Tales


Alice



  Light from the single candle, burning atop her small dresser, reflected brightly in the darkest wells of her eyes.  It was the only light in the room since she had boarded up the windows, years ago.  The windows and the doors- all access to the outside was sealed so it could not escape and spread its infection.

  She stood by her bed, facing the blank far wall of her filthy, stinking room.  Dark, steely eyes, unblinking, but still only barely seeing the wall, for what she saw the most was behind her eyes.  It was something far dimmer than this room.

  It was something she thought she had escaped.  She thought she had finished.  She thought she had left it behind, but it had followed her.

  It had planted a seed in her mind.  The vile spore, at first quiet, had later begun to grow.  Once barely audible, then a whisper, and then soon a quiet voice in her dreams, it called to her.  It turned her dreams to nightmares, and once she was afraid, it spread through her like a poison.

  It moved gradually, unsuspectingly, through her bloodstream, until it spread its dark bile into her every fiber.  She could feel it coursing through her veins.  She could smell it in the sweat that oozed from her every pore.

  Sweat that soaked her long, black hair to its very ends, hanging flat and loose about her shoulders.  It further saturated her gray nightshirt, already dark with salty moisture.  She had long since forgone wearing anything more.

  It penetrated everything.  She did not even sit unless she had grown too exhausted from standing, and she slept only when she could no longer force her eyes to remain open, praying she did not collapse onto her bed only to later awaken in a putrid stench.

  It was enough that she had always awakened screaming in terror.  The faces of the denizens haunted her like demons, their evil smiles and mad laughter, bright like the edges of broken glass- like the edge of her attempted escape.

  The edge of the butcher's knife, stained red, many times thrown across the room, it lies in the corner, pointed to by many dark lines, each line marking a failed attempt to escape.

  Her wrists, never given a chance to scar, were wrapped in bandages soaked red with blood and sweat, still dripping crimson down clenched fists, though she could not say if the blood was always fresh.

  It did not matter.  She would not be allowed to die.  It wanted her back, and it would not release its hold.  Even as she stood there, she heard its collective voice whisper in her ear, beckoning her.  The uneven rise and fall of her chest betrayed her efforts to refrain from shouting.

  She knew it would not surrender, and she knew she could not run, but she was sick of it.  The voices, the faces, the nightmares and screaming, the stench and the filth, all were now a rotted taste in her throat.

  She finally lifted one bare foot, off of the wooden floor, and moved it forward.  She set it down, and the other arose and followed.  It seemed almost as if she were not the one in control, and with each step, she heard the voices' pleasure, but she knew she was the one moving as she turned toward the corner of the room.

  She knelt down and picked up the knife, by the handle, with the tips of her five fingers.  She slowly stood erect as she watched her fingers crawl around the wood, feeling it in her grip.

  She walked back to face the center of the empty wall, and then stared at an invisible point right in front of her eyes.  She raised the knife over her head, and the other hand joined the clutch.  With a summoned strength, she brought the knife down hard, plunging in into the sweat-stained wall.

  She tried to ignore the encouragement from the voice as she jerked the blade out and then plunged it in once more.  A third stab was enough to sufficiently weaken the wood.  She put the dull edge of the blade in her mouth and held it tightly between her teeth, freeing both hands.

  With clenched fists, she pounded the wall, breaking it further, and then began tearing it away.  Tossing aside piece after piece of the wall, bits of paper and broken, thin, wooden slats were strewn about her feet, until what was hidden was finally revealed.

  This object that had once filled her life with wonder had become an icon of horror.  She had been unable to destroy it, but she dared not unleash it onto her world, for she could not risk it spreading its evil, so she had it buried behind her wall and forced herself to become its tortured guardian, not that it would have let her part with it, anyway.

  She felt its presence pulling her physically, like hands brushing against her body, urging her closer.  The voices were louder, some enticing, some pleading, all calling her back, and insisting they needed her.

  She took the knife from between her teeth and clutched it tightly in one hand.  Her eyes, cold and hard and black, like onyx, stared, unblinking, and then she spoke in a voice almost as deep and evil as the thing before her.

  "Then you shall have me."

  She squeezed the handle of the knife, and once more stepped into the mirror.



Written:
Wednesday
February 27, 2002


Tales