Status: new story B)

It Comes in Darkness

Prologue

The night was warm and humid for a spring night and Ryan Roth had started this day already anxious to go home. Heat filled his cheeks and cement sat in his stomach like a weight that slowed down his pace. Finally, he thought, he had reached the moment that had seemed so far away and his long strides carried him from his office building, and up the stairs of the parking garage little more than 2 blocks away.

He smiled at thoughts of her. Liv Larsen. Her name was Olivia but she despised merely hearing her own name and had all but forbidden him in high school to call her by it.

He didn't know how he had gotten lucky. People told him all the time he was ugly, and that Liv looked weird with him but that only seemed to make her love him more. Handsome, she called him anyways, every morning before they parted for the day.

His finger tips toyed with the small box in the right pocket of his dark jacket. The smoothness of carved wood slid under his fingers and he thought of Andy, the older gentleman in his office who had taken the time to craft the ring box himself in his wood shop. Andy figured Ryan could count it as an early engagement gift, and he carefully designed it by hand to make sure it would be a worthy gift for the occasion.

Ryan's face contorted into some indecipherable expression thinking about it. It wasn't like Andy and himself were the closest so he was confused why he had went through all the trouble but, time and time again, Andy was there to assure him it was none. In any case, it really was perfect and Ryan dropped it into his pocket where it would stay until it was time.

The parking garage was more quiet than usual today, but Ryan was happy for that considering some days getting out of here was a disaster. His floor though, was not just quiet...it was nearly empty. He tried to carry himself to the car as fast as possible which wouldn't be that hard considering how tall he was.

Half way to the car, the scuff of his shoes started to seem louder than it should be and he noticed that the sound in general started to sound off and flat, like he was hearing recorded audio of his own feet in some sort of studio and he began to find himself feeling more and more uncomfortable with being there in the parking garage. As absurd as it sounded to him, he was starting to feel like something was there. But he did his best to press forward and just get to the car.

When lights in the garage suddenly flickered, Ryan blinked a couple of times. Trying to convince himself it hadn't actually happened. Once more...he headed towards the car, now even more anxious. Not 10 feet from the car the lights flickered again. They flickered. Flickered once more...and then died. All of the lights. The garage. These office buildings. The street below. All fell dark and deafeningly silent.

The pounding of his heart and the rushing of his blood was a sound that filled his head. He started to feel dizzy. All of this was so sudden that Ryan was trying to convince himself he must be hallucinating or having a heart attack. This wasn't happening. Every thought raced through him so fast he could hardly process it.

Ryan stopped and swallowed, his large eyes darting around the garage just for the sign of anyone else but he could hardly see anything at all. He had never told anyone but Liv, but he was afraid of the dark. Ever since he was a child, the dark always left this dense feeling of unease inside his chest, as if he was staring at the sleeping jaws of a beast too happy to snap him up.

:They must have a power outage in the area." He whispered to himself. Trying hard to feel like a man, he bolted in the direction his car should have been. Where it should have been and now wasn't.

This darkness was getting darker, and the air was quickly getting stagnant. The sound of his breath was as controlled as he could get it, since in the last 2 minutes he was fighting the urge to take ragged deep gasps. His long fingers pried into his pockets for his cell phone. Struggling to maintain control, his shaking hands finally found and clung to it.

He felt reassured at the light from the phone, and frantically began to call Liv, but before he could even dial, the atmosphere changed so suddenly it felt unreal. The air was heavy and hot now, getting hotter. The phone suddenly fell from his shaking hands onto the concrete, shattering.

"Shit." He muttered into the heaving darkness.

Leaning down, he collected the phone and looked around, seeing nothing there in that ringing silence. Suddenly he felt like his fears were confirmed. This wasn't right. It never had been. The street, the building, the garage. It was all too quiet, and he was too excited to have noticed it was wrong. While he was looking back behind him, he felt the air around him was being sucked away and dread built in his stomach and rose again like bile, nausea settling heavily inside him. The hot air felt like static and tasted like heavy metal; iron. Almost instantly that silence from before was painful and loud, throbbing in his ears but it didn't last long. As soon as Ryan turned around, it was there. Whatever it was. It was dark, almost black, and looked vaguely like someone's sick idea of something trying to pass as human.

Seeing it made Ryan's stomach drop and the air escape from his lungs. That's what this creature wanted, since its face, hot and slick touched Ryan's and the only thing he could make out before everything disappeared was feeling fluid rushing through his head. Boiling inside him like lava as it poured over his sinuses, down his throat and filling his body until he thought it would burst. It was beginning to destroy him and he was going to feel it.
♠ ♠ ♠
I have no idea what's going on and I write this stuff when I'm stoned so hopefully its good and you like it :)