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It Was Dark 26 April 2010
This one has been rejected everywhere I've sent it, but I still really like it. Maybe you will too.
It Was Dark
It was dark in that endless maze. Was it an actual maze? A maze in her head? Hell? She had long since given up on caring where exactly it was; only finding a way out. Could one crawl out of their own head? Spreading their lips to disjoint the mouth and force one’s self out, splitting the husk of the head like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon?
Jesus, maybe she was crazy. Thinking thoughts like that. She shook her head hard enough to smack her face with the greasy locks of what had once been her pride, her glorious blond hair. She didn’t want to, but couldn’t help the compulsion to reach up and try to run her fingers through it. In her head she could see it, thick and shinning, it’s tendrils caught and floating on the soft lilac scented breezes. In her hand she could feel another clump of it come out and cling to her fingers and arm like a spider web. She used her other hand to smack at, to get it off, revolted.
Then the shivers began. Her body shook with them and her already exhausted muscles screamed, burning like fire pulsed through her veins. She huddled down, bringing her knees up to her nose and wrapping her arms around her chest. It would help if she had on more than a wet summer dress. How did it get wet? The air was cold and wet like a winter thunderstorm and she could hear water flowing somewhere nearby. Had she fallen into a stream? A stream. Was there a stream? Where was she? It was dark in this place, this maze. She let out a strangled sound, something between a laugh, a sob and a scream. A sound a crazy person would make. And she worried again that maybe she was crazy as her thoughts began to spin round that circle again.
Sad as it was, the only thing that stopped her from going over it all again was not the desperate instinct of survival kicking in and telling her that she had to get it together if she wanted to live. It was that she knew that thought would lead her back to running her hand through her hair and she couldn’t bear to feel more of it fall out. And falling out was what it was doing. There was no little prick, no sting of hair being ripped out. It was sitting there, ready to go and her fingers catching on to it only spurred it along.
She gnawed on a sore and bloody broken fingernail instead. Trying to make it hurt, trying to make something in herself snap to so that she could go the hell home.
Look around. It was dark. Everything had that hint of blue that says somewhere close a full and swollen moon is shinning down. Somewhere above is a sky without stars because they just cannot stand up against the majesty of the moon. The queen of the night sky. Who spun in her circles from sliver to full, from darkened to new. Did she dance in the sky? Is that what it was? Were the sun and the moon lovers? Dancing through the universe? She bit down on her finger, pushing teeth through skin until she tasted her fresh blood and whimpered.
She tried to stand, forcing her will to make her muscles pull her like a puppet and bounced her head off of the low ceiling. She reached up to touch the new hurt and was horrified to feel a lump growing under a bald spot. She’d forgotten, forgotten that she’d crawled on her hands and knees to this corner so that she could possibly rest without the fear of something coming up from behind her. To put her back against something solid and maybe catch her breath. And if she was lucky, catch her sanity.
A giggle started in her chest. She tried to repress it, tried to stop it by covering her mouth with her hands; now was not the time. But it bubbled its way up her throat and out from between her pressed lips like joyful vomit. Tears streamed from her eyes as she crawled out the way she came. She had not remembered that her knees were raw from scuffling over the hard, rough blocks beneath her. If she could see in the darkness better, she thought that maybe she could follow her own blood out of danger like Hansel and Gretel followed their breadcrumbs; finding the way home. Her mother had almost named her Heidi when she was born. That’s kind of like Hansel or Gretel, right?
She growled at herself in frustration. Stop going off on those crazy freaking tangents. She just had to keep putting one hand in front of the other. One raw knee forward and she was one step closer to free. She hoped. Crawl. Crawl. Crawl. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the pain. At first she’d needed it to get her going. Now she needed to not feel to keep her from stopping. Crawl. Faster. Wait. What was that noise? She froze. It couldn’t really be behind her. Could it? She’d just come from that way and she’d been alone. There was nothing but shadows back there, little pieces night overlapping and crowding into the corner. She had to have been alone. She thought. Oh God, she hadn’t. Had she? It had been there the whole time. It had been watching.
A grumble. A slow trickled out sound from the darkness behind her that turned into laughter. Shockingly similar to her earlier laughter, maniacal, insane, gone.
Ever so slowly she turned her head. Her body didn’t want to. Her body said stay very, very still and maybe it won’t notice us. But she had to look. Just like every person in every horror movie she’d ever seen. She wondered briefly if she was in a movie and somewhere, safe in front of the screen a girl a lot like her was repeating, “Don’t look. Don’t look you idiot!” But she had to look. She forced one eye and then another; squinting as if that would soften the terror.
It had red eyes. No they were black, black darker than the darkness. Wait, no red. Were they green? Jesus, Its eyes flickered. Then came that sound again. Like someone being strangled and trying to breath. At first she thought that It was making that sound, but she was. There was that one eternally fast second and her mind screamed, Run! Now, run! And she was running. As fast as some one could on their hands and knees. Which is surprisingly quick when your choices are do it quick or die.
She couldn’t see, she didn’t have time turn and watch It overtake her. She just needed to get to a place where she could stand and run. God, she could feel It coming. That smell. She remembered now that she’d smelled It before she’d had any other sense of It. Before she saw It eat her boyfriend, before he’d dared her to look into her compact mirror and say that name four times. She’d been afraid and he laughed at her, told her that they could say it together. He’d stopped on the third and let her say the fourth alone.
She’d playfully smacked at him and called him a jerk. Then he began kissing her and she forgot about it as things progressed. She had her eyes closed, so she hadn’t seen It coming. She smelled It though, like fresh dirt and rotting meat. She’d written it off as something coming from the mines. They were laying on a blanket a few hundred yards away and even though the mines were closed down, sometimes there was a strange smell. No one ever spoke of it, but you knew that everyone smelled it. And when it got real strong, the grownups started acting funny, especially the really old grandparent types. The curfew for the town that was in place and steadfastly ignored by everyone, became strictly observed. Windows were never left open, doors weren’t just locked, they were dead bolted and crosses appeared over doorways.
She’d smelled It. And then the familiar weight of her boyfriend was suddenly gone. She sat up and saw a darkness had lifted him into the air. There was no constant shape, just the ever changing shadow that was vaguely human. It broke him in half. His scream cut short as It tore his head loose and it rolled across the ground towards her. His eyes blinked and his mouth moved for a few seconds before his brain finally realized that he was dead. She thought perhaps that was when she first started losing her mind.
There were only two choices for her to run to. One was the car. That was out of the question because he had the keys in his pants pocket and his pants were still on his legs and in the possession of the thing. The other was the mine tunnels. That was where she went. That was how she’d gotten wet in the stupid sundress she’d worn for her boyfriend. The first tunnel she’d gone down was flooded.
She’d had to backtrack and it terrified her. She kept waiting to turn a corner and run into It. Waiting for It to descend upon her from the unseen ceilings. To reach up from the ground and grab her ankle. If she could somehow manage to wander the mines until morning, then she could try to get out. Surely, all monsters disappeared in the morning. The waiting was the worst of it, she’d thought. Her mind playing tricks on her as she went slowly insane. What if his ghost haunted her for not trying to help him? Then she began fearing him as well as It.
Yes, the waiting was definitely the worst. Until this point, with It bearing down on her. This point with her lost in the dark, trying to get away. Trying to follow what she thought was moonlight, but maybe wasn’t. Maybe, now that she thought about it, it wasn’t the moon streaming in from the an open mine shaft somewhere. Maybe it was just a trick. Or maybe she really was close and it was making her think that she wasn’t. Maybe….
Her head slammed into a wall. She sat back, hands scrabbling along the crumbling shards and crevices. No, no, no. She had come in that way. This had to be the way out. How could she get lost in a straight line? She turned and put her back to the wall. There was no where else to go. She couldn’t go back. It was taking slow deliberate steps towards her. It still had no discernible shape or face, but if she was forced to guess, she would say that the eyes looked amused.
She whimpered again and prayed for her mind to make that final leap. Jump off that edge of sanity so that she wouldn’t have to feel what was going to happen. Please, God let her mind break now. There came that slow growling sound again. Or was that laughing?
Jesus, where was the way out? It was dark. So dark in this place. The shakes began again and as the thing approached her, her inner self coached her on. There you go, she said, crazy’s just a couple of steps that way. She actually turned her head to the right, as if she could really see crazy sitting beside her. The thumping sound of feet snapped her attention back to the thing in front of her. If only she had a name for what it was. Not monster. Not werewolf or vampire. Not anything. Maybe that’s what it was; nothing. Maybe she was crazy and this whole thing was in her head. Maybe she was locked up in a room somewhere so doped up on thorazine and lithium that she didn’t even know she was dreaming. Ah, to just be insane and not about to die.
But then how did it make those heart shuddering steps that rolled around inside of her head? It didn’t have any feet. Did it? Why did that trickling growling laughter reverberate through her entire body the way that it did? It didn’t have a mouth. Did it?
She looked closely, squinting her blue eyes with their hugely dilated pupils. Maybe it did have a shape. Kind of like a man. And it was wearing shoes like her boyfriends. As she raised her eyes she saw that it did have a mouth and it was talking to her. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” her boyfriend was saying, “This place is dark. It’s like a maze.”
Joy and relief surged through her body. He reached out a hand and she took it, ready to scuttle back the way she’d thought she couldn’t go. Until she realized that his head was sort of sitting crooked on his neck. She let her eyes go up a little further. She screamed loud and raw when she saw the eyes were not brown, but a twirling, flickering green and black and red. Like Christmas on acid.
Then the disjointed laughter before It bit off a finger. She lost it then. No longer screaming, but finding that safe analytical part of crazy where she could disconnect and watch while the thing ate her slowly, a bite at a time.
She was surprised at how painful it really was to have pieces of yourself, chunks of flesh, tendons that must get stuck in teeth, be ripped apart. She didn’t try to run anymore. What’s the sense in running when your knee bends the wrong way? That would be stupid. Better to just let the thing lick her raw knees, twirl the joint around until her calf pops loose of her thigh. Much more sensible. And, my goodness, it does take a long time to die, doesn’t it? The human body must be equipped to live through anything. Wow. Were those her intestines? She would gather them up if it hadn’t eaten her fingers. It’s really rude to just let parts of yourself lay around.
Finally, when it had eaten its full of her. When nothing was left but a ruined sundress and a few strands of golden hair. One thought continued on. It was dark in this endless maze.
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