The crippled figure staggers across the dusty field, a rusty dagger clutched by bony fingers and white knuckles. The figure walks up to the shattered mirror and looks at his many reflections, dancing around the reflective surface. What does he look like nowadays, the knowledge of himself nothing but a lost memory. The figure turns around to see a freshly cut lawn surrounded by a white picket fence. A little girl runs up to meet him and he twirls her around in the air, enjoying the look of pure thrill exploding on her face. The old man, worn out from acting on his delusions, collapses into the dirt, his rusty dagger still held tightly by his bony fingers. An hour passes, or maybe a day, he cannot be sure anymore.




The man gets up and returns to the skeletal structure he calls home. The wind chime is silent, it has nothing left to sing about. The man opens the door and turns around to close it from the inside. He turns around to a clean, polished wooden hallway. A woman walks down the hallway towards him and they embrace, happy and content with their lives. He closes his eyes while hugging her, opening them to a dried, fractured building with no roof. He walks up what remains of the stairs towards the room where he sleeps. There are stuffed toys scattered around the room, many of them torn and missing stuffing. Dagger still clasped strongly in hand, the old man collapses onto the small bed, content to let his legs hang over the end. As the man sleeps, nightmares haunt him, causing him to shiver in the dry heat.




Something stirs in their quiet neighbourhood, creating unease in the young man's home. His daughter cries out to him and he moves to comfort her. She's had a nightmare, and begins to explain it when a loud, irregular banging comes at the door. This frightens the young man's daughter but he is quick to assure her of her safety. He goes to the door and as he gets closer he can hear scratching and snarling amongst the banging. Assuming it to be a stray dog, he kicks the door to shoo it away. This only angers whatever is on the other side and the young man can hear small chunks of wood being pulled off the door. He calls his wife to bring him a knife from the kitchen, she does so. A chunk of wood falls away from the door and the young man can see the large dark-brown wolf slowly breaking its way through the door. It sees the man, turns and snarls. It leaps at the door, sending splinters flying. The man takes action and hurries his wife into his daughter's room, who comforts her amongst all the loud sounds.




The wolf doesn't relent in its onslaught on the door, and eventually creates a hole large enough for it to shatter its body through in one muscular bound, but the man is ready for it. He slashes forward and clips the wolf's ear, which falls away almost instantly. The wolf, seemingly not noticing its loss of appendage, slowly starts to circle the young man, enticing its prey to attack again, so that it may take him down. The man feints and the wolf pounces at him. The man spins the blade in his hand and severs the foor leg of the wolf, knocking it to the ground. The wolf seems to notice this difference in its altercation with this meat and decides to go after the weaker prey available her. It bounds up the staircase and smashes through the weaker bedroom door of the young man's daughter. The man stumbles up the stairs, the horror of his family's screams filling his ears.




The man stops half a metre away from the door, the screams having stopped. Complete despair fills the man's body followed by ultimate rage. The man rushes into the room, locates the wolf, and plunges the knife he holds into its head. He sits there and screams as he continues to pull the knife out of the wolf and sank it back in for what felt like an age. After around an hour, the man is still, his voice coming out as a crack and his arms tired and heavy. He begins to cry, coiling into a fetal position on the floor, the knife still clutched by his white-knuckled hand.




The old man rolls out of bed and out of the building into the arid wasteland, red dust reaching out as far as the eye can see in every direction. The day begins anew.




This is my entry for the Apocalypse Skin Contest, and I decided to put my meagre writing skills to use and create a backstory for it. I used my old Link Skin as a base, making an old Link, then making a tattered old Link, then of course creating the skin you see now. Turned the cap into a hood, rounded the ears, browned the clothes, changed the tunic into a shirt and pants, and made his eyes all weird (I can't remember the term for having two different eye colours). Once I upload all of them, I'll put links below for the different stages that it took to make this skin. As usual, made based on the sprites of The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap, but in this case, tweaked massively. Check out my other stuff and subscribe for more.