The Battle Surrendered--Part 1 of 5

I'm excited to introduce to you our first part in a series of five stories written by Storyteller SilverLoom! We were graciously given permission to use it. It's a beautiful story, and I just KNOW you'll love it like both Tiffany and I have. But...we can't post it all today. It will have to come in segments. Come back tomorrow for part two!

Part One

By Storyteller SilverLoom

They came at night. There was no time to prepare. I had no idea they were coming for me… until it was too late.

I woke up just in time to see them reaching for me. They looked like shadowy silhouettes of humans. They had no faces, no features to distinguish one from another. Their fingers were like black icicles circling around my arms, neck, and head.

Screaming, I pulled back, trying to roll over and get away. The shadow creatures didn’t let go.

A dim light suddenly shone. But instead of clarifying, this light made everything blurry. It illuminated the shadow creatures, but they didn’t disappear like shadows; instead, they seemed to grow more solid. Their skin turned white, soft, and pleasantly warm. I could see their eyes; dark, but gentle. The light seemed to come from someplace behind the creatures.

A strange feeling invaded my body and mind, like the one you get when you have a fever and take a sedative cold medicine. Under the unnatural disorientation, I started to wonder why I was fighting. I thought that I wasn’t being hurt, so why bother struggling? It was too much work to try to get away.

The creatures made me stand beside my bed. I didn’t resist. One of the creatures twittered in my ear, its voice soothing, “Follow meee….”

I didn’t ask where it wanted me to follow it to. I would see when I got there. It would take too much effort to talk.

I remember taking the first step to follow the creature. Something in me warned that what I was doing was stupid and wrong, but I buried the feeling and stepped forward. The next thing I knew, I was blinking as if I had just woken up. I was no longer in my bedroom.

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The eerie light was gone. The shadow creatures were gone. I was completely alone in a dark, damp prison. The only light in the place filtered in from a crack in the wall high above me. My ankles and wrists were chained to the stone floor of the dungeon. I had a vague memory of the creatures telling me to chain myself up.

“Hello?” I called. No answer came. The only sound was the rhythmic dripping of water from a corner of my prison. “Hey! Let me go! Get me out of here!” I yelled. Was it my imagination, or did I hear malicious laughter coming from the darker parts of the dungeon?

My heart pounded with fear. I had never thought something like this could happen to me. This stuff only happened to people in stories. It wasn’t supposed to happen in real life.

A scream welled up inside of me and I let it go. The worst part of it was that I knew I had put myself in this place. I hadn’t fought hard enough.

I curled up on the cold stone floor and sobbed. Then I called for the only One who could hear me. “God, please… please help me! I don’t know where I am! I shouldn’t have given in. Please! Help me!”

As my tears fell, the light from the crack in the wall suddenly disappeared. I stopped mid-sob and froze. I even held my breath.

A voice reverberated off the solid walls of my prison. “Hello, down there!”

I looked up at the crack. The face of a man stared back at me, his head almost completely covering the small crack. He had the widest smile I had ever seen. “Not the most comfortable place to live, I’d say.”

I wiped my teary eyes with my pajama sleeve. “Can… can you get me out?” I asked.

His smile grew even larger. “That’s what I came here to do.”

Come back tomorrow for installment number two!