New-old story. Horror/suspense?
Wrote this a year ago in high school. My English teacher always said I was good at writing stories, but what do you guys think? I will accept all critiques except the ones I don't like. And the only ones I don't like are the "IT SUCKKSX!!!11!!!" ones. But you guys won't do that to me, will you?
Stardust
By Mathew V** ****** (catch me now, stalkers!!!:rolleyes:)
Something moved in the cupboard.
It was quite dark, late at night. In fact, the clock had just chimed midnight.
At the bottom of the cupboard, under a heap of old shoes and clothing not worn for years, was a cardboard box. Inside the box were some dusty, faded toys. There were dolls, marionettes, stuffed fluffy toys, a train with two wheels missing, a wooden soldier whose sword had been broken in some long-forgotten battle, and several jigsaws.
Something in the box moved.
Dust floated free of the box and drifted from the open doors of the cupboard into a beam of moonlight shining in through a window. Sparkles of light shimmered in the dust, as if from the center of some unknown galaxy where stars flared up into incandescence then winked out of life in an instant.
Something struggled to free itself from the box.
More dust was pushed into the air where an invisible draft of air held sway, setting the dust into a swirling vortex of chaos.
The aged toys were moved and jostled within the box. A sinister scritch-scratch of something sharp scraping against the box pierced the darkness, disturbingly out of place next to the steady backround rhythm of the ticking clock.
Yet more dust was flung outward from the box, joining with the second vortex of dust and riding the current of air into the moonlight. Where there was once a galaxy of tiny, short-lived stars there was now a universe. Thousands of glints of light created a fair imitation of the universe—constantly expanding and thinning out in the moonlight until every trace of dust finally settled to the wooden floor.
The rhythmic ticking of the clock was interrupted as a quiet chime sounded out for all to hear that the hour was now one. With the unexpected sound came increased vigor from the cardboard box. Most of the dust had already been displaced and what was left scattered into the moonlight, glimmering in and out of existence until they too settled to the floor.
The movement in the box, however, never settled. It became more frantic. The toys were shaken in their slumber, but nothing would wake those toys. They did not have the power, the energy, of the shaker of the box. However, the shaker was nearly out of energy itself, and was only now able to awaken itself to search for more.
There were plenty of old corroded batteries laying in the bottom of the box that still had a kiss of electricity within them, but mere batteries would not suffice. They did not have the right energy, or the power to acquire it.
With a nearly imperceptible scrape the toy train shifted downward across the other toys. The shaking and the scratching stopped, leaving the room dead silent but for the incorruptible ticking of the clock. A darkly stained, brown cloth arm reached out into the open air. It had no fingers, only a slight curl mimicking a hand at the end of the arm.
Another stained arm reached out and grasped onto a small pile of puzzle pieces, the other curled hand gripped the leg of a doll.
Together the arms lifted something out from the toys that should have never been able to move of its own accord. A tiny, brown body of cloth was pulled upwards until it stood. It had a shape and size similar to a large gingerbread man cookie, but there were no gaily-colored gumdrops adorning this wretched thing. The only decorations upon its dismal body were dark, black button eyes sewn tightly to the head, and a line of cruel, jagged stitching across the head that looked more like fangs than a mouth. Dark, crusted stains that could only be dried blood covered the entire thing, more heavily stained upon its head and arms than elsewhere.
It stuck its imitation hand into a hole slit in its cloth leg and retrieved a rosy shard of bloodstained glass.
The abomination could sense the energy it needed within the very house where it had, until now, rested. The powerful lifeblood of a young child emanated from a wall across the room. On the other side of that wall a child fitfully slept for the first time in dozens of years. Slowly, with infinite care for its weak, but soon to be replenished body, the abomination crawled from the box then out of the cupboard.
Soon it would be strong again; soon it would a bloodthirsty force hunting for only more energy to sate itself. Its lust for the energy was insatiable.
The first step was to strengthen itself, and a source of strength had finally appeared. The first influx of pure, yet disturbingly dark, energy would be the sweetest. With a slight shudder the brown cloth doll crossed the patch of moonlight, stirring up the stardust, the bright red glass gleaming.
It crawled under the bottom of a door to the room on the other side of the wall.
