Emergence

The full 6,000 word story is in your Commission Lovers folder. Your Welcome Notes are all updated by the way!

For Story Lovers, make sure to check the previous folder links too! I caught that I forgot a few of them, and you have plenty of images!

Emergence

Commissioned by LoamLife

Written by HarmonyMotion

Chapter 1 - Crystallized

“Do you want to have sex tonight?” Shaun asked his wife, Nicole. He struggled to put the segmented pole through the sleeve of their tent.

“Maybe. If I’m in the mood,” Nicole answered with zero interest or eagerness.

“Yeah, for sure. No big deal,” Shaun replied. And it wasn’t a big deal. He asked out of a feeling of obligation and not of desire.

The two had been married a few years now, struggling to make ends meet. Shaun worked at a car dealership that bought and tried to flip lemons before ultimately scrapping the junky cars, and Nicole sold bras to young attractive women who made her green with envy. The daily reminder of her own inadequacy fueled her inferiority, leaving her a husk of a person.

Shaun completed staking the tent and stood up with a groan, his body aching as if he were 20 years older than his actual age. A thin sheen of sweat covered his brow. “How about a snack?”

“Yeah, sure. Sounds good to me.”

Nicole went to their car and brought out a plastic crate of budget muffins. They were enormous, well more than enough for a full meal just for one. Filled with sugar and vegetable oil, lumpy and poorly made.

The two overweight individuals finished off the entire pack of six in one sitting.

“I saw a short trail on the way in,” Nicole suggested as she chugged down a diet soda. “It was only 0.5 miles. Maybe we can finish the whole hike and be back in town to start a fire and roast marshmallows.”

“Sounds good to me,” Shaun burped. “Especially the marshmallows.”

“How did we get so lost?!” Nicole lamented as the sun set.

“I told you, we needed to stick to the trail!” Shaun barked, huffing and puffing as he stomped along the unblazed trail.

“I was on the trail! If you’re so goddamn smart, why didn’t you lead the way?” Nicole shouted back.

“Oh, oh, oh. I see. So it’s my fault you couldn’t get it right?! Just like everything else huh? Nooo, Nicole can never do any wrong; it’s always my fault!”

“Well what do you want me to do!? You never take initiative on anything! That’s why you’re still making chump commission instead of owning your own car lot!”

The argument would have continued, as it always did, but both parties were far too short of breath from their strenuous hike to do anything except sputter angrily at each other. They meandered around the vanishing trail as the cover of night began to shroud their vision.

After a bit of stumbling around, they came across an eerie glowing light illuminating the darkness. Shaun went to examine it. It was a strangely large and deep rock formation, completely out of place in this forested area. The light compelled him, pulsing gently from the cave entrance.

“Nicole! Come here! There’s light.”

“Oh thank god. But what if there’s something in there?”

“What, like a fire? Then we’ll thank the gods, that’s what!”

The two went in tentatively. It was clear that there was no fire. Pale, ghostly white beams reflected off of the walls, the stone beset with irregular crystals, some small and knotted, others long, smooth and flat like a pane of glass, as if they had been forged by human hands. Or some other sort of intelligence.

“Shaun, this is...” Nicole wrapped her arms around his.

“Um, yeah. Uh... let’s not get lost in here. Come on. I think we can take our chances outside. I still have some phone charge left.”

But as the pair turned to leave, their reflections seemed to grow larger in the rock. The cave seemed to shift around them, morphing and unstable.

“Shit! We literally walked one way in! Where is that entrance!?” Shaun lamented.

Nicole whimpered. She was just as flabbergasted as her husband. The crystals continued to move, their intricate and inscrutable dance finally surrounding them on all sides. They were completely trapped.

“What the hell!” Shaun yelled, driving his elbow into one of the panes.

Suddenly, the crystals burst to life.

Huge shards of glass shot out of the walls, piercing the overweight, troubled couple. Their gleaming, pointed tips slid through Nicole and Shaun’s chest, their legs, their arms as if their bodies were incorporeal. There was no pain, no blood, no heat—just the cold realization that something supernatural was happening, and they were completely helpless. The cacophonous shriek of crashing glass finally ceased as they hung there, suspended in midair by otherworldly crystals.

Their bodies began to turn to crystal fused with flesh, starting from their shoes, climbing up their legs and torsos. They couldn’t move a muscle, not that they even dared to. It looked as if they would shatter from any wrong impact. As the creeping coldness climbed up their necks, Nicole and Shaun looked at each other one final time.

“Shaun...?” Nicole uttered weakly.

The pair lost consciousness as the crystals engulfed their heads.