I realise that paragraph sounds a tad weird. After tennis, I sat down to write the story that's been sitting at the back of my head for the past few days.
__________________________________________________
She flipped a page of the book in her hand. Distracted occasionally by her mother reading the newspaper beside her and even less by the oldies music emanating from the cassette player but otherwise completely engrossed. It was a fairytale story of lands other than our own and of talking beasts and whatnots. They usually bored her and at her age you would think she had grown out of them but this book was somehow… different. From page one onwards, she was hooked on it and was enchanted by it as if enchanted by the spells in the book. She thought at the rate she was reading this evening, she’d finish the book early tomorrow morning. She flipped the page greedily.
The cassette her mother was playing in the player was of sweet tunes and music from her younger days. She swayed to the melodies and hummed in harmony with them feeling almost at bliss with the world. The nostalgic music reminded her of her carefree days when there were no children of her own to take care of and the only one in charge of her own life was her. Not that she was not grateful for the four healthy young adults whom long ago she had once carried in her womb for nine months and then painstakingly brought up with the best of her abilities just that, children don’t always grow up the way you want them to. Somewhere along the line, they get rebellious and you lose your power over them and this brought many stressful days for this mother of four. The music calmed her tortured nerves down.
As the music from the cassette neared its end, she climbed out from the bed she sat on with her daughter. “Eh, I need a cup of coffee or something,” she said as she walked gaily out of the room. As she closed the door she said to her daughter, “Let the tape stop by itself, ya.”
The door closed with a gentle ‘thud’. Her attention was pulled away from the book and the daughter lazily laid her eyes upon the cassette player steadily rolling the cassette in its mouth. The last song on the cassette had ceased to play and what came out of its speakers now were the meek crackling sounds you hear at the end of cassettes when there is no more music to be read. She stared a little while longer at the player and listened a little more intently to the crackling sounds and decided that the cassette must be a very old one because the crackles were relatively loud. They got a little bit louder but she thought it was just her imagination and chuckling at her foolishness, she turned back to the book in her hand.
She barely read another sentence when she heard a loud creepy hiss in the room. Her eyes shot wide open and they immediately explored around the room for the source of the sound. The hiss came again sounding so terrible and ominous that she winced. She could feel her heart palpitating in her throat and the hair on her neck standing on end. Her breathing hastened. The crackles still played. She stared disbelievingly at the cassette player. The tape was still rolling. The temperature plunged. The room grew icy cold and darker. She instinctively reached for a blanket.
“Child…” said the hissing voice emanating from the cassette player. She recoiled with horror clutching timidly at her blanket. Her breath formed mist when she breathed out. Her legs shivered with coldness in the frosty atmosphere of the room. Accompanied with the dreadful voice, chills ran down her spine. She kept her eyes upon the player calmly rolling the tape inside it and she did not know what to make of it. Her expression was one of surprise and confusion and it was soon to become of horror.
“Child…,” the raspy voice went on. “What are you up to there?” Then it chuckled sinisterly. As for her, still clutching her blanket, she suddenly snapped out of her trance-like confusion and into a state of thinking with her mind. She reached out an almost blue hand and struck the ‘STOP’ button on the cassette player as fast as she could pulling her hand back quickly. If she thought this would end her troubles, she was wrong. The chuckling voice just chuckled even louder and this time more menacingly. Shocked as she was, she tried it again striking the ‘STOP’ button harder this time. The tape still played. The evil voice just laughed out louder and more sinisterly mocking her futile efforts. She struck the button repeatedly trying to push it down and end the whole wretched event.
The cruel laughter continued and it got louder and louder until the cassette player shook upon the desk it sat upon. She stopped her endeavours and shrunk back into the bed gripping her blanket tighter still and watching with horror now at the sight before her. The cassette player shook more violently with the incredibly ominous laughter ringing out. The cassette started rolling faster and faster until steam burst out from the compartment that held the cassette. She gave a little shriek. Then a stream of dark substance crawled itself out from the tape compartment slowly spreading its edges onto the outsides of the player. The flow of substance started boiling causing steam to rise from it and bubbling too so that when the bubbles burst, little specks of red dotted the white desk upon which the player sat.
She couldn’t believe it. She thought she had lost her mind. The boiling and bubbling and violent shaking of the cassette player with steam rising up above it and little red specks of blood just got worse and worse. The voice was suddenly very loud and threatening and was not very icy cold anymore but very hot and fiery with anger and it did not feel as if it was from the player anymore but from the very room itself surrounding her.
“Come join me, child!!” the voice bellowed with rage. “Why do you tease me so?” it added full of annoyance and inexplicable resentment. And then it roared. A full-hearted roar much like what would come from the heavens but more likely the depths of hell. She covered her ears with her hands. She looked up and screamed as the roar became deafening as if screaming might make the evil beast whoever it may be go away and leave her be in peace in her own room.
All this while, the cassette player shook ferociously and emanated steam from the blood boiling out from its cassette compartment. As if it could not handle the hellish situation anymore, the cassette player burst. Amidst the mad roaring and screaming, the player burst into pieces so that the roaring ceased itself and forced the girl’s screaming to a stop too. This was because before she could realise that the roaring had stopped or that the player had burst, hot blood was splattered upon her delicate countenance and her open mouth which was open because she was screaming was unavoidably filled with blood.
Realising that the roaring had ceased, she regained her wits about her and looked down onto the cassette player which had burst open. She swallowed a bit and tasted salty blood but it was of no bother to her at the moment because another bigger bother sat on the white desk before her.
What lay on the desk wasn’t the electrical circuits that the burst-open player had inside it. It was flesh; pink and juicy raw flesh overflowing with fresh blood which pooled onto the white desk below it. The plastic outer covering of the player that had broken up remained plastic but had flesh joined onto the insides of it. Chunks of raw meat lay scattered in the surrounding area and on the bed too. Blood was not in scarcity for it splattered the entire room, layering the ceilings and walls including the girl who was covered with thick blood. The smell was awful. Like the smell of old coins in your hand combined with the discomforting smell of human entrails.
The largest hunk of meat lay still and slightly steaming on the white desk. She looked at it. A part of her was glad the voice and all was over. Another part of her tried to come into terms with what had just happened and of what was to be done next. Thinking of this all, she saw a small speck of black in the very core of the meat on the table. The little speck grew into a larger and larger one and soon it was spilling out onto the table and crawling towards her and a buzzing sound grew louder and louder.
It took her awhile to realise the bugs were flesh-eating and they tried to get at her and chew into her flesh. With a hand sticky with blood, she pushed them away and screamed when they bit into her thighs. More came towards her and more came out of the chunk of meat on the table and they covered the entire room with themselves and they threatened to cover her as well. She got to her senses, screaming nonetheless, and stood upon the bed sweeping the black bugs off her four limbs. They got under her shirt and she tried to squish them by pressing onto her tummy. She gave up and jumped off the bed and rushed to the door. She flung it open breathing heavily and shrieked with the horror and pain of being eaten alive, the bugs still crawling all over her nimble body.
The first person she saw was her brother and she ran into him.
“Help!! Please! Help me!”
Her brother was not unkind. He received her into his arms, putting them around her as she sobbed into his shirt. He calmly stroked her hair as if she were but a kitten and inquired with a gentle voice, “What’s the matter, dear? What happened?” He crooned more useless words to her trying his best to sound comforting. She sobbed and trembled and then tried to sweep more of the bugs off herself till she realised that… the bugs were on her no more. “What are you trying to brush off yourself?” her brother asked.
Her face was wet with tears and through the tears in her eyes, she looked at her brother’s shirt. It was wet but not from the blood that was on her but wet only from the tears she cried onto it. She looked at her hands and turned them over and then her own clothes and her own legs and feet. They were clean and untouched by red liquid. Not a speck of blood appeared anywhere on her. Wondering what happened to the horrid stains, she turned behind to look back into her room. It was clean too. She was surprised. The whole room was in the condition it was in an hour ago. Its ceiling and walls were of their original colour. The bed was clean and a lone book lay upon it. The blankets were spotless. No crawling black swarm of bugs were about. From where she stood, she saw the cassette player and it was still in good condition sitting tamely upon the white desk.
She couldn’t help but smile at herself although her brother looked at her with concern. She turned to look at her brother. Inside the room, the cassette clicked as its tape ended and the player stopped.
__________________________________________________
That's done then.
3 comments:
what other dark creepy stories are festering inside ur head naz..?
hmmm... you want the ones involving you cherie?
u want me to hold ur hand lynn?
Post a Comment