Dr. Richard Talbot. (Deceased)

[Richard Talbot]

Dr. Richard Talbot awoke. He couldn’t be sure if he was awake or not, because the darkness was so absolute that he didn’t know if he truly was conscious or floating in an abyss of his mind’s own devising. But no, he could not be floating- here, he could tell he was lying down, on, yes, on, a hard slab. Where was he? He lay still for a moment and tried to think. Maybe he was still asleep. Maybe none of this was real- perhaps it was just a nightmare. But even the most convincing of nightmares could never feel as oddly real as this.
It was… cold. Yes, the temperature. Something normal. Something real to concentrate on. Cold. Even though he tried to cling to this certainty, something nagged at him. Was it cold? Was it really cold?
With a horrible sinking feeling, he knew. Was it cold? No. It wasn’t cold he felt, but the absence of warmth. That automatic assumption that the lack of any heat meant that it was cold was replaced by the realisation that simply because it was not one thing did not mean that it was therefore the other.
He wasn’t cold. He wasn’t hot. He wasn’t anything.
His arm prickled. A persistent itch. He reached over to scratch it, but instead of flesh his fingers found an insect. A beetle of some kind. He shuddered, crushed it, and flicked it away. His arm still tingled, though, so he rubbed it, and with horror he felt his flesh, not warm and taut, but cold and loose, hanging off his bone like ill fitting charity clothes on a famine victim. He sat up with a jolt, terror washing over him, his heart pounding- and here the fear deepened, for through the haze of wild desperation he realised that, despite every part of him knowing that here his heart should be pounding, it was not. It was not even beating. He tried again to look about, to peer into the shadows for even the faintest glimmer of light, but there was none. With trembling hands he reached up to his face, and felt the two great holes of his empty eye sockets.
At last he cried out, but this was cut short as the sound emanating from his lips- and here he felt, or tried to feel, his lips, but instead felt only ragged flesh and teeth- was barely recognisable as his own. It echoed from his throat, coarse and dry. He tried to speak his name, and heard it, but the voice which had spoken was an echoed, rasping mockery of the speech he had known as his own.
Numb, empty, but full of fear, he swung his legs off the slab and dropped to the ground. He stood, but his legs would not take the weight for long, and he dropped to his knees. He tried to stand again, failed, and knelt in his own darkness, as still as the dead, fear slowly being replaced by a sinking despair.
“This is who I am? What am I? Where? Is there nothing? What is this pit? Am I dead?”
Despair turned to anger, and he found the strength to stand. His fists clenched and he roared out, livid now, furious at this cruel twist that had befallen him.
Alone he stood there in a place he could not see, not hot, not cold, but torn inside between a white hot fury and a sinking black despair. And all the while, his the memory of his own, human, voice echoed in his mind, speaking to him, mocking him, repeating the words, over and over-

Truly, Doctor Talbot, you are Forsaken.

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Dr. Richard Talbot was, in life, a local doctor/surgeon/barber/tooth-puller who lived with his wife and son in Lakeshire. This much he can remember. The next he knew was when he was raised, summoned, if you will, to his new calling.
Now he busies himself with inventing strange devices to aid his vision, the vision that rotted away in the grave with his eyes.
He remains kind and thoughtful, and a good friend to those who befriend him themselves. He still believes in the power of the light to aid his healing, but even still, strange and evil thoughts sometimes distract him, and his distaste for the Light and life itself haunt him and trouble him beyond even his capabilities to resist.