Basic Fear Camp

Here is the new paragraph story: Basic Fear Camp. As you will notice its a lot longer than a paragraph and more like a short story. It is but the content I'm sure will be much appreciated. Let me know what you think!

I open my eyes to see the reality before me blend into one flamboyant mess of colors that are just an extension of oneself. There are no details. I look around me trying to figure out what the colors mean I see tans and greens and blues. Everything around me is set up I feel I am on a grassy field by a large body of water, but everything is just blending in with no fine detail. No specific shapes. With an untrained eye one might say that this was just a mess but someone who truely understood art would say I was living in a masterpiece of color. I look at my hands and it’s hard to tell where my appendages end and when the background begins but there is a cure for the madness.

I was dreaming, and I can make the dream go in any direction now I realized where I was. Walking towards the blue mess in front of me I began to feel clammy and wet. it was a body of water even though it was poorly represented. I didn’t know how to swim so surely this body of water would wake me up. I went in deeper till the point my mouth was under the water. No one stopped me and even though I was dying I couldn’t help but feel more at peace. Closing my eyes and listening to the waves I listened to the water crashing over me. I was cold. I let out all of my breath in my lungs assuring a fast death, but it never came. A whistle pierced the airwaves, and someone dove in behind me. The messes of blue became less abstract and more fluid. Defining shapes began to take ahold of this universe and I felt someone grab me and pull me to the surface. 

Gasping for air I realized that I was on my school campus and the lifeguard on duty had seen me drowning. He prepared to perform CPR and I realized where I was, was not in my body but above it. I was something spiritual seeing my death. The lifeguard started beating on my fixed chest wishing he could do more. Everything turned black. Seconds later I opened my eyes and I was back in my body. The cute shirtless man sighed with relief. 

"Are you alright Sarah?" He asked. "Can you hear me?" I could hear him but I couldn’t find the words to respond. Another lifeguard ran up to me and asked if I was okay. I tried to respond but it was only jibberish. 

"Shit. I think she was under for too long. She needs to go to the clinic." Another man rolled up a wheelchair up to me and all three men lifted me up and placed me in the wheel chair then covered my with a few warm towels. One took me away from the pool and took me across the building and onto the favorable clinic that was on campus. Trying to form words several times I spoke complete nonsense. Trying to place a memory of what happened before this and I couldn’t find one. I sighed knowing whatever was happening was serious but there was nothing I could do.

When we got into the clinic I saw a couple people I recognized but couldn’t quite place their names. I know that they knew me too because they all raised their heads when I entered the clinic and looked concerned. 

"What happened Jack? What happened to Sarah?" One person asked. 

"She nearly drowned in the pool. I think she hit her head on the bottom. She’s unable to speak clearly. I’m not sure if she could understand us." I could but I had lost the feeling below my neck. I couldn’t speak, walk, move. What have I done? I began to cry as they tried to get a doctor to look at me and soon enough they did. They wheeled me into a room and started to examine my body and asked me to blink once if I could feel what they were touching and don’t blink if I couldn’t. They tested my arms. I didn’t blink. They then went to my legs. I didn’t blink. They checked my toes and fingers and I still couldn’t feel anything. The doctor then went to my torso and touched my stomach. I didn’t feel it so I didn’t blink. He then touched my collarbone and I felt that. It was good news right? I blinked many times but with each and every passing of my eyelids opening and closing the room looked fairly different like the reality around me was changing. I soon found myself laying down in a dark room and I got up. I could feel my toes and my arms. Maybe I was just dreaming. I could see a dim red light light up the corner of the room and a red light peeking from underneath the door jam. I saw movement on the other side of the door and the door itself opened showing to me a large man with a full beard. 

"Hey Honey, I know it’s been a hard week but I feel you would do better if you joined our guests."

"Okay," I said. "I’m just waking up. Had the weirdest dream." The man who I thought would be my father nodded and turned on the lights in my room. 

"What happened?" He asked as he inched further into the room. 

"I dreamt I hurt myself and—"

"Honey," he added in, interrupting me "You did hurt yourself. That wasn’t a dream. I know life is hard but we need to make the best of it." Just then I heard a woman yelling my fathers name. "Duty calls," he said while getting up, "we can talk about this later. We have guests. He walked out of the room and left. The hallway he was in was dark and illuminated by a blood red light and my room was lit up in a concetrated fluorescent white. However, the walls were painted purple and the tile was near black. I looked down to my arms and just then realized why it had been just that, a bad week for me. Blood stained bandages frequently covered my arms in a obvious attempt to kill myself. It was obvious that this place I was my home though. There were no doctors here and I wasn’t in the hospital for the attempt on my life.

The injury I dreamed was of drowning and possibly facing brain damage and frivolous pygmy sized cuts was not what happened. I was lost. I wasn’t sure if what I dreamed was real or not. I seemed just fine now regardless of the self harm. 

I got up using my hands to push me up off the bed. My arms ached with a sharp pain when I got up but the pain soon went away once I stopped applying pressure on my arms. I was in a red sundress that blended in with the red lights and the red bandages. Next to the door as I approached it were a couple of black but shiny flats with red bows. I thought they would fit the occasion if there were guests. I slipped them on and continued into the hallway. 

The hallway had several photos of the family who I recognized to be my sister and parents and other members of the family. We were all brighly smiling but in the grim red lights that filled the corridor I could only feel that something nefarious was in my midst. When I got into the main room there were many glass walls forming a u in the center of the room. In the center was a outside area in the middle in which the roof was not over. On the opposite side where there were no glass walls, there was a large metal fence. It was closed and even though it was fairly far away and between the fence and myself there were many obstacles I could tell there was something small on the other side that was shaking the fence. 

Looking in the room I was directly in I could see a kitchen and living room and this whole central area just morphed into another room with very little dividers. Immediately to my right were couches and a tv they were a black as the tile underneath my feet was a dark brown and other earthly colors. The red lights still covered the walls and looking outside I could see the sun was past setting and nearly gone. 

Immediately to my left was the kitchen. There was a granite island that separated the kitchen objects to the rest of the room and on the far side of the kitchen was a dinner table that was made out of a dark hard wood. Within the kitchen was my mother but she didn’t look up from what she was doing to see me. I felt that my surroundings were gloomy and everything seemed odd. I had to still be dreaming and when that thought came before my mind I realized that the objects crowding on the metal gate were small creatures. Bigger than rats but smaller than a large dog. Covered with fur they stood on all fours and had blood red glowing eyes. Their coats were a dark black and seemed to blend in with each other and I wouldn’t be able to tell how many there were if it wasn’t for their eyes. 

In my fixation on these creatures I realized that I had opened one of the glass doors and entered the center outside area of the house. The man who I blatently guessed to be my father stood near a fire pit that a large animal carcass was roasting over the flames. He pulled a lever that rotated the meat so everything would cook evenly and mentioned that the animals will eat once we have eaten. The creatures were fixated on the rotating meat and once it started rotating they started to let out little screams that pierced my mind and forced a spoonful of anxiety down my throat. I covered my ears and walked inside and my father followed while laughing. 

"You're acting like you never been here before. What’s going on?" He asked. I lowered my hands and crossed my arms, then looked at the floor. I didn’t know what to say. I was a stranger in a strange land. 

"I don’t know what’s going on," I said quietly. 

"Were celebrating B.F.C. Honey." I thought what B.F.C. could stand for and upon first thoughts I wondered if it stood for Basic Fear Camp. This place was scary and my anxiety was getting the best of my fearful inner child as I thought bugs were frantically crawling under my skin. 

"And that is?" I asked while keeping my voice down. Some people started to enter the room. 

"You know what it means," my father said while backing outside, fighting the glass door causing it to slam shut. The other people in the room took notice to me and brought out their fat arms to give me a hug that would stop circulation of my blood. I obliged them and they held me for as long as they wished. Another person walked in and it was who I could tell to be my sister. She had several bags in her hands that were stacked to capacity. Soon a couple of blueberries that just sat in a basket she was carrying fell out of the canvas covered bags. 

She saw me and looked upset as she kneeled down to pick up the blueberries. Backing up into a wall when I got closer she looked fearful of my condition and couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t sure what she was so scared of but there was one thing I did know. She was with me when it happened. I don’t know how or why but I knew for a fact that she was a part of the puzzle. 

"Dinners ready!" My father yelled while using a sharp blade to finely cut the carcass of the animal that someone had slaughtered. Carving off many pieces and placing them on everyone in the family’s bowls and plates like it was on a rotisserie. I looked around me to see all was here and there was my grandmother and my mother’s sister and her two kids. My sister kept her distance from me but she was here and like I mentioned before my father and mother were here. 

Once our plates were filled to the brim with meat and other assortments of food and cutlery we all sat around a table that was just after the kitchen in the u shape of the building. I wasn’t sure what the meat was but it was delicious as I continued to take more bites into the flesh filling the caustic void inside of me. This was my family and regardless of my self harm they all looked happy to see me except for my sister. She looked up cautiously in fear of what I knew but I didn’t know anything. Sounds of eating filled the air and when my sister was done eating she got up from her chair and went to the sink to wash her dishes. She left her phone on the table and I decided that I had to know if there was evidence on what happened to me. I got up and said I needed to go to the bathroom and stopped when I was where my sister was sitting I put my hand on her phone and asked, where it was. 

"You seem to be very forgetful today," my father laughed, "Your bathroom is in your room." Peculiar. But there was no place I would be safer than my own room. I picked up the cell phone and headed there. When I passed the kitchen I maintained eye contact with my sister and she didn’t know what I was about to do but I was sure she would soon find out. I went into my bedroom and shut the door. The door had a lock and I locked it. I then proceeded to move to the bathroom and that door also had a lock so I locked that one too. I laid in the tub which stunk of mildew and blood and a memory flashed on this is where I did it. I could see a couple of blood speckles that still frequently littered the tub but it was time for the truth to come to the cause. I tapped the screen and it asked for a fingerprint. Thinking I was going to be defeated so early I tried my fingerprint and it opened with no problems. Looking through the photos and videos there was nothing out of the ordinary. I looked at the applications and one was titled B.F.C. 

I opened it and the screen was covered with digital blood and a red door with a brass knob. I clicked again, and the door opened leading me down a black hallway with a light at the end. The screen stopped moving and asked "inductee or member" I didn’t know who I was, so I clicked on member. It asked for my finger print again so I gave it. The screen then said "you are in the wrong place, you are an inductee. The screen then turned white and had some mumbo jumbo about purifying my soul for the greater good. I clicked continue and the screen read "you have already started the process. Would you like to begin where you last left off?" I clicked yes. Just then I heard a knocking on my bedroom door.

"Honey! Why would you lock your bedroom door? I thought we agreed to leave it unlocked so we could keep an eye on you." I didn’t respond and kept reading the information stating how false memories would be planted and I would live with the B.F.C. family. There were several topics to choose from when I got to the next page, but one caught my eye. It read "blood ceremony". I clicked on it and in full detail it mentioned I had to cut myself to take out the bad blood within me to make me fully whole and it must be done by the members of the congregation of B.F.C. 

These people weren’t my family and if I was reading everything correctly I did suffer from brain damage and this ceremony healed me. The door to the bathroom was kicked open and I heard the door slam on the wall. The man then politely knocked on the door and asked if I could come out. I didn’t respond. All this was heavy, but I wasn’t sure if I should welcome these people with open hands or if I should spit in their faces. Yes, they healed me but to what end? This place, this building was something fierce. Something like a cult. C stood for cult. I knew that much. The man started to shake the knob of the door and he started pounding on it. Basic Fear Cult. Bearded Father Cult. Borderline Family Cult. He started slamming on the door. I sunk down into the tub hoping he wouldn’t see me but when the door swung open I knew it was too late. The man smiled and began to talk while extending his hand out to me. 

"We were worried about you Honey. Come. Let’s feed the animals."

Remember me