The lightning was vicious that night, as it ripped the night sky apart, slicing down through the rain and illuminating the world around it. The world was damp from the rain but otherwise it seemed to be a perfectly normal night. Due to the late hour, aside from the occasional car passing by in the distance, the world was mostly still.
Standing in the rain, staring out across the nightscape in front of him, Vigour breathes in deeply. He’s known for being the Prince of Party, but sometimes he likes to just…be. He’s the jack of all sense, after all, and sometimes the sense you need to please is that smell of a storm incoming, the feel of the rain on your bare skin, and the white noise of the night sky.
His soggy retreat is broken, suddenly, by the appearance of a haggard and staggering old man, who walks towards him slowly.
“Elgarth!” the man shouts. “Elgarth!”
Vigour is shocked, and as the man gets closer he runs to the nearest door, throwing himself through it and slamming the door behind him. He turns around to see…
The nightscape, but this time, alongside the crash of the lightning, the cars are all now crashed too, each car upturned with distant screams and groans drifting through the air towards Vigour.
“This can’t be real,” he says out loud, almost as a test to see if the words even leave his mouth. They do leave his mouth, and just after they dissipate into the night, the same shambling man appears before him.
“Elgarth!” he shouts. “Elgrrrrr!”
Vigour slaps himself in the face, but nothing changes. Panicking, he runs through the door, slamming it shut once more. Silence.
Silence until he turns around, only to once again see the nightscape before him. Now, all of the buildings are on fire, and the screams are louder than before.
Vigour is stunned beyond words. As the shambling man appears once more, he considers his options. On the one hand, he could keep trying to escape. But what if things keep getting worse? On the other hand, he could face the shambling man – but he knew what that meant, and he didn’t want things to go that way.
So he runs. He runs half a mile down the road, and dives into the door of a 24 hour convenience store. He stumbles back from the door, taking heavy breaths. He can hear the cashier behind him, so he turns to greet him, only to find that the shop dissolves into the nightscape once more. Now, there is complete silence. The buildings are but rubble. The cars long rusted. The shambling man appears once more.
“Elgrrrrrrr!” he shouts. “Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”.
Vigour sits down, the rain matting his hair as he realises that the shambling man has come to get him for what he did. There is no escape. And as the shambling man gets closer, Vigour notices his skin leathered and disintegrated, his eyes glazed over, and a deep rasp coming from his throat.
Vigour closes his eyes, just as the undead man from Elgarth rips the skin from his face.
Vigour screams, eternally.