Dream 03 → Fire Down Below
Mar. 25th, 2010 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
irregularWarnings: Situations of peril. Spoilers for Ken's backstory, but nothing you don't know by Episode Four.
Dream Effects: INTERACTIVE.
Notes: Aside from Ken himself, the figures in this dream all resemble the same young Japanese man. Ken knows who this is, but he isn't saying. The men will not reply if spoken to and are quietly menacing, but not overtly aggressive. They just like stalking people.
This is how Ken dreams of fire.
He never knows how he came to be there - not in the dream, at least. Lying on concrete with the reek of petrol clinging to his clothes and his hair, he opens his eyes on flame.
The building is burning. Catwalks, gantries, machinery: all burns. Flame licks at the windows of the warehouse, at the very walls: he can feel the heat on his face, hot and oppressive as the air of a kiln, hear the roar of the fire in his ears. It deafens him, it leaves his head ringing. He can feel the heavy, heated air burning in his lungs - get out, damn it, got to get out of here before he chokes--! The smoke, thick and black, burns his sinuses; It gags him, blinds him with tears and sends sweat pearling up acrosss his brow, his back...
Ken springs to his feet, the breath catching in his chest; he can think of nothing but the need to flee, but he never runs for the doors. The doors are blocked, or blazing. There's only one place he can go and that's up.
Up.
He sprints for the nearest stairway just before a burning beam scythes down from somewhere above him and crashes to the ground where he had been lying. Ken looks back, then runs again, the treads of the stairs shuddering against his feet. Everything burns - flames lick at the gantry he runs across, and it yaws violently beneath his feet, chunks of debris rain from above, and that is burning too. The breath burns in his lungs.
After a time, he becomes aware that he is searching. Searching for something, or someone - the catwalk gives way beneath his feet, and the scream is choked off in his throat as he throws himself desperately forward, snatching at stairway or girder or anything that will arrest his fall-- Panting, he hangs from the broken walkway for a while, before pulling himself up and struggling on...
And, after a time, he becomes aware of the figures, looming through the choking smoke. Circling, and growing ever closer.
All he can do is keep moving. Keep moving forward because maybe, just maybe he will be faster.
Dream Effects: INTERACTIVE.
Notes: Aside from Ken himself, the figures in this dream all resemble the same young Japanese man. Ken knows who this is, but he isn't saying. The men will not reply if spoken to and are quietly menacing, but not overtly aggressive. They just like stalking people.
This is how Ken dreams of fire.
He never knows how he came to be there - not in the dream, at least. Lying on concrete with the reek of petrol clinging to his clothes and his hair, he opens his eyes on flame.
The building is burning. Catwalks, gantries, machinery: all burns. Flame licks at the windows of the warehouse, at the very walls: he can feel the heat on his face, hot and oppressive as the air of a kiln, hear the roar of the fire in his ears. It deafens him, it leaves his head ringing. He can feel the heavy, heated air burning in his lungs - get out, damn it, got to get out of here before he chokes--! The smoke, thick and black, burns his sinuses; It gags him, blinds him with tears and sends sweat pearling up acrosss his brow, his back...
Ken springs to his feet, the breath catching in his chest; he can think of nothing but the need to flee, but he never runs for the doors. The doors are blocked, or blazing. There's only one place he can go and that's up.
Up.
He sprints for the nearest stairway just before a burning beam scythes down from somewhere above him and crashes to the ground where he had been lying. Ken looks back, then runs again, the treads of the stairs shuddering against his feet. Everything burns - flames lick at the gantry he runs across, and it yaws violently beneath his feet, chunks of debris rain from above, and that is burning too. The breath burns in his lungs.
After a time, he becomes aware that he is searching. Searching for something, or someone - the catwalk gives way beneath his feet, and the scream is choked off in his throat as he throws himself desperately forward, snatching at stairway or girder or anything that will arrest his fall-- Panting, he hangs from the broken walkway for a while, before pulling himself up and struggling on...
And, after a time, he becomes aware of the figures, looming through the choking smoke. Circling, and growing ever closer.
All he can do is keep moving. Keep moving forward because maybe, just maybe he will be faster.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-28 08:27 am (UTC)He saw the thing it became, though - the light, burning and brilliant even through the flames that leapt and crackled about him, then slowly fading. Even harried and terrified as he was, he couldn't have missed that. Gasping, he stooped short, nearly stumbling and falling onto the catwalk. He snatched at the rail to catch himself, ignoring the burning heat of the metal, the scalding pain that seared through his palms: he turned, desperately casting about himself to try and find the source of that sudden, terrible light--
Found it in a figure stalking the factory floor, a figure which burned but was not itself consumed, with a brilliant pure white flame.
It was the figure of a man, but a man of fire - or it was man-shaped, at least, or nearly so. The figure was clearly too tall, curiously elongated, its limbs stretched out and too long, its fingers long and spindly: there was something unsettling about it, something that had the breath catching in Ken's throat, had him stumbling back a pace. It was as if whatever the creature was - for it wasn't human, it couldn't be that! - it had heard of men, but never seen one, and so had been forced to improvise...
He stood, and he stared, and he crossed himself. Then ran again, though to where he didn't know.
Just as long as it was away, that was all--