Shock Treatment Series

Written by Jenskot Dayspring

Part 1 Dream Shock

That the best way to describe the corridor that seemed to last forever. No matter how fast or how long you ran, you could never reach the end of it.

How long had he been running?

It seemed like hours. He was beginning to tire, his legs were growing heavy, his breath beginning to shorten, he wanted to stop, but one thing kept him going.

The voice of his daughter cried out for him. She sounded scared and in pain. He kept running to reach her but it seemed as if only her voice existed, never the less, he was going to keep running.

“Daddy! Please come quick! The bad man is coming!!” the voice of Luna screeched.

“Daddy... is.. coming... sweetheart!” Pietro Maximoff shouted between gulps of air he tried to inhale.

Quicksilver began to try to accelerate his speed faster, pushing him to a dangerous speed.

Faster.

Faster.

Everything around him was becoming a blur. He kept running and running, his heart was pounding inside his chest, telling him to slow down and stop and rest.

He ignored it.

All around him, her voiced seemed to be, saying the same thing over and over, followed by screams of torture.

Pietro kept running through the blackness for what seemed like a very long time.

He could take it no longer, he needed to stop. So he did, he didn’t slow down, he just stopped dead in his tracks. He clenched his heart, his knees buckled, and he fell to the floor.

Gasping for breath he laid there, his body ached to much to move. He shut his eyes, just to rest them for a moment.

When he opened them again, he found himself in an entirely different surrounding.

He seemed to be in a very large room, the walls red and covered with strange designs and words, he did not know. Pietro, amazed with the volume of the room didn’t realize until it was almost too late, that he almost stepped of the ledge that he was standing on.

He stepped back and gazed around the room, to make himself aware of his surroundings.

The ledge that he was standing on was very narrow, just enough room, for his feet. There was no way in or out that he could see. So *how* did he get in? In the middle of the room was a stone pedestal. The space between the ledge and the pedestal was a very wide black pit, that Pietro imagined had no bottom to it.

But what was that, that was sitting on the pedestal? Pietro strained to see what it was, in the very dim room.

A cage? Was that what it was?

“Daddy!! Please come an’ get me!” Luna’s voice cried again.

This time Pietro knew where it was coming from---the pedestal.

“Daddy, coming Luna!” Pietro shouted as he tried to figure out how he was going to reach her.

He couldn’t jump the pit. He couldn’t get a running start either. There was no bridge to the pedestal. Weighing his options, he decided that his best chance was to jump it. He *was* very doubtful that he’s actually make it.

“Daddy, hurry the bad man is coming!” Luna kept crying over and over

Who was this bad man? Pietro wondered as he was about to make the leap of faith, but suddenly, like it appeared out of thin air, was a small narrow, rickety bridge, that connected the ledge to the pedestal.

“Where did that come from?” Pietro wondered aloud. How could he have missed that, it was right there in front of him.

He didn’t care about how it got there any longer. He only was focused to getting to Luna.

Pietro began to carefully cross the bridge. Some of the boards were cracked and some were missing. The binding that held them together was fraying.

Pietro tried not to look down at the pit, so he looked at the wall ahead of him.

It was moving closer.

Was he just imagining it or where they actually moving in around him?

He started to move faster, to get to Luna.

Luna’s cry’s became amplified and more high pitched than before. The sound was unbearable.

Pietro threw his hands over his own ears to try to drown out the sound. He wanted to start screaming too, the sound was driving him crazy.

He kept going.

Finally he made it. His feet on the stone pedestal and he was just a few feet away from the cage that held his daughter.

A few flickering torches lit the pedestal but, he could still not see inside the cage, he knew she was in there though.

He walked slowly towards her, grabbing one of the torches on his way. Her cry’s stifled a bit.

He prayed that she was okay.

He was there in front of the cage, it was bigger than he imagined.

He looked around the room again, noticing that the bridge that he had just come across moments before was gone. The walls that looked like were closing in on him, where so far away now, that he could barely see them. Now he was trapped on this gigantic stone pedestal, with no way off. At least he’d be with his daughter.

His daughter.

He became so intrigued with the room that he had forgotten about his daughter.

He took a deep breath and held the torch in front of the cage.

Pietro let out a terrified howl.

There inside the cage was his beloved daughter, dressed in her pj’s. Except her body was not more than a mere skeleton.

He fell down to his knees and cried.

He looked at Luna

“I’m so sorry,” he said to her in between sobs “If only I was faster....”

The skeleton jumped up from where she had been sitting.

“Daddy, your TOOO late,” it screeched “Toooo- late!!”

It’s eye sockets burned with a red glow.

Then it began to laugh and laugh and laugh.

“NOOOOOO-” Pietro Maximoff howled as he shot up out of his bed.

His wife Crystal shot up not more than half a second after he did.

“Pietro!, what is wrong?” Crystal said startled as she wrapped her arms around her husbands bare shoulders.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead and gasped desperately for air.

“I...I had a horrible nightmare, Crystal.” He said ting to calm himself down “I will be fine, it was just a dream, that is all.”

Crystal still had her arms around his shoulders, she knew that the dream Pietro had just experienced was terrifying, she could tell by the way that he was trembling.

She kissed his shoulders a few times.

“C’mere, honey,” she said as she pulled him back down to the bed, so that his head was resting on her chest. “Do, you want to talk about it?”

“No, Crystal. I’ll be fine” he said in his usual tone “But thank you”

Even though he tried to sound like his normal self, Crystal knew that he was just trying to cover up how scared he was.

“Okay, Pietro, just try to get some rest” she said softly as she stroked her hand through his silver hair.

She was worried about him.

Pietro tried to relax again, but he didn’t want to sleep.

For the first time in his life, he was afraid to sleep.

~To be continued next in Shock Treatment, Part 2 Shock Wave~