Dark Dreams: The Juggernaut

I'm in a round room that seems like an old attic. The walls and floors are wood, but not finished wood. It reminds me in some ways of a barn, the way the walls are solid but the twisted and brown floor boards don't quite meet up exactly. The walls seem air tight though, and at the top they meet a ceiling that angles upward. In the center of the room is a tremendous post, almost as wide as I am, going from the top of the ceiling down through the floor.

There are no windows, and there are no lights, but it's not dark in the room. Instead, light is coming up from below through the cracks in the floorboards, through the space between the boards and the post. The light is orange and red, and it moves as if, just underneath the floor I'm standing on, magma is sliding and shifting, oddly calming and beautiful.

I look around but don't see anything else in the room. I figure there must be a door or hatch, but I'm not immediately finding it. I start to walk and realize that, behind the post where I was standing, resting against the opposite wall, there is something else in the room.

There is the Juggernaut.

It would look like a suit of armor if not for the sheer immensity and the lack of a head. The shoulders go right across, smooth at the top where a hole for a head ordinarily would appear. The rest of it looks like it had been built for someone huge, some muscle bound beast that would work it's will through sheer strength and ferocity. It shows no signs of rust or deterioration, but still somehow carries the sense of antiquity.

I walk up to it, fascinated. I have to stand up on my tiptoes to look at the top. I do so wanting to look inside of it, and am disappointed to see that it lacks a place for a head to go through. As I look, I lose my balance slightly, and put my hand on the smooth chest of it to catch myself. From somewhere behind me, I hear a mocking voice quietly say, "Ooh, you shouldn't have done that".

I turn around to see where the voice has come from, but before I have a chance to find out, there is a cacophony of creaking metal. I turn just in time to jump back as one of the arms comes up, hand closing where my head had been a moment before. Finding nothing, the Juggernaut slowly pushes itself away from the wall, every movement causing that same metallic groaning, like the sound of metal being torn apart by great forces.

I back away, looking frantically for that exit. I still don't see anything like a trap door or window that might afford me some means of escape. Again, from somewhere behind me, the voice mocks me. "There's no way out, and even if there was, it won't stop until it gets what it wants." A soft laugh follows.

I continue backing away, moving quietly and trying to put both space and the tremendous pole supporting the room in between me and the thing that, now moving freely, slowly, deliberately, seems to be pursuing me. "It's not going to stop until it gets what it wants you know." The voice seems to be coming from below me now, but I don't dare look away from the metal giant, which paused at the sound. I can see it from either side of the pole, angling it's shoulders in my direction.

I stand still, breathless, trying not to make any noise, still hoping to find an exit before the slow moving thing is upon me. At my feet, I feel something bumping into my leg repeatedly, and again the soft laugh came from below me. "There's no where to hide in here, and there's no way out." I look down at my feet, and looking up at me is a man's head, his bloody neck and spinal column torn and twisting below him like a snake. He smiles at me, recognizing my panic. "He won't stop until he get's what he want, and mine wasn't good enough."

I hear it's laughter beneath the thud of a giant footstep, and look up to see the thing step towards the pole in the center of the room, the pole of solid wood, the pole that is almost as wide as I am. The thing raises it's left hand across it's right shoulder and, balling up a fist, brings it crashing down against the side of the pole. With a deafening crack, the pole splits in two like a toothpick, the top half hanging at an odd angle now while the bottom sinks down into the floor, flooding the creature with the red-orange glow the light below.

And I know, without a doubt, that I am not getting out of that room.