The Decipherment

PART 10

  The whole world around Isabelle was falling apart. Her subconscious was dissolving into nothingness, and she could do nothing to stop it. What once had been her happiest and calm thoughts were now her worst fears. And they were coming after her.

  As she looked closely into the snake-like shadows looming overhead, she saw they changed their direction of movement and suddenly, all of them turned towards her. It sent a trickle of fear through her spine. The adrenaline surged through her whole frame and instantly she could feel her racing heart inside her throat. The blood supply to her brain increased in speed and the instinct of fight or flight took position.

  The reflex was tremendous: without thinking of nothing else, Isabelle ran. She ran like she had never did before in her whole life. The obnoxious feeling setting in the pit of her stomach of knowing there were dark creepy shadows chasing her made her legs move in an abnormal speed.

  She had no idea where to go, where to hide. She could see no way of defending herself; she just kept running. But for how long would she be able get away? She knew she had to face her fears . . . or else, prepare herself for the worst to come.

  As she ran on and on, she saw the large canvas-sized images she had seen earlier of her memories nearly falling. They too were crumbling down into pieces. She saw them fall into pits of nothingness; and the whole space was erasing where the images had been. She wondered if she could ever experience those ideas again, considering the fact that they were almost destroyed now.

  She turned to look across her shoulder. She was nearly blinded by fear as she saw how fast and close the long black streaks of shadows were turning in on her. She felt like they would swallow her any minute. Her whole mind was crumbling down around her. She wondered what would happen to all her dreams. Would they destroy like this too?

  She was still thinking about this when she passed the vault-like structure she had seen earlier that contained all her dreams. The opening was closing in on itself slowly, but Isabelle caught a glimpse of the inside. To her horror, the huge 3D-like images, which were her dreams, were all merging into one another, bending and breaking themselves. The colors mixed into one another until a large whirlpool formed. Just before the opening closed completely, she saw the swirling mass burst within the space of the vault, sending off tiny specks of light and dust.

  She had built the world of her dreams with care and affection; and seeing that world shatter like that broke her heart. She felt a deep loss inside.

  She had not stopped running all the while. She did not how far she would go but she had to get away from the shadows lurking behind her. All around her the whole space – the emptiness that held her subconscioussness, was totally fading. Even as she ran, the floor behind broke away and left cracks till the edge of the ground, making it fall beneath as well. There was just the ground that lay ahead of her which was still intact. Every step she took, the floor faded from there, replaced by emptiness. The cold and bitter feeling of numbness grew stronger each minute. But this was nothing to what lay ahead.

  Each grain of her unconscious state of mind: every memory, idea, thought, feeling, perception – all blended into one another and started to literally crumble and fall away like dust. Isabelle saw it all happening from a distance, but she witnessed the destruction as if she was close nearby. Like tall buildings falling one by one, all the giant structures of her subconscious world fell apart. It was a complete catastrophe.

  And then the last bits of ground that remained started to break from the front edge. The last thing that Isabelle saw was her memory of hugging both her parents when they had returned home from a trip. The image dissolved in itself and dissipated into dust and tiny globules of light.

  The ground beneath started to shake and finally, every particle of matter that held it firmly, broke and it started to fall. Isabelle saw it coming. She had seen the other end breaking but she found nothing she could do to stop that from happening. And then it all broke, like a piece of glass breaking from its centre. The ground beneath Isabelle’s feat gave way and she started the fall which she did not know would land her where. Until this time, she had thought the shadows chasing her would have left, probably dissolved into themselves like everything else – but they hadn’t. As she kept falling, they increased their approach to her and then, all of sudden, they came as close to her as she could imagine. She screamed just as all the dark looming streaks of black hit her.