The Creature (2nd. Twisted Tales)

FEATURED in The Writing.Com Newsletter: Horror/Scary - Two Sources of Inspiration - Editor's Picks,  Jeff , October 5, 2011

HONORABLE MENTION in the Halloween Scary Story Contest Forum, ember_rain, 2011

SECOND PLACE in the Twisted Tales Contest, Arakun the twisted raccoon , October 2011

A Short Story Nominee in the "The WDC 2010 Quill Awards: 5th Edition" 2011 by Andrew , January-February 2011

FEATURED in the Writing.Com Newsletter: Horror/Scary - The Horror - Editor's Picks, Shannon , February 22, 2017

"I don’t like the dark, and I don’t believe in ghosts,” Ollie whispered in the silence of his room, while covering his mouth and nose with trembling hands. It was the sixth time that he had heard the grumbling in the night’s darkness. His heart thundered in his chest. His mouth was dry and he wanted to escape, but he couldn’t move; he was stuck to his bed. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

What does it look like? Why is it here, after me? Ollie thought. I will keep my eyes closed. It might go away. He heard the noises coming closer like little black rats crawling under his bed. Why was the night so dark? Couldn’t it be less ... dark? Why did his mother always forget to turn the night lamp on? She knew he hated the dark. He tried to reach the night lamp from under the covers.

The blanket slowly fell off from his bed near his blue and red Spider-Man shoes.The bed shook and he almost peed from the fear of what would come next. He trembled. Then he saw it ...  a big, dark, egg-shaped, and deformed mass came right over him and it felt as if it penetrated every pore of his skin, taking each and every little space of his body. He screamed; he thought that his spirit had left him and had disappeared into the nothingness---his mind falling into a deep sleep.

                                                                         

  ***

Anne woke up, sweating. “John, there’s something ... someone in this house! Wake up! ” she shouted.

“What? That’s impossible.”

“I saw it in my dreams.  It was evil, John.”

“Come on, Anne.”

“In my dreams I asked it, 'Who are you?' It said it was a visitor, but I knew it wasn’t. So I said, 'What do you want?' It said, 'Him'.”

“Him who?” John asked.

“The 'little' one", it told me.”

“Anne ...”

“Don’t you dare disbelieve me, John!”

“Alright. I will take a look.”

“I am coming with you. I know that there was someone else ... awake in this house. I can still feel it. As a matter of fact, I feel its presence all the time.”

“But how ...”

“You know I 'know'. We must go to Ollie’s room first.”

“Look. The door is closed! He never likes it closed.”

“Open it, quickly.”

“Oh, he’s in bed. He’s sleeping peacefully. Relax, Anne.”

“John, there is something in there with him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can see it; it is dark and eerie and right there, in the corner of the room, on the ceiling. Turn the lights on, John!”

“Okay. See? There’s nothing there. Nothing.”

“It was there, John.”

“But how could it have disappeared so quickly, whatever it was?”

“I can still feel its presence...”

“Anne, there isn’t anything. Come on.”

“But ...”

“Come on. Let’s go to bed. He’s okay.”

***

I was still a boy, I was still 6 years old, and the light was still off. I was in total darkness and still safe in my bed. I had been sleeping for a couple of hours when -- BAM! -- I felt it; again! I opened my eyes, turned my head around then upwards, and analyzed my room. Then, I stopped looking around, my eyes glued onto the ceiling. The disgusting, dark creature just stared at me and started crawling around the ceiling like an upside down crab, but it had no legs.

I was sweating. My Spider-Man pajamas were damp. How does he do that? I stared at him and finally realized he wanted me. It just sat there, on top of my bed, staring at me. I passed out minutes later with the creature’s darkish-yellow eyes and creepy, twisted smile above me. He made me remember things; things I feared. He made me remember that everything happened for a reason.

I woke up to a foul stench emanating throughout the room; against my will I threw up on my blanket. His grayish, somber expression was in front of mine; it was horrifying. His mouth was half-open and the odor that came from his throat was disgusting. It was a stench I once smelled while coming home from school. I had found a dead squirrel and the stench was worse than bad eggs. It was a mixture of a dead animal’s carcass and puke maybe much worse. I threw up again on my pajamas. The evil, dark creature ... laughed. I had to confront him or I’d pee in my bed. I didn’t want to do this; so, I decided to talk to him. I had to be in charge.

“What do you want?”

“I want you.”

“Why me?”

“Don’t you know? You should know.”

“No, I’m just a kid.”

“No, you’re an old man.”

“What? Look at me. I'm a young boy.”

“I know what I see. I know who you are.”

“My name is Ollie. I don’t know you. You stink. Please go away.”

“Reltih.”

“What?”

“Reltih. That’s your name.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s Ollie. Please, go.”

“It took me a long time to find you. I won’t go away.”

“Go, now.”

“No. I told you so. Besides, there are others.”

“I know that.”

“So, I'll stay. It’s my turn.”

“But you are creepy and weird. I'm not allowed to talk to ... strangers. My mom told me so.”

“I’ll be here all the time. I have all the time in the world.”

“Why?”

“Revenge.”

“What did I do? I couldn’t have hurt you. Please. Look at you and look at me.”

“You hurt me bad.”

"I couldn't have; not me."

"You did! I feel it. I know it. I have become your spiritual obsessor and I will suck all your vital energy."

“I’m going to scream ... and call my mom and dad ...”

“They won’t see me. They can't help you. Only you can see me; your mom senses me, though.”

“I’ll call her then.”

“She’s fast asleep. Besides, they think you’re sleeping, too. I can make things happen you know, so you’d better not.”

“What can and can’t you do?”

“I can’t leave this deformed, ovoid mass, but I can fly. I can’t speak, but you can hear my innermost thoughts. I can’t go there; not anymore now. I gave it up years and years ago while searching for you. I am bonded to you. Can you see these shiny grayish strings? I stuck them right into you and now I am draining your soul. That’s how I ... eat ... and live. I eat your force, your mind and your thoughts; your life. I am what I am. I am no more who I was. I don’t remember much. I only know that I hate you.”

“I can’t even kill a spider.”

“You hurt me. You took everything from me. I am nothing because of my obsession. I am this way because of you. So, now you must pay. Revenge is certainly a dish best served cold. Since I died, I’ve searched for you all over the world; trying to find you in older bodies and older spirits, but I was mistaken. Evil can be and is hidden in younger bodies too; in the form of younger spirits like you. Some of my kind told me that we would not find you; but I was smarter. I did find you. I heard them talk about you. So, I stuck my strings deep into your confused aura and I will never let you go. Never, ever.”

“I can pray and...”

“It won’t help you. I am what you made me. I am this way because of my hatred; but my rage comes from your meanness. My shape is this way because of what you did to me and I am a forgotten monster. I cannot, must not forget this and be taken in by your sweet looks.”

“I don’t know what I did to you and if I did so, I don’t remember. You must forget. Let go. You must learn to forgive. My mom has those so-called special powers; she’s spiritual or something like that, you know - and I often hear her saying that we must forgive 77 times 7. It’s a Universal Cosmic Law. It’s what rules the universe and the spiritual world, the different spiritual planes. If we don’t forgive, we will never grow spiritually and go to heaven. Don't you know that? There is always a chance, even for the worst of souls like you. Another chance. Do you want to go to hell? I don’t. I won't.”

“I live in Hell,” the creature murmured.

Trying to find the creature's weakness, I persevered. “You must stop this, creature! My dad says that hell is only in our minds, inside of us. There is no hell. We make our lives a living hell. I am asking you to forgive. Come on now! Do you want to be Lucifer or Satan, and burn in eternal flames forever?”

“I am a Demon," the creature whispered.

“Creature, you must forget. Forgive! I am just a little boy. I have never, ever hurt you. Look at me. How could I? You are scaring me. Listen! Have you ever seen yourself? Have you ever seen what you look like, and what I see?”

“How can I see myself if I’m inside this dark, ovoidal, stinking bubble?”

“Wait! Let me ... help you.”

Trembling with fear, I opened my bedside table’s drawer while the dark creature observed me - hovering over my bed, spying, watching, uncertain. It breathed heavily and it was dripping a gooey liquid over my pillow. I sat on my bed, crossed my legs, cleaned my sweaty forehead with my hand and picked up my dad’s flashlight and a small mirror that once belonged to my mom. I switched on the flashlight and pointed the light directly at the surprised creature’s grimace - then I violently shoved the mirror right in front of its ugly face.

“Look at yourself. See how you look? See why I fear you?"

***

When Adar saw his reflection in the mirror he immediately froze. Time stopped. He wanted to scream but no sound came out as he had no mouth. He couldn’t believe what he saw. He was a deformed, compressed mass of skinny, skeletal-like legs and arms, mixed up with putrid human flesh and thin, red wiry veins. His face was smashed and plastered into all this translucent confusion with only one eyeball and half of a mouth, decayed, razor sharp teeth hanging from one side.

He was liquefying melting into a dark oneness thing. He was horrified. He wanted to find his soul, but there was none. It was like having a hole in an empty existence. He wanted to scream, cry and howl so loud that he imploded and exploded into tiny pieces of goo and snort - disappearing forever from where he hadn’t existed because he was nothing.

***

Ollie breathed hard. He blinked his eyes. He looked around. His heart was beating fast, but he wasn’t scared. He had never been scared, not even once. Slowly, Ollie’s eyes turned from a light blue to a yellowish-red color and the cute smile on his face became flat, arrogant and deceitful. He laughed scornfully as his frail body seemed to change from a small, young and sweet boy to an old, curved and wrinkled man full of evilness and anger. He smiled and breathed deeply. Then he became a boy once more, while he thought to himself in the stillness of his room:

There goes one more that I’ve managed to get rid of! Ha! Ha! Ha! They seem to forget that my power is ... endless. Oh my. This one was so close to catching me, especially when he said that he knew my name - but he didn’t even spell it right. He should have said it backwards. Ha! Ha! Ha! Stupid, sad creature. Good for me, though. Ha! Ha! Ha! If he had said it right, even once, they would have listened and I would have been in some real big trouble.


Words: 1992