Dream of the Raven's Gate XI

I opened my eyes.  There was no sensation of movement, no sound to be heard.  It was dark, so very dark, and I strained to see anything.  Wait...Whispers.  Shuffling or scuffing of some kind. I tried to speak, found I had no voice, not even a hint of breath, no sound at all.  Was I bound as well?  Was I floating?  Difficult to tell, still disoriented from waking...

Something brushed against me, something small, but sharp.  It slid across my cheek like a fish, it's long body undulating in some unknown current.  Slime coated me where it touched my skin and my mind twitched - sharp and slimy made little sense.  Then another. Then many more.  Again, my mind raced wildly, unable to gain information from my eyes, I relied on the sensations against my skin and my ears to determine what was going on here. What might have been a school of fish covered in sharp glass scales rushed past me, I could feel the warm trickle of blood on my cheeks, and I now realized that I must have been bound in some manner as I was truly unable to move.  The rushing sensations stopped suddnly, and I could almost feel a change in the darkness, a deepening. 

A voice spoke, wet and thick with ageless depth. "The Key" It was nearly unintelligible, but still clear in intent.  I had a key... a silver one... it was power and it allowed me passage...
"The Key..." The voice spoke again.  Deep, like a bass drum submerged in a swamp.  "Give me the Key..."
I tried to make sounds, again, no matter how hard I tried, I could not. Then a new sensation in my head, behind my eyes.  Crawling uncontrollably over my thoughts, I could only describe it as the tentacled arms of dozens of sea creatures.  It was maddening. They stroked my memories, they caressed my every thought as though those were solid and tangible.  They stroked the flesh inside my throbbing, lost skull as a lover caresses the skin of his beloved. Intense pain erupted when they would snag on one memory or another and pluck at it like the string of some infernal instrument.  The sound a raucous note ringing forever, a vibrato stroke against a moldy cello...  My head begged release, and I began to see lights and flashes.
"The Key... It is there... give it to Meeeeeee..."
I fought to maintain my grip on reality, or what I believed was reality.  My fingers wanting to catch hold of the bleeding wounds on my face, the pain a stark contrast to the madness boiling inside me now. That pain as real, here, and with cause.  The madness in my head might be imagined, or the tail end of some dream unknown to all others.  The tendrils bored into the meaty flesh of my recollections.  They discovered the soft folds of my mind, and rent a path into the center of my being. 

I wept openly.

Each taproot finding purchase in the fertile soil of my mind, each one taking a different hole and making it their own. They prodded and ransacked, they dug deep and plucked at the memories, making sounds into a hellish symphony, one made up of memories. The emotions surrounding each memory erupted again and again, while my captor, unseen in the black, began to answer the notes with his own music.  Each memory inciting a response from the madness in the black, a scream from a new voice each time.  It felt like ages before I realized that it was my voice screaming...


Continued