Silence

     Hey! Here's a horror-y piece I did last year. I should clarify that when I say 'last year' I mean the last academic year. Actually, this piece was for the Hallowe'en week, so it was last year in both senses...whatever. Anyhow, I hope you like it, I was, and am, pretty pleased with it.

‘The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown’ – H.P. Lovecraft.

  

He crouched, in absolute quietude. It was so deafening that he could barely form a thought. After a moment or so, he became aware of small sounds, which would usually be an irritant to him. The plink, plink, plink of a cheap, ill-fitted tap over a presumably cheap, ill-fitted sink. There was laughter from the room beyond, and the sound of cutlery being made to dance over bacon and china. In a way, this indication that human life was so close was a comfort to him; however they didn’t take away from the fact that at any second, he could be ripped from behind the iron curtain in which he had found sanctuary.

                The world went dark; it had been for quite some time when finally, he awoke; stiff from crouching for so long. He wasn’t sure what had roused him at first, and could not completely remember why he was there to begin with. Then he heard the wailing of hinges as heavy footsteps entered the room. He held his breath. Eyes wide; sweat beginning to escape his pores. His limbs shook violently, threatening to throw him off-balance, revealing his position to whoever belonged to the footsteps.

                The being stopped almost right outside the stall he was occupying and, evidently unaware that he shared the space with anyone else, began to whistle something which could have been anything, and was quite clearly out of tune.  The sound was comforting to him, aside from being almost intolerable to the ear. His lungs released the stale air from within themselves, grateful for the fresh oxygen which was now filling them. The whistling stopped, The gentleman outside his dingy asylum zipped up his trousers and exited. Not bothering to wash his hands.

                He breathed a second sigh of relief, he was alone again, or so he thought. He took a moment to survey his surroundings. The room wasn’t well lit, mostly due to the fact that he was sitting inside a small cubicle in a dark corner; the whole bathroom had one broken bulb, one flickering bulb, and one dim bulb. The tiles landscaping the walls were at one time white, however they were now a murky colour somewhere between grey and egg-shell blue. The floor wasn’t any colour he’d ever seen before, but more an amalgamation of white, yellow, brown and most disturbingly of all; red.

                He began to relax a little bit, fidgeting to try and make his position more comfortable. That’s when I decided to alert him to my presence. I could tell he wasn’t expecting it at all, after all, I don’t make much of an entrance, and I can remain in the same position for hours, blending in with the surroundings, appearing as only a ripple in the light or a shadow in the darkness; sometimes people do a double-take, and on the second glance they scrutinise my general area as if they expect me to wave. As I dropped I gained substance, I landed on him with quite some weight to me, I felt him become rigid, felt his muscles tighten and his blood run cold. All the hairs on his body stood to attention and he tried to scream. The scream failed and all he managed was a squeaky whimper, and a tiny amount of urine escaped his bladder. He knew what to expect; we’d made our feelings clear to him from the start. We don’t do favours for free. He should have known that he can’t escape us; we see all, move through time and space, move through walls and mountains, pass through the core of the earth and feel no pain. We can tear a man limb from limb, and never feel remorse. So this is what I planned to do: take him out into the main part of the bathroom in which he’d taken refuge, and tear him apart, piece by piece, as if he were a simple child’s toy.

                ‘Please! Please, no!’ he wailed, as if it were going to help. I merely sneered in reply. His eyes were bulging now; I could see the terror mounting and feel it too, coming from his very heart, his veins, his sweat. He panted panicked pleas, apologies and empty promises. It was too late for all that. I began bounding his body to the air around him; stretched him out like the Vitruvian Man, he struggled against my invisible bonds, looking to his left arm, then his right, eyes ballooning as he felt my ropes boring into his wrists; seeing them draw blood even, but not actually witnessing them do the work.

                I was enjoying this. I fed off of his fear, turning it into pure ecstasy. He writhed and wriggled, trying to free himself from the trap I was creating just for him. I summoned some of my fiercest and hungriest demons. They gnashed their jaws at him, salivating. He howled, the way that humans so often do. Nobody in the room yonder heard a thing, nobody came to his aid; they were all too busy pouring bitter coffee into their already over-stuffed bellies.

                 I began by tearing open his shirt, revealing his fast inflating and deflating chest. Then I made small lesions, allowing his blood to escape, driving my minions to distraction, they began giggling with the anticipation of sinking their teeth into fresh human meat. I then began breaking the bones in his fingers, turning them to grit; I continued this all the way up his arms, through his chest and down his legs. I left his head alone, I wanted him to see this, actually feel and bear witness to the consequences of his betrayal. He vociferated his pain, as if it would make a difference. He was becoming desperate now, trying anything to make me stop. I considered it for a moment; leaving him there on the floor of the dirty bathroom, all his bones crushed to dust and bleeding from his bare torso, for some innocent person to find him, and probably vomit, ending up mentally scarred for the rest of their life. But I didn’t have any desire to upset innocent humans, so I dropped him from his shackles, giving my followers the signal that they were to begin their feast.

                They tore him limb from limb, spraying blood across the bathroom floor, intestines and bone dust leaked out, he screamed the entire time. Eventually, there was silence; apart from the plink, plink, plink of an ill-fitted tap, over a very ill-fitted sink.

            Hope you liked it! I may be a bit more absent than normal for a while; deadlines and whatnot, you know how it is.

             If I don't post between now and Christmas, MERRY CHRISTMAS GUYS! And happy New Year!

                                 Thanks for reading, Laura

                                                                xoxoxoxox

http://www.free4down.net/search/christmas-animals/