July 27, 2010

A dream from the past

[A scence for a character from my Shadowrun pen&paper group. It's a dream, a nightmare, that haunts the character all night long.]

Late at night, you find yourself in the old penthouse, your parents used to own. A strange feeling hangs over your thoughts, as if there was a unknown presence hiding in every corner of the room.
You stand in the living room, but it's empty. All the antique furniture, the old chairs and carved tables, the memories of your childhood, brought to Seattle from europe, they're gone. You can't think straight, everything seems so familiar, yet so strange. And still, there is this presence lurking in the shadows. You wander through the penthouse, and as you stand before your old bedroom, you open the door. A look inside, the lights are turned on, but the room is not the room of the 15-year-old that it belonged to, but it's filled with the belongings of the little child, that grew up in England. It's full of toys and books. Books filled with theories and knowledge of the awakened world. At the end of the room, you look out the window, and something inside of you expects the skyline of Seattle, as you watched it every night, between your studies. Another part yearns the view out to the open gardens, the forest in the distance, that your house in England used to offer. But instead, all you can see through the dusty glass are the redmond barrens. There are burning cans, there are decaying buildings, rotten streets. The sky is black, no moonlight, no stars. Only ruin and misery.
The feeling of dread, the knowing of this strange presence, overwhelms your every thought and you start to cry. Through the dirty glass, over the darkness outside, you can see your face reflecting in the window.
You are 15 years old and everything is going to change.

Behind you, your mother calls your name. You turn around, but the hallway is gone. You stand on an empty street in the barrens. A street, that cracks under crushing weeds. A street of dread, with shadows moving in the corner of your eyes.
Behind your mother, you see the frame of the patio door of the penthouse. Your father appears behind your mother, holds her shoulders and looks into your young face with sorrow and regret. Your mother is about to whisper something, but you can't make out, what she is saying. She tries harder, but her words can't reach you. You want to walk up to your parents, as a loud gunshot disrupts the silence, the misery of the moment. Your father still bears dread on his face and he stares lifeless into your eyes, as the bullet enters his back, tears open his chest. Your mother falls forward, because the bullet is now stuck in her neck. In the distance, inside the door frame, in the middle of the street, you see a shadow. A shadow with a long coat, with a smoking gun in its hands. With a streak of silver hair hanging on either side of his face. Your mom is crawling before you.
Your are 15 years old and everything is going to die.

Your mother, bleeding from her neck, she says, "I'm sorry."
As you look up, your father is gone. Just this shadow with silver hair and a smoking gun is standing inside the door frame. Behind the frame, you now see the patio of the penthouse, Seattle's bright skyline on the horizon. The shadow, the killer of your parents, it nods at you, before it jumps over the railing of the patio.
Leaving your mother to die, you run after him. Standing on the patio, behind you the penthouse is complete again, full of furniture and plants. You look down to the streets of downtown, as the sound of another gunshot tears apart the night. . .

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