Fleshy Shadow [Horror Story]
I heard knocking coming from my basement door and I was afraid to check. I thought the pile of coats made a face that was an angel looking at me. The droning noise like a dying animal rang through the empty night and pierced me out of my stupor. I peaked my head out of the door and into the dark night with everything so still. There are no noises, no wind. All of a sudden, a noise like a thousand puppies yelping in reverse slow motion gradually increased in volume until only a slimy and guttural echo of snuff and gore remained. It died down and got loud again like it was breathing, pulsing deafeningly.
No one wants to see the literal face of death, each iteration incarnate of finality. Like a siren, it rang out in powerful terror. The lights suddenly went out in my home and I quickly retracted my head from the outside world and into the house. I couldn't see a thing, and there were no background noises besides what I presumed to be a monster. "Is the noise getting closer? I can't tell" I said in a daze while slumping down into a dark pile against the door. I fumbled around for a flashlight, heart racing, feeling closed in. I realized that there was no escape. The car broke down last week and is in for repairs. I have no neighbors for miles and miles. My religion suddenly failed to comfort me for I was in a vacuum of reality, vacant of His mercy. All that was left were the deepest corners of my fear.
The new moon permitted no vision besides vague outlines and ambiguous stains. I can't think of anything to comfort me. My family, my story, my corporeal form became as far away as the invisible moon on this wretched night. Petrification sat on my skin like perspiration. It chilled me like a storm. My bones chittered and chattered like an earthquake as I decided to leave the house. By some spontaneous drive of necessitation, I couldn't help myself but to venture further, closer, towards. The screams continued to echo in the stagnant air. My physiology was violently seizing while my mind was somehow pushing my quivering body forward. There was a strange comfort in the ripping terror which surrounded me.
Time collapsed on me like an avalanche or mudslide. The dilation of reality became potent around the point when the past and future ceased to differentiate. My life flashed before my eyes as if I was living it again, and I could feel every emotion and sensation. I recalled the deafening yelp, in and out, that had followed me everywhere. It was a droning and grading noise that represented everything that I had ever repressed.
I was facing the very essence of my shadow, the ever-present singularity of pain that I had resisted for years. In fact, I remember my first memory as a child and how the painful screech was there with me even when my family was against me. When I wanted a candy bar and my mother wouldn't allow it; I heard the painful, bone crunching, ear shattering, explosion of asymmetrical rupturing. Cataclysm, puncturing, shocking, grappling, detriment. Drifting off, disassociating from it, running, hiding. But here I was, getting closer. Remembering it in my mind. Finally, this still night called to me, I could resist the darkness no longer.
No wind could chase it. No rain could clear it. No pain could mask it. No one could stand it. For some reason, this was the only time that I recognized the persistent rap on my door. This was the time that I answered it. I'm not sure if I'm welcoming yet, but I'll give it a chance this once.
In the middle of a clearing, surrounded by trees, was the fleshy mass that I had stumbled upon. Breathing and screeching into nothingness, into my presence. Without thinking straight, I approached it. The flesh transformed, greeting me with the face of my dead father on a bloody, fleshy stump inches from my face. It laughed and laughed until it cried, and I cried with it. It transformed again into a disgusting, rotting pile. It writhed like it was in pain. It transformed into my pain.
It stretched around me, it stank worse than it looked. It tastes like hell. It feels rough and soft in both of the worst ways. It reminded me of horrifying videos that I accidentally clicked on while surfing the internet. I remembered everyone who disappointed me and how I disappointed myself. I was reminded of the pain I felt when I messed up, the pain that appeared by no fault of my own, and the pain I had witnessed in the world.
It wouldn't ever go away, but at least I could venture deeper and find the angelic singing. Maybe the two would cancel out, maybe they would simply get along.