Part Nineteen, Two: The Happening

I felt the weightlessness speeding higher and higher as the ground grew further away and after the thrill was gone, the terror set in and the doubt and began to fall again, faster and faster towards the ground below, the square full of people shocked and awed at my escape from the ground. The pull of gravity tugged at me with more force than that of a dropping roller coaster and the wind screamed past my body towards the ground faster and faster.
"Rek!" I felt Cook nudging me awake, "Rek wake up."
"Wh…what?" I frowned, opening my eyes to the interior of the cave again, "Did I fall?""Rek, Prowler is gone." He said softly, with a caution. "What?" I said lifting my weakened body, the sour of my hunger and thirst echoing in my gut still.
"A few minutes ago, he just shot out of the cave like a terrified kitten!" explained Cook, "Faster than I could think really."We rushed to the entrance as a gentle drizzle remained constant from the dark skies above, the vast barren land now soaked and muddy. Prowler was no where in our eye sight and the air was cold and silent."Maybe he heard something." I said softly, my legs beginning to reel at the pain inside my stomach."Maybe he just went home." Answered Cook as he pat my shoulder. I nod wearily and head back into the cave.
"Are you alright?"
"No."
"What is it?"
"Hunger I think."
"I feel it too."
"We need to eat before we die."
"I don't know what to do Rek." He answered sadly, "I don't know where we are."
"You said the family has food?"
"Yes. They."Just then Prowlers thumping paws entered the cave and he dart around the curve in the rock with a huge bird like creature in his fangs, mauled and black with eyes of evil.
"You're kidding me." Said Cook turning to Prowler who dropped the meal on the ground and nod with his head, proudly almost. Cook turned to me in awe and I frowned, "Think we can eat that?"
"I don't know… Not raw at least, I don't know."

After spending what felt like an eternity at the mouth searching the area within our sight for any dry wood, Cook spotted a crevasse to the side of the mouth, a few feet away and made the dash through the storm to collect it for our fire. Together, we almost savagely ripped the black beasts scale like feathers from its body and began to cook the meat on bark skewers over the flames, my stomach barely able to await its turn from red to bronze. Prowler waited with a patience that only an untamed beast of the wilderness could.
"Man oh man, I'm hungry!" said Cook, everything about his face revealing his dire urge to chew and chomp on this creature’s meat. "That's putting it mildly. Starvation and mal nutrition I think fits the bill." I answered grinning with an equally watery mouth. "Right, so be it. I hereby declare no more hunger pains hence forth." Joked Cook grinning, "For now at least."
"Yeah." I nod, when Prowler gave a moaning growl to our words."Think he understands us?" "I do." I nod proudly, as a silence returned to the caves. Prowlers hunger began to itch as him too as he kept shifting closer and closer to the flames. "He's a pretty cool pet though." Smirked Cook almost shy of his admittance to taking to this seven foot wolf beast, who's once dark fur with the blackness of the jungle had been washed with the downpour and revealed a white almost fluffy fur. "What happened to you." I said softly, choosing to deter my starvation with another topic to break the silence, "What you said last night."
"Yes." He nod, "I can swear it on my soul."
"What happened?"Cook sighed and looked down, readying himself to complete his story to me again as the meat sizzled to the heat of the flames.

Θ Θ Θ

With a sigh I reluctantly divulged into my memories and opened up the horrors that lay in my past too Rek. He deserved too know what happened, after all good friends don't have anything to hide. "I was lying on that butchers board hearing only footsteps around me, barely able to see through the pain and tears. The corpses that hung in front of me filled my soul with fear, it was literally a living nightmare. When the footsteps stopped, he was by the side of me, staring down at my already battered and wounded body grinning, like a ruthless, emotionless son of a bitch.” I said angrily, “I knew that sooner or later, he was going to hurt me big time, do to me what had been done to those corpses hanging.”
“Jesus.” Said Rekara listening intensively.“This is what he did too all his victims, all of whom stand like a memento on the wall. At that point all I could make out was his silhouette through my earful eyes - the big stomach, the tall posture and the floppy apron, all pointed to him.”

I had too pause for a moment, just too gather thoughts again as the memories flooded my head all mixed up and distorted. Rekara shifted closer to the flames, testing the meat that had not yet grown near cooked.

"A prod, nothing more than a simple prod on my right temple. I was shaking so badly with fear hoping it was all a dream, another nightmare that caused my own parents to chase me from their home. But it wasn’t a dream, it was worse than any nightmare.” I said pausing as my lungs tightened, “The prodding erupted into the most painful experience I could ever recall. It went into my brain, through the skull, shuddering. I can still hear it…” I said putting the tips of my fingers to my temple now, feeling numbed again. Rekara frowned, watching me impatiently to continue.“The two metal probes were linked to an electric generator in the corner. I knew this from having accidentally witnessing it before. By now my vision and all other senses were gone, totally mesmerized by this torturous phenomena that I felt in my head."The generator started up, and everything was taken over by electricity. I don’t remember much, I can just remember that sound, that feeling of my brain being fried, a whizzing sound in my skull, echoing inside of me.” I said sighing with a weight that would never leave my thoughts and memories. Rekara removed his meat from the flames as did I and a short silence hung between us again.“He didn't want to kill me, but to bring me damn close to death itself – torturing me like he did the others.” I said continuing, dire to have it from my chest now that the door had been reopened, “I don’t know what I felt, couldn’t explain it even if I tried. But I was fighting to wake up, I now that much.”Rekara tossed a portion of the meat to Prowler and began to bite into it, “Not bad.” He said softly, eagerly devouring his meat that I simply stared at over the flames.
“By the time I felt him pull the shock probes from the sides of my forehead I was out of it, my heart just managing a faint beat. He knew what he was doing, as though the sick bastard had studied it, perfected it on god knows how many innocent people.”Rekara had finished his first meat and had tossed the bone portions over to Prowler who ate silently as I began to pull strips apart and put them into my mouth allowing a moment for Rekara to either shut me up in disbelief or ask me to continue.

“How is it that your alive then?” he asked finally, sarcastic and doubtful of every word I had spoken. I turned to him and he frowned awaiting an answer and I sighed, putting more meat to my eagerly awaited hungry mouth.

“He took me from the table like a sack of potatoes and took me an old wooden block hanging vertically on the wall. He strapped me onto it, I cant remember what he did to me there, but beneath me was a rotting pile of human organs, there were cockroaches and rats all over it and worms and maggots.”“Ok…” he said, “We are eating.”I shrugged ruthlessly almost, “He lowered me into it gradually and I do recall throwing up though. But then I heard him leaving, the door closed and he was gone. I was alone there, to spend the next 2 days in that fucking pit, strapped too that block with no movement at all, knee deep in rotting human parts."Rekara shook his head, and turned his meat as Prowler motioned beside him, hungry now for more. "I was so disorientated that I don't know. But being here, in this place, it feels like things are starting to emerge again. Images, distorted memories of things I thought I had long forgotten about." “I know the feeling.” Sighed Rekara as he began dividing his meat again between himself and Prowler. A long silence hung in the air as we cooked our meat over the flames, and then ate in silence still.

Θ Θ Θ

"Why are you here Rekara?" he asked as the flames began to flicker their last flames. Sighing, feeling still the great weight of this world bearing on my soul and my questions, I shrugged, "I don't remember. I keep having these dreams.""Dreams? About your real life?" "Flying. And then falling." I nod feeling again the rush of death approaching from my fall from the skies, "I don't know how I got here. I can barely remember my life before this, only fragments of it.""I know." Nod Cook solemnly, "I felt the same when I first got here, like everything I knew and could remember was part of a dream I just couldn't recall enough of.""Yeah. You remember now.""I think its because I'm worn out now, nearing the end of my battle here. My part in this dark and miserable puzzle." He said in a tone so at ease almost with a doomed fate."Don't say that man." I said shifting up to the small flames and red coals, "You cant loose faith.""Faith? In what, you?" he asked huffing a laugh, "If you." he said pausing with an uncomfortable clenching of his jaws that gave me an eerie motion of distrust in my chest."If I what?" I pushed worriedly, "Tell me Cook. Please.""Nothing dude. I just. I'm so tired of running.""Cook don't play games with me, if you know something I need you to be honest with me." I said, glaring into his eyes, "Please, let me trust you."He paused and looked down, and in that moment of the glare of the flames touching his face I knew that he had a weight on his mind about me and I pushed again, "Please, tell me what it is you think.""I think you're here by mistake.""What?" I gasped, "What does that mean?""Of everyone I have come across here, in the family, not one of them cant recall how they came to the door of that passage." He explained softly, excited and riddled by my lack of memory and knowledge, "But you, you only remember half way down the passage. Further than I have ever heard!""What are you saying?" I asked, now worried that all of this punishment is a mistake. Cook shrugged, "Everything has changed since you came here. The blackness is moving more stronger and forceful than before and I cant help but wonder it its because of you or not.""Wait, what are you saying?"“I don’t know how I got out of that pit, I don’t know how long I was in there. But when I woke up I…”
Just then Prowler's head lifted and in an instant he was on his feet, staring into the cave behind us with terrified eyes."What's it Prowler? Something in there?" said Cook standing up bravely. Prowler's lip raised and he growled to the shadows on the wall. "What the hell is wrong with you?" I asked turning to Prowler, "What is it? what is there?"Then as though it never was, the light from the coals was out and I turned to Cook, "We better run."Just then I felt the pull of a hand grabbing me from behind across my chest into the cave wall. Prowler released a bark of sorts and Cook dart for me when suddenly I was being dragged upwards along the caves rugged roof and then dropped back down to the ground again."Rek!" said Cook rushing to help me up, "Are you ok?""What the hell was that?" I shouted when again, I was plucked from my feet backwards into the wall and dragged deeper into the cave screaming in fear of this invisible menace. Cook sprint after me, grabbing my hand but the force of the pull toppled him off his feet, face first into the soft sand at his feet. Prowler too dart after me, clawing and snapping at the cave wall as though to apprehend this entity living in the walls when, like a toy I was flung across into the other side of the wall and grabbed there around my face and waist by cold ice like hands I could not see or physically feel and dragged deeper and deeper as Prowler tried desperately to claw and snap at this thing stealing me. Then flung back across the path and back and forth like a rag doll between two girls, invisible and twisted little girls having fun with the giant wolf pet. As I flung through the air from side to side and then around by my ankle and back and around, I saw Cook running towards me with his sift half torn off, his one hand in front of the other, covering something and I yelled, "Help me!"
As he neared, he revealed in his hand the ripped section of his shirt, inside it a small flame from a coal at the fire and he skid down to his knees and with a hard breath, blew at the flame sending it into a scorch through the rest of his shirt and like a scolding hot potato, I was dropped to the ground as screams filled the air as we watched the two ghastly shadows slither off away from the light, Prowler in chase still.
"You ok?" asked Cook kneeling beside me and helping my disorientated body to its feet as the shirt cloth burnt on the ground. "How did you know to do that?" I asked surprised and dizzy. "I don't know, I just knew."Just then Prowler yelped from deeper in the cave and we dart towards him when the last flame of the burning shirt flayed to darkness.
"Prowler!" I called, my voice now echoing in the hollowness of the rock mountain.