#luminu things

No, this wouldn’t be happening if you were dead. You don’t think anything would be—

Another two beats. You feel especially dizzy, on top of the vertigo from having no sense of space or direction. 

Maybe something really did eat you alive, and now you’re in its stomach listening to its slow, colossal heartb—

Another two beats. You lose your train of thought again from the deep aching pain in your head that drowns out everything else. 

It sounds like it’s coming from outside of you, all around you, and within your head all at the same time. Your head feels too—

Another two beats. You think your brain might be melting. 

All you can hope to do is wait out the thing that might as well be hitting your head like a drum. Either it will stop or you will stop; this can’t go on forever. No, you can’t go on forever. 

The smoke starts to clear. Or something like that, you guess? It’s difficult to tell, but you think you can see a flash of purple with every head-splitting thump. It’s as if the black hole blanket covering all your senses changes color, or maybe like you’re seeing a flashing light through a thick, inky membrane. 

No, it’s coming and going in waves. The light swells before each beat and dims in the space between.  Or is it the reverse, swelling between the beats as if the noise scatters it away?

It doesn’t matter. You think it’s getting closer. 

It starts off like a welcoming, warm glow, like soft moonlight on your skin. You didn’t realize how cold you felt until each thundering beat brought the momentary warmth of the purple light, like a comfort to counteract the terrible heartbeats. You welcome it, so it comes ever closer and closer, soon washing over you like a warm bath. 

Then like a splash of boiling water. 

Then like licking flames. 

You are reminded of the urban legend of the frog boiled alive on the stove, except you, unlike the frog, never had the choice to leap from the pot at all. 

The light is reaching for you, grasping at the inside of your skull with long thin fingers made of molten metal. You think something might be reaching back. Something that is alive inside your head. 

Then it stops. 

You are flung awake, gasping for breath, like someone has just lifted you out of a pool of water. No, more like a pit of tar. 

You look down at your hands. No burns, no light, no—

Two beats resonate through you. You whimper quietly, sensing a mounting headache from the tension in your head. 

… Wait, where are you?

You look up. The room is barely lit, but you have no trouble seeing two figures in front of you. One is currently held by the neck against the wall, trying to kick and squirm away. He has four arms, carnival paint, several shiny dangly things on his horns, and is begging to be spared. His pleas are ignored. 

The troll holding him, however, is unlike anyone else you’ve ever seen. He is terrifyingly tall, built, and covered in glowing lime green tattoos, but you feel much more in awe than fear as he seems to have come to your aid. Bright flashes of electricity crackle around him and the bladed staff he’s holding in his other hand. 

You’re so caught up in watching him strangle this poor clown that you could have knocked right off the bed you’re sat on with how intensely you flinch when the door slams open. 

You hear the soft ring of jingle bells. 

Your chest tightens and your breath catches in your throat. Your own heart skips a beat, but the one in your brain beats instead. 

The lime green tattooed troll whips around and releases the clown’s neck, who immediately backs into a corner and merely watches. Kind of like you, you think. 

Another clown storms into the room. They are immediately pinned to the wall with a blade pressed at their throat. There’s a thick black smoke seeping out from under the empty-eyed mask they wore, which seemed to be… Trying to grab the other guy? You’re not sure, because regardless of what the smoke was doing, the light coming from his tattoos was easily keeping it at bay, burning up all the shadows. 

You think the tattooed troll is talking to this new clown. You can’t tell over the ringing in your ears from the loud beating that is still bouncing around the inside of your head. The words don’t sound real anyways, so you try to just shut out as much as you can and cope with just what you can’t get rid of— the echoing heartbeat that seems to just be a part of the contents of your skull cavity now. 

It feels like there’s a terrible little creature that has decided to take up residence on top of your brain and each beat of its terrible little heart is so far within your own head that you couldn’t ever hope block it out no matter how hard you tried. 

You try to pace your breathing, slow and even, to soothe your racing heart and loosen the tightness through your whole body. When you exhale, a heavy black smoke falls from your lips, not too different from the same stuff coming out from underneath the mask of the clown your savior has pinned to the wall. That makes the panic worse.

It feels like years that the two stand there. Your gaze flicks between them and the first clown, but to your relief he doesn’t seem to want to put you back in whatever nightmarish abyss you were in before. 

He finally backs off after you think you’ve spent an eternity just sitting there all coiled up like a tense spring. He walks to you, and both clowns watch. He offers a hand and you just stare at him for a moment, so overwhelmed by everything happening to you that it doesn’t register what he’s offering for a couple moments. 

“Fuck, what did you do to the poor thing? Lobotomize him?” He twists to look at the first clown for a second, but quickly turns back.

“C’mon. We’re leaving.” This time, more insistent. You finally reach out and grab his hand, but flinch away for a moment. You weren’t expecting a static shock.