Shift

Author's note: This story was heavily, heavily inspired by a passage from "The Drawing Of The Three", the second book of the Dark Tower series, written by Stephen King. 

The fever has taken a terrible hold on him. It courses through his veins, poisons his body and sickens his mind. Everything seems wrong, warped, reality slowly slipping away, leaving only shadows and whispers. The forest is dead, the ashen remains covering everything. The world seems to

shift

the sun stings him, cold and merciless. He shivers and coughs into his hand, and red droplets stain the skin. His gaunt, bony hands shake as he pulls his cloak tighter around his emaciated frame. He walks on, towards the mountains. They frame the horizon like the pointed, blackened teeth of a great maw, longing to devour. In his fevered mind, they are his doom and his salvation. In his fevered mind, they

shift

backwards, the hands grasping at his clothes. He falls, hard, his breath fast and ragged in his chest. He shuffles backwards. The ground rises and falls beneath his trembling limbs. His movement kicks up clouds of dust, and it stings his eyes. It enters his nose and his throat. It fills his ears, robbing him of his senses. The man that is not a man shrieks, and it shakes reality. Darkness descends, and the lights

shift

the scream never stops tearing tearing tearing through his head. The man that is not a man that is not a man that is not a man always screams. He can't see it, he never has, he never will, but he knows. He has never known and always known the screaming screaming screaming. It has hidden behind his thoughts, always screaming. It has hidden behind everything and nothing. The screaming is the source, the core, the truth. The scream continues and enters the final

shift

as mountains collapse, darkness shines and light freezes, the world ends.