IT'S DOWN THERE

IT’S DOWN THERE

by Truegho, Webmaster of Horror Writers.net


I have a monster down in my cellar. No, seriously, I really do. I am not lying. He’s a big monster – and a most ferocious one at that – too. In fact, I would even go as far as to say that he is my best friend. Yes, as odd as that might sound, he really is.
Hey, look, don’t snigger and look at me as if I were stark raving potty. I am telling you that this monster of mine is my best friend. And he is so helpful, so obliging, especially when it comes to disposing of people who annoy me, people who do the dirt on me. To be blunt, people who I fucking hate.
So how did I come about this monster, you may well ask. Well, I’ll tell you. It all began one cold, dark, rainy and windy night back in October of last year. On that fateful evening, my whole life was to take a sudden and dramatic turn, and a turn for the better too.
Up until then, my life had been pretty dull and boring. Nothing exciting ever seemed to happen to me at all. But then, like a blessed gift from Heaven (or should that be Hell?), the monster suddenly came into my life, like a cunning thief in the night, stealing my attention, my heart, and even my very soul. One minute the cellar was empty, and the next it wasn’t. And once the monster arrived . . . well, I am delighted to say that things soon began to pick up. I started to have all the excitement, all the thrills and chills, I could possibly want. It’s surprising the way an ordinary, dark, smelly old cellar can suddenly become a place of enthralling activity to the keen spectator, the ardent monster owner. Oh, honestly, you should see the way all the blood from my friend’s victims fountains all over the place when he tucks into them with his huge razor-sharp teeth, splashing the cellar walls in a viscous crimson collage.
I don’t know how the monster came to be in my cellar in the first place, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t really care. All I know is that my big, hungry, furry friend is giving me the kind of ineffable pleasure that I just want to go on and on and on . . .
The monster’s first victim was Sandy. Yes, sexy but oh so snidey Sandy – the cold hearted bitch who was about to ditch me for that big-headed Flash Harry she’d met at the local disco. Nearly broke my heart, she did, when she sprang the news on me that night over a candlelit meal that she didn’t love me anymore, that she had met somebody else. Of all the times to deal me such an emotional hammerblow like that – during what I’d thought was going to be a nice romantic evening together at my place! But that was Sandy: no feelings, no respect, no heart. Well – ha, ha, ha – she really HASN’T got a heart now, has she? Oh no, because the monster ripped it clean out of her chest when I lured her down into the cellar and locked her in with it! Oh yes, and it wasn’t just her heart that it ripped out either, but also her lungs, her stomach, her intestines. Following her slaughter, I gasped in awe and shook my head at the copious amounts of blood that had sprayed and splashed all over the cellar walls. It was just like going into an abbatoir. There was so much blood and guts that the whole cellar seemed to be covered in a glistening, stringy red mess. I must say, for a little dwarf of a girl – a POISON dwarf, considering the callous way she treated me – she certainly had a good few pints of the old red stuff in her veins. The blood donation society would have loved her!
Of course, as you may have guessed, it wasn’t actually me that murdered her, but the monster. Yes, the monster, my monster. He’d made his first kill, and boy was he pleased! Despite all the newly spilled blood saturating his furry coat, and despite all the lumps of guts splattered in his hair, I just had to go up to him and give him a grateful pat on the head. “Good boy,” I smiled at him, with all the warm affection of a farmer petting his collie dog. “You’ve done well.”
My monster just replied with a loud belch, after swallowing a final lump of the girl’s mutilated torso. Its huge yellow razor-sharp teeth gleamed dully in the darkened cellar as its mouth widened in what could have been a satiated grin. This creature could certainly eat the worst cannibal on earth under the table. Such a fierce, rapacious appetite for human flesh. Such a powerful and useful source of bloody vengeance for anybody unfortunate enough to get on the wrong side of me!
More human grub for the monster soon followed: that nasty neighbour of mine . . . the loathsome cunt who had been bullying me at work . . . that over-authoritative council official who was always bemoaning the state of my garden . . . and a few more individuals whom I’d seen fit to punish, with a little help from my furry friend down in the cellar of course. Yes, they all got their just deserts, and the monster certainly got his deserts too, albeit in a somewhat different sense! Christ, no wonder he’s starting to put on weight, after all those humans I’ve been feeding him recently!
Enticing my victims into my house had proved to be a piece of piss. Well, I mean, there are 101 ways of persuading somebody to come back to your place, aren’t there? That was the easy part, of course, but then the tricky part was getting them down into the cellar. Certainly not easy, in one or two cases. Consequently, I had to push them along a bit, just to get them down there into the monster’s dinner din, and if that meant sneaking up behind them and knocking them out with a heavy ornament to the head, then so be it. I’m bloody well sure, though, that those few awkward ones were psychic, that they could actually sense that I was secretly harbouring some kind of thing – a monster perhaps – down in my cellar. No matter, I got them down there in the end, didn’t I, even if I did have to resort to the drastic step of bashing their brains in. Christ, I still can’t help but laugh whenever I picture them in my mind, suddenly jerking awake down in the cellar and getting the fright of their lives as the monster lumbers over them, glaring and snarling ferociously, before pouncing on them and ripping them to shreds with his sharp fangs and powerful claws.
So there you have it. My story. Make of it what you will. Draw your own conclusions. I have given you the general gist of my monster in the cellar – and maybe scared you shitless in the bargain – so I guess that brings everything pretty much up to date. Right, okay, so where do we go from here?
Well, for a start, you can bloody well stop gawking at me like that, as if I were a bloody lunatic or something. And stop smirking at me, because I don’t like it, I really don’t! Such sneering behaviour, particularly from somebody of your vocation, is very unprofessional. Look, I know you’re a doctor – well, all right, a psychiatrist then – and that you have been sent from the hospital to grill me, especially about all the . . . disappearances. But that certainly doesn’t automatically exempt you from any bitter feelings – any baleful intentions – I may start to develop towards you if I don’t like your line of questioning, not to mention your supercilious, condescending attitude. I tire of people very easily, you know.
And, look, don’t regard my whole story of the monster in the cellar as nothing more than some sick, weird fantasy conjured up by an over-active imagination and, as such, something that should not be taken seriously. I assure you – I swear to God above – that everything that I have just told you really did happen.
And if you are still harbouring doubts about the credibility of my story, then why don’t you just put down that pen and clipboard and come with me down to the cellar?
It’s down there, you know. It really is.
And it is very, very hungry!