The Good Times

It was dark, only through the cracks of the door, a few rays shone through. The large room had wooden, boarded floor. It was empty, aside from the bed the small boy had layed in for the last five nights. Instead of his big, comfortable room, he had found himself in this cell after waking up one morning. Steps could be heard echoing behind the heavy door. The young boy opened his eyes when it turned in its hinge with a loud creak.

He wanted to move, but he could not. No words were able to leave his body. He just watched as the masked figures in hooded, brown coats entered the room. They carried candles, whose light shone onto the wooden faces. The little flames danced in anticipation, waiting to catch a burnable material to pulverize. They closed the door behind them.

The three hooded figures stopped next to his body. One of them kneeled down in front of the boy and put their small candle next to him. The light reflected in the two human eyes beneath their mask. They noticed his open eyes, but continued. The other two watched as the kneeling figure put its hands over the boy's stomach. Their hands lit up, slowly blue light streamed out of their palm and into the boy's body.

The first day, when a different person used the same spell but with a different color, he had felt nothing, only the room's cold air on his skin. Throughout the following nights, the weird spell the three had alternately used had left a weird sensation in his body. When one of them used the spell, it would feel cold, the other would produce a tight feeling in his chest. When the current person used their spell for the first time, a nice warmth had filled his body, but it felt warmer now, to the point it felt like a burn on his skin. Worse than the other day, it stung into his stomach, but he could not move.

Then, a shadow emerged from his body. A demonlike figure stretched its arms to pull itself out of him. He panicked as another pair of arms joined the other. Yet, he could not move. More and more arms appeared, the body got longer and longer. The creature started crawling over the kneeling person's body, but the three paid no attention to it, not even a glimpse. More came out of his stomach, it seemed they were no arms, but dozens of legs. It went around the hooded figures body multiple times, before it scuttled over to the next. Further back they were still around the first figure and then no more came out of him. The thing had left his body, its body contined scattering through the room, the sound of hundreds of legs walking across the stone walls filled his ears.

The person in front of the bed stopped their useless spell, picked up the candle holder and got up. The three looked at the boy, then at eachother and started to leave. The demonic creature crawled out of the door just as the three people did. Its long body barely slipped through the doorway as the door fell into its lock. The jingling of keys and the clicking of the metallic lock.

The next day, the boy woke up to the morning sunlight shining through his window. It shone through the large window into his wooden bed. At first he was scared it was a dream, he looked around his nicely furnitured room. The boy lifted his body up, the rustling of his warm sheets comforted him. He had started to cry, so he dragged his blanket back over his head.

The door to his room opened, heavy steps moved towards his bed. The boy's blanket was pulled away, he saw his father halfheartedly smiling at him. He was holding a silver tablet in one hand.

"Good morning."

The boy covered his face with his hands. His father layed the tablet down and grabbed his forearms to move them away, "Are you alright?" The touch felt familiar. Like flames, his fathers skin burned on his arms as he touched them. Like the figure from the cell room, the feeling stung into his flesh. The boy ripped his arms away, got up and ran out of the room. He saw his mother walking down the hallway. He ran towards her and hugged her lower body, crying.

"What is going on?" She stroked her hand across his head, when her fingers reached his neck, a freezing cold bit into his skin. The same effect one of the three masked people had.

The boy slowly pushed his mother away and looked up at her calm face as she caressed his. For a second, he ignored the pain rushing through him. More tears poured down his cheeks as he gave a silent goodbye.

It was definitely them. The boy could tell, even though he was unsure how. That feeling belonged to the figures, "How would I even be here after a kidnapping?" He though as he started to run down the hallway. Past the tapestries and paintings, down the long stairs and through the large wooden doors. The young boy ran out of the mansion as he heard yelling from the windows behind him.

"Get him! You need to catch him!" His mother screamed.

"Joy! Come back! We only wanted the best for you!" She cried.

He ran into the forest, it was cold, but not as cold as the touch of his mother and the feeling in his chest. He continued on until his body could not move anymore. Next to a small recess inside the stone brick wall of a small cemetery, he fell to the ground, finally ready to go back to sleep.