One Cold Serving (Solo)

Dread wrote:John had experienced terror many times throughout the past couple weeks, but its common reappearance in his life never desensitized him to its touch. He remembered the parting words of a strange visitor to the forest, a visitor whose energy level surpassed that of either of “Coach’s” assistants. “Coach’s” subordinates were certainly strong in their own respective rights, but the nightmare of a being that had approached John from beyond shadowed them significantly. “Be seeing you soon,” He had told John in an unmistakably masculine voice. John had since lived in constant fear for his life.

He stopped eating, stopped training, and could not find sleep even in the forest cave among his animal companions. He remained on constant guard over the next two days, but those days without either sustenance or rest inevitably took their toll on him as he traversed the forest in search of the very danger that threatened to destroy him. He could wait no longer for the stranger to revisit him; the waiting only escalated his anxiety to such grand heights that he could hardly retain his composure. John had already spent restless nights not knowing when the stranger would reveal himself for whatever sinister purpose he had planned.

His body trembled visibly with hunger and fear. His vision blurred as it often had over the previous hours; he felt faint and he stopped to wait for the sensation to subside as it had before. The feeling only intensified and he collapsed to the ground; he saw sparks and then nothing as consciousness left him. His body forced him to sleep so that it could finally recuperate, but his mind infested his much-needed slumber with nightmares in which he suffered all too real pain.

John eventually realized he was dreaming; the monsters his wild imagination created were too surreal to exist. He tried forcing himself awake to escape the ongoing torment, but he had left his body’s rest too late. He remained asleep and trapped in his own little demon-infested world over which he had absolutely no control. He died several times over and experienced a thousand lifetimes of suffering. His torments seemed like augmentations of what he had already endured throughout his entire life in the waking world.

John feared he would never again wake and screamed at the thought. He worried he would forever remain asleep until the very day he died. He dreaded having to suffer days of torment while his body slowly shriveled to nothing from lack of water and food. He placed additional effort at waking himself, but his body could not be so easily disturbed by its feeble and frightened captive.

In one nightmare, John found himself naked in a vast and dark desert. The wind blew violently and sliced his skin with its icy touch and with the grains of sand it lifted off the terrain and hurled at him. He saw all these things only because a single light shone in the sky. An enormous giant of a red star visibly covered in numerous and hideous black spots as though bruised, bleeding, and all but broken, cast a crimson glow down upon the world. What little warmth it radiated failed to cross the spatial void between it and its orbiting planet. The more than ancient star seemed only interested in illuminating the horrors of the land. It had long since grown indifferently cold to the life it helped sustain once upon a time.

Cloaked figures approached John from behind; he sensed their presence in his dream and he turned to examine them. He backed away and tripped during his hasty retreat to avoid the malevolent beings. Their eyes glowed brilliantly as though reflecting the very gold the avaricious beings sought above all other things; the nature of dreaming afforded John this knowledge. They looked down upon him and perceived him as hardly an obstacle in their unceasing path of destruction to acquire more of what they desired.

John scrambled to his feet, turned away from the cloaked beings, and fled from the very things that wished to spill his blood for whatever amount of gold it was worth in that wasted world. They pursued him with grace as John clumsily scrambled along the soft sands. He thought to fly, but the nightmare had stripped him of all the abilities he had acquired in the waking world. The nightmare also soon sapped him of his strength and energy and slowed him until he could proceed no further. He stood as still as a statue in an unknown and dying land. He tried to scream, but only a whisper of breath escaped his throat, constricted by the fear that permeated off his being and sustained the terrors around him.

The creatures rushed toward with daggers that reflected the red of the aged star above. John was only able to turn to face the approaching horrors. He immediately fell to his knees and cringed; expecting to feel the cold sting of steel penetrating his flesh at any moment. Instead of suffering yet another horrible death in his sleep, a burst of light suddenly filled the abysmal realm from above. It radiated not only warmth and illumination, but John also sensed hope beating down on him from the light. It transformed the golden-eyed figures into fading shadows and stretched those shadows thin until they faded away into nothing. The light then descended down before John and lost some of its radiance so that he might obtain a view of its core.

A smartly dressed boy, John had seen many times before in the waking world as well as in one memorable vision, revealed himself as the source of the benevolent force that had saved him. He had saved John before from poison and then again from drowning; he had also helped John calm his soul so that he could learn to suppress his own energy as well as sense external energy. John still knew not the child’s name and the child only ever had little to say to him. The boy spoke the same words then in John’s dream as he had already spoken before.

“The light...The dark...One cannot exist without the other...Light to guide the dark and dark to save the light.”

The boy then reached down toward John with one hand and offered to help him stand. John hesitated for a moment and stared, unblinking, at the child. The boy said nothing more and John doubted he would glean anymore out of him as he had tried conversing with him in the past. He eventually took the boy’s hand into his own and escaped the nightmare world.

Dread wrote:John woke in the forest and he felt invigorated, albeit famished; he knew not how the strange child invaded his dreams, but he silently thanked the boy for his interference all the same. He looked to the sky and noticed that the sun was beginning to set, but he refused to retire for the night until after he supped. He journeyed to the river with a smile on his face, and caught well over a dozen salmon within the hour. He gathered some wood, built a fire, and cooked and ate his meal. Even though he had burned most of his catch, his dinner tasted heavenly to him, someone who had gone without food for a couple days.

He allowed his fire to burn in the midst of a clearing; his previous rest left him wide awake and incapable of sleep. He collected rocks off the forest floor and initiated a session of target practice by fire light. He had recently practiced throwing rocks at a rabbit during a hunt, but that had ended badly. Even if there had been ample light by which to hunt, John lacked the heart to kill furry woodland creatures. He could not hunt the very prey that the forest provided its local hunters, not after the mess he had made of a rabbit by tossing it into a tree out of anger. Instead of practicing against live creatures, John aimed at the trees that enclosed his campsite.

He repeatedly failed to hit any of his targets even though none of them were moving; the fact he could not strike a still object from such close range quickly frustrated him. He had experienced similar difficulties during his botched attempt at hunting, but he refused to give up. He took breaks whenever his temper began running particularly high; after experiencing firsthand the damage his own anger caused, John knew it wise to relax at certain intervals. When one of his projectiles sank deeply into the bark of a tree with a thud, he jumped for joy. “Booyah!” He exclaimed in celebration; scaring birds into flight with his cry.

John continued his training over the passing hours and missed often. He hardly improved after his first success as though he required a hefty amount of luck to strike anything. He continued tossing stones, but the natural supply of them within his campsite diminished over time. He had to stop after awhile to fetch what he had already tossed into the darkness. He returned to campsite with his pockets full of ammunition and began all over again. He may not have been a perfect shot, but the fact he was doing anything at all helped keep his mind off his impending encounter with the unidentified visitor.

His arms burned after a time and the sky began to brighten with the first rays of morning light. He put out his fire, which had become little more than a smoldering pile of ashes from neglect and a dwindling supply of fuel. He sat down and crossed his legs to meditate and rest his body. Within minutes, John’s head slumped forward; he had fallen fast asleep. As he slept, he dreamt of simple and harmless things, things that meant the world to him. He dreamt of the woman who wanted to adopt him and of her baby daughter who he wanted so desperately to call his sister. The orphan boy dreamed merely of home and family.

Dread wrote:Consciousness returned to John slowly hours later and by then the sun had already progressed well beyond its midday position in the sky. He opened his eyes and uncrossed his legs carefully, both of which felt sore from having been folded for such an extended amount of time. He stood and performed a few basic stretches to remove the aches and pains that came with sleeping on wild terrain and in such an unusual position to boot. He examined his surroundings, and his waking brain recollected all that had happened to him in the past couple days.

Fully refreshed, John decided to go down to river, but not for anything to eat; he had grown severely tired of fish and could wait a little while before having to stomach any more. When he arrived at the shoreline, he walked alongside the river against the current. He hoped to find something in particular and hoped that the forest “Coach” bought included it. He walked for almost an additional hour when he heard a thunderous noise up ahead. He rushed forward to confirm with his eyes what he hoped to find around the river’s bend.

He happened upon a spectacular waterfall through which rocky outcrops and platforms bulged outward. The largest of the platforms divided the fall almost evenly into two sections, both of which crashed down into the river with magnificent force that constantly and violently churned the water and sprayed the air with a perpetual and frothy mist. John undressed then flew up to one of the smaller platforms where he eagerly landed and positioned himself directly beneath the water’s path. He remained there for several minutes and relished the refreshingly cold stream blast away all the remaining aches and pains of the days he spent roughing it in the wild. It pressure washed all the filth and impurities from his body and maybe even his soul.

He experienced the strange sensation of being made anew. It was almost as though he allowed the fall to carve away his old self and cast the imperfect being down into the rocky depths. He imagined the fall simultaneously supplying his new body with all the necessary ingredients for a fulfilling and promising life. He never once complained about the chill that would have almost certainly caused sickness in a weaker human. He simply remained still and withstood and partook of hardly a fraction of the creative and destructive power that the world had at its disposal.

John remained beneath the waterfall even after his cleansing, but he departed the platform and situated himself near the center and just before the fall divided into two. He levitated, but made no movement beyond that as he assessed the forces against which he contested. He wanted to receive the full force of its downpour as he initiated an old form of training he had not personally attempted before. He achieved that desire and smiled almost masochistically. As the fall pounded down on him, weighed him down, and inevitably began to pierce his hardened body with its cold, he began.

He started with a few simple movements to gauge the full influence the fall had over his body. He adjusted to the force accordingly, but that required placing additional effort into all of his actions and that would accelerate the rate at which he exhausted himself. That was precisely the point he wished to achieve, however. He needed…no…wanted to become stronger and the waterfall presented him with the opportunity to achieve his goals. He had tired of fearing the coming of the next day as though the present one was the last he would ever live. He wanted to grow strong and bold so that he could fearlessly face each new dawn with a smile and slumber soundly after every dusk. He lusted after the power that would enable him to crush anything and everything that threatened his existence.

Dread wrote:John spent the last remaining hours of the day punching and kicking at nothing more than the curtains of water that fell thickly over him. He grunted from the obvious exertion it required to penetrate the heavy barrier encompassing him and weighing his body. He slowed over time and his muscles burned and ached for relief, but he endured the pain and pressed on. The constant flow of water eventually began feeling like an endless rain of piercing shards of glass on his skin, but he persisted in his training and ignored his increasing agony. As the sun set, it took with it much warmth in its departure for the night; soon after, John could stand the icy fall no more.

He emerged from the fall and descended with his arms wrapped tightly around his body in a feeble attempt to regain the warmth he lost to the river. He shivered violently and his teeth chattered noisily as he came down to where he left his clothes, and hastily dressed. His clothes absorbed much of the moisture he had collected from his training and maintained the chill he suffered to his enormous displeasure. The cool night only increased his discomfort as did the wind even though it was hardly more than a calm breeze that night. He set to alleviate himself of his present torments by building a fire far from the shoreline. He fed as many sticks and deadwood he could find lying around into the blaze, creating a magnificent bonfire that imbued him with much sought after warmth.

He could not maintain the great fire for long for lack of fuel; it inevitably shrank down to the size of a cozy campfire, but John had received an abundance of heat by that point. He lied down in the dirt next to his fire and gazed upward at the moon and stars. He could not yet find sleep, but he was content to relax after all he had put his body through not only during the past few hours, but during the previous days as well. John glimpsed a brilliant shooting star streaking across the heavens and thought to make a wish on it. I want to live without fear or worry. He smiled even though he hardly had reason for any amount of happiness. He figured the emotion he felt in that moment was hope, a preposterous idea that his life would improve.

He tracked the shooting star with his eyes, but it did not vanish in the blink of an eye as meteorites should while burning up in the atmosphere. It even changed course, turning sharply so that it headed directly toward John. He immediately stood up and took to the sky as the blindingly bright object descended quickly down onto his campsite. It crashed directly atop his fire, extinguishing it instantly while simultaneously spraying the air thickly with splinters, ashes, and smoke. John shielded his face and coughed as soon as tendrils of smoke sneaked their way down his throat and into his lungs.

He eventually lowered his arms and gazed, fearfully down toward where he sensed a powerful presence. It matched that of the stranger who had promised to meet with him again. John had dropped his guard, he had relaxed too much; otherwise, he would have immediately sensed the intruder’s approach. He silently cursed himself as the smoke cleared and the last of the ashes floated angelically down onto the earth. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.” The stranger spoke to John. “It satisfies me to see you have survived your master’s training up to this point.”

“You’re...satisfied?” John asked with a deep sense of confusion.

“Of course I am satisfied with your present condition because I now get to kill you.” The stranger admitted.

Dread wrote:John glimpsed the man in the fading light of dying embers and immediately received the full impression of his daunting figure. He was a hairless example of the human race and appeared impossibly tall; he had, at the very least, a good two feet on John in terms of height. He was not only tall, but incredibly broad as well. He bulged with muscle from his neck down to his ankles as though he had dedicated his entire life to body building. He wore no shirt as though exhibiting his sheer physical power, but he sported a dark pair of pants; John could not determine the article’s color in the dark. Darker than his pants were his obviously black combat boots into which he stuffed his pants; they covered his shins as well as his feet, after all.

He leaped toward John who tried backing away to avoid his outstretched arm. He seized John’s ankle and dragged him back down toward the earth. In quick succession, he slammed John down onto the forest floor; the hard ground cracked and gave way to the collision as John’s body sunk inches into the dirt. He shouted out in pain and cried out again when the stranger stomped onto the base of his spine with one of his massive boots. John extended his arms forward; his fingers trembled with pain as he desperately reached out to drag his body forward and away from his attacker. The man seized him by one of his exposed hands and squeezed.

John screamed as his fingers cracked in his attacker’s vice-like grip, but that served only as a precursor to his continued suffering. The man yanked and jerked John out of the man-shaped impression in the earth, neatly dislocating his shoulder. He lifted John inches off the ground who reached up toward his trapped hand, hoping to free it from the giant. John received a punch straight to his gut, expelling all air from his lungs and causing him to go limp. He opened his mouth in a silent cry and blood mixed with spittle, both erupted from his mouth. His body swung like a rope and the man proceeded to punch John again and again and again.

John gazed blankly ahead of him in his closeness to death that resulted from the superb damage done to him. His attacker bored of treating him as a punching bag and lowered John onto his knees without releasing his hand. He then catapulted John into the sky; John helplessly looked down at the disappearing ground below and cringed when the giant vanished from view. He sensed his attacker’s presence above, but his mind alerted him too late. The man delivered onto John’s back a drop kick that nearly snapped his spine in half.

John met the ground again in a spectacular explosion of dust. His attacker allowed him no time to rest. A bright red light appeared above him, illuminating the world with a sinister glow. John rolled onto his aching back in time to witness a bowling-ball-sized sphere of energy race toward him. He reached deep within his very being in time for his aura to activate, encapsulating him in perfect rippling blackness. He then launched off the ground away from the attack and flew backwards. He managed to avoid a direct hit, but the resulting explosion from the orb’s impact with the ground chased after John with a terrifying quickness.

The explosion swallowed John up and set his clothes aflame as it began licking his flesh with thousands of fiery tongues. John’s aura left him as the blast carried him straight into a tree into which he collided, spread-eagled. The concussive force pinned John to the tree for a time as tremendous heat continued assaulting him, threatening to fry his innards. The kinetic forces of the attack inevitably petered out and John slumped, badly burned and broken, from the tree and onto a crater’s edge.

His attacker landed beside him and crouched down. He grasped John’s hair with one hand and snapped his head back. Their eyes met; John’s seemed devoid of life while the giant’s orbs were vibrant with energy and purpose. “Why?” John barely croaked out.

“I suppose you deserve to know at least that much.” The man spoke calmly. “Do you remember what you did in South City?” He asked, but John could not speak; his wounds made words almost beyond his capacity. “I am sure you remember killing someone there.” He continued. “That man you killed was my…my student and…” He paused and John noticed him trembling with fury that he had managed to contain up until that point. “He was my son!” He shrieked.

“He...was…a…b-bastard,” John groaned defiantly.

The man growled then brought his free hand around and showed John an empty palm aglow with red energy. “Now that you know,” He spoke coldly, pretending to ignore John’s comment. “You will die.” The light soon blinded John; its sheer heat leaked into the burns on his head and neck, afflicting him with additional suffering.

The bald man was about to release his attack when something struck him in the forehead, forcing him away from John and crashing onto his back. John looked ahead just as his savior brought one leg back down from having kicked the giant. A pair of feet floated in midair before John, both wore fine dress shoes. John was then assaulted by the enormity of the presence before him. It was as though the arrival’s energy signature itself was too slow to accompany him during his first strike and followed him as thunder follows lightning. “What are you doing to my student?” “Coach” calmly asked John’s attacker.

Dread wrote:“Coach” rushed forward and John could not turn to see what happened next for such was the intensity of his injuries. He caught a glimpse of the enormous man reaching out at his teacher with one arm. The swift movement was accompanied by a sickening crunch. The larger man screamed, but a second crunch silenced him; John both heard and felt something large and lifeless collapse heavily onto the ground beside him. “That most certainly takes care of our uninvited guest,” “Coach” said dismissively as he clapped his gloved hands together as though cleaning them from taking out the trash.

He stood over John and regarded him for a moment; John saw little of him in the night and noticed, for the first time, the true depths of darkness that encompassed the upper half of his face. There was something mystical, unnatural, and terrifying about the blackness that hid away the eyes and brow of John’s teacher. “Coach” gave him no time to dwell on it as he picked John up off the ground and lifted him onto his shoulder. John groaned as his hands dangled feebly against “Coach’s” back and his feet hung limply before that man’s belly.

John could not begin to guess why his teacher had bothered saving him days after having condemned him to die in the forest cave; an event that seemed to have occurred over a lifetime ago. He could not begin to conceive the sadist’s intentions. That’s it! John thought with a start. He doesn’t want me to die at all. I’m just a toy for him and I’m no use to him, no fun for him if I end up broken. That’s why he saved me, just so he can keep on torturing me! John felt no gratitude toward his teacher and he doubted any love was lost in that aspect of their relationship.

John noticed a dim light casting itself over their surroundings; it grew more brilliant as “Coach” approached its source. “Coach” ascended a small set of stairs and entered an enclosed area, but John saw little from his position other than a red-tiled floor beneath them. “Coach” deposited John onto a strange bed, allowing him to look around freely. John managed to move his head a little and noticed that they had gone inside a spherical structure of some sort. The wide pillar at the center of the structure immediately drew John’s attention toward it. The pillar featured slanted panels near the middle with various buttons and switches, some aglow and some others blinking.

The scenery coincided with certain television advertisements he had seen before and John realized that he and “Coach” were now inside a space ship! “It has come to my attention that Earth is no longer safe for you, John.” “Coach” said as he stood in front of the pillar and typed in a sequence of commands. “Your training has not progressed as quickly as I had anticipated.” He continued. “That is why I am taking you off world and to a place I believe will help you sharpen your skills and hone your technique.” He explained. “We have days of travel ahead of us before we reach our destination, but the equipment I have had installed in this vessel will allow you to continue your training without interruption.”

John could not believe what was happening, what was about to happen. He had never once thought of leaving the planet. Earth was his home! It was where he belonged! He did not want to go into space to some distant world he knew nothing about! He did not want to go into space at all! He had never so much as left the cities until “Coach” came into his life. The very prospect of leaving the protection, safety, and familiarity of Earth frightened him.

What protection does Earth offer me? John suddenly thought. Lately I’ve done nothing but fight for my life and I couldn’t even do that much against that guy who wanted me dead. Earth seems so strange now to me ever since things started changing quickly after South City. What do I really know of it? It’s like the world I once lived in never existed at all. These sudden realizations tore at John’s soul, and tears flowed freely down his face as he hardly heard “Coach” cry out, “Launch!” A tremendous rumble then came from below and the ship started propelling itself upward toward the heavens and away from Earth.