Draft #1 — 1930 words (tar­get: 1000)

Assess­ment Task 1: Imag­i­na­tive Composition

It is said that the fall into dark­ness was unavoid­able — an event which must occur for the ful­fil­ment of some cause, lost in time.  Some­thing lost in thou­sands of years of lech­er­ous exis­tence, mil­len­nia over which oth­ers had fallen to the cause of this dark being who, so desir­ing to make things ‘right’, at least within the con­torted reck­on­ings of his own mind, aban­doned all in pur­suit of this dark­ness.  It was, per­haps, bet­ter, for those whom he was depen­dent upon for his un-life, that they were stripped of all con­cious­ness and will when devoured by his ineluctable hunger.

At this point, they too became sub­ject to a need to sus­tain their own un-life, cre­ated when their true mean­ing and pur­pose was removed from them.  Fol­low­ing the foot­steps of their keeper, bound under him, they engaged their ret­ri­bu­tion on oth­ers — and so the cycle con­tin­ued, hun­dreds drawn under this curse.  What, exactly, is this thing which is to be so feared?  It is the dec­i­ma­tion of any sense of self iden­tity or exis­tence, sub­sti­tuted with a per­pet­ual cycle of… of robotic, mind­less, blind rep­e­ti­tion of the motions insti­gated by the first to fall.  To be feared?  Not in itself — although, it must be said, immor­tal­ity as noth­ing is worse than frail exis­tence within which life may exist.  Any fear is not the con­ven­tional one of pain, or other suf­fer­ing — but of noth­ing.  Not of the unknown — sim­ply of a denial of experience.

This fear did noth­ing for most, of course — the inevitable was only pro­longed.  The world was slowly falling to the grasp of this life­less dic­ta­tor.  For most.  There was one, it was said, who would pos­sess the qual­i­ties to over­power and destroy this man, releas­ing the world from an age of bondage under an empty mas­ter.
—-
Karl Riley drifted in alter­nat­ing states of con­cious­ness.  An alarm sounded loudly next to him, and he jerked upright, slam­ming a closed fist down on the key­pad of his mobile.  Groan­ing, he rolled in a twist­ing motion, bring­ing him­self to a sit­ting posi­tion.  It was two in the morn­ing, and appar­ently he was needed imme­di­ately at work.  Mut­ter­ing some­thing about over­time, he dressed, left his apart­ment, and started drov­ing to the support-center, stop­ping only to grab cof­fee from an all-night con­ve­nience store.

As he turned to return to his car, the lights of the con­ve­nience store flick­ered, before fail­ing.  Hear­ing the sales assis­tant swear­ing, Karl walked in dark­ness to his car.  A cloaked fig­ure moved along the street, towards him, mak­ing no attempt at con­ceal­ment.  He reached Karl’s car first, and stood, wait­ing at the dri­ver side door.
“Err… hi?” said Karl, ques­tion­ingly.
The fig­ure stood, silent and motion­less, his face in dark­ness.
“Sorry, that’s my car.  I need to go.  It’s two-twenty on a Thurs­day morn­ing, and I have ten min­utes to get to work.  What are you doing?“
With­out speech, he moved aside, and con­tin­ued to walk along the street.  Glanc­ing cau­tiously, Karl unlocked his car, sat down, and again locked the doors from the inside.  He turned to pull his seat­belt, and again turned back to fas­ten it.  As he looked up from his task, his eyes locked with two per­spi­ca­cious, pen­e­trat­ing eyes, of the fig­ure he had seen moments before, fix­ated to the win­dow of his car.
Tear­ing his gaze from this appari­tion, Karl turned the keys, gunned the engine, and tore off down an otherwise-deserted street.  Breath­ing heav­ily, he reached shak­ily for his cof­fee.
“Wake up Karl, wake up,” he repeated over to him­self.  “Wake up Karl, wake up, wake up, wake up, WAKE UP!”, he found him­self shout­ing.  Except it wasn’t his voice he heard shout­ing.  It had come from behind him.
He leant his weight on the brake of the car, and it shud­dered to a halt in the mid­dle of the street.  His seat­belt caught him, and he turned to the back seat of the car, where the man sat, indif­fer­ent to Karl’s dri­ving abil­i­ties, speak­ing now, in mock­ing tones — “Wake up, Karl.  Wake up.”  He stopped speak­ing, and reached a hand for­wards to firmly grip Karl’s shoul­der.
His ran­cid breath per­me­ated the car, and Karl shud­dered at his touch.
“Am I awake?” asked Karl, now unsure of any­thing.  His grip tight­ened, and Karl winced from the phys­i­cal pain of it.
“Yes.“
“What is hap­pen­ing?“
“You are to be freed from aware­ness.“
With that, he loos­ened his grip on Karls shoul­der, instead reach­ing for his neck.  He moved his face closer, the breath becom­ing stronger, more potent, more repul­sive.  His mouth almost upon Karls throat, he saw a cross, strung around his neck.  Vio­lently, he pulled away, break­ing through the back win­dow of the car, and van­ish­ing into the night.
Skep­ti­cally, Karl glanced out the back win­dow, still won­der­ing if he really was awake.
“He broke my win­dow.“
—-
Arriv­ing at work half an hour late, cov­ered in spilt cof­fee and bro­ken glass, his super­vi­sor, Lara, looked dubi­ously at Karl, but didn’t ask ques­tions.  “There’s a pack­age on your desk” was the extent of con­ver­sa­tion that morn­ing.  A pack­age?  Deliv­ered between when he had left work at 5:30 the pre­vi­ous night and now?
Some­what intrigued, he opened the pack­age.  A potent aroma dif­fused around the room, as three pieces of gar­lic rolled from the pack­age and onto his desk.  A dag­ger fol­lowed — as though the gar­lic wasn’t sur­prise enough.  Star­ing at his work­space as though offended by the pres­ence of these strange objects, they sto­ically remained through his many blinks of dis­be­lief.
A per­son passed in the cor­ri­dor, sniff­ing curi­ously.  Appar­ently sat­is­fied that the smell was sim­ply gar­lic, they con­tin­ued on their duties.
Karl peered into the UPS bag, find­ing a let­ter inside it.

You are being watched. This pack­age car­ries gar­lic that it may not be inter­cepted. You learnt, tonight, of the forces of evil which remain hid­den from soci­ety at large — these forces would not have you read this, would not have you learn of them.  You are the key to con­clude thou­sands of years of lech­ery at the hands of these… crea­tures. They are the un-dead, an accursed peo­ple fallen under the grasp of the evil one.  It is said that there would be one who could crush this mas­ter, free­ing thou­sands from his grasp, and ulti­mately sav­ing human­ity.  This one is you.  Enclosed with this let­ter is a dag­ger, forged from sil­ver — this is the weapon with which you must destroy him, by pierc­ing his heart.  The attack on you tonight was not imag­ined: your attacker was the one who must be destroyed.

“Hmm…” mut­tered Karl, “So, I’m sup­posed to go around wield­ing a piece of sil­ver that arrived in the late evening in a FedEx bag, stab­bing any­one who looks shady and wears black?“
The phone rang.
“Karl Riley” he answered.
“No.“
“I’m sorry?“
“No, you are not to go around stab­bing any­one.  The man who attacked you tonight.  He is the one you must destroy.“
“How…” Karl looked at the dis­play on his phone.  Caller ID resolved the num­ber to an inter­nal exten­sion — 107. “How do you…“
“Nev­er­mind. I can assure you, exten­sion 107 does not exist,” the voice said, appar­ently get­ting louder, “but I do.“
Those last words were heard not on the phone, but from behind Karl, com­ing from Lara.  She wasn’t hold­ing a phone.
“Hello.“
“Umm… hi.  How do you know all this?“
“There are many who know of this evil, but few of us who are empow­ered to act.  Lara, whose body I now occupy, knows noth­ing of this.  She, like most of human­ity, will never be aware of the dark­ness amongst them.  You are elected to serve, you are bur­dened with this knowl­edge.  It is for you to act.“
With that, the fig­ure of Lara flick­ered and dis­ap­peared into the air, leav­ing Karl sit­ting, at a loss.
—-
He returned to his apart­ment, with no word as to why he had been called into work.  He assumed it was asso­ci­ated with the other events of the night, although how, he didn’t know.
The new mes­sages indi­ca­tor flashed on his phone.
“You have… seven new mes­sages.“
“Seven?!” he exclaimed, unbe­liev­ing.
The mes­sages began to play.
“Hey Karl, what’s up?  Phil here.  You com­ing into work today?  Gimme a buzz some­time, okay?“
“Hi Karl, Chris call­ing — missed you at work today, every­thing okay?“
“Hey, it’s Steph.  Where you been the past few days?“
“Karl, Lara here.  Pick up the phone.  Are you there?  Karl?  Where have you been the last week?“
There were another three to play, but Karl slammed a fist down on the machine, and it stopped.
“It’s five A.M., on a Thurs­day.  I was at work twenty min­utes ago.  I left work yes­ter­day at half past five.  Lara saw me at work this morn­ing!  Why do they think I’ve been miss­ing for over a week?“
Cau­tiously, he checked the date on his watch.
“What…” he began to speak.  The phone rang.  He answered, and a voice began speak­ing: “I am com­ing to destroy you.  I am the undead one, whom you encoun­tered some time ago — a week, exactly.  Do not won­der about time, for soon you shall exist, immor­tal and out­side of such petty con­straints.“
Karl lis­tened as the line went dead.  He placed down the phone, and col­lapsed on the floor, his vision obscured by tears of con­fu­sion and des­per­a­tion.  A bird-like sil­hou­ette flick­ered past his win­dow, cast­ing a moon-lit shadow over the fig­ure of Karl.  He heard a voice, with no appar­ent phys­i­cal ori­gin — it chanted softly, envelop­ing, sur­round­ing him — no words were spo­ken, at least, none which he could com­pre­hend, but it was of no con­se­quence.  A sec­ond voice could be heard,  at first quiet, but gain­ing, grow­ing louder.  This voice was gut­tural, vio­lent, harsh.  Formed words came in its’ speech, although Karl could not know their mean­ing.
The first voice began to speak in thoughts to him — he did not recog­nise the words them­selves, but com­pre­hended, nonethe­less.  It was telling him to stand, to walk.  He could not see… shapes moved in his vision, as the two voices raged and fought against each other. He felt him­self being directed, walk­ing, mov­ing towards the table where he had laid the FedEx enve­lope.  Reach­ing, know­ing exactly where to go, directed per­fectly, he lifted the knife from the enve­lope.
He felt the sec­ond voice shift inside his head — his vision of shapes became darker, red­den­ing, as though mad­dened by the touch of sil­ver.  The sounds were tor­tu­ous, a res­o­nant scream pen­e­trat­ing his being, feel­ing as though the pres­ence of the knife would burn his body in two.
A stran­gled voice rasped at him, “RELEASE THE KNIFE”, com­mand­ing force­fully, even in the midst of its agony.  Karl was com­pelled, held still, under the desire of the soft, yet pow­er­ful first voice.  Remain­ing with the knife seemed unbear­able, but releas­ing it?  Karl grasped it fever­ishly, unable to bring him­self to let it fall, trapped between pain and… and he did not know what else.  The words of the let­ter drifted in his mind, as though in a thick fog.
…there would be one who could crush this mas­ter…  you must destroy him, by pierc­ing his heart…
With ago­nis­ing real­i­sa­tion, he felt his arm pull the knife away from his body, only to bring it towards him, plung­ing it deep, into his heart.
The voices ceased.  He was alone, on the floor of his kitchen, fist held tightly around the knife, dying.

Com­ments, cor­rec­tions, etc. are more than wel­come.  I’m not even sure if this is fin­ished — I may end up adding to it, although I’ll have to halve it in size for sub­mis­sion, at any rate.  Meh.