Using Pair 2 (sorry for the length)
Title - A Child's Thought
"They have been woken, my liege." The black hooded figure said at the door way.
At first there was no response, then there was a echo of a book being closed roughly. The man, at the only source of light within the study, turned in his chair toward the black hooded figure. "Thank you." Was all he said and sighed turning away from the already closed door and looked out the window before him. There was nothing much outside the windows, just darkness, just the same that surrounded himself. That would change soon. Again.
~~~~~~~
A knock came at the door. Maggie didn't need to pull them any closer, her two younger siblings Eva and Jean, instinctively shrunk into to her chest.
"Shh. Its o.k., stay quiet." She whispered to them, trying to calm them down just as her own heart was attempting to beat out of her chest. She clung to them tighter, if that were actually possible. "Hello?" A voice emanated from the door.
Jean, the youngest, began sobbing.
"Shh. Shh." Maggie shook her arm in an attempt to keep her sister from giving them away any further, but she was just as terrified and nearly on the brink of wailing her self. Another knock. She was becoming desperate; she looked around frantically for a way out, but there was only darkness, except fro what light crept in around the edges of door. There was musky smell in the air, like that of old moldy books. Perhaps they were in a library, but Maggie didn't care where they were as long as she could get them out alive.
As noted when they first woke up to a man in a black hood setting them down, there was no sign of an exit, save for that door again, which had been proven to be locked. There was no way out.
There was a scrape of something metallic entering the door's lock and series of clicks sounded, followed by another knock. The door slowly began to swing open on ancient hinges.
The light of a weak dawn poured in, revealing the room to be a small nursery filled with a few baby furnishings and couple of bookshelves of fairytale bed time stories; Maggie and her sisters paid no attention to the room, their attention was solely on the door.
"Hello? Are you in there?" A head began to peek through the lighted doorway.
Eva and Jean both began sobbing loudly into Maggie's chest. Maggie didn't bother trying to quiet them; she just held onto her sisters as hard as she could and stared at the door in a trance beyond tears.
The head alone came through, and the door halted. The face was firm, years of stress had taken its toll leaving deep worry lines everywhere. The black eyes were sharp with experience, unwanted experience. Though, Maggie did not see that, she only saw the face value of a hard man, and she could do nothing.
But she missed something else mixed with the unwanted experience in his eyes of a face of deep worries. Hope shined in his eyes, upon seeing the children; as if they were themselves the dawn of a new day. And in his perspective, he was not to far off.
The man did not move the door any further open, he only kept his head there and he smiled, an expression his face was not used to making against the deep lines of his face and absorbing black eyes. "Please. Excuse me. I didn't mean to scare you." He said his smile deepening.
Maggie only tried shrinking back into the wall.
"Uh. I am Dr...I am Malloch." He said raising his hand from behind the door.
"Please. I am not going to hurt you." That gripped Malloch's heart for a second. He opened the door slowly as he lowered himself down to their level, squatting in the doorway. "Are you hungry? I can feed you something."
Maggie only shook her head and did not speak, her sisters finally looked at Malloch that spoke to them, the remnants of their sobs still hiccuping out of them, and just stared.
"Well, then. What are your names?" Malloch asked.
Maggie looked Malloch over and sighed, looking a little more relaxed. Though she still held onto her sisters. "I-I...am Maggie. And..." She paused looking down at her sisters, who were becoming tense again. "These are my two younger sisters. Eva," Maggie lifter her right arm indicating which she was, "and Jean, our youngest." She moved her left arm.
"I am more than pleased to me-"
"Where are mommy and daddy!" Eva shouted out loud.
Maggie brought Eva up to her chest again. "Shh. Its ok." She looked at Malloch in the eye, the red finally fading from her own eyes, "They passed away, a long time ago. But Eva...she doesn't always grasp everything...she always bounces back and forth in knowing and unknowing of our parents passing."
"I am sorry." He was sorry for their loss, but in his eyes, a greater hope shined in hearing of Eva's loss of grip on reality. "Please, come with me. I want to show you my home." Malloch began walking before the girls had time to even think about it.
"He is scary. I don't like him." Eva said watching the doorway, as if it were a maw of some untamed beast.
"I'm scared, too." Was all Jean said.
Maggie shook her head and kissed Jean on her head. "Come on. We are his guests and we can't be rude. Mom and dad wouldn't be happy if were rude."
Together they ventured out of the room, Maggie guiding them holding their hands tightly, and turned down same direction Malloch had turned down the hall. There he waited for them at the end. Patiently waiting. He smiled when he saw them. When they caught up with him, he lead them down and down into the depths of his home.
It was huge and windowless, but after a while, Maggie realized that there were windows; it was just so dark out, that the black walls hid the windows. The darkness almost seemed flat and without depth, though Maggie didn't understand the darkness's flat features, beyond thinking it strange.
Their tour ended in a large room, filled with countless candles and the walls covered in countless books, there were scattered tables, covered in papers and books and pens. There were a couple of plates of food left on some of the tables. Some half eaten or just rotting where they sat. But one particular table was cleared off and then topped with paints and paper and what looked to be hot chocolate.
"Please. Make yourself at home." Malloch gestured to the table.
"Come on its o.k. he is just being nice." Maggie brought her sisters to the table and they sat.
"I brought these out for you to paint with, take your mind off of this morning." Malloch looked out one of the windows. "And some hot chocolate to get you going." Malloch smiled and took one of the paintbrushes and dipped it in red and poked a bloch onto the paper in front of Jean and made a sound of falling rain. "Bloop!" He smiled and walked away to his own table where h began writing at once.
Maggie smiled encouragingly to her sisters, though Jean had already taken up the paintbrush Malloch used and began covering her paper in bloches saying "bloop" each and every time and then laughing. Eva looked at the paintbrushes and took up a yellowish color onto it from the collection of paints, and began painting two figures. It didn't take much to guess what or who she would be drawing. She missed mom and dad the most of the three. Maggie looked down at her own paper and began painting a sky and flowers.
Some time had passed and Maggie and her sisters had already finished their hot chocolate, her stomach was beginning to rumble, she was finally hungry. She was looking up at her sisters, about to ask if they were also hungry and ready to take up Malloch's offer, she saw the black hooded man appear silently behind Eva and Jean. He raised both his hands, each holding a cloth and reached for her sisters. Just as she was about to scream a cloth came over her mouth and she knew no more after a couple of breaths.
Everything whirled in her head. Voices filled the blurs of colors. She didn't know what was going on. After a few minutes, her hearing began to sharpen.
"No, she is much too old. She has passed the time of true childhood creativity." Malloch's voice sounded in her head. "The other two, however, are perfect. I feel that Eva is the most promising. Her art was beyond creative, even though it was centered around her parents."
"You think so? Well, we should have her Mantled, first, then." Another voice came in. "What should we do with-" His voice stopped. "She is coming too."
Maggie felt a cloth put over her face again.
Time was lost, again. And it was her sight that came back first, this time, but everything came in waves. She was in and out of her body. She would be awake for a few moments seeing and then black again, and then awake. She couldn't understand much of what they were saying. Mostly mumbling, she remembered seeing a machine coming down from the ceiling though, and going over a table that looked to bare Eva.
Black.
Colors. Bright violent colors. There was screaming. Lots of it. She looked up from her own table. Eva was screaming, the machine was over her, and holding parts of what looked to be a body against her. Maggie tried screaming, but all that would come out was a whimper. The violent colors shifted again. Maggie looked towards them, the very direction Eva was facing. Outside the window the world was coming to life. Lights and a sky and trees were visible. They grew rapidly and died away.
Black.
Maggie felt as if she were having a nightmare. It looked and felt like it. She opened and closed her eyes, she didn't know how many times. But the last nightmare she had...Eva was dead. The violent colors were gone. And Malloch screamed out, as if frustrated and angry. Maggie didn't want to think or feel anything. She didn't resist anymore. She let herself fall back asleep.
Black
Time passed again. She didn't know what was real or not. But she remembered hearing Malloch call for Jean. Maggie sobbed with strangled whimpers. She passed out repeatedly over the next torrents of screams. Screams that assaulted her. Screams that assaulted her in her dreams. Lights beat against her closed eyelids.
Finally, she could take it no more. She fought back. She stood and walked over to the machine. Groggy and light headed. Malloch stood over Jean's body, sobbing. Her gut wrenched, but she was distant from her body. She wanted to sob, but she was dried up.
"Why...?" Was all she could get out, and then collapsed leaning on a table next to her.
Malloch looked at her with red eyes, and even deeper lines than before. He looked away at the window and walked over to a chair and stayed facing the window. "I had found him. I had found him. For all of our existence he had left us behind. But when I saw him, I knew why.
"Fickle like a child. Never really understanding what he was doing." He sobbed momentarily. "He was just as innocent as the child he looked. He came with me. To my home. I didn't know I could hurt him. I mean. Of all the songs dedicated to his strength and power, something as simple as me could not so much as phase him. Right?" Malloch put his head into his hands.
"I don't understa..." Maggie couldn't finish her sentence, her words muddling up in her dry mouth.
"After he died. Everything seemed and looked o.k., but I knew it would be horrible. At first you couldn't tell, but then when they started to disappear in clumps, you couldn't ignore it. The stars in the sky began to fade away. The sun blacked out, and the sky with it. Soon the lands started to collapse into nothing. I did my best to collect as many children as I could. I knew there was only one way to fix this. But I didn't know how. I just knew that children, like your sisters would be the key to saving us.
"Perhaps it was his dying wish, perhaps it was gift to me, in knowing the answer. But so far, I have only come close with a whole mess of almosts. The world needs a child's mind. A replacement" Malloch paused and walked over to Jean's body at the table. He stroked the body parts of the little boy attached to the machine that pressed them against Jean. "The crumbling stopped here, at my home. I'm pretty sure it is because of him."
"I don.." Maggie tried again.
Malloch looked her in the eyes. "I killed God."