Eidolon Atomic
Chapter four: Man Eater

Sadness overwhelms me as I try y hardest to cry, but nothing comes out. I try to do anything to make my tears flow, but they never do, it would be such a great release to do so, but the tension building in my soul seems to start to drive me to rage and anger instead.

Now released from the grasp of the monster that held me, I have rushed away from the viewing of this horrible place in time. My nerves cannot take it. The horror and shock of watching such a fall. I believe that this is it. That his life has ended, and now my only thought is to seek him out in this darkness where ever he is.

I wonder for what seems like days, yelling out in the darkness. But I do not replace anyone, and only the emptiness responds with its ever smothering silence.

After so long, I sit down in place and then begin to sob out-out reflex in a state ob absent body, but as I do, the replaying images of his demise, replaces me, forming out of the blackness, chasing me as I run, so I am forced to run even longer. It seems I will be forced to watch this torment for all eternity. The sound of deep lacerations on bones, and rigid vicious stone replaying until my soul simply goes insane.

Eventually, the same creature replaces me. The sickly looking thing that seems to haunt me at every corner of my attempt to escape.

“Was this your plan all along you monster, to trick me into torturing myself. To keep me trapped in a hell of my own making, damn you! Damn you!!” It, flinches as pour the last drop of my emotions out at it, no other way to re-leave the emotional tension building in my phantasmal strings. The notes are a scolding hot substance that I know harms it; and threatens both of our safety, as I want it to.

She recovers from the small lashing I give it with my voice, coughing up more fluid with her thought.” You fool, it was not my intention to cause you harm, I warned you of what this path holds, of the trials you face, but, in all honesty, I was not expecting such an odd circumstance to take place.”

The apparition looks at the moment that plays out before me, “It seems we both may have bigger concerns in our way than we thought. But, I must tell you now, before you commit to the realm of the mad, that this torture you endure, is set upon you by something fearfully powerful. In part, it is your creation that brings you into its arm’s length.”

“My creation? How? I would not force myself to watch something like this. I would not create my own madness.”

“Most do but are not even aware of it. It is simply something they cannot see or comprehend. Something that you’re subconscious does not understand, so it remains invisible. The moment of your confusion replays over and over as a struggle is fought to understand what is going on. But this isn’t all, it seems some type of parasite has latched onto this moment, something that is playing games with time itself.”

The field moves closer to me, uncomfortably so as it continues,” It’s hard to imagine that one such as yourself would have difficulty comprehending something like this, as it was, I thought you would be able to see the thing that plays with reality. Do not feel shame in your shortcoming, as I am sure we are both very distraught.”

“What do you mean? You see the same things I do, and yet you are not confused as to what we see.” I turn and face the image as it replays, “What is it that I am not seeing, what is it that has me so tortured and perplexed as to not see it so obviously for what it is?”

“That is something that I am going to have difficulty answering, but It happens to hear.” The creature points to the moment when the soldier replaces themselves distracted by something. Before blur moves through them and, chaos and blood replace who was once standing in their place. Some of the soldiers don’t even notice that they have died. “Something has entered the moment that shouldn’t have, something, that divides the frame of perception, it changes details every time, some slight to large, entire trees go missing, and more soldiers appear with different looking details on those ghastly suites. It is like something is stuck re-entering this moment over and over, and changes the path of time as it does.”

I’ve seen it in this moment before, I saw it the first time; but as though things like this seem to happen often. Many bizarre things live in the forest and memories of creatures that dwell in the darkness of the overgrown land, come to me now. A small catalog of deadly things spawned from the earth. Creatures of immense speed or force have been the source of more random attacks than this as they bend minds, and in so much of this played knowledge, I did not think twice what could have been at the origin of this attack. I share this lack of surprise.” Do you not, see where they stand? Those soldiers should know better where they are, it seems they forgotten what forest they are in, dropped their guard and focused too small.”

“This may be true, or it may be that your logic is tricking your perception, it did mine in such a way almost but I know better. As I looked upon the death of a few and have seen similar moments. “It points to the image again.” These hounds, I have seen them in my collection of lost images. They hold some type of extra sensory ability; do they not?”

This fact catches my attention, then let’s lose more knowledge inside my kind. “Yes, your right, the dogs; are psychic. More powerful than that of the men I the suites, they would have detected any creature to come close to them, four a hundred yards.” I say reaffirming her question. The cybernetic hounds hold a great deal of extra-sensory ability. They are made to break through the cloak that some animals use, and so far they have never failed.

This raises concerns, no creature has ever been able to sneak up on these dogs, it would take something so well hidden that in no way could it even exist, even as a ghost or haunting. Many deadly animals have the ability to camouflage themselves in a moment’s notice, as is why these animals have been fitted with such an ability. So the question remains, what is it that has attacked and murdered three soldiers, without ever being detected?

“I can sense that now you understand. Something is interfering, something that is not supposed to. I am only left to wonder to what extent this being has decided to become involved, and for what reason. Its timing was impeccable, but its intention is unknown. However; it seems it has saved your companions life.”

“What do you mean?” I ask not knowing what is implied.

“You searched for him here, cried out to his soul and yet you found nothing. If he were here, with that ability of yours, a soul in this place would have located you by now.”

“But; this place is so vast; how would you know if I could not replace him.”

“There is no real space here, no true distances, no lengths or expenses or even true time, it is only a figment of what the soul only understands in relative nature of what it has known in life. So to that boundary of dimension, distance and place are as close as you put them, meaning he would be right next to you if you so willed it.”

“Are you telling me, he survived? That; He lives and breathes still.”

“It would be easier to show you.”

I ponder for a moment, as mysteries surface as strange oddities in solving. I know the life left him as he stopped at the base of the hill, but maybe there is still a hope I have yet to realize. That is; if this creature tells the truth. “Then, show me,” I say now with some type of direction. However, something continues to bother me, for such a helpful thing, this creature seems to remain a mystery to me.” But first, before we continue, I must know your name. Who, or what, you are?”

“I told you; who, or what I am, is not important.”

“It is; more than you know. I have had dreams of you, nightmares of you ever since I was a small girl, you’re terrifying even now, and looking upon you brings back horrible memories, thing that claws at me from the dark. I don’t think I can trust you, without knowing what you are.”

It looks into the distance, off into the blackness and coughs, after a moment of a long pause in words, it manages to stop its sickness long enough, to finally give an answer. “I think, I was a person once, a human being that; became something else. Like you, I found myself endowed with power but that did not last and for some time, I have remained to hear, in this darkness, calling out to whoever could hear me.” It then turns to me.” But, my real name has been lost to me for some time, as no one has said it for what feels, like eons. However, if you must call me something, to put some type of meaning or purpose to my existence, or bring light to my form, the shadow that has haunted you for so long, you may name me, as Rem.”

“Rem?” I ask the name brings up more questions. “I’m familiar, with an anagram that takes such a pronouncing, does it not stand for.”

“I am unsure, as to what it stands for, I replace myself sometimes called by other individual’s darker thoughts, and dreams. I have seen many secrets, stood to watch in many nightmares. I am actually seen or remembered by very few, so my existence is much like that of a shooting star in the night. You will have to forgive me for my intrusions in the past, as for some reason, you were the only one strong enough to remember.”

“Your choice of the name doesn’t do much for your case in apology,” I say letting her know the frame that he placed her in. It is one of cautious hostility. One where I can keep a close eye on the actions she takes.

“You do not trust me still.” She says watching my disagreement. “Even as I show you my intention to help?”

“Would you trust the monster that lives inside your nightmares?”

“There are things far more frightening than I whitch dwell in darker places than this. I have seen them, and know of their intent.”

“Is that why you need my help? Is it because the parasite you mentioned before, the one that you pointed out. Is some type of, the enemy of yours?”

Rem looks at me for a moment, “The definition of the word, enemy, is a lost one. I don’t know what it is or what it wants. Only that it seeks some type of power. And, that for some time, it has been manipulating the world to its will, focusing on you, it too is a dream dweller, and though you may have never seen it, it found you as well.” Rem puts her long thin spider leg like fingers on my shoulder once again. The cold I feel from Rems touch still causes me to tense. “I want to know what it wants, and stop it from toying with lives. I sense that it is evil, but to what degree I do not know. You can help me stop it.”

“How,” I ask cautiously, as it seems I have been caught in the center of some type of conflict that has affected my life in more ways than one.

“Just watch all you can, and show me what you see. Now, behold, the face of your beloved.”

I steel myself, knowing that now, a large mystery is at hand. I have never backed down from something like this, not even in death it seems. Many things are still unknown to me, but now I, at least, I have some inkling of what to expect in opposition. “I am ready,” I say focusing my intentions. Hopefully, I will be strong enough to see this to the end. As I, no longer have death to fear; it is only the knowledge it brings that scares me.

The image starts over from the fall, I watch the soldiers die, the dogs that go along with them, the confusion that ensues and the fall that hurts me with every second it is watched. Then the bottomed earth hits hard, and life fades from him. I almost turn away once again, but I may need to know keeps my eyes open and my mind focused, I break through the wall that has kept me turning and running, and now see the other side of its shadow. A glimpse of death for a man with more problems than I had realized.

The young man, now at a standstill at the base of this extended tumble. He can’t move, but his mind is swimming in his pains induced hallucinations as it dances on the step of deaths door. He has never been this close to death before, not in his own right to it passage. But still in watching so many others die, it is without the realization that he replaces himself slipping away into his last moments.

Above him; through the blackness. The now bloodied fugitive can barely hear the surviving soldiers as they try to talk over the urgent sound of sirens and gunfire as something now gives these Black Skulls the fight of their lives. They now stand at the edge where the renegade had so foolishly misjudged his path and tried to climb down. Gun shots and yelling manage to replace their way to his ears, and add to the mix of confusion that his soul now swims in.

This combination of noises serves as a backdrop, as their exclamations begin to seamlessly blend into the ghosts of this young man’s own haunted psyche. Something from which he has no escape from. As all of us, have no escape from.

A woman; exotic beyond description. Calls to him from this stifling see chaos and darkness. The patterns of her skin mesmerizing as they glow like a lava lamp filled with rainbows.

Her words are swallowed by the high-pitched cries of an electric speaker. Cycled in its pitch of warning. But the intention of their sweet and soothing nature is still heard by the unhearing parts of the fugitive’s mind as they clear away the carnage of this man’s soul.

She slowly but steadily approaches, indescribable shades of changing color becoming pinker as the design imprinted on her skin; becomes more vivid with overtones of other colors as she weightlessly floats toward him.

Who is this woman, my heart sinks in the wondering of who this vibrant creature is? The scene plays out in the blackness as if it were to take place right in front me. Here in this odd afterlife. But, even as my anger tries to get the best of me, I watch with patience.

The woman’s hair burns like the sunrise fed through a thousand prisms; its colors call out this young man’s name as he lies face down in the darkness. Shades of greens, blues, yellows and oranges that transfer their swirling patterns into words that cannot be heard or read, but; only felt in their deeper understanding of conveyance. The softness of these words accentuates her open arms as they seem so ready to accept the young man. Making and offer to him that his body is unwilling to accept but too week to turn away.

A visage soaked with patterns beyond description in shades of color it is something even I replace hard to look away from. Colors as if; the tints of the sunburned sky are now becoming visible once filtered through the plum of a nuclear explosion. Super-heated ozone separating them into a color that someone could only see from the corner of their eyes, but only when the blast is directly upon them.

He can feel her hand gently caress his face, warming it like rays from a distant purple sun. Electric sirens like the recordings of a woman singing soon join into, and overpower the sirens, using their rhythm for the songs overtone. The sound is beautiful, lullabies from the ancient children’s songs that help the young replace absolution from the night, helping children in discerning it in its difference from the terrors of real life. As if the sweet low full tune is made only to make the blow of childhood seem less hurtful in its pitiful sincerity. A cushion underneath the fugitives tired head though unseen, its presence is still somehow known.

The song is sweet and calms his panicking soul.

“Come now my children, the siren will sway.

The daylight will come and the night runs away

The monster has fun in their own silly way

But the daylight will come, and the sirens will fade

Eve of the atom, atomic the clay

the sun in the night and the Phantom of ray

Trust in the atom, the sound clears away

Night time is gone, and the children will play

Trust in the sun, where all dreams are made.” She says the song wrenches on a time long past in decades of silt, and it brings a calmness to even me as I hear it.

The woman to embrace him, her colors sing gently as she pulls him into the soft grasp and warmth of her kiss as she finishes reciting her song, and running her hands through his dark hair. Her kiss is centered on a human face and human lips; so sculpted as if to seem like the soft bloom of a mushroom cloud as it rises from its place of collision. A comparable sensation to the one he feels when his lips and hers finally come together, a warm kiss from supernova sun poured into the shape of a woman, shaken about so as to lose all of its orientation. Something so warm and welcome, that no one could have possibly turned it away.

My heart is on the brink of breaking, I feel as if I have met this woman before, seen her somewhere in the reality of the living. Shook her hand and exchanged words as I looked into her treacherous beguiling face. I feel betrayed; but why? I do not know.

He lets her take him as his body refuses to move and his mind refuses to care, resisting slightly at first as his reflexes allow, but only to give in to his desperation. Kissing her back just as deeply as she does him. Placing his hands on the lower parts of her back and pulling her close with what little strength he can manage to muster. The two phantoms become locked in each other’s hold, keeping each from the cold darkness that surrounds them.

The kiss is long and heart felt as if to be two lovers were caught in an unending embrace. Lovers who are just now letting their feeling be known for the first time after keeping what they thought was a secret of their solitude. Letting loneliness be broken after years of being in its isolation. But still the young man can’t help but feel his betrayal in the back of his mind. A sinister thought that wrenches his brain and steals away the light in his judgment, and the warmth of his body.

The young man knows that this is wrong, knows that this kiss can never be what this woman wants it to be, never one of love, caring or concern. This moment is simply one of many that will forever be a lie, forever be a manipulation of weakness in an attempt to gain an un-achievable affection. But, never the less as if a black hole were ever to disguise itself as a star. Its proximity and contrast to darkness make her something that this young explorer is unable to get away from. Her trickery, reaching out with light only to keep a hidden darkness concealed from a distance, ending the journey of many a vessel to explore the unknown. But, in her soft and comforting rock of a silk like a hold, he replaces that he may not be strong enough to resist this. As doing so once caught is almost impossible.

I feel as though I should intercede, do something to help him keep his strength. I feel that deep down he longs for someone else, someone he lost and has been fighting long and hard to get back. He wants to keep to his faithfulness to the one who he truly loves. However, it is difficult for me to trust his nature now, as my supposed killer, a man with the ability to mask his emotions, it seems I have very little to trust. Everything seems to be made to cover another lie in this moment, and all I now know is, what I see.

This young’s man’s heart, the lonely heart of a supposed murderer, now showing its true nature. Its loyalty does not belong to me. I know this and so does he, this appearance does little to sway his emotions to the rhythm of a foreign lullaby, as it already swings to that of another, something I now perceive as treacherous . Her song in the sirens does relax him, unfamiliar with its tempo is, it reminds him of one he heard in another darkness, in a place so warm like this one cradled in someone arms. Can men’s hearts be so week? Be so fragile as to become like children in the hands of anything warm? His loneliness is immense, but surely. There must be more strength to be had than this.

This woman that now holds him brings a comfort of her own, but nothing like this has ever taken place between them in the real world I’m sure of it. The fugitive can’t help but feel a deep sadness well in his heart. As this seems like such a disloyalty to everything he has ever stood for. Everything he was taught in respect for another he had come to know so intimately.

It seems so strange, that in this moment of weakness that she is the one who replaces him in the darkness, who gives him warmth in the cold struggle of the primordial night, and caresses him so gently as to become locked in such affection. But, it is with this thought, this negativity in this young man’s heart that he can soon sense the sinister nature of another presence in the endless darkness. Even though this moment seems so natural, it’s now inwardly false disposition seems to be manifesting in the background as a horrid gaze of endless agony and rage.

He begins to try and look our way, but can’t as his head is pulled back into the kiss he can’t escape.

Can he sense us? Are we beginning to manifest in his afterlife? Rem said that time hear has a lost sense. So in that definition, is this moment in the past, or is it a part of the present happening as I watch. If so I must speak with him somehow, to replace answers, before my heart breaks completely, and I am driven mad.

I concentrate my thoughts, and now in his mind, an image forms in the backdrop, though close in proximity it keeps in blurred focus. Stealing away this young man’s attention as it moves in, from out of the corner of his eye. My figure coming into focus from outside the edge of his full perception, but still within the area of his notice. Coming closer and becoming clearer somehow without my ever moving from a place, I stop right next to the both of them.

“How are you doing this?” Rem asks. “You should not interfere with the course of this moment.”

“You said yourself that there is something worse than you already involved.” I respond, “Maybe it’s our place to stop whatever it is at all costs.”

Rem looks at me knowing that I am right. “Don’t tempt me Pholinvantom, our place is only to watch and learn. Not to fight.”

“Maybe that’s was your place, but right now our ability’s combined have changed things. So either help me, fight off this thing, or wonder forever what your true purpose is. You said that time doesn’t exist here, it might even be that we have interfered already, but you simply didn’t see it.”

Rem thinks for a moment, perplexed, but then as we watch I can tell that something disturbs her about this display as well. She then reaches out her hand, and my doubled sense of things feel a split in the merging different instances of time and perception.

By its shape he can surmise that it is another woman maybe, or, at least, another person, but as its familiarity can’t be recognized it seems as though it is someone or something that simply does not belong where it is. He has never seen who this person is before, and does not recognize their place, the presence is something that would otherwise mean that their attendance in this moment is impossible.

Unfamiliar to him still as he opens his eyes to it, is the silver skin over her body reflecting a type of chaos it seems; even though there is none around her to be seen. As the young man tries to look at this incoming phantom the seemingly urgent look on her porcelain colored face is something which still slightly holds out of focus as if she were entering from the ground up.

The young man can feel the apparition as if she were rushing in with the speed of unreality. Moving ever closer to a mentally outstretched limb in order to intercept the moment he is locked in with the liquid heat explosion of a woman. A production of his naive mind he may be a reaction of his subconscious and all of its objections to what is currently taking place. The somewhat welcome advance of warmth and softness is difficult to turn away harder more so with every passing second of his lock within it. But the force from outside is strong as well, and pulls harder than the gravity of any megaton star, a pull that the young man could never conceive of.

Another noise can be heard in the darkness, another shrill lullaby sung in staggering key, only so as to offset and to assert its wrongness. A shrill scream of a song that begins to work its way to the center of the young man’s entirety. Scratching away at his surface with glass nails this, lullaby cuts deep with its melancholy overtones of insanity and drives hard its position of horror and pain.

She floats for what seems like forever, constantly out of arm’s length. Her face is ghostly but blurred as she approaches without approaching. Coming into form and from behind the woman that holds him. But as she still gets closer becoming complete with every moment of the sumptuous kiss, and with this realization, the young man can now tell that something is very wrong.

He becomes colder still as the silhouette of malformed gaze approaches, feeling the sensation now as if it were used like a steel glove to grip him. Though the only thing he knows is touching him is the woman he knows to be warm. The embodiment of warmth that he holds to seems to fade in contrast to the cold. The kiss he is locked into becoming more noticeably unreal, even though she, this hourglass drink of sunlight’s action’s; become more drastic and intense as well as if too deeply insist her loves for him and it’s real intensity.

He needs this he knows it, the warmth in this irradiant woman’s body. It is a need that the metabolic nature of his mass can’t escape the necessity of, as it pulls him in now more intensely than ever, this struggle however is a fight that she replaces herself losing the grip of the horror next to them is powerful than first judged. Both of them now share in a fleeting embrace of the moment as the kiss is soon to be no more. As if two were joined after a thousand years of waiting in the darkness that surrounds them both, coming together once in a fantasy that will never become fully real.

The other still approaches them, coming in faster now more than before. Something urgent and terrifying in its nature of raw expression. Though for some reason the young man so caught in-between the emotions of his mind and the needs of his body can’t quite focus on what it is. Or more shockingly why such a foreign figure is in this place of slight comfort and unreachable subconsciousness. But as it has yet to fully reach them; its urgency is still below his full notice.

As he turns his attention back toward the curved body now pressed so hard against his. The shapely bend of her figure held in the steel rails of his arms. He is forced once again to put the corner of his eye into full focus. Different now in his last attempt to see what this thing is that so begs his attention, is now crystal clarity, soon overwhelm the brim of his capacity to look upon such a grotesque horror.

The young man is met instantly eye to eye with sunken gaze and canyon like cracks in the skin what was once a woman. Her blackened mouth motioning out the patterns of the young man’s name as she places it on the required part of her lullaby. The muscles and sinew in between the open slits moving along with her gestures as she speaks; bare teeth in the place of where her lips should be. Black liquid oozes from the black crags and shingles of her face. As if the stress of simply uttering her ghostly song where to cause her to bleed out cold black madness and fear. Outstretched, her hand is almost upon the both of them, moving in from out of yet another corner in the darkness. Long spider legs finger ready to enclose around anything caught in their web.

But it is in the sufficient proximity and clarity that his name is finally heard. Emanated from the harsh black ooze as if her voice were nails being ground into liquid in and industrial cement mixer, chalkboards threw in for good measure and spewed out in sickly liquid sound.

Though this word it is only truly heard just once. It pierces the bubble of his unconsciousness with the sharp point of a shrill scream, but only a moment before he is ripped back in into full reality by the grip of the steel spider fingers that enclose around him. Success is ours as the veil is broken.

Light and color begin splitting the blackness like so many flames, pouring the ashes built walls of darkness down, like grains of fire. The transition to amend the true dominance that reality has over the fragile nature of what the mind perceives in dreams. The reality, the flame that can often set ablaze to the dreams and fantasies of any man, especially if even nightmares seek to trap him.

I watch this in his mind, as it transfers to my sight, and the veil only breaks for him, as he is ripped back into life.

The image of his subconscious dies in screams and echoes as the wall of color washes through and topples over his body; the unknown voice hitting the very pillar of his perception of reality with momentous brute force. All of it concentrated into a single, familiar two-syllable name. One that he knows belongs to him, Raymond.

His name is now known to me, as it is I who speaks it, it comes to me from within as I have known it all along, and however, I somehow found it forgotten. Raymond, the man I love, but as to the truth of his being my murderer only more known blanks can be drawn in sickly black ink.

Raymond wakes up, breathing in a deep gasp of air, he can feel warmth all over his body as he passes back into full awareness. As if to be a sensation held over by the encroachment and sudden loss of the body that found him in his blackness. Removed in his transition from the world of imagination to the darkness of the real life. But it is now that this warmth becomes reality, as something sits upon his chest.

He knows he should not have survived that fall, but cannot make sense of what he saw while he was in the void. It passes through his mind as he tries to hold on to it, but it seems in that passing through the life gate requires a toll of one’s memories.

From a position on his back, he tries to make sense of his surroundings. The darkness around him makes it difficult to see, but he can still make out a few basic shapes in the short distance of his sense.

His damaged eye creates a blind spot that narrows his view, cutting his sight in half, it hides the very serious problem now sitting on his chest. If he could hear me I would tell him not to move, but words don’t transcend death.

With his vision impaired not much can be collected from his blurred and tired vision. His body is stiff with injury and dulled to sensation, but he soon replaces that he is still able to move.

“Stay still,” I whisper, hoping that somehow he will listen. “Please just don’t move.”

He doesn’t hear me, to my gut wrenching shock, he doesn’t hear me. He strives to stand but something keeps him from moving. Turning his full attention to what it is, a very real fear soon grabs hold of every nerve still connected within him.

It stirs as he moves. Then quickly goes back to a state of rest pinning him down. As he turns his head it comes into full few, and panic soon fills him. It is a Gorgon, powerful beyond belief, and holding Raymond in place in its nest of death. A pile of thousands of human bones resting beneath the both of them.