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Rated: 13+ · Short Story · Horror/Scary · #2160626
Does perfection rest inside man?
A Once Hazy Dream


I awoke with you by my side in a deep sweat. Must this morning happen so fast? I hardly had enough sleep to begin with. Work weathered me to the bone last night.
A sudden distraction in my body gave me the urge to satisfy. Satisfy my hunger. Satisfy my passion. Satisfy....It.
    I gently woke my wife to let her know I was hungry. She always hated it when I woke her from a dismal slumber. As I was doing my routine shaking, I felt a looming glow press within my chest. Something was off. Was it spiritual? I don't know...maybe...
My ignorance jumped to conclusion and assumed it to be nonsense. After the almost endless rattling of the ol' spouse, she awoke with an irritated face.
"Honey, I'm hungry." I said softly.
She murmured a noise that I could not decipher. I stared at her for a while hoping that she would erect herself up so that we could go downstairs and eat together. Eventually, she propped herself out of bed which pleased me which pleased It.
We stumbled down stairs for breakfast. It was a typical, run of the mill morning meal. Coffee for her, milk for me. Breakfast was always so sweet. Scrambled eggs with two slices of thick cut bacon on the side. Oh, that sweet, succulent smell, filling my nostrils delicately! It brought a ray of sunlight into what felt like another mundane early morning. As I sat down and enjoyed my breakfast, a large flow of pressure constricted my sinuses. My sense of smell became non-existent.
"Ah," I said aloud, "my nose is stuffed. Now I can't enjoy my eggs!"
"It's okay, honey." my wife started, "just eat."
I submitted to her command. How could I not? She looked so cheery that morning like a beam of light, contrasting the shadows of a darkened room.
After the tasteless breakfast, I waddled slowly into the bathroom. A mirror in the bathroom reflected an image of me. I looked weak. My eyes crusted above my eyelids, new wrinkles folded on my cheeks, and pink eye was readily near. As I gazed and glanced at my morphing face, small spittles of vomit driveled out of my mouth. I grasped my mouth quickly to halt any further regurgitation, but the effort was wasted. The vomit continued to spew out like milk and honey. I watched the assortment of collected chunks and liquids stream across the floor. When the vomiting ceased, I studied it fervently. Every hunk of partially digested egg became visibly interesting the longer I stared at it. The passionate memorization of distorted food particles was interrupted by a sharp pain puncturing the nerves in my hands. My panic increased into a pathetic scream.
The lovely spouse rushed in to help. She knelt down in front of me, holding my right hand tightly, "What's the matter?"
"I'm in intense pain. Can't you tell? Can you not see?" I responded aggressively.
She glanced every crevice, every follicle of hair on my arm to understand what was wrong. Even with her delicate hands caressing my spastic arms, the pain gripped harder and with violent firmness. What felt like inner darkness coursing through my nearly thinned blood became typical and expected. A once joyous face had succumbed to mere disinterest. My wretched heart had distorted in an inescapable nightmare.  The thing inside of me was sentient.
It was real...
It was here...
My sweet spouse left the room to gather some water from the refrigerator. Her generosity left the room as fast as it arrived. The only source of gentle kindness that warmed my vexed bones disappeared as a dissolving whisper in the air. My mouth secreted moisture to speak. My moaning voice became weighted by what felt like a thousand kilograms of sand. Both hands, left and right, rattled vehemently.
Something was forming. It was forming...
The organized anatomy within me deformed and reformed simultaneously as a distorted screech escaped my esophagus.
"What's wrong with me?" I asked myself aloud. "How did this come to be?"
I crawled on the floor to study the vomit again. When I referred back to it, the scrambled eggs and thick bacon turned the color red. I had no recollection that the vomit was originally red. The vomit coagulated in a soft, whipped paste and produced a new smell. I took a moment to gather my thoughts. Why and how did the vomit turn blood red? Why did it reek of war and cinnamon?
It all made sense...
"All those years of dreaming" I roughly began, "reality is now a fairytale."
The rasp in my voice diminished into a faint and pressured whisper. As I realized what madness was revealing itself, something began its transformation.
It was transforming my body...
Vertebrae were bending and breaking, cracking like a whip. Nostrils reduced to a skinned nose compared to that of muscle tissue. Hair on my head slowly thinned until it reached complete baldness. The only hair that remained on my head was circled around my back scalp. Finger phalanges elongated coincidently with my metatarsals. Brown pupils dilated rapidly to shift to a red pigment.
Light dimmed to darkness.
Life felt like an eternal death.
It felt good....It felt satisfied...
    My wife returned to the bathroom with the harvested water. Her poor innocence was not capable to handle what suffering was unfolding in front of her. My heart raced. It raced inside me...
I became something...
I became....It....
    My body was clearly in pain, but my voice strained harshly to speak to her. To warn her of It.
    A mortified scream riverbed throughout the house. I faced her. She faced me. She cowered behind the bathroom sink in fear.
Wallowing in vulnerability, she asked, "W-who are y-you?"
I cranked my long forehead around my neck with an unhealthy smile creased on my lips. I fluttered my luscious eyelashes at her. Her frightened figure and my unsettling gaze were the only vivid images within that melancholy bathroom. I knew all other worries within my little world dispersed into a faint memory. An enigma, a poorly lucid speckle in a valley of darkness. All I could think of was It.
With my mind twisted and pinned into madness, my sweet lady feared me. The one and only thing that I cared about became a trembling defenseless angel. Once It intoxicated, perverted, distorted, curved, ringed, seethed my brain and the waves that channeled through, nothing could stop It.
I am It.
I am It.
I am It.
I am It.
I am It.
It.
It.
It.
It.
It.
It.
It.
Out of key pianos and untuned violins surrounded the heavy environment. A hasty breath. A soul hungry creature. A once prominent human being that became tainted by the corroding acid within its own self.
Her heart raced like a stallion. It raced with surged blood, pumping faster than the vessels and veins could carry it throughout the body. This made IT happy.
I acted as a child would in front of her. Petulant in the face of distress. I felt like a kid again. What filled the ol' noggin was the imagery of lollipops, acorns, baseballs, and small little sail boats. As she crouched on the ground in terror, I staggered in an immature motion. Hands were folding and turning angles, giggles were produced that sounded as they belonged to senior citizens, and eyes that shifted and flared as if they did not know where they were.
I walked towards her sluggishly. One step, two steps, three steps, four steps...
"You mustn't fear," I happily began, "I am here." I licked the ending creases of my lips. I was yet to understand why she was so afraid. I sensed her heart sinking to bottom of the floorboards. The sheer phobia. The utter hopelessness chained within her constricted and confined her to the ground.
She begged, "Please...please..." Every fiber inside of her rattled. "Wh-who are you?"
"Who am I?" I repeated as a question, "Why must you need to know? Have you forgotten who bares this flesh? Do you not reconcile? Recall? Remember?" chuckling, "I am who I am."
She asked once more, "Wh-who are y-you?"
I gave an even larger grin that curled like a pig's tail. My jaw unhinged silently to reveal jagged teeth. I batted my eyelashes to emphasize the yellow tinted pupils that were growing in size. I paused in the quietness that crowded that miniscule bathroom. I answered in a weak and puny whisper. "The man you will forever love. The man who sought what he wanted and it was delivered unto him, unto It. "
With no further words spoken I swallowed her whole. She struggled, wailing her legs, trying her hardest to escape my forcefully stretched mouth. The blood flowed fiercely out of the torn veins of my innocent wife's legs. Elongated skin and flesh peeled back from my uneven fangs. Tearing, tearing, tearing away. A large echo of sound from my swallow permeated silence once again through the room. The bathroom was no longer occupied by two.

I awoke with you by my side in a deep sweat. The sound of inhaling and exhaling entered and left my body. I felt the structure and anatomy of my face. I felt my scalp that carried an abundant amount of hair. Teeth symmetrical in size. Hands and feet both normal in length and in width. Reality was no longer a fairytale. By then, I knew it was just a dream. While sleeping, she had a simple smile on her face. A face that smiled with sanctity. A face that knew no form of harm. I glanced at the clock by my bedside and realized how late I was for work. But then I looked back at my wife.  I looked at that simple smile she made. That simple smile placed one on me and I wanted to keep it that way. I pulled the covers over my face and went back to sleep.

The End



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