The Descent to Madness Read Online Free PDF Page B

the thorny bark grating his flesh as he rolled past. Finally, he ploughed into a snowdrift and lay there, bleeding and broken, breath gasping wheezily, wetly from lacerated lungs.
    The world was greying, colours bleeding from his sight as his body finally succumbed to the heinous combination of injury, fatigue and cold. His brain was shutting down, striving to block out the pain and the indisputable fact that he was dying. As the world faded to black, the last sound he heard was the frustrated roar of a hungry monster denied its meal.
     
    ***
     
    His senses were muted and his body far off, but this wasn’t the soundless, dreamless oblivio n of before. This was more real; a subsection of his mind as it cordoned him off from whatever grisly state his body was lying in. As his lifeblood bled into the ground in a reality far distanced from his mind, Graeme Stone found time to examine how he felt about the prospect of his own mortality.
                  Was he scared of death, he pondered? No, he decided. But why then run from the beast of earlier? Why had he sought shelter from the storm? Either could have claimed him but he chose to resist. Why run if death held no fear? It wasn’t the fear of death that drove him, he understood. It was the fear of pain. And more than just the pain of physical harm. The pain of failure, betrayal and suffering beyond his control. Though his short memory precluded him from knowing for certain, he felt sure that the past few hours were indicative of his previous life. Not, he was reasonably confident, in terms of drama. But he somehow knew that recent events were only the latest in a long chain of misery. So it was mere pain that continued his existence?  If so then how pitiful, how pathetic a life that was, to be ruled by fear and fear alone. He should let it end now, just sit back and wait for the release as his body slowed to a stop, to an end of all his suffering.
                  And yet… and yet…
                  He didn’t want to die. Despite everything he just didn’t want to die. He could not put his finger on it (in a quite literal sense at the moment), but for some reason he had an urge to keep going, even knowing that, from past experience, life might not get better. That didn’t sounded like running away. That sounded more like running to . That was almost verging on sounding like hope . Despite the setbacks, the betrayals, the suffering, he was carrying on, not fleeing but hoping against the odds that things would get better. That things would somehow, finally, begin to change .
                  Change. And a ripple passed through his consciousness, mighty but muted, like the shockwave of a depth charge felt through the vast emptiness of a cold, dark ocean.
                  Change . And, like a sleeping giant rousing from its millennia long slumber, the potentialities lying dormant in his genes rose to the surface, having waited so, so long for this precise moment.
                  Change . And his consciousness rushed back to the surface, stripping away the fluffy half-life of the dream-world and roaring back into the cold light of day to find Graeme Stone reborn.
     
     
     
    Chapter Three
     
    A snowflake described a slow and lazy arc as it descended, before finally settling on a small, white nose. Whiskers twitched but otherwise the little creature carried on as it was, rooting through the thick snow in search of the hardy green plants beneath. Eyes on either side of its head kept look out, whilst its long, upright ears scanned this way and that for any hint of danger. Nonetheless, it didn’t see him, didn’t hear him.
    For he was getting better…
    From his concealed vantage point in the bush at the base of a spiny tree, Graeme Stone watched the rabbit with rapt and hungry attention. Its soft, white fur positively bulged with the promise of the warm flesh beneath. With the back of his hand he wiped