Re: Kylie (Courage Wolf)
This dream.... Were those her children? Everyone seemed so happy, and Hope was growing up well! It was beautiful, and Kylie fell deeper into sweet dreams, before something changed... Something was different now, that was Garellia...
Turning her head to peer around the room, Kylie took a moment to realise that this was... her old room? She didn't remember it... or... she did now. She was infuriatingly small as well, childish emotions about being short rushed through her before she turned from the chair she was standing on and hopped down, seeing her toychest.
Rummaging around inside it, Kylie soon had her favourite stuffed... thing, she wasn't sure what it was! But Reggie had made it for her and all was right with the world! Hugging it tightly to the bright yellow sundress she was wearing, Kylie skipped down the hallway to the kitchen and began tugging on her mother's shirt, she was hungry. In a moment sweets, it's cooling... Her mother... mommy, she... had parents. Looking up into the green eyes of her mother, Kylie hugged her leg and pouted. This didn't make any sense... she had never remembered her parents... Reggie had said... She had never remembered...
It was... a full day of bliss, being held by her mother, playing tag with Reggie and cuddling her father as he read her a story before bed. She wanted to play though! It was summer, and the fading heat of the port city, and the cooling breeze continued to push through her bedroom window. She couldn't sleep. Holding her toy, Kylie waited until Father had left, and hopped back up on the chair, looking out at the moon. This was all very strange, she was herself, and this child, and the thoughts of one were bleeding into the other, and she couldn't shake the smell of that damned pie.
Kylie, from her place as backseat driver to this entire memory, and she was certain it was an old memory now, was still reeling from everything, she knew something was coming, she was screaming in her mind at herself, to run, to warn somebody, something was going to happen that changed everything, and Kylie, stunned and held prisoner by time, was clawing at the cage like a wounded animal with no other option. She couldn't stop herself from climbing down and trying to find daddy again, she couldn't speak when she noticed a shadow she had missed the first time... Into the bedroom of her parents, she couldn't Stop! Why couldn't she stop! What was happening!?
It struck her fully when she saw the empty bed, and things started to flood back into her mind, and she was forced now to simply sit, and see it all again, to smell and taste it, the stench of rot in the air, the rough grasp on her shoulder and the hand of her brother slapped over her mouth to stifle her scream, before another rang out downstairs, and kylie stomped on his foot, that was mommy... Why was she screaming!?
Down the stairs, through the shadows and into the flickering candlelight, before she found the sitting room, the furniture overturned, the sounds of snapping bones and torn flesh hitting her like a wall as she tumbled through a faintly shimmering veil, tripping on her nightgown. Kylie had stopped screaming at herself now, she was crying and a fear unlike any other she had ever possessed smashed into her mind as she just stared at the thing holding her father... or what was left of him. It's body floating several inches off the ground, no flesh to speak of, just... bone and muscle, organ and blood, as it held the obviously broken body of her father up by his savagely torn chest.
Mommy was pinned to the wall by... something, Kylie couldn't see it, before her gaze was torn from what was happeneing as the dessicated remains of her father's corpse landed at her feet, and she stared... and stared. She was in shock, she couldn't move or speak. There was her mother, and there was Kylie, trying for all her soul, to close her eyes, to forget, to not see what was about to happen, as her head turned to look at her mother with blank, unseeing eyes, as she was pulled across the room, screaming in a mix of defiance and terror as the creatures fingers curled around her neck, and an impossibly long tongue shot forward to push down her throat. Gagging, pulling at the creatures arm, Kylie watched, as her mother began to thrash, and wail, her body starting to wither, before black spots appeared on her arms and face, and she slowly rotted from the inside out...
Everything faded again, and she was in Reggie's arms, as he carried his little sister away from that place, running as fast as his young legs could, tears rolling down his face as she stirred, and he repeated the same words over and over. If you need to hide... Go down... Deep.. Go under. Go to the sewers, find the Rose. over and over, a mantra as he tried to keep his own sanity intact, as surely as Kylie's had been utterly shattered, as he slid through a sewer grate, Kylie clutched tightly to him, and into complete darkness, before Kylie slid into the black.
She burst awake, screaming and thrashing, fighting not with the practiced grace of her profession, but the terrified flailings of a small child, unsure of where she was, her eye's wide as she rolled off the bed and threw herself into the closet, slamming the door as she calmed down, pounding on the wall, screaming No... no... NO! as her fist impacted the wood over, and over again in absolute hysteria...