Curse of the Dragon's Blood

The sun was just shining through the thin white curtains that danced in the breeze drifting through the window. Ocean air filled a large room with a comfortable sitting area. An upholstered couch sat against the wall with arm chairs to match. The low wooden table in the center was topped with a decorative flower arrangement. The sitting arrangement faced a standing area with a large wardrobe on one side and a dresser on the other. Between them was a full length mirror framed in polished carved wood.

Reflected in this mirror stood a man in his early twenties wearing two pieces of a three piece suit. His sandy blonde hair was swept up in a well kept crew cut. He stood around 1.8 meters tall and his features were sharp, as he was on the skinny side, but it did help to push him over to just being considered handsome, despite his rather pale skin.

Kaleb was currently adjusting his cuff links as he observed himself in the mirror. The only word he could find to describe the finished result was ... 'pretentious'. As he was for the most part a shut in, hence the pale complexion, who was either engrossed in his work or his video games, sometimes to the point of forgetting to eat, hence being rather skinny. The expensive suit, the cuff links and even the well kept hair, to a certain extent, were not really his style. 'But', he thought with a sigh and a slight smile, 'I guess it makes sense to wear this on my wedding day'.

He and Stephanie had graduated college in the spring and were now having their June wedding in Hawaii. The plan was then to spend the rest of the year on a sort of world tour honeymoon. 'This is seriously going to cut into my savings' Kaleb thought with another sigh.

Although money wasn't too much of a problem for Kaleb, as he had developed an app with his best friend Anthony, who was also his best man. The app had gone big in their junior year and Kaleb was still seeing profits. To top it off they also had several other projects in the works, in fact Anthony and he had plans to start their own company.

As Kaleb continued to stare at his overly fancy reflection it became more and more humorous to him and he couldn't help snickering. He never had any money growing up and he didn't even own a suit until he got to college. After all, his parents had passed away in a car accident when he was very young leaving him an orphan and he had gone to live with his Godparents.

His Godparents were well meaning, warm people, the problem was they already had 5 kids before they took in Kaleb. This, paired with the Dad's job as a mechanic, had led to a distinct lack of luxury in their household. With such humble beginnings, Kaleb felt uncomfortable surrounded by such excess and clothed in such luxury. Like the carnival cutout characters that one would put their face through, the wrongness of it was comical.

To be honest, even after Kaleb made all that money, he hadn't really changed his lifestyle that much. Initially, about the only thing he did was buy nicer computer gear. The change in lifestyle came after he met Stephanie. She pulled him out of his life in a darkened studio apartment and showed him a life beyond the screen Kaleb worked and played on.

Stephanie would often comment about how hard life must have been for him growing up. While Kaleb would be the first to admit it wasn't easy he wouldn't have called it hard. After all, his little ragtag family had always had enough and they always looked out for each other, including him.

As he reminisced on all these pleasant memories, Kaleb finished his last adjustments in the mirror and he let out one last sigh. This was the sigh of a nervous groom who had gotten ready entirely too early and now had nothing to due but stress. It was barely 7 a.m. and the wedding didn't start until 4!

'I'm just going to have to go find Anthony and annoy him for a couple of hours' Kaleb thought, making his way to the door. As he grabbed the handle he was slammed into the door and his ears were flooded with a horrific shattering sound from behind him.

Kaleb felt the blood flowing as he went to grab his nose to stop the stream. Just then, he felt a change in the room. He grabbed the door handle with both hands as the force in the room instantaneously reversed, the explosion becoming an implosion sweeping him off of his feet and pulling him toward the center of the room. As Kaleb looked into the room, through his tear filled eyes, he saw what looked like a crack had appeared.

The crack that appeared in the center of the room went from ceiling to floor and looked as if someone had shattered the fabric of reality like it was glass. It looked like the room had been torn in half as a spiderweb of veins continued to crawl around the rift further tearing chunks of reality into the abyss. It was like the initial force was the puncturing of a vacuum and now the forces were once again trying to find equilibrium by sucking everything out of the vacuum.

Kaleb was now hanging from the doorknob as he looked into what seemed like the mouth of Hell. As he looked on in horror the furniture and wall art was dragged away, and an unusual movement to the side of the room caught his eye. It was a ball of black light, as odd as that was, it seemed to be completely unaffected by the ever increasing pull of the rift. This black ball, about the size of a soccer ball, seemed like it was writhing around as its outline continually shifted and it crashed around the room. It looked like it was almost in agony.

Just as he became aware of this odd entity, its seemingly random writhing brought it hurtling toward Kaleb's head! As he tensed for the impact Kaleb was shocked when it went right through him like a ghost. As he turned around to see where it had gone, he suddenly felt like his brain was exploding! His vision went white as he grabbed his head in agony.

"Found you" he heard echoing in the recesses of his fading consciousness as he plummeted into the rift.