THE BLACK PATH

The BLACK PATH is a subdimensional pocket which seems to form in a manner similar to a dream. For most folk, they are forced into this world upon their death; reality forms a ‘bubble’ as their will explodes out of their body, and it is that bubble from which they must escape. Whether this bubble leads to the next life, to oblivion, or someplace else entirely, all comes down to the soul itself.

It is the Black Path which leads one to the next world, and is said to be a trial; a final reflection of one’s life playing out in front of them, a dreamscape constructed for them where they must face the mistakes they’ve made and the successes they’ve had and resolve some of their deepest conflicts. Some, unable to face the specters that await them in this world, remain trapped in the Black Path forever, where the bubble eventually decays, collapses, and destroys the soul. The BLACK PATH is also sometimes referred to as the LAST DREAM, among many other names in many cultures, and

Here, they look at her.

She is standing before a crowd. The BLACK PATH is a subdimensional pocket. It is the bridge between this life and the next. Attended by colorful, hollow specters. Forms barely able to be determined in the dark, half-remembered imprints of crowds of people unaware of her plight. They hang at the edge of the stage like a wave batters a shore, shifting colors not unlike the ocean she’d only seen in moving pictures and through the bars of jail-carts. Push, pull, with every note that rings from her throat. She’s trapped in this dress, this wretched, stupid dress, borrowed silk wrapped around her to conceal mechanical joints below. She hopes that eyes might catch a glimpse of the hem of her wrist, or detect her strange, mechanical movements, but they don’t. They never do. Her voice pushes, and pulls, and they move without thought until they are gone and she stands alone on the stage.

She isn’t alone on the stage. There are figures, lined up behind her, imperceptible forms hanging in the brilliant red curtains, wielding her as their puppet. The coins rendered unto them by the audience chip away at her debt as a single man might chip away at a mountain with his pickaxe. She looks up, and the hands are too real. The shadows coalesce, and black hands reach for her to reclaim their puppet, and plunge through the stage where she was.

She is gone. She is running, as fast as she can. Her mechanical body is heavy. Why is her body mechanical here? Shouldn’t it look like what she truly is?

She bursts onto a street, with blinding incandescent lights hanging from poles as tall as trees. Those shadows break apart in the light, slinking around it like water on glass. She dances between them, deftly dodging their grasp. But they are there at her heel, clawing at her with unmatched desperation. To them, she glints golden in the light. She is their last hope.

She is in a forest. The street lamps have become trees, and the light is nowhere to be seen behind her. Wicked forms dance through gnarled canopies, from tree to tree to tree, above her. At any moment, they threaten to drop down on her. She keeps running. At least machines don’t tire. She will run for as long as she needs to. Even here, in the dark, those other things follow her. Not the puppeteers, but those hollow, colorful shells; watchers, distant but always there, an immobile audience to her suffering. She calls to them, as loudly as she can, but they sway in joy at her voice and give no other response.

She is before a spotlight, running so mindlessly that she notices the change in scenery only as soon as she hits the edge of it like a wall. There, she turns, back against it and poised defensively, to witness a scene. A cart, toppled over. There are shapes of men as tall as the trees, holding muskets, and two small figures as tiny as rats, and you, in the back of the cart, staring at her through living eyes like you've seen a specter. You have. You remember. That automaton remembers.

She is ascending a pile of gold as tall as a mountain. How did she get here? Some moments seem to skip, to pass without memory. Her scrambling limbs barely manage to find purchase as the coins shift under them like loose sand. The shadows chase after her, hands reaching from nowhere. No matter how high she climbs, it seems like she can never escape. Until, then, all at once, she is at the peak, greeted with a door through which she quickly passes.

She is in a room. It’s small, white, constricting. There’s a painting on the wall, and a desk, and a chair, and a bed, and nothing else at all. The painting looks like nothing at all. This room is far more solid than her other memories; where everything else seems vacant and ephemeral and without substance or sense, her feet feel solidly on the ground in this room. But there is no door. The BLACK PATH is a subdimensional pocket. The BLACK PATH is a place, physical, in space, though hidden from all but the most prying eyes. Eyes that appear on the walls, and the floors.

There is no door, but for the one they come through. Towering, blocky figures, seizing her by her limbs and dragging her kicking and screaming from the room.
…

“We have movement!”

“Yes… wake up, now, miss Eleanor. You’ve been gone far too long.”

Prying hands are attending to your riven body. It’s not YOUR body. It’s THEIRS. All metal and wires and strange clicking and turning things. The light above you is as blinding as can be, like a spotlight hot against your metal face. Though they see you first as small spasms, your soul breaches the surface of this world with a scream of rage. Your hands pull as hard as they can, and you thrash like a wild animal in a trap. Four men in masks recoil from you, having the audacity to be confused.

“Miss Eleanor, please, calm down! You are back with us again… you’ve been gone some six odd months, I’m sure this is quite a surprise… but you don’t have to worry. You’re not in that horrible place anymore.”

But you don’t. You don’t calm down. Your foolishly powerful arm breaks free of one of the straps almost immediately, and you throw a wild punch with such force that it sends the closest of the men skidding across the room, porcelain mask shattered and bleeding profusely.

“Shut this thing down! Come on, come on, just—”

You are asleep, at their command.