Death Feverl:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

            The forest was silent as a shadow. The sky was a mask of ebony. I could feel the darkness pressing down on me like two hands on my shoulders. If a presents was there it was none I could detect. Slowly, very slowly, my vision began to tunnel. Everything began to fade into each other. Shapes began to emerge. Pulling themselves from the trees and shadows, which by now looked almost as one. As the shapes began to take form I noticed that they are not blurry, like the rest of my surroundings. However now I can see them plan and clear. They are dead things, which I can only compare to the mutant Ebilia I saw once when I was three. They have no soul, no life in their eyes and their bones creek with the time they have spent here. They do not scare me, no, for I have seen much worse in the shadows here.

            They have come before, but never have they taken me. They just stand there, their hands reaching forwards as I sit and look in their eyes. I can hear their screams from when they died and it fills me with a pain I have on words for. Yet still I feel no fear. I think I’m past that point. For I have been here so long. I think I might stay here till I pass away and end up like them.

            I remember and impressing heat at the beginning. It slowly faded and the cold of this land gripped my body and raped it with chills. That’s when the dead things first came to me and they have come often scenes. I remember a time before this land, if just faintly. There is light and warmth, and the arms of things living.

            I talk to the dead things sometimes. I say “I think I have been here a while, have you?” Of course there is no night and day so it is hard to tell. “You don’t talk much, I wonder why?” In fact, they don’t talk at all. “It’s strange, I never feel hungry or thirsty, am I dead?” I have wondered if this is a hell or heaven, they didn’t tell us about this place in Atquati. I have thought about these things a lot, and many others.

            A thing I noticed after a while was that it was the same dead ones that came back over and over. I figure they must have been here a long time. At first I was a little scared, and then I was emotionless.  But now a new fear is creeping in to my mind. What if they are waiting, buying time until they can come for me and make me as they are. Slowly this thought sets in and takes hold. I begin to watch them carefully. Noting every movement and I notice they are staying longer than they use to, even going in shifts so that I am almost never alone. I began to cherish the moments I am alone, and in these few moments I prepare myself for what I must do. Though it pains me, for they have been my solo companions.

            I waited; I pretended to sleep and waited. It did not take them long to come, and when they did I was already forming a plan in my head. One came very close and reached out as thought it was going to grab my head. I screamed and struggled against their hands kicking and lashing out with my arms. Then I reached behind me and grabbed a tree branch. I plunged it in to the dead things as they came at me one by one. A sliver liquid sprayed me and I screamed as it burned my face and body. I realized too late that my screams would bring more of them. Before they got to close I ran at them with my tree branch but before I was on them they fell to the gowned behind them was a shadowy figure. I dropped my stick and my eyes closed as I fell to the ground.

***

            When my eyes opened I was in a bed room, my bed room, from all that time ago. Tikka, my Tesuri, was curled up by my feet. When I looked around me at first I was breathless, unable to say anything. Then I screamed.

***

            I sat in the police station at Atquati. They questioned me about what happen while I was sick with a fever. I tried to tell them that I wasn’t sick. I had been sucked into another world, but they wouldn’t listen. They told me that I had a fever and was probably hallucinatory during the worst of it. But I am curtain they are wrong.

            They had a forensic team look at and determined that I had done, I had killed my family and the maids when I thought that I was killing the dead things. And that the shadowy thing had been Tikka who thought she was protecting me when I was thrashing in the grip of the maids who had run in when they heard me screaming. I denied it. I knew what really happen, they dead things had done it, and I was shore. But when I said this they laughed and said the dead do not stand up and walk amongst the living, no matter what world you go to. I could see it in their eyes they didn’t believe me they didn’t have it in them to. at that point I couldn’t help but wonder what they would do to me if they thought I had done it.

            When I walked back in to the house to gather my things I noticed they had not moved the bodies yet. They were still lying on the ground, their blood in pools around the stab wounds on some and bite marks on the others. I turned my gaze away. The dead things had had long claws that could stab, and sharp teeth that could bite. Why would they not believe me as they did themselves?

***

            After a week on trial, at which in the end they had me plead insanity, they sent me to a hospital in Scria and emitted me as a delusional psychopath. But I know they are wrong. I know that now as I sit here scratching my story in the wall of my room with my nails. Do want to know how I know I’m right. I will tell you, for I have proof. Even now, as I sit back in this world I see them, standing outside my window, watching, waiting to take me.