded like I understood what he was whispering, but it didn't make sense to me at all.
"Let's get this over with."
Creeping into the living room, we made our way to a door on the right side wall. It was just out of the psycho's view. Half way to the door, a loud creak came flying out of the quiet. We'd made a wrong step. Wheeling around, the psycho stood up and started towards us.
Armand and I bolted for the door and ended up in the "cadaver room". There was no time to grab anything to break the window in our room. The psycho was right behind us. We went for a door on the other side of the cadaver table and ended up back in the living room. The black haired man almost grabbed Armand when we went through the door on the right side wall again. This time we were back in our room. Our only way to escape was to jump through the window. We both flew toward it. The glass shattered and then everything went black.
When I came to, I was alone on the snowy ground outside the massive castle. I looked around me, but Armand was nowhere to be seen. My thoughts went into a dismal territory. Had the psycho gotten him?
It should have been cold, but it wasn't. Standing outside for a moment, I looked around. There was a large cemented area off to the left side of the castle. Light blue 1950's shaped buses were lined up. Elderly people in Hawaiian flower print shirts were getting off of them. They looked like they were going on a long vacation in a sunny paradise. Most of them were smiling. It was an extremely odd site.
The thought of going over and talking to them was passing through my brain when I heard a shout. It came from above me. To my surprise it wasn't a disturbing figure of horror, instead, it was Armand.
"I'm going to get down there! Don't go anywhere!"
It looked like he was on the fifth floor. I wondered if he had killed the psycho. About a minute later Armand came out the door at the bottom of the facade.
"How the hell did you end up back in there?"
"You were passed out on the ground, I thought I'd find out more about this place. I went back in and found that everything was empty. No furniture, no people."
"Really? I saw weird shit too. These old people are getting off of buses over there."
I pointed to the left. Armand watched the little old people for a moment.
"Maybe we should find out where the bus goes next?"
Armand's voice perked up and he smiled after the question.
We quickly made our way through the snow to the buses. We walked to the first in the line. All the passengers had evacuated that bus. A driver sat inside on a bright red seat. We walked up the bus stairs and asked where the bus was going next.
"Well, it looks like we're going to travel to New York City."
Armand and I must have looked a little lost because the driver then told us it wasn't far and we could ride for free if we wanted. We found a seat and waited for the bus to start.




4

"So the rooms were empty?" I asked.
"Yeah, nothing was in them. I traveled all of the fifth floor. Nothing. The doors were normal too. I don't know what the fuck is going on. I'm completely baffled by this entire experience."
"Do you still think we're dead? I mean, if we are, apparently we can die again."
"Yeah, Aquilus, we must be dead. Snow isn't cold and we don't get hurt falling from three stories up. I wish I could know where Jessie's at now. He's dead but maybe, he's somewhere else now. Maybe the whole damn thing was an illusion. I don't know. He had been a good friend, I'd like to find him again some day."
Tears were building in Armand's eyes but he held them back from falling.
"Don't worry, I'm sure where ever he's at now, he's alright."
"I didn't even really get to know him, we never talked about our pasts with each other. When I told you two about killing my girlfriend's parents, that was the first time I'd talked about it since getting here. He'd never spoke of anything from his life."
"Armand, everything will work out. We'll find him again, I'm sure of it."
It was difficult trying to comfort him but he did seem to find some solace in my words. We were quiet for a while. The bus engine started up. After a little bit we were leaving the evil castle behind. As we went along Armand and I stared out the windows. Every season existed at once as we road by trees and fields. Trees wore their autumn colours, the ground was covered in snow. Flowers sprang forth in the fields and rivers flowed gently. We didn't see any houses or other castles along the way. Before we knew it, we started looking at tall buildings and loads of street lights. It was night in the city and day outside it. The driver stopped the bus.
"Everybody off!"
Armand and I got off and gawked at what we saw. An odd assortment of people walked by us. Some of them were half animal while others were pale white vampiric things. A few looked human, which was relieving.
Together, we made our way down the sidewalk. At the end of the block there was a medium height building with a sign reading Vacancy. Feeling we had no choice, we decided to go in to stay the night. The desk clerk was one of the vampiric things. She checked us in and gave us our room key. We climbed a winding staircase to the 13th floor and walked down a long hallway with dark red carpeting. Our room was at the end, number 69. Armand and I laughed a little, then walked in. To our amazement, we had roommates. One appeared to be a werewolf while the other two were normal humans.
"Hey hey, new room-mates fellas!" the werewolf shouted. The other two came forward to introduce themselves.
"Hey there, I'm Blondie and the wolf guy other there is Jicker."
"And I'm Ehlin. You two are...?"
"Armand and Aquilus."
"Welcome, friends. Feel free to look around and get comfortable."
Armand and I did look around and noticed a few odd things but nothing seemed that strange anymore. After we were done examining the room and bathrooms we walked over to the table where the three were playing a game of poker.
"We don't want to be rude, but can we interrupt you for a moment?" I asked them.
"Sure no problem." Ehiln said.
"We've got a few questions."
"Alright then..."
"Well, first, are we dead? And is this place actually a permanent residence or a just a hotel?
"Ha ha, the boys aren't sure about themselves!" Jicker said to his friends then looked back to us.
"Of course you're dead. Everyone in this world is dead. We've all come from different times and different places, but we're all dead as dead gets. You're on what we call, the 'first level'. This is the plane right after death. You can stay on it or leave it when the time comes. Some of us can even show up as ghosts in the human realm. Scares the shit out of them but we think it's hilarious.
And yeah, this is a place you can stay permanently. You have to pay a little rent but it's your's. So you need to get your asses out there and get a job hahaha"
Armand felt the need to ask a few more questions. His curiosity was not satiated.
"Can you die if you're already dead?"
Ehlin gave him the best answer he could have ever hoped for.
"Oh yeah, you can die twice, three times even more. If you die on the first level you're sent to the next or sent back to the human realm. It depends on how you die the next time around. If you're murdered or commit suicide, which is a difficult thing to accomplish here, you get sent back as a new human. If you die by some bizarre accident, you go to the next level or plane."
A smile came out on Armand's face. He'd never appeared so happy. With a jovial voice he asked the next few questions.
"Have any of you ever been to this Castle outside the city?"
Blondie looked up from his cards.
"I've been there. It's not a pleasant place. I was stuck on a floor with serial killers. I think all the old people that show up there on buses get a different experience than the rest of us common youngsters. Is that where you two started out?"
We both told him yes and Armand continued his questioning.
"These are the last questions for now, I think. Where did the half animal half human and vampire people come from? And where do we get jobs?"
"We're the result of our problems. We were all drug abusers. Apparently that shit affects the life energy or something." Jicker smiled, but obviously didn't like to think about the past.
"You can get a job anywhere, just look in the paper's classified. It's just like back in the human world." Ehlin ever so helpfully told them.




5

That night, after everyone had gone to bed, Armand and I talked for a while about how things were going to be. We both realized that everything was going to turn out alright. There were jobs we could get and we had three new friends. Death had been strange but it was going to be a good place for us. This was a second chance that we couldn't get in life. We were both excited about making the most of our new existences. For a while neither of us could sleep, but then Armand fell into dreams and I followed soon after.



-----------author's note----------
This was a dream i had one night. Yeah, wacked out isn't it? I've got the psychology behind it though. While one character shares my pen name, he is however, not technically me. He is what is referred to as, my shadow. The embodiment of all that i cannot be in waking existence. (What a wicked beast i would be if i was all that.) I was able to determine that all 4 characters were dream embodiments of various emotions. Armand=sensitivity/intelligence, Aquilus=arrogance/courage/mischief, Jesse=fear/pain/anxiety and The Psycho=senseless insanity. Jesse is somewhat killed off, therefore subconsciously i was attempting to annihilate those aspects he represented. As for the rest, i could spend an eternity writing about the meanings.

There are two stories thus far that follow this one. Both are the back stories of two characters, Armand and Aquilus. Those tell how each ended up in the strange room with ugly furniture.

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