A very short (two pages) story which transfixed me as it came to me like a powerful daydream. I had to write it down immediately to try to capture the power of the feeling it engendered.
I was standing naked in my room when I saw a flash of light moving from my upper right to my lower left. At that moment something pierced my left forearm just above the wrist. It didn’t hurt at all. There was just a pulling sensation. I looked and saw a translucent thread that looked just like fishing line except it has little pulses of light in yellow, pink and green that flashed and moved along the thread.
Another thread flashed down through my right forearm. It seemed to come out of the ceiling and go down to the floor. All at once dozens of threads shot through me all over my body. This time they came from all different directions. I felt like I was inside a giant sewing machine, being threaded over and over again. It was startling, and very strange, but not altogether unpleasant. I looked myself up and down as well as I could and I looked just as I thought I would. Like someone who has been pierced all through with fishing line, with the lines held taut in different directions.
As I stood there I felt my body relaxing, really relaxing. I became wobbly and felt myself losing my ability to stand up. I felt myself becoming sort of gelatinous. After a short while the only thing holding me up was the threads. I peered down at my hands and forearms. The pink colour of my skin was fading out and I was becoming transparent. I could see bones and veins, but they were all transparent. I looked like rubberised glass, although I’m sure there’s no such thing.
Although they stayed taut, the threads moved all together and laid me on my back. Once I was on my back with my feet and hands in the air, I could see clearly that I was all transparent. I could also see that I was losing the rigid shape of my human form. I was becoming more jelly like and gravity was pulling my arms and legs towards the ground in small areas that were sagging. Strangely I felt calm, and somewhat fascinated with what was happening to me.
As if at some signal, the threads sprang into action, moving about at great speed, threading and unthreading, pulling and holding. By this stage my body was basically putty which could be twisted and moulded.
With a flourish, all of the threads pulled free of my body and disappeared into the walls and ceiling.
I could sense I was still on the floor but I had lost the sense of touch, and the ability to move my body. But I found I could move my eyes around within the shape I had been put into. I slowly moved my eyes around the perimeter, feeling things behind my eyes tighten then catching up, loosen again. I kept moving my eyes until I was able to see myself in my bedroom mirror.
What I saw was finally disturbing and at this time I felt somewhat fearful. I had been pushed into the shape of a suitcase. I looked like a glass suitcase with a transparent creature squashed inside. The sides of the suitcase were completely flat, and the only break was my two nostrils, making two holes in the straight side of the suitcase shape. I could see my lungs inflating and deflating inside. My eyes were some way away and my mouth was out of sight completely. I tried to move it but I could not. In fact I couldn’t control my breathing either.
Worst of all though were my feet. They protruded from the top of the suitcase, but had been made slender and joined together to make a comfortable-looking hand-hold for the rest of the suitcase.
Who was going to lift me and where were they taking me?
A Subtle Armageddon follows in the tradition of C.S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien in defending traditional values in an increasingly secular culture. It deals with the plight of the last man on Earth, who ought to have had it easy. But he is not the la
A Subtle Armageddon follows in the tradition of C.S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien in defending traditional values in an increasingly secular culture. It deals with the plight of the last man on Earth, who ought to have had it easy. But he is not the la
The AL-EX Project (ALternative EXistence) is my first foray into light science fiction, written under the name of C M Donaldson (my real name) with a tale that tells of what happens when our main character aims to explore the dream state and manipula
