Screw's stories

[screwbaII]

Hey all, I was bored and falling asleep on the bus (which I hate doing) so as I was trying to keep myself awake with thoughts I came up with a concept. Well, a story concept, I do this quite often but most of the time the stories in my head are just a concept or idea for a story and I never write them out. But this one I think may get people thinking (I hope) and I thought of a good way to tell it. There are some ‘flaws’ in this story as some of you might think of but this is a highly hypothetical situation (and I will go into some detail at the end of this) Sooo I hope you guys enjoy.

Her World

Julia opened her eyes, and it was black. Not black as in you can make out the outlines of things, black as in her eyes squeezed shut in a dark room, on a moonless night kind of black. ‘Where am I?’ she thought, ‘I must be dreaming, from the operation I suppose?’ She thought about pinching herself, so she did, and she felt her eyes open.

She looked around, the smell of bleach and the blinding whiteness of the lights that contrasted so dazzlingly to the previous darkness made her feel like she was in heaven with a God that had a cleaning fetish. The hospital was how it had been before the operation and nameless employees bustled in and out of the room, checking on the patients. She lay staring at the ceiling for an unknown amount of time feeling quite exhausted, until finally her doctor came in smiling. “Time to go home, Julia”, he said grinning, and behind him Julia could see her family waving. Her husband and three little girls all standing, waiting for her to get up and come home with them, and she looked back at her doctor, “are you sure? So soon after such a huge operation?” The doctor simply nodded, “good luck” were his parting words as he left the room and her family rushed over to help her. Surprisingly, she suddenly felt good, which was strange, because a minute ago she had felt completely exhausted. “Let’s go home honey, we’ve missed you” her husband hugged her tightly and planted a light kiss on her forehead, “we’re so glad you’re alright”.

It didn’t take Julia to get back into the routine of life; working, eating, sleeping - but something was off. Time felt warped and strange, sometimes it seemed like a lifetime passed in the space of a minute, and on the same token it sometimes felt like a second could last for eternity. She eventually found she could control this time, and make things last for as long or short as she wanted. She could travel into the past, and into the future. Soon she discovered she could also change the environment around her as well. “What did that operation do to me?” she wondered, walking around in a world of paused time. She looked at a low-flying bird paused in flight as though caught in an invisible block of ice. As her powers grew she began to manipulate her world more and more, and every day was a new and exciting way to look at her world.

That is until the fog set in, and the random and strange events that began to happen outside of Julia’s control. It came slowly at first, the fog that she could sometimes view on the horizon in the past was beginning to creep closer. As time passed it began to envelop things closer and closer, and overtime Julia began to fear the fog. At the same time other things began happening. Sometimes, she would be driving and there would be a dead end, and if she tried to change it, nothing happened. The first time she experienced this was about the same time the fog had started its assault, and as the fog crept closer, so too did her routes of her escape begin to become blocked, until eventually she couldn’t leave her house because if she opened the door, the fog would start coming in. People started to disappear as well. At first it was her neighbours, but no one else seemed to notice, coming up with excuses like “oh they’ve just gone on holiday”, and some who disappeared seemed to have never existed, according to everyone else. However, one day she woke up alone.... everyone was gone. It was only her... in her world...

The fog was getting thicker with every passing day, “it almost looks solid” she thought one day as she glanced out the window and observed it. Then came the day the crack in the glass appeared. Waking up one morning, she saw it at her bedroom window, like an icy tendril across a clear lake, and everyday it grew. Julia was terrified, but helpless in her situation. She knew one day she would wake up and the fog would be choking her. The fog would kill her, she knew this, but as much as she didn’t want to accept it, she knew that the torturous crack was simply delaying the inevitable. Working up whatever courage she had left to muster, she marched to her front door. She opened it...

~*****~

They had watched Julia, for the rest of her life. Her body had been dieing, riddled with cancer – all but her brain. There was nothing anyone could do for her.... nothing except remove her brain and keep that alive.

A brain life-support machine had been in development for several years and had been awaiting a human test-subject, for a trial. It had worked on all animal subjects, but even with the most advanced thought-imaging machines, they could not tell much about what happened to the animals after the brain was removed from the body. With Julia though... they saw everything.

~*****~

Well basically what this story is based on is the concept of the interaction of the mind, the brain, and the body. In one of my philosophy subjects I did a few years back, there was a concept I found interesting. If you were to take someone’s brain, and keep it alive in a glass jar, would they continue to think, and live in an imaginary world? Or would they simply live in the darkness of their mind with only thoughts and memories to accompany them? Make what you will of the story, I don’t write stories in my spare time, nor am I particularly interested in them, what I hope I did with putting this up is make some of you think.

Life is 10% sensory perception and 90% imagination.

[SiamJai]

And make me think, you did! :)

There is so much unknown about the human brain; it's a great subject for interesting concepts, and you did a great job capturing one of these in the story. I kinda expected that there will be a twist near the end, and the curiosity was in the back of my mind as I read the main story, until at last got to it - a fitting great finish!

I agree that we add a great deal more to our sensory perceptions to make up what we call 'life'. I'm not sure what'd happen to the brain if it were isolated from the body, but people who had lost their limbs, they say they still feel 'phantom pain' and itching in areas that physically no longer exist. So it's quite plausible that we'd still feel some sort of imaginary body even if we'd lose it all.

But an imaginary world around us, that we'd perceive as real? I don't know... is there any sort of 'official' theory on this, Screw?

[screwbaII]

As I said, this was a concept touched on in a philosophy class, not a psychology one :p Although psychology is derived from philosophy, psychology uses scientific method for it's arguments, whereas philosophy is purely logic based arguments. However, as you said with the whole sensation of 'phantom limbs' the possibility that the brain can create stuff that isn't there is quite real.

For example a study that stimulated a 'pleasure centre' in the brain brought such a feeling of euphoria to participants that some of them begged the researchers not to stop stimulting it. This showed that the brain is perfectly capable of creating senses within the body, rather than external from the body.

Another example is de ja vu. Epileptics commonly get a sense of de ja vu, especially before they have an attack. A study was conducted on this 'de ja vu' feeling and it was found that a certain part of the brain (I believe it was the Hippocampus, a part of the brain that is vital in the laying down of new memory) when stimulated created a sense of de ja vu for the person. So this sense of having done something, or seen something before is really just a sensation your brain makes you feel.

Your brain is perfectly capable of creating something that isn't there, whether or not the brain could create something from no sensory input ? It's plausible if you think about it. Many of us probably had our own imaginary worlds, and also when we dream, we have no sensory input from our eyes, yet we can 'see'. I imagined it somewhat the same as this, but incorporated more senses.

I knew you would find this interesting Siam XD and this thread is open for debate on such topics. I'll post up some more stories of concepts I know of when I think of them (usually it's on the bus and stuff). So discuss all you want, as that is the main point of this thread :D (as well as showing off my *cough* awesome *cough* story writing skills. I'll leave this going a few days so people get a chance to put a debate in (or opinions or whatever you want to, put nothing at all if you want), and then I have a new one that I have brewing to post up.

[Ivernus]

I do have to agree with Siamjai here, the story itself was interesting, you knew there was something wrong with it, some sort of revelation that would be revealed in a twist from the start but it wasn't one that simply jumped out. The story captivated my interest till the end and explored a very intriguing concept through out. Unfortunatly a topic like this isn't really my area of expertise so I don't think I could discuss it as well as some other people may be able to, but it goes without saying that the story itself is well written and fun to read.

[screwbaII]

Well, the concept is probably a little advanced for most people on here I suppose, but I knew that Siam would at least play with the idea with me.

[SiamJai]

Oh, I'd play anything with you, Screw! :-p

Nick, I'm sure you have a rich imagination, you could use that in lieu of expertise... at least that's what I do, haha. :-D It's just for the sake of fun. ^_^

Back on subject, I'm still a bit skeptical about the brain creating a realistic illusion of our surroundings... true, we have dreams and imaginary worlds, but of the former, we are not conscious (as opposed to a perfectly conscious brain functioning without a body), and in the latter, we know that the world we imagine is not real.

I'd kinda go with the idea that while the brain could create a sense of full body, the rest would be just like normal: in the conscious state of mind, we'd be surrounded by darkness and no sensations, and while the brain is in 'sleep state', we'd see dreams as usual. But I know, it would not make a good story at all, hehe.

That pleasure center stimulation sounds quite interesting (I'd try that, how about you? :p). Now, if various parts of the brain were stimulated to artificially create a sense of world, I could go with that (as opposed to the brain just being left on its own, suspended in some nutritious goo). That's kinda close to the idea that the Matrix was based on... a cool movie for a cool concept. :)

[screwbaII]

Lol XD

Well I suppose you're right, but I guess it ties into the whole 'what happens to us if we don't have a sense'. When people are blind, they can't see, but they can 'see'. There is a phenomenon known as 'blindsight', in which blind people can in fact navigate around objects in their path without bumping into them or the use of an external guide (it is slower than a normal person however). There is an idea there, that we don't see with our eyes, but we see with our mind. Our body is specialised to channel external input from the outside world, but is the outside world actually creating these senses, or is it our brain?

For example, I am looking at a red wall. The light waves for 'red' are reflecting off the wall into my eyes, and my cones (specialised cells found in the eye responsible for colour vision) are transforming the light into neurochemicals that is then sent to the brain via the optic nerve for processing. My brain then processes the vision sent by the eyes in the visual cortex, and determines that I am looking at a wall that is red. However, I can just as easily close my eyes and picture the red wall, and if I was attached to an fMRI machine, the same visual cortex that is responsible in processing visual input from the eyes would light up as I pictured the red wall in my mind.

It works the same with every other sensory input processors in the brain, if you IMAGINE the sense, that part of the brain activates. If you imagine a song in your head you can 'hear' the song... even if it isn't there. You can 'see' a picture of a red wall if you close your eyes. So imagine if you had originally been able to experience the world with your body, but then all of it was taken away from you and it was just you in your brain. If you knew this was happening, you would get pretty bored pretty fast, and what is the single greatest thing to do when you are in a situation that is really boring, but nothing is available to quell that boredom? You IMAGINE. Sometimes for me personally, I would construct worlds in my mind, and these worlds remained stable over time. I could add and subtract from them, imagine new things in them, but overall once I constructed them they remained as I remembered building them, and I guess if you had your body taken away there wouldn't BE anything to do except imagine. And would you not agree that imagining things with your eyes closed in a dark, silent room brings out more vivid imagery and sensations in your mind than say you had your eyes open while sitting in a light room.

So, I guess there are two things that could happen in the event that I had no sensory input. One would be that I would live in a world of nothing, or the brain would just die and waste into nothingness due to no stimulation. Or the brain could devise a world to live in based off experiences. I mean, even if we know dreams aren't real, they still often seem real, but we know we will wake up from them... that is if we are consciously awake within a dream. However, sometimes you can't tell dreams from reality... for example when I was a child I had a dream I was busting to go to the toilet, and I was consciously awakening into this dream and it felt so real that I physically wet the bed when I thought I was on the toilet. I was pretty confused when I woke up, let me tell you :P And I have had similar dreams like it sometimes, but fortunately from that experience previously I manage to wake up in time to get to a toilet. The point is, it is possible to confuse dreams with reality, and if you can imagine being in a dream you can't wake up from, would you not just assume it was reality anyway?

I kinda try and demonstrate this in the beginning of the story, she physically wakes up and there is no sensory input at all. Hence the blackness. So she 'wakes up', but instead of waking up into reality, she withdraws from reality and wakes up into a fantasy that she simply accepts because to her, the blackness isn't a reality at all. She knows that something is wrong, she knows she can do all this crazy weird stuff, but she can't understand why. This is because as I said she gets into a routine of 'working, eating, sleeping', and when she (as the mind), goes to sleep, the brain will also shut off for sleep mode, and that is why when she 'wakes up', it will still be her reality.

Another interesting sensory thing that some people have is this 'crossing over' of senses (this isn't really related too much to my story, but just throwing out this kind of weird sensory 'bug' people have in their brains). I forget the technical term for it, but basically you have these people that can experience two senses in the one sense. For example, simply listening to a word such as 'apple' will create the taste of an apple for the person. And this doesn't go for just food words either. Some people with this type of the condition, can experience tastes of foods from something as obscure as someone's name. (For example if I introduced myself to someone like this they might say that when they hear my name it 'tastes' like chocolate). There are other versions of this, for example, some people can see words and symbols as different colours. Like, if they were looking at my sentence now it might look something like this, where each individual letter is coloured in. As you can imagine, problems arise when they are reading coloured words and the colours of the words don't match the colours that they see the words as. Some famous musicians have this form, they can see harmonious notes as harmonious colours and come up with great music :p True story. Of course this thing can work with any combination of senses, but the most common is the one I just explained.

I must apologise my ranting is a bit here and there and all over the place but I go off on tangents and forget what I began with and all that kind of crazy stuff. My personal view on this is I don't really know what would happen, I just like tossing around possibilities based on what I do know. Personally I think that if there was no world, then the brain would create one based off what it knew. But what about if you took the brain of say... a newborn baby and did the same thing. How would they then experience the world, having no experience of the world to do things such as complex fantasies? Yea, I like have no idea, sometimes it's really hard for me to wrap my head around talking about stuff like this. And you're right Siam, this is pretty Matrix kinda thinking, worlds within worlds and such. I'm more skeptical of the idea that the brain would just sit there in a world of nothing, because when we are sleeping in the dark the brain can create worlds where we 'see' and anything and everything can happen in them, and sometimes you can even control what happens yourself. Although dreaming does have a function, the fact that our brain uses our sense of sight (pretty much the only sense used in dreams, although I do have auditory dreams sometimes if there is a monotonous sound around it will often be incorporated into my dreams) which is next to useless in the dark to create an internal world and an internal situation seems convincing to me that in the absence of being able to use our senses on the external world, we would use them in the internal one.

[Lovelight]

"...what I hope I did with putting this up is make some of you think."
Making me think too much, Screw. Waaay too much thinking. @_@

Anyway, I like this story. It was well written. I thought the mood was going to be pleasant. Because...you know. Controlling time and space is awesome. But then the fog came in, and I thought it was going to be like another Stephen King novel except without the monsters. The ending was a really nice plot twist though.

For a short story, it really is compacted with lots and lots of ideas and themes about the general world.

Good job. :]

[screwbaII]

Thanks Love, I hope your brain didn't explode in the process of thinking (sometimes some ideas and concepts brought up in my courses gives me headaches as well, but thankfully it's only empirical stuff and not this philosophical stuff). As I said I do a lot of thinking on bus trips (if I'm not reading books, and if I am reading books and come across an interesting concept I usually start focusing on the idea rather than the book LOL). I've been thinking of a couple of new ideas, and since I've had some good feedback about this story it makes me motivated to post some more up. Need a couple more bus trips though :P I do have a couple in mind though, so if you guys really did enjoy this one then I will be sure to post up some more.

I'm glad for the people who have replied have told me about their thought processes while reading the story, it gives me great feedback about what kind of effects playing with words has, so thanks :D

[screwbaII]

Well, as I promised somewhere along the line, I would post a story I wrote in yr 11 Extension English. So anyway, I'll give a bit of background on it. It is long - about 6 pages or almost 3 000 words. It was written for the theme of 'gothic', and I practically got like one of the top in the class (there were only 11 people in the class but these 11 people were probably the most skitz people I knew in terms of intelligence in English). So pretty much being one of the best (I think I came second or third in this assignment, but first overall) was a huge achievement for me.

The story is kind of based on Ancient Egyptian mythology, with my own personal twist to it. Prior to the writing of this story I had been thinking of writing this story (or something similar to it) anyway, and when this assignment came up I believed it was the perfect chance. I used to write a lot of short stories in my spare time, so I was pretty happy when this assignment came up. I edited and re-edited and put a lot of work into writing this, and when I handed it in I felt it was as polished as I could personally make it without other people's criticism (the most I got from my mum was "You should be a writer" ... yea....). So anyway, this was written about five years ago for a school assignment, so don't expect it to be professional, and you can criticise it if you want to but I hardly see the point since this was written so far back in the past. But feel free to I welcome any and all comments on it. So yea this will probably be at least 2 posts long (maybe three), and hope you guys enjoy it.

Anubis’ Curse

Ancient Egypt – 4000B.C.E and the Gods of Ancient Egypt came into their immortal being. One of the more powerful: Anubis - God of the dead, who ruled the judgement of the dead, and who once ruled the Underworld as well, before he was overthrown by Osiris. The legend goes that after Osiris’ death at the hands of Seth, and then his resurrection by his wife Isis, Osiris claimed Lord over the Underworld Anubis was enraged at being replaced by Osiris, in the eyes of the people –especially- it gave him an image of diminished power!. After the condemnation of Seth by Horus, Anubis vowed his revenge on Osiris. Not long after that Anubis then made a dark alliance with Seth. Osiris became angry at Anubis for his insolence and trapped him in a dark tomb which he ordered the sphinx to guard so that no one may enter unless they solved the Riddle (which Osiris gave to the Sphinx.). Anubis enraged even more at his condemnation, humiliation and entrapment, turned the Sphinx into sandstone and put a curse on his tomb, so that if anyone ever uncovered it, he would overthrow Osiris and again take control of the Underworld and in the process wreak his revenge on the mortal world, releasing the souls of the Underworld to find their long dead bodies. His army of Anubites would rise and bathe in the blood of the people who turned away from their master. If Anubis was allowed to reign again, the dead would walk the land and know no peace. All would be condemned to an eternity of mortal torture in which they could never fulfill the needs of being alive, but in the process never die… All would live in death…~###~
From the Journal of Lucifer Jones

Monday, 12/12/05

I arrived in Egypt today, with my fellow colleague and best friend, Erebus, my first time ever, although Erebus had been here before. It seemed important that I came here, ever since I found that old manuscript in the Museum archives. Something has been niggling away at me, something that drew me here. The manuscript must be dated at least 3000B.C.E and it talks about Anubis being the old ruler of the Underworld… a forgotten legend. The only thing is the bottom half of the manuscript was missing however, which worried me a little, in some unexplainable way, but I think it alludes to the tomb of Anubis… if in fact Anubis was an ancient monarch before the first dynasty- before recorded history, which is my belief. It certainly solves where the Riddle of the Sphinx came from… It would be an exciting discovery if the tomb of a “God” was found. I intend to discover if this… if Anubis was indeed a monarch, this could lead reason to believe many of the Gods might also have been real people… this discovery could be very important for mankind, and I shall be the One to discover it!!!
~###~
Lucifer gazed out of the window of the inexpensive hotel in which Erebus and he were staying. The day was clear and bright, but ominous storm clouds were already gathering into puffy white and grey mounds on the horizon, electricity already beginning to shoot through them.

On the other side of the horizon, the moon sat, half full.

It was nearing late morning, about 10 am, but the sun’s rays were already beating down heavily on the barren wasteland of the desert near Giza. From this side of the small, cramped room, Lucifer could see the Pyramids of Giza, their majestic triangular faces, rising out of the sands which spiraled and eddied about them violently in the wind. Before them lying silent and unfeeling of the sands sting, was the Sphinx. Its massive paws splayed out in front of it, and its face breaking down slowly, as if rotting with the age of thousands of years, almost as if it was nothing but a decaying corpse. It was a very windy day.

Erebus walked slowly out of the tiny bathroom drying his glossy black hair with a towel. “So what are we going to do today Lucifer?” he enquired between the ‘shwush shwush shwush’ of his towel rubbing against his head. Lucifer thought for a moment before turning to face him, “I was thinking last night Erebus, about the manuscript from the museum, it refers to the Sphinx remember? – the Riddle of the Sphinx, and I think the Sphinx has something to do with it- just something tells me it does.” Erebus stopped his towel and raised an eyebrow. “I think we should see the Sphinx today,” Lucifer concluded, mistaking Erebus’s look as one of puzzlement.

Erebus hid a smile behind his towel, ‘a smart one indeed Seth’ he thought, ‘a smart one…. Indeed’.

About 2 Hours later Erebus and Lucifer were both standing before the decaying majesty of the Sphinx, gazing up at its half face towering above them. The coarse sand whipped around them, stinging their exposed limbs like thousands of tiny scorpions. Lucifer squinted hard up at the Sphinx, wishing for some sort of sign, anything, to let him know he was on the right path… if, of course there was a path to follow…

The sun hit its zenith and the shadows disappeared…

Lucifer turned away briefly then looked back surveying the scene that was the sphinx, the face, the chest, the paws, the front legs. A glimmer of gold in the nook of where the right front leg joined onto the main body caught his surveying eyes. Erebus, his eyes locked on Lucifer’s every single movement, gazed at him intently with mild interest at what Lucifer was doing. Erebus’s steely grey eyes glinted when Lucifer bent down to investigate what had caught his eye. “Erebus,” Lucifer called him over excitedly, “I think… I think I found something!” “You think too much” Erebus muttered as he strolled over leisurely, his face conveying none of his own excitement, nothing crossed his blunt features but an expression of boredom. “What is it?” he queried Lucifer rolling his eyes and playing along with the curiosity.

What Lucifer held out to him was a golden scarab, uniquely carved, it, indeed was a find of its own, but also, a find Erebus never expected to see.

In his hand he held the Riddle…

“What do you think it is?” Lucifer whispered to Erebus, who in turn held out his hand as an indication he wanted to have a closer look at the discovery. Lucifer handed it to him slowly and Erebus took it, and inspected it.

No doubt it was the Riddle… but where was the solution? … What was the solution?

“I think it’s something important…” Erebus concluded and reluctantly handed it back to Lucifer. Lucifer looked at the Golden Scarab again closely. Underneath it were faint hieroglyphs, etched neatly, reading “The Riddle”. The fine, golden legs, he observed carefully, formed a definite pattern. Something clicked in the overworking cogs of Lucifer’s mind.

“It’s a key…” he whispered. Erebus was definitely surprised at this, and it briefly showed across his face.

‘The Riddle is a key, OF COURSE, but where is the lock… every key needs a lock…”

Lucifer looked at him puzzled, confused by Erebus’s reaction. It didn’t surprise Lucifer, Erebus had always been unusual… something about him never did quite fit – as if there was something more to him, something that Lucifer could never put his finger on…

“What is it a key to?” asked Erebus, then, almost with an urgency, “where is the lock that it opens?”

Lucifer didn’t pick up on Erebus’s tone though; he was deep in thought again. There had to be a pattern to it, what did it mean by “The Riddle?” Was this the Riddle of The Sphinx?

The moon passed slowly in front of the sun, blocking its radiant light…

Suddenly it grew dark. The sudden darkness startled Lucifer out of his thoughts. He glanced over at Erebus, who, forgetting his composure altogether, was looking up and grinning at the sky, which was unusual – Erebus never smiled without a reason. Lucifer then looked up at the sky as well, and realized that the moon had totally eclipsed the sun. When he looked back at the Sphinx he blinked. There was something unusual about the darker shadow cast by the headdress of the Sphinx, which had caught his attention. Standing back, he saw on the ground, in the shadow, a stone slab of a doorway. In between the 2 paws of the sphinx the sand had been blown away and the Solution was visible.

[screwbaII]

Erebus glared at Lucifer expectantly. Lucifer dropped to his knees and placed the Riddle into the Lock, the Solution. A door slowly opened, grating against the sand as the stone moved under the Sphinx’s main body, revealing a stairway paved in gold. Erebus, who had been watching in amazement, now began to laugh, a slow menacing laugh, a look of wildness in his cold, grey eyes. The storm clouds that had been building blew in, covering the eclipse, and the only remaining light from the sun, sending the world into a shadow of darkness. The wind whipped up even more.

The sliding stone slab finished opening with a rumbling finale. Stale air flooded out and the stink of decay stung the insides of Lucifer’s nose with its repugnant smell. Erebus descended slowly into the tomb.

A dark shudder rippled through the Earth… Anubis had awoken…

Lucifer suddenly felt the very Earth beneath him shake, as if trembling, and he was suddenly very scared. Erebus, at this point, was near disappearing into the darkness. “Erebus! EREBUS!!!” Lucifer shouted running down into the abyss after him. Erebus whipped around, his eyes flaring, “YOU… FOOL! I am Seth, God of darkness, not “Erebus”! You have awoken Anubis! Prepare to die pitiful mortal… and live in your death…” With that Erebus /Seth began to laugh hysterically.

Lucifer fell back as another shape loomed out of the shadows. The long nose of a jackal appeared which was followed by the head of a jackal… a BLACK jackal. A highly muscular body of a man ensued, with an ankh on a highly decorated neck décor. Golden arm bands, decorated with miniature snakes that writhed, hissing and twisting, glimmered faintly around the arms of the figure.

“Anubis…” Lucifer whispered hoarsely.

“You boy, you are a smart Fool, aren’t you” Anubis growled menacingly at Lucifer, regarding him with distaste, “but for your ambition, mankind must now pay”. “You on the other hand,” Anubis continued with slow articulation and Seth grinned “can sit back and watch.

Very suddenly, making Lucifer jump, startled, Anubis whipped out long deadly curved scythes from his waist band and turning around, bounded easily up the stairs of the tomb. At the top, outlined in the thick grey clouds, and the lightning that streaked through them, Anubis threw his head back and howled, a long high pitched wail tapering off to the shrieking laugh of a jackal. Seth followed him up and thunder cracked and boomed overhead as they stood looking down at Lucifer, their malicious nature reflecting in their eyes. Suddenly they both turned and leaped off into the desert quickly becoming obscured by the violent sands.

Lucifer scrambled quickly to the tops of the stairs and beheld a sight of pure terror. From the sands Anubites were forming. Millions upon millions, each with 2 deadly scythes, their jackal heads every bit as unnatural as Anubis’. Their legs tapering into the hind legs of a jackal, but were more strong and muscular, enough to hold the weight of their unnatural head and bodies. Heading towards the City of Giza, Lucifer saw Anubis and Seth. They stopped before the Army of growling, snarling Anubites. Anubis lifted his head and as one they all howled, ending it in shrieks of laughter so piercing Lucifer had to cover his ears. Suddenly they were off, bounding, running, leaping in a stampede towards the city.

Lucifer sank into the sand, confused and defeated. What had he done? He had unleashed Judgement day unto mankind. That’s what he had done. In his despair he had not noticed the other terror lurking under the sand.
A raspy groaning behind him startled him to his feet. The smell hit him before the sight did, the smell of decay. He turned around and almost wretched in horror at the sight before him. Thousands of skeletons and corpses in varying stages of decay marched slowly across the sandy wasteland, the sand swirling about them in the wind and distorting their already distorted and grotesque features.

Lucifer shrank back down into the tomb’s dark haven as they passed in the wake of the Anubite army, towards the city. Lucifer was totally and utterly defeated now, he had bought doom to mankind, he could do nothing… or could he?

Scrabbling around in the claustrophobic blackness of the tomb, he found The Riddle, fading fast from its gold to a black. He knew of another museum manuscript attached to the legend of Anubis. A poem, he had thought at the time, but now with a slow realization, he knew it was the undoing of Anubis’ curse.

As he went through the words in his mind, and ibis appeared suddenly at the entrance of the tomb, fading out of the sands mist and into reality. Before Lucifer’s eyes it transformed into an Ibis headed God… Thoth.

“Ah Horus, you have returned” he greeted him, regarding him in a birdlike manner. “But I’m not…” stuttered Lucifer. Thoth laughed the pointed out “You could read my hieroglyphs Horus, the writing of the Gods, you are the only one who can restore the peace…” and with that, in the blink of an eye, the words echoing in Lucifer’s confused mind, Thoth was gone.
He, HE who had unleashed this… this slaughter on mankind, was Horus reincarnate? Lucifer had no choice but to accept his destiny. Slowly he whispered the words:

When the Riddle unlocks the door,
And out of it does darkness pour,
Only one may restore the peace,
And stop the horror they unleashed,
With the Scarab fading fast,
Before the Sphinx the wielder cast,
Fight the darkness and with light spread,
The hope that light through darkness sheds.

Lucifer waited until the last of the skeletal ghouls had passed, but the stink of death still lingered strongly about the Sphinx, making him wrinkle his nose in distaste. He clambered out of the vault and witnessed, in the distance, the City of Giza being ravaged. Overhead the thick black clouds streaking with lightning rumbled and groaned, masking the screams and howls in the distance.

Lucifer stood up bravely, the last ray of hope in an otherwise now dark world. He had unleashed the Pandora’s Box of Egypt and now, he had to close it.

Holding the Riddle above him, and feeling a little foolish in doing so, he screamed out the poem…
“When the Riddle unlocks the door!..” Anubis turned around.
“And Out of it does Darkness pour!..” “NOOOOOO” Anubis screamed.
“Only one may restore the peace!...” The moans of the undead echoed throughout the desert as they were drawn back to their graves.
“And stop the Horror they unleashed!...” The Anubites began to disintegrate, back into the sands that were eddying violently around them.
“With the Scarab fading Fast!...” Lightning struck all 3 of the pyramids behind the Sphinx simultaneously.
“Before the Sphinx the wielder cast!...” the Riddle began to glow brilliantly..
“Fight the darkness and with light spread!...” Anubis howled in rage…
“THE HOPE THAT LIGHT THROUGH DARKNESS SHEDS!!!...”

For a moment time stood still.

Suddenly from the deathly silence, an eruption of sound, howls and screams that faded into echoes engulfed Lucifer. With the end of the tumult of noise, a beam of sunlight burst through the clouds, surrounding Lucifer with light. Overhead a falcon hovered and swooped, saluting Lucifer.

Behind him the darkness was drawn back into the tomb…

Lucifer desperately hoped mankind could learn from the mistake he had made, so that this horror could never happen again. To make sure of this Lucifer threw the Riddle into the Nile, so that it may wash out to sea and never be seen again. Lucifer never saw Erebus again.

From the Journal of Lucifer Jones

Wednesday, 13/12/05

So with that I leave you mankind, with the thought that you will not seek the knowledge I once sought, for this will surely lead to your destruction…
Horus…

500 years later…
“The discovery of a tomb underneath the sphinx has lead to major epidemics throughout Egypt; we hope that this will not spread any further…”
Anubis grinned at the news report and howled in glee… Judgement day had come… at last…

Overhead a falcon watched silently, disappointed…

[screwbaII]

I should probably also mention, that the names I chose have particular meaning to them. Erebus was something like chaotic darkness, and Lucifer actually means light bringer (despite being the name of satan, which was brought in by the church at a much later date than the name originally appeared.).

Hope you guys enjoyed it.

[Lovelight]

That's a good read. I like how you thought out their names. Tis not just random names, oh no. Lucifer as 'light bringer' makes sense because the Latin 'luc-' root means light, so...
It's well written, the language and vocabulary made it interesting to read. Because, you know. Simple language --> Bad in the literary world LOL. (Twilight)

Anywho. I really like this. The descriptions provided made it really clear as to what's going on as 2012 occurred. Ok, maybe not 2012. I like how it's not just visual either. You emphasized the stench of death and decay. The only thing that made it confusing for me was where he is while Doomsday was happening. It could be that I'm just a bad reader, but he seems to be running around all over the place. First, he's outside, and then he's inside somewhere, and then he's outside again.

I like how his tale ended, which was in success. However, I think the poem that he memorized seemed pretty random. I'm assuming that he's an archeologist or something, right? So it'd make sense that he knows that the artifact exists. But maybe if you explained his thought processes of how the manuscript happened to relate to such a thing. Because I think that means that Lucifer would have to know that the curse existed beforehand and... yeaaaah...
I don't really know how to completely articulate why that troubles me...but I hope you get the gist of it.

And for the last thing that concerned me:
"As he went through the words in his mind, and ibis appeared suddenly at the entrance of the tomb, fading out of the sands mist and into reality. Before Lucifer’s eyes it transformed into an Ibis headed God… Thoth."

Care to clarify? xD (like.. who's Ibis, and so forth)


Anyway, I really enjoyed reading this.
I like the presented idea that knowledge can be more of a burden than a benefit.
(ironically, it also took knowledge to save the world)

Good job. :]

[screwbaII]

Mmm ok I'll just clarify it a little better.

Firstly the tomb is at the sphinx and it is underneath it (so when he goes inside and outside he is really in the same place - at the feet of the sphinx but he just goes within the tomb).

Yes he is an archaeologist - he found a manuscript in some museum archives while perusing them. Unfortunately the bottom had been torn off (which would have been the part about how the tomb is cursed, which you would probably have to infer). Also because he is friends with Erebus, who is really Seth, Erebus would have had some hand in the direction and guidance of the plan for Lucifer to open the tomb. Also he found the poem mixed in with the other manuscript in about the same area (if that makes any sense), and I agree it's kinda random but that's probably because I didn't go into much depth about how he found it/why he memorised it. That's because I just put in another infer thing (to save on words so I could stick to the main part of the story and not go off onto tangents and stuff). Just threw in that he found it in the museum as well probably about the same time he found the other manuscript about the tomb. He probably felt it was important, just as he felt it was important to go to Egypt after finding the tomb manuscript. But yea, the surroundings of that is pretty confusing and a little disjointed (predictable since my writing gets worse as I go along LOL but I did do this over like a short time period so I couldn't exactly go into massive details about it). Anyway yea, it's the kind of thing you can just infer your own reason for. Him being an archaeologist is also an inferred thing since he studies museum manuscripts and stuff.

An ibis is a bird with a skinny elongated beak, and the Egyptian god 'Thoth' was the ibis headed god of I guess writing and stuff. He was like the scribe guy of knowledge, and he took the form of an ibis or an ibis headed human (like many of the other Egyptian gods that had animal heads and human bodies). Basically Thoth helped Isis out in the resurrection of Osiris (in the legend) and thus I threw him in there as the writer of the riddle and stuff. So yea, it's basically just another God of Egypt, the basic jist is they all continue to exist through time because of their immortality, and often hide in various forms so no-one knows they exist, and some have forgotten they are gods - such as Lucifer being Horus - who was the son of Osiris and Isis and also the one who took revenge on Seth. As I said I kinda took bits and pieces of the mythological stories and changed it to make a different story of one that was relevent in a more modern context in a gothic theme.

Hope that mostly explains things for you D: Thanks for the critique though XD I know it's bad to put inference stuff into stories but I didn't really feel like it was relevent to state every single detail :p

[Lovelight]

Oh no no no no.

My AP US History teacher told me that a good story is like a girl's skirt.
It's long enough to cover the knees (or the important parts), but short enough to make the mind wonder (self explanatory). So inference --> A-okay.

I think your story is just one of those ones that I'd have to read several times to understand (I read it three times and found that there were a lot of small details that I missed) and have a faint background on Egyptian mythology.

Anyway, you clarified everything. (it's all makes sense now!) It really is a good piece.
I hope to see more from you.

[screwbaII]

Yea ha ha ha, when I re-read it after a few days while I was actually writing this I found pieces in it and stuff that I never actually even realised I had written o.o Re-reading it after like 5 years or so I also found new things in it I couldn't remember. I'm like wow I painted a pretty good landscape LOL. But yea there is a lot of stuff that you need to re-read to understand properly I guess maybe. The part at the start is supposed to give you the basics you need to understand what's going on in the actual story and everything I suppose D: But glad you really liked it :D