Audible Illusions Novels & Stories

The sound was haunting, almost like an illusion. It sent chills down her spine.

And whenever she shouted what sounded like instructions, I felt a heavy punch in my chest. After the female voice repeated her instructions three times, a faint beeping sound replaced the stationary sound, and a chorus of cheers registered in my ears. What’s happening? As much as I would love to listen to them, I don’t have the energy to stay awake. Wait. Am I awake? Is this a reality or an illusion? Was I hallucinating or having a false vision? But my confusion is the least of my concerns right now. My body and mind seem too tired and confused to process anything anymore.

She was immobilized and blinded, a parcel of warm, breathing flesh on the bed. “Comfortable?” His voice was close. She could only nod, her breathing already shallower. “Good. Now, we begin the sustained auditory and tactile protocol.” She heard a soft click, then a low, resonant hum filled the room, a white noise generator, tuned to a frequency that vibrated in her bones. Beneath it, a slow, rhythmic, synthetic heartbeat began to pulse from speakers somewhere near her head. Thump-thump… thump-thump…

There was clearly something happening right in front of me, but I couldn't do anything. 'Come on, Seraphine. Think! What can you do if trapped in this illusion? You can't waste time again after making Jesse foolishly die because of you!' Frustrated, I finally decided to at least run and search for the source of that noise, rather than stand here doing nothing. /Boom! Boom! Boom!/ I sharpened my ears to capture the direction of the explosive sound. It seemed that when my senses of sight and hearing combined, what I was witnessing was a cluster of illusions. So, I tried another approach. If my eyes couldn't be of use, I would rely on my eardrums alone.

I couldn't see his face. But he was protecting everyone. I was pulled back, but this time not placed in another memory. A second heartbeat entered my awareness. Not the one I was used to. Then another. And another. I froze. What was happening to me? I don’t know what to believe. Are memories some kind of illusion? The sounds multiplied rapidly. Dozens and hundreds of heartbeats were everywhere. Fast ones. Slow ones. Weak ones. I could hear them all. But…they weren’t mine.

A sensation of something that used to be there but is now just an ache. The sound hits me in the pit of my stomach, and suddenly, the gallery starts to tilt. My knees feel weak, like the joints have turned to water. My ears begin to ring with a high-pitched, metallic whine that drowns out the studio. There's a flash in my head and I see a woman’s silhouette in a garden, but she’s turning toward me this time. I hear a laugh...that same vulnerable, melodic laugh, echoing through a hallway that smells of antiseptics.

It feels like whatever that awakens inside me is burning all those energies quickly inside my body and rapidly draining me. "Is there something wrong? You've been staring at me the whole time," I curiously ask Clarren. Then something weird happened, I've been hearing whispers of people from different locations, the noises of the utensils from the kitchen, even the laughter of the children playing in the corridor, dripping from a leaky utility sink faucet, sounds of traffic, a horn honking, and an engine revving. The sound is getting louder and louder. These noises are piercing in my ears almost deafening me.

Please change. “Uh! That humming!” I didn’t know why I remembered that. We parted and Amor looked at me, confused. “I wouldn’t have come this far. I was going back, but a melody lured me here. You were here, did you hear it too? It was like magic.” “Don’t tell me you have started hallucinating now. Auditory hallucinations. I have been sitting on the branch of the highest tree here and I haven’t even heard a bird chirp and missing on a full-fledged magical melody is impossible.” He said in a convincingly teasing tone.

she rasped at him. I rose to my full height with my sword in hand. “How can it be fought?” Kaden asked in a growl. “We can’t,” I said The light from her hand was still growing, there was a sound that reminded me of the buzzing in your hear after you hear a sound that is too loud for too long, like tinnitus—only the sound was constantly rising in pitch, like a teakettle, only higher. The light kept growing still, painting the whole room in white. Such a light should have blinded us, but it didn’t, and in a flash of insight I realised that neither the light, nor the sound were perceived with our actual senses. Our eyes didn’t see white, our brain did.

Could there be another layer of illusions? Was it one level higher than the normal ones? But this speculation only lasted for a second before Samuel immediately dismissed it. Because it was impossible. Illusions often occurred in relatively hidden spaces. Because in such an environment, the illusion would be more real, and the trapped person would be more compatible with the illusion. Just like the so-called 3D or 5D, in order to give the audience more comprehensive experience, these things are often placed in the room. Was outdoor okay? Of course.