Oscar's vision began to sway, red seeped from the top of his vision down to the bottom. The world began spinning, or Oscar stopped spinning with the world. He was stationary, while the rest of the world continued. The red continued to cloud his vision, his entire body felt as if someone had taken a blunt hacksaw to it. Tearing through his tendons and muscle, before cleaving at his very bones.
Oscar tried to gasp for air, but his body no longer seemed to deem him the highest authority. His knees bending, Oscar fell to the ground, kneeling in front of the statue that the mask had dropped from. If Oscar was still able to see through the ocean of red that now clouded his vision, he would notice that a pair of deep, piercing eyes had appeared on the statue, their irises white, the pupils a deep red, resembling the color of dried blood.
Suddenly, Oscar's vision went black, his body crumpled into a fetal position on the ground as he fainted.
Drip
Drip
Drip
Oscar's eyes snapped open, the feeling of water constantly dropping on his forehead was beyond irritating him, sitting up from his bed he looked around. His house was the same as usual, his bed next to his parents, the old worn table at the center of the house. The wood-burning stove that sat in the corner of the house.
Looking up the thatch seemed to be perfectly intact so,
'Where's the leak?' Oscar wondered to himself.
Shrugging it off he began making his way to the door, but he suddenly stopped.
'I thought I was… outside already.' Oscar looked up again, he looked closely. Once more, the table was fine, the beds in the right position, the stove where it always had been. Then he squinted, looking even closer with his increased focus he finally noticed.
The wood where the chairs would slide when pulled out or pushed in was in too perfect condition, not a scrape in sight. The soot that lined the edge of the stove was gone; the stove was now perfectly clean. His mother always refused to clean it, saying the ash was good for his health.
Lastly, the beds were perfect, too perfect. Every needle of hay that made up the beds were cut to order, the quilts that covered the beds were perfectly stretched across. Then he felt it again,
Drip
Drip
Drip
Right on his forehead, Oscar frowned before looking up, there in the thatch roof was a small hole, leaking and dripping right onto Oscar's face. Using the back of his hand he wiped it off, before inspecting his hand, what appeared on his hand caused his pupils to dilate and his heart to skip a beat.
A bright red smudge was left on the back of his hand, Oscar began to panic, his heart attempting to break free of his rib cage and run away without the rest of his body. Tears began to well in the corner of his eyes.
"Mom! Dad! Help!" Oscar began to cry,
His only solace was the fact that his mom or dad could surely save him. But soon, the walls began to deteriorate, cracks started at the base of the walls then quickly spread all the way to the roof.
Then, they began to crumble. First the rear wall that always faced the setting sun, fell apart and disappeared, revealing an endless landscape of red. The sky was a slightly brighter red, the ground was covered in liquid blood without a single disturbance in its surface, almost like it was glass forged with the heart of a demon.
Then the rest of the walls disappeared, hanging in the sky was a bright white sun, it stood still at the absolute peak of the sky, unmoving, staring down upon everything within its realm like a deity watching its worshipers beg at its feet.
Oscar fell to his knees, cradling his head within his palms before he finally began to crumble,
"Aghhhh!" He let out a scream, finally beginning to cry like a kid, after all he was one, the blood-filled world however seemed to either not hear his cries, or simply didn't care, as he was ignored.
Oscar cried for what seemed like years, if the sun in the sky could move it would surely have completed numerous cycles. But the world continued to treat Oscar with a cold indifference.
Finally, done with his crying Oscar wiped the corners of his eyes, before sitting in a meditative position. Closing his eyes, Oscar began to think about what he knew,
'I touched the statue… then put on the mask, before I felt like dyin'…'
Oscar's frown deepened,
'It has to be the mask, but how do I get outta' here?'
Realizing that sitting down would do nothing to help is sorrowful situation, Oscar got to his feet. Oscar stood. With nowhere to go, he began to walk. Once more, like when he first entered the accursed woods that led him here, he walked for what felt like days, seasons, even years seemed to pass by for him.
The horizon had long since turned into a mirage, his own mind began playing tricks on him. Sometimes he would see his home right on the horizon, then as he continued to walk towards it, invaders would come. They would slaughter the village before burning down his home. They would laugh, and worst of all, they would point at him, crucifying the bodies of his parents facing his direction.
In response, Oscar would scream, he would run towards them, sometimes he would even drop to his knees and breakdown. The only thing that kept him going was realizing that none of this was real. How many times could his parents be slaughtered? Surely not more than once, maybe twice if he allowed even the impossible to happen.
Seemingly realizing that the illusions no longer affected him, the world deemed them useless and stopped showing them completely. The horizon once more returned to an endless expanse of red. Oscar sighed, at least he would see the occasional interesting illusion, now he was back to the monotonous hike that was his life.
Sometime later
Oscar had long since given up at looking at the horizon, knowing that all that would greet him was an endless sea of blood and a star that gazed down on him like an ant.
He kept moving forward, he began to recite the old nursery rhymes his mother used to lull him to sleep with,
There was a girl with ribboned hair,
Who danced alone where no one could see,
She sang to stars, and whispered to trees,
She danced for fairies and spirits,
Till one dusk came a man with bells and shoes,
Cap undone.
He smiled softly, and tipped his head,
His mask all smiles, his sleeves all red,
She took the song he gave away,
And danced until the break of day.
Oscar smiled, the rhyme seemingly bringing a certain sense of safety to his perilous situation. Gaining a renewed sense of vigor, Oscar for the first time since he arrived, picked up his pace.
SMACK
Oscar fell on his backside, holding his nose that started to bleed and added to the endless sea of blood. Looking up Oscar completely forgot about his now injured nose and face. Because right in front of him was a massive monument, cut from what seemed to be white marble.
Oscar began to walk around the monument, inspecting each and every bit of it. Coming on the opposite side of where he arrived, Oscar noticed strange engravings taking up the entirety of that side of the monument. Right at the base of the monument however was a small section of words, this time, in the common language that Oscar spoke.
Oscar attempted to glance even at the common language at the base of the monument,
"Ah!" He screamed, his eyes felt as if someone had just stuck spears that had been heated in hot coals for days straight through his skull. Blood began to leak from the corners of his eyes, and whispers began to fill his ears,
The *^&% is not *&#@%
*&^% Contr&*(*& made &%^$
He *$^&*###$&%&$##$#$#
$*#**#*$*^%&$*#*$&%&$*#
Just the mere sound of the words echoing in his mind seemed to be too much for his mind to handle. The voice, seemingly so far away that Oscar could only make out a few words, but just those seemed to bear enough power to instantly annihilate Oscar.
Finally, the voices stopped, and Oscar managed to calm down, be careful to avoid looking at the words on the monument again, Oscar quickly turned around and continued to walk.
'Best to ignore whatever that was.'
After Oscar had already disappeared once more into the horizon, the monument began vibrating ever so slightly, the first of the large unknown characters on the monument seemed to glow for brief second, before once more falling still.