TERROR

(^ For creepier effect turn on sound-effect)

Hey everyone! Continuing my efforts to completely creep you out this month I will begin with a hair-raising quote by the master of horror: Stephen King. Enjoy the story. Oh! If you’d like to heighten the creep-factor, press play on the sound player just below the picture of the strange doll. Enjoy!

The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…

~Stephen King

♦

 by Vashti Q

♦

He touched me. His cold fingers lay upon my bare shoulder and made me shudder. His breath, icy, lingered on the hairs standing on end at the back of my neck.

 

I turned quickly.

 

No one.

 

My eyes flickered in every direction searching for his likeness. I was alone in my room.

 

This is not the first time this has happened to me. He still torments me. It was not enough to do so while he was still among the living. He visits me now as he did then . . . only at midnight.

 

At first it was only a touch, and he was gone—back to the place where phantoms dwell. Cold and piercing as was his contact, I preferred it to the unspeakable things he now does to me. I can’t get away so I lie awake, waiting for him, as I did not too long ago when he was still alive.

 

Alive, in the dead of night, he used to leave my mother in a drunken sleep and sneak inside my bedroom. He’d put a hand over my mouth and threaten to kill me if I spoke a word to anyone of the vile acts he would perform on my teenage body. Back then my mind would escape, leaving my body to suffer the terror and pain. I escaped to a faraway place to be by myself. Being alone then was a blessing. When he was finished with me for the night, I’d lie writhing in pain, bleeding and sobbing against my pillow as he once more made threats to end me before departing my room.

 

There is no escaping him now. He haunts my mind, my very soul, and being alone now is synonymous with hell. How do you rid yourself of a ghoul—an evil spirit that plagues your slumber? I wish I knew. Night after night, he tortures me. My shrieks and howls go unheard. I am on my own.

 

Tonight I will put an end to my suffering. I can no longer endure the hurt and anguish he inflicts on me. I should have done this long ago. Perhaps this would have been a better solution to ending the agony, rather than the one I ultimately chose.
Uggh! As I run a piece of glass along my wrist to the point of bleeding, I tell myself the excruciating pain is only temporary. My hand shakes uncontrollably, making it difficult to finish what I began, but I am determined to end this nightmare. I will be rid of him once and for all.

 

Argh! The agony! It is as if I just forced white-hot pokers into my arms. My fingers cramp and seize into claws. Slitting one’s wrists is not the painless, glamorous death the movies make it out to be. It is repulsive, foul, excruciating. I watch the blood gush out of me like geysers. There is gore everywhere. The smell of metal and fear assaults my nostrils. My chest feels tight. I scream. I cannot prevent myself from screaming in anguish. The pain. Oh God, the pain!

 

I feel a chill in my bones. I have an obscure sensation like something is expanding inside of me, filling me with haze. I . . .  I–––

 

 

*

The doctor bent over, hands on knees, panting after running from the other side of the hospital. “Nurse, how could she do this with your station right outside the room?”

 

“I heard nothing—only silence—but when I entered the room to administer the nightly medications, I found her like this.”

 

“Did you . . . ” deep breath, “move the body?”

 

“I found her just as you see her.”

 

“In all my years tending the mentally insane, I have never seen anything like this.” The doctor pulled a small tape recorder out of his lab coat and pressed the record button. “The patient is nude and covered in blood from head to toe. Her eyes are open and they gaze at me as if they could see me. Her arms are extended, her hands together, one over the other, palms up, resting on her thighs proximate to her knees. Her legs are crossed at the ankles.” He paused and took another deep breath. “The only visible wound on her body is a large laceration on her chest. It begins inferior to her sternum and extends to the left. It appears to be self-inflicted, although I have not been able to locate the instrument used.” The doctor gulped and continued. “Lying on the palm of her hand appears to be–––her heart.” He switched off the recorder.

 

“Do we have to move her?”

 

“Call the police.”

 

 

*

“This is how they found her?” one of the orderlies asked.

 

“Yes. Neither the doctor nor the police wanted to move her,” the other hospital assistant said.

 

“Strange. She looks like she’s just sitting comfortably in the chair, waiting for someone. Her dainty hands offering her heart as if on a platter. She should be slumped over, but she’s sitting upright and alert. Her open eyes look aware, and her face has an innocent tranquil quality. She looks as if at any moment she would break words. I don’t believe she was capable of doing this.”

 

“Of course she was capable! Both the doctor and police confirmed it. One of the CSI police noticed a large piece of glass jutting out slightly from the gash on her chest. She used it to cut herself open. I don’t understand how she could have that expression on her face after all that pain. Her faint smile and serene expression are unnerving. Besides, no one that ends up in this place is innocent. She murdered her stepfather in cold blood while he slept. Her mother awoke to find her straddling him, dressed only in his blood and gore. She stabbed him seventy-eight times. Her mother said she saw a demon in her eyes that night.”

 

“Why did she do it?”

 

“She claimed her stepfather abused her sexually.”

 

“Surely that must have driven her to it.”

 

“No, it would have been impossible for her stepfather to abuse her since he was paralyzed from the waist down.”

 

“Oh.” The orderly gawked at the young girl’s corpse. “Wow, she must have really been crazy.”

 

Copyright © 2013 by Vashti Quiroz-Vega. All rights reserved.

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