SHORT STORY LINKS

In the dull grayness of the feeble lands which once held promise, which only now hold hate; I weave this story.  Though oft I, myself have felt that this reality were fiction—now I do swear by its loathsome truths.  It is a perpetual nightmare, a land of ash and soot.  Death.  Here it surrounds everything as a holy shroud covers the priests who dare venture into the realms of the decrepit.  It is here that our poor fool answered the late night ringing.  A ringing which had troubled him in dreams and has now reached beyond into this oppressive reality…

Slowly the receiver of the pale, almost yellowish colored phone struck down with the dullest, echoing thud.  With a trembling hand, which once held the receiver faltered ever so slightly and the phone indeed missed the mark and continued to the floor in a crash.  The final words that had echoed over the phone were haunting in the least.  True dire circumstances of illusion, or so held in disbelief, by the poor fool who picked up the phone on that evening.  Even the voice held the eerie feeling of disembodied reality, which twisted the soul of the victim.  This tortured the heart that once bled with the steady pumping, the rhythmic thumping, and pounding ritualistically beating of the heart. Then this cerise fluid or red blood as we all would call it as we see it steadily shifted.  It altering forms and functions and thus ran more and icy blue through the frozen body.  Yes, frozen, trapped within the mortal reality of assured mortality and the impending doom.

A quick turn and the shuffling of two impaired feet stomped but only a step.  Just a step, then he struck the chair.  Though, he knew very well its presence in the room.  For it had been there for years.  It was, well, nearly twenty-three years ago when he obtained the perfect bound leather chair.  It was plush and offered a feeling of presumptuous security.  Yet, amid the flawless construction, the highly esteemed materials— it faded and became worn.

The soft brown leather chair, with its torn arms and worn back fell quickly to the floor—tossed aside by the mere silhouette of the fleeing man.  Toppling as he stood he hurriedly ran for the nearest door that led to the openness, the great expanse of the outside air.  The thud of the chair, the crash of the phone receiver fell nearly as a deaf tone to the terrorized ears of the unfortunate fool who answered this night’s call.  Each step that he took, brought him closer to the door, each stride drove him nearer to the exit of the ever shrinking room.  Escaping the tightening noose of realities impending was the sole intention.  It was the sole focus of the fleeing man, who was as always trailed by his simple silhouette. 

Without hesitation, he grasped the tainted brass knob of the solid five-paneled oak door and quickly he twisted it clockwise.  His shoulder slamming into the chipped and sickly green paint that once covered the interior of the door, as his body moved with a force faster than his wrist could twist the handle.  Each splinter that pierced his taunt flesh formed tiny droplets of blood on the door—blood that splattered about the face of the wood and mixing with the sickly colored paint.  Though, the seemingly sturdy door burst open and into the cool night the man fell headlong and without pausing to contemplate the deepening sensations that tugged at the rear of his mind.  Sensations that ever so slowly begin to nibble at the ends of the cerebrum and eat away at the tails of the reality that remained.

The crisp evening air met him and embraced his face with the crisp touch of reality.  It caressed his bloodied skin and licked his wounds, numbing the pain with an icy chill that seemed to warm him inside.  His crazed eyes, still wide for the horror of the voice and the eerie phone call he had received only seconds ago maintained their deathly grasp.  His mind, wandered as he stared up at the blackened sky as he searched for the stars or the moon or even a cloud; yet, he could see none of these things.  All he could see was the cookie-cutter houses that lined the old block, the rows of rusted mailboxes that lined the cracked pavement of the unused road.  Searching his eyes could see the slight glows from between the cracks of the wooden planks, which covered the windows.  He could see the small trails of smoke leaving the partially collapsed chimneys.  Not a soul walked on this evening, not a single individual person or beast was out on this crisp and night, not one, except himself.

He stumbled continuing to shuffle down the road, tripping over the breaks in the pavement, stumbling over the roots of the rotting trees that were left.  Every bare branch reaching toward the heavens taunted him.  The darker side teased his intellect and screamed at him to return to the safety of his battered home.  The night itself whispered in his ear to return. Darkness retorted his stay and demanded that he escape back to the sanctuary of his boarded up haven.  He turned pausing, and looked over his shoulder down the cascade of bent mailboxes, down the rows of crumbling homes to the far end where his house stood.  “Seventy-seven paces,” he muttered under his breath, as his mind screamed for him to count them back down to zero as he returned.  The call, the voice in his head, the demons on that receiver edged his nerves and forced him into an unreasonable fit and so he continued.  He ran, sprinting through the yards, bearing down on the depths of the night.

It was while he ran, while he sprinted through the thickened air that his mind wandered further.  He pondered the voice.  His cranium concentrated on the words that were uttered.  The grey matter tore apart the possible indications and implied meanings, arriving at nothing but fear.  Terror of an anticipated oblivion or destruction that is so very complete.

Suddenly, he spotted a light an illumination amid the dark night.  It has appeared instantly before him, arriving in front of him without warning or announcement.  It was a ball of light, but without wick or candle attached to it.  It burned without oil or wood to consume.  It floated aloft without hand to hold it, or sconce to cradle it.  Its light was the palest yellow, and just enough to provide a light.  It did not brighten the ground and seemed to create more shadows than it banished.  It beckoned to him it seemed, though it spoke not nor did it move.  It was not warm it was not cold. It just was there.  A few moments passed as he stared at it, analyzed it and drew on his knowledge of the past, summoning the greatest of his wisdom—yet, this he could not place his finger on.  His fractured mind too tied in knots with the voice and the ringing to accurately ascertain the potential dangers.

Then, without warning it clicked.  The whirring within his own head concluded the facts and had alone derived the answer. “The voice,” he uttered in a quivering tone.  The voice, yes the voice, his mind cooed in admission of his horrid realization.  Recalling then the voices intent, the words that had dripped from that demonic call, “Do not play with the lights, do not sleep in the darkness of their shadows—for my eyes are they, my burning heart are they.  And they come for you tonight!”  Stumbling back he turned, he spun, he twirled around to face yet another floating light—a simple bubble of iridescent glow. 

He sprinting passed the light, he ran as quick as his worn legs would carry him.  Quickly he covered the one hundred thirty-seven paces back to the home.  Quickly he entered the battered door that he had burst from before.  As he stumbled, he could see from the corner of his crazed eye the trailing light streaming from behind him.  Suddenly he was crashing to the floor—he fell to the ground; falling on the damp and soiled red rug at the entrance.  Eyes only inches from the ragged rug, he clearly could see the tattered strands, clearly see the worn rug and its infestation of tiny bugs.  Bugs!  Some with six legs, some with four legs.  Slowly he watched them scurry about in terror of his all seeing eye.  Quickly, his hand darted out and smashed one.  He smiled with glee at his omnipresent power over the pitiful creatures.  With his good right hand he stabilized himself and used his left hand to grasp the tarnished brass knob.  He hauled himself to his feet he staggered to the worn leather chair and grasped it the best that he could, hoisting it up he piled the chair, planks, stones and miscellaneous materials into a heap in front of the door and hoped that it would hold the tiny glowing lights at bay.

He sat somberly, in the small room.  He sat in the midst of the gloom of the darkened place he began to mutter.  From his mouth he sputtered words that rang out in an incoherent mess.  He seemed to be reciting incantations of blithering nothingness and spouting out indecipherable blubber.  Then he saw the pale light beneath the unhinged door, which he had recently braced.  He saw a light, a dim glow near the cracks of the planks he had long since pounded to his windows.  He noticed an eerie shadow over the soot in the unused fireplace.  With eyes searching and scanning each entrance route, his mind screamed for him to get out.  He grasped his head and curled up on the floor embracing the position of birth.  Lying prone in the fetal position he wailed out. He cried and screamed in agonizing horror.

His eyes wide open, stuck it seemed in the open stance.  He was unable to close them, despite his concerted efforts.  No matter how hard his struggle with his own body, they would not close.  They could not close.  He wept uncontrollably because of his apparent lack of power, he cried.  He pounded on his chest.  Beat his own body.  Bruised his own ribs.  Tears etched tiny lines down each cheek as he cried, as he sputtered out curses at the darkness.  Muttering wicked thoughts of evil at the tiny lights he gnashed his teeth biting hard down on the flesh of his tongue.  Watching the trail of blood the followed the meat of his mouth to the floor.  He cursed that which waited just beyond the cracked and splintered wood of the house walls.  Curses resembled gurgles amid his blood soak mouth. 

Then one light slipped through the crack, between the splintered and poorly intact wooden planks that barricaded the windows.  Another found its way through the keyhole on the brass handled front door and still another discovered a passage through the feeble chimney.  Suddenly, in a blur of motion dozens, hundreds and then thousands of the tiny lights slipped in, drifting slowly to the crippled figure lying prone on the floor.  Encircling him, wafting in a wary track all about him they danced and spun a blur of light wrapped within the shadow.

He looked up through tear and blood stained eyes.  He could smell the blood that was dripping from his nose, his heart pounded with the fury of the warrior who felt the feeling of death upon him.  He rose to his feet; he grasped the phone in his hand and swung it round at the blur of light.  It smashed with a dull thud against the feeble planks and splinters rained down on the worn mat and the bugs.  He threw the lamp, the rug and everything that he could hold at the lights; yet, not one struck anything except the empty shell of his home as he wreaked a devastating path across the once sheltered home.

The first light drifted in to the despaired man lightly touching down on his arm.  A tiny pinprick of blood, a small line of thin red fluid ran along the length and then formed a drip that plummeted to the bare floor.  A pain rippled through his arm, and rang out alarm in his brain.  A second, a third—a hundredth dancing light licked his skin and removed it one tiny piece by one tiny piece.  Blood dripped and the flowed steadily to the ground as he stood silently, his body burning in pain; his muscles twitching in the open air.  In his hands he cradled his intestines, which had fallen free, since there was no skin, no muscle to hold them in place.  He held his liver and other innards too.  Collapsing onto the ground, the bare rough wood cut his organs, pierced his exposed veins and wracked his exposed skull.  With his heart thumping, pounding against his bare ribs he burned.

They had eaten his flesh.  They had taken his protection.  They had taken his life in a simple breath of that lasting night.  The phone call had removed his sanity; sent him into that night—even though he knew the peril.  He knew the lights would take his skin and leave him to rot.  As his lidless eyes gazed at his own putrid flesh, he drifted off into the horrors of the death, and he died twitching in pain, gasping for air and unable to stop the pain.  He was unable to stop the burning, unable to remove the horrific voice that echoed in his head.  He was unable to forget my whispered breath.