Wendell Wags (35, Unemployed)

"The fuck is this thing?" Wendell muttered to himself. He'd been driving around to a few businesses around town, dropping off resumes when they didn't have a spot to apply online and generally being out of the house. His last stop had been near a local high school and since it was Saturday, he felt like just taking a meandering circuit of the grounds. He had no illicit intentions towards the property or staff and the kids were gone for the weekend, so that helped minimize the chances of being accused as a pedophile. He was fairly non-confrontational too, so if he was told to leave, he'd remove himself without issue or protest.

He doubted that would happen though, as the area was a ghost town. He saw a golf cart used for maintenance in the distance and when he started his walk, passed by an actual maintenance truck, but he was the only living soul he could see. The sound of traffic from the adjacent freeway was light and made for pleasant background noise. While moseying about the athletic field, he spotted a shape he thought was a rock. Odd because the field was well kept and nearly immaculate. Not a chain link or blade of grass out of place. So a darkly iridescent shape amid the healthy greens and steel grays and tan dirt stood out like bondage gear at a feminist conference. Approaching the shape at a placid pace, Wendell (Wen to his friends) was already pondering the shape. Maybe a piece of equipment a student or faculty had dropped or forgotten? Perhaps a class project by one of the bright, young minds of tomorrow?

Wendell mentally shrugged. If it was anything other than a piece of trash, he'd find some faculty member and hand it off to them, trusting them to return it to it's rightful owner. If they didn't think he stole it, that is. If it WAS a piece of trash, he'd just toss it. No muss, no fuss. On closer inspection however, the object was a rectangular shape. Dark, but seeming to almost shimmer in the sunlight. He remembered his family taking him to a glacier park and reading an exhibit on little black worms that lived on the ice. He thought on that now as he looked at the object that was such a deep, glacial blue, it approached black. The slight way it...shivered and...writhed(?) made him think of a worm crawling. The description was apt since the object looked like it was composed from a smooth, solid material. Like ice. It seemed more sculpted than actually carved. Not like tools have ever touched it, despite the funny symbols that appeared on the surface, but only when you looked at that area. Otherwise the object was a mundane block of curious material. Wendell would call it a block of very dark ice except the temperature was in the eighties and the dirt surrounding the object didn't have a bit of moisture around it. No melting.

Figuring he had run into something outside his normal experience, Wendell questioned if this was really something that would, or should, be at a high school. So being the high school diploma educated genius he was, he employed a time tested tradition used since the days of our caveman ancestors.

He poked it.

While this may have been a bad idea according to more educated individuals, Wendell figured that if the grass and dirt it was on hadn't melted into a hissing sludge, he'd be fine. The block of ice comparison fell a bit flat since the object felt smooth and cool, but not overly so. Still, even if it was sitting in the sunlight for five minutes, it should be warm. He couldn't tell if it was wood, plastic, stone or metal, but it was most definitely not ice. Wendell all of a sudden didn't feel like schlepping this thing around the campus to try and drop it off when his own monkey curiosity and a strange urge to hold onto it manifested. Picking up the block, he was slightly surprised to feel the weight shift oddly and feel something move around inside of it.

'A box' he thought. 'This is one odd box.' and then came the inevitable followup question.

'What's inside?'

***********************

Back in the dining room of his grandparent's summer house (he pays rent, shut up) Wendell perused his curious find. Or more specifically, it's contents. There hadn't been any latch, hinges, lock or even seam, but once he touched it again, it open smoothly and in silence. It was bit unsettling to be honest. Inside he found a chalice. Repeating his earlier question, he wondered just what he was dealing with. It could have just been a fancy cup, but peering within showed an alarmingly bottomless receptacle. Even tilting the hollow towards the light revealed nothing but shadow. Like the chalice was a literally bottomless container.

He felt a compulsion to drink stronger than any he had ever felt before. Even when there was nothing in the chalice, he had the urge to ingest the nothingness.

He drank.

Long ago, Wendell read a story of the knight of the round table questing for the Holy Grail. Only one knight in the end was worthy to drink from it, and when he drank, light poured out from the cup, more and more until the knight filled and became one with the luminescence and finally was gone. That was how he felt now, only instead of being filled and united with light, shadows poured out of this grail. It poured down his throat into his stomach, even as he felt his gullet welling with darkness, he couldn't stop drinking. The shade began to run through his veins, suffusing his flesh, like he was a dry sponge left to soak in a basin of warm oil. It didn't all go into him though, the shade spilled over his lips and chin, like a greedy child trying to drink too much chocolate milk. The shadows poured down his front, pooling at his feet until he began to feel...sinking? As the darkness continued to flow without stopping, the shadows spilling down his front felt like it was soaking him from the outside in, trying to meet the shadows pooling within him. His eyes were still untouched as he was able to angle them down, only to be transfixed in fascinated horror to see he was sinking into the shadows at his feet. He could feel himself soaking in the substance, being subsumed, overtaken. But he could not stop drinking, his eyes were the only thing he could move. As the world rose around him, sinking into the cenote of darkness, he wondered if he was drowning. He didn't feel like he couldn't breathe, even if he didn't feel his own pulse anymore.

Wendell sank fully, the shadows passing over his own dark eyes. The ceiling fan the last sight before all sensation went completely dim.