When I was 17 I used to write little stories, too.
Blind Juliet.
Where are you, Susan?
I’m pondering all the possible beginnings that could have led me to this place. It’s freezing here, the rain pounding hard against the farmhouse roof from outside. The sound is muffled due to the hay it was constructed from, and I wonder how many horrors would await me dare I choose to exit into the outside world. I am at a loss. That world is not for me. The world I stumbled into..
Susan, my darling, if only you could see me now, at the time where I crave your company the most. The warmth of your flesh upon my flesh would give me enough reason to not only stay in this horrid place, but to remain here for a long time. Therein lies my pain – you are not here. I don’t know where you are. My company and I, we lost you, lost you to the outside world, although I wouldn’t call it a world. I’d call it a hell. Now, I’m alone here, in this hell. Devon is most likely dead by now, and Rita, if anything, the troublesome woman that she is, would be fighting for her life against the violent denizens that we had never thought would threaten us.
The township seemed so kind to us, and caring to one another, yet never would I have imagined that they would turn on us the way that they did. One short moment of realization, and the plates on top of which these men had served good food and satisfying nourishment were used to bombard us. I could still feel the cut upon my head where the plate with the remnants of lamb had been thrown and made contact, a means to sate us turned to what would hurt us horribly, and if the knife I used to slice portions of the lamb away from the stock corpse had pierced any deeper into my arm by the rough and burly man to my side at the dinner table, in that brick house full of welcoming men, the arm would probably have lost function, if I had not instead bled to death.
I heard a noise, and that noise I thought to be the footsteps of angry men, readying to charge into the makeshift den I have crafted for myself, their pitchforks spearing into the sky, their sharpened machetes pointed at me, almost as though they direct the spirit of Death itself to fall upon me. If that were the noise, I would be nothing – yet it is naught but a mere scratching, caused by what could have been an animal. If that is how far my paranoia has stretched my sanity, then said sanity should surely snap in due time, the air knife-thin with tension. Usually I would take comfort in the rains, but I cursed them for not allowing me to hear any strangers choosing to enter from the outside world. Instead I took solace in the comforts I have made for myself, in the form of the bales of hay I had untangled from their shapely and compact for, scattered about the floor and crafted into a nest for me to nestle within, in my seemingly futile attempts to hide myself away, a temporary escape from Hell.
I catch a scent like rotting meat, and I prayed it was naught but the smell of decayed livestock, or just the scent wafting from beneath my bandaged arms and legs. I had been there so long that I could near lose notice of the scent. I couldn’t see a thing – nothing over ten inches from my nose – but for the light that pierced the wall of the barn in columns every time lightning chose to strike, allowing me for a moment the chance to examine my surroundings. Each time, I prayed nothing had changed nor moved. Similarly, Susan, we shared a night like this, long ago. I remember your face as it would illuminate before my eyes with every clap of the sky; blushing and shy, taken aback by my presence on top of you. Your body was weak within my arms, although not due to any form of malnourishment, but quivering with the love I pray you felt for me. Your one blue eye gazed upon me with cute curiosity, whereas the other, one green, looked at me knowingly. At the time, it seemed, we were an unstoppable force, and despite the contempt your father felt for me and my presence in your home, nothing would distract from our blossoming romance – you cared little for his antics, and almost in acceptance of this it seemed at dinner there was always a place set for me, so long as I told you prior that I was coming around, which you insisted was his doing and not your own. How far it feels I have come from that serenity into this catastrophe. It is a shame, too, that your father insisted he come along when we all chose to venture to this place, together. A father bears a love for his daughter that forever remains unrivalled, but I fear that no love in this world could stop the horrible people living in this village from doing worse than what they could do to me to your father.
At a grim hour such as this I am reminded of the day I met you. Lost to my own world, I made an adventure into the world outside, in order to find some kind of peace within myself that would grant clarity to my gloomed-over mind. Somewhere between setting foot into new countries and journeying home a new man, I stumbled upon you. Transfixed, I followed you to your home villa, and watched from a distance as you suddenly appeared from the door of your second storey balcony, facing the front of your house. You wore a flowing white dress, loose and wavering like a nightgown, and when you came to rest your weary arms upon a ledge – how I wished I could carry you then – with your deep brown hair hanging over the edge like a curtain, I felt myself move forward until I was so obviously within your sight that you would have been a fool not to notice me, and when our eyes met with the most pure of knowing glances, I found myself devoted to your every movement, following you with my eyes – never speaking. Surely enough, we never spoke that night, not until the morning. Not even while you were in my arms.
When we awoke, tousle-haired nude messes that we were, you seemed so insistent of me making my leave of your place that I bore no thought to the fact that you might have another lover, or even a child to which the sight of my naked form would have screamed in appall. Needless to say, I bode you farewell, but it would not have been for long, and my heart remained cold and steely in your absence until you returned to warm it. And needless to say again, I climbed your balcony every night, the love stung Romeo that I was, yearning with each insistent gallop to your home to cradle your warm body. It wasn’t enough that you stole into my mind with your luminous beautify, but by then you had captured my heart, too. Had you not caught my eye that day then I may have died a lonely man a long time ago. Instead, it seems, I will die a lonely man within this cruel and strange abyss, your deep and calming blue and green eyes lost to all but my memory.
One eye was blue like sapphires, the other green as emeralds.
There was a crackling, something that sounded like a cough, and I was pulled from my feverish hallucinations of your eyes in an instant, despite the fact that from across the room I swore that with every clap of lightning I could detect your eyes from somewhere in front of me. No eyes of any color comparable could glint like yours do in the light. I was up in a heartbeat, and still I felt as though I could see you staring back at me from across the room. I felt a movement beside me, and my senses were alight even more – something fell, and collapsed beside me, and I was too afraid to move for fear it might attack. It didn’t. It was still, like stone, beside me. I’ve brought about death, I thought to myself. If I hadn’t moved in reaction, I would have gone unnoticed, but instead I vied to jump to attention at the smallest crackle of sound. I sat in my sorrows for a moment, until the next thunderclap illuminated the entity to my right.
I stifled a cry. A pockmarked corpse, naked and battered by all kinds of pain bringing devices imaginable, had fallen from its hideaway above me. Its eyes were sewn shut, and it was almost as though children had scrawled faces of merriment beside the places on its body where it had been violently pierced. This could not be the corpse of a human, but a disfigured mutant – a terrifying distortion, a Dali. Once I had seen it, the image of it imprinted itself on my mind, and I felt the need to vomit as my head spun to the point where I was forced to get up and run across the room in shock. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. This man must have been beaten to death by a thousand clubs, all the while being stabbed in every soft bit of flesh upon his body by knives – his manhood itself beaten to a pulp. Dry blood coated his chest, and I was almost afraid to believe my luck, that I should take shelter beneath the corpse of a mutilated human being. It was with that fierce movement I so thoughtlessly partook in that the barn-house door burst open with light.
The sudden blaze of light and sound left me in shock for a few moments, as I fell to the floor, almost landing upon the corpse spread out in a star not an inch from me. When I regained my sight and hearing, I was confronted with a flame, a blazing torch burning inches away from my face. The two intruders, whoever they were, attempted to identify me, waving the torches they carried around the room and near to me, eyes piercing mine… scanning me. When I saw the faces of those that had invaded my temporary space, however, I was filled with confusion. I realized they were scanning me with recognition – searching my eyes with disbelief. A gasp escaped my mouth as I discovered something that filled me with hope; I recognized their dirtied features.
The woman of the two dropped her possessions with a yelp and leapt into my arms – Rita, with her feline features and cat-like eyes, had survived.
“Brad…” She whimpered, her voice muffled as she pressed herself against my chest, “I... I can’t believe it. You’re actually alive.”
“I kind of can’t believe it either.” I murmured, holding her close to me. With that, she was reduced to a bundle of sobs, gripping me so tightly that I stifled a gasp.
The second male figure brought the flame he carried close to his face to reveal himself – Devon, it seemed, was alive too.
“It’s good to see you’re still kickin’.” He grunted with a half-smile. He approached me and hit me hard on the back so roughly that it hurt – an action of endearment when it came from Devon. They were wet, bloodied and their faces were smeared with dirt. Both of them looked exhausted and unwell.
“Good to see you too, buddy.” I returned his smile, releasing a teary Rita from my grasp. “How’s everything outside?”
“Dreadful,” Rita replied, returning to her usual fierce and foxy demeanor and tone of voice. “We’ve killed ten of those things already. They’re reasonably intelligent, but can be moved quite easily. It feels like they’re everywhere.”
“What do we know about them?” I asked.
“They’re fast. They move in packs, and speak in tongues I’ve never heard of… like some twisted form of Spanish…” Rita spoke again, “They’re well organized, their tribes are reasonably cultures – which means, at least they live in houses and know how to cook.” Se explained. “Having said that, they haven’t quite grasped the concept of long-range weaponry, which means instead they take to slashing and stabbing at us with knives.” Bitterly, her face twisted into a scowl.
“There’s something wrong with them, though…” Devon spoke up. Rita and I turned, and found he was standing by the door exiting the farmhouse, looking out into the rain. “I hit one of them – straight in the kneecap, with a mallet I stole from one of their homes. He saw me leaving the building after hiding away when they were still a pack. His kneecap shattered, and he fell straight to the ground… except he got up again and again, crying out from the pain. It was like the pain didn’t matter to him at all, so he kept coming, lunging at me from the ground he crawled upon.”
Rita stared at him for a while, processing what he had just said, before sinking to her knees and sighing deeply. “They have to be human. They just have to be. They look it, they speak a language that I’m sure we could come to understand – and they’re warm like we are.”
“Still,” Devon replied, “It was as though that man, if I had let him lie, would have kept coming at me until his end and final breath.”
With that revelation, another figure burst through the open door., slamming it shut as they did. The rain from outside went from muffled to deathly in force, sweeping the ground outside in torrents, drowning everything it crashed down upon. We stood to attention, Rita and Devon raising their torches above their heads, ready to strike with flame and club alike. When I looked upon the intruder’s wet face and hair, clothes torn to shreds and dangling threads, I was again filled with the sweet sigh of relief. The figure that had charged through was no beast, no assailant, but Susan’s father. I looked him over several times, and was relieved to see that he was uninjured – however judging from what fear I could read from his eyes, he had clearly seen things in his time outside that we dared not ask him about.
“You… all of you…” His eyes darted across the room, lingering on each of us, “Where is my daughter?” He saw something behind me that caused his jaw to drop, and charged through me with force, coming down to crouch beneath the corpse by my feet. Realizing it was not Susan, he stood up and sighed. “It’s not her… I’m so glad.” I stepped forward and placed my hand upon his shoulder. He moved into me, eyes shut, mouth uttering a near-inaudible prayer of thanks.
“She’s not here, Ralph. We don’t know where she is.”
“They took her. I saw them take her. It feels like so long ago now, but I know she’s out there somewhere. I’ve looked everywhere, scoped every building and hovel in this godforsaken place, and this is the last…. There’s nothing.”
I winced upon hearing this. “… I understand.” I replied. I felt myself give way at the knees slightly, and a sinking feeling descended upon me. Susan was nowhere to be found, so judging from that, she must be somewhere else – with them.
“We have to leave.” Ralph said in a panic. “We can’t stay here. They’re everywhere. I tried to outrun them, I did, but they were everywhere. You don’t understand how horrible they are… I’ve never seen anything like this… The things they do, they’re unimaginable horrors – unspeakable abominations.”
Rita mumbled something unintelligible, and then slowly began to cry. Devon reached forward to hold her – then, like a child echoing her mothers’ ways, Devon began to cry, too. Ralph, at long last, sank to his knees, reduced to a mess without his child. He wailed – slow, high-pitched cries to the farmhouse ceiling above us, louder than the rain pounding from outside. It was with these heartbreaking sounds that I heard something more horrid than any collapse of a corpse, any thunderclap or rending of flesh. I heard the sounds of one hundred footsteps, stampeding towards us. I saw the door open with light once more, saw bodies fill the room, pouring in from outside. One hundred torches gathered around us, surrounding us in a circle, and I knew we were dead then.
They were all around us, their narrowed eyes speaking of a long-blossomed hate. They ceased the cries of my friends, and the room was filled with silence, but for the ever-present rain still yearning to strike us, as the others were too. Baring at us, they flayed their torches like swords, scalding Rita, and clubbing Devon across the head, flames licking at his scalp. One of them kicked Ralph across the face, and I saw blood fall from his nose onto the muddy ground.
In the warm bright light I looked again to the wall across the room, where I had sworn I had caught a glimpse of your warm view. Scanning the wall, I hoped to find an inch of hope that you were still here, with me, in this room, protecting me, watching over me. What I saw when I scanned that wall, was a pair of eyeballs, loosened from their sockets by delicate fingers, inserted into hollows cut out from the wood. I felt a growing numbness fill me from the inside, radiating out, penetrating every inch of my being.
One eye was blue like sapphires, the other green as emeralds.
No comments:
Post a Comment