shaggy673
08-26-2006, 04:14 PM
Andrew's heart was pumping now. He thought to himself, she knows my weaknesses and I know what she is going to do. She is going to throw them at me, try to weaken me. She looked at him, crying, shaking her head. The game had begun; his gaze was enough to cut steel, and yet she held on. Deep down, she knew that it was all she could do. Especially considering that he had begun to drink. It was his weakness, she knew. He never turned to it unless...
...unless he was afraid, scared, and suicidal.
"Don't do this," she warned him. She was trying, but she knew what it would look like to him. It would seem as if she was turning away. She was afraid and indeed wished to have some protection against his instability. There was something inside this beast that she loved, and if she just held on...
He looked at her. "And you think I don't know about him?"
A cold chill broke throughout her entire nervous system. She could feel it crawling up her back, reaching around to her face;
"What do you mean?"
So coy, he thought. She will play this game until the bitter end, pretending and hiding. Secrecy breeds like bacteria. "You know what I mean," he said simply. He could feel tears coming up, tickling the back of his eyeballs. "You killed me."
"Don't say that!" Looking into his eyes. "Don't do this." She had misunderstood what he had meant. He was not suicidal, he was broken and shattered. He stared at her, eyes narrowing.
"That's not what I meant. I mean you killed me. You took my heart from my chest." He felt them falling, and he cursed her. "Did you think I would never find out? Did you think I was so blind?" His head was heavy: everything was pressed firmly on his shoulders and the weight was excrutiating. He looked at her, and his eyes filled with her angelic glow. He saw her in the perfection that he always had seen her, but though he wanted to believe it, his heart told him that she was a threat.
"I have to go." He had said it many times before, but this time somehow it had more power. She broke down into tears, stared at him in desperation.
"Please don't go."
He looked at her, walked up to her. He couldn't help himself; he kissed her forehead delicately. Both of them broke into tears; their body violently shaking in one great mass. He stopped, looked down at her. He knew that she had chosen to chase him away, and he had chosen to ignore the hints... how had he been so blind?
The chill had begun to move all over his body. So this is what it feels like to die, he told himself. Not in the physical way, but in a way much deeper, more permanent. He closed his eyes, but he could still see her, and he knew that he had to run.
She tugged on him, begged him. His breathing began to sharpen, become painful; the mission had become dangerous.
It was easy at first. But he could hear her crying. It broke his heart into as many pieces as a human could endure without simply dying. And even then, he did not understand how he was still alive, how his heart had simply not just stopped.
It was an attack, and she knew it. But she had to try something, even if it would fail and blow up in her face. "Please stay!"
His eyes caught a photograph of the two of them; he was blissfully staring at her, but her gaze was pointed somewhere else. He did not remember what she would have been looking at, and before he knew it, tears were flowing. "You want him, not me. I'm not that man anymore," he said pointing at the picture.
He didn't know how it happened, but he had escaped the apartment and found enough alcohol to kill an elephant. A part of it was suicidal, he knew, but it was not conscious. Just as cigarettes and fast driving is technically suicidal, it is never conscious but something the subconscious tries to justify, as excitement, or 'living', or extreme adrenaline. I was not that he wanted to kill himself per se, but he wanted to make certain that his mind was destroyed so that he might not think; his thoughts were like razors, slowly cutting every nerve. When he closed his eyes, his imagination ran thinking about what she had done, and there were emotions that occurred at once. A part of him was hurt, destroyed; another part was guilty and felt like he had betrayed her, pushed her to this heinous act and now he was punishing her for his inadequacies; another part of him simply wanted to be angry that he was bottled up inside, boiling his blood. He wanted to cry, curse... to implode.
"Hey, wake up."
His eyes opened to a sight. Staring down at him was a green creature with floppy ears, and he felt a wet substance rubbing against him. He looked down and found a one eyed cat licking his fingers. He had fallen asleep on a park bench, but now...
"Where am I?" he muttered. "Who are you?"
"They call me the Boogeyman," the creature said, looking down with a smile. "Who I truly am has been lost with time; I have forgotten more about myself than anyone possibly could. The smelly thing licking you is Peebles."
"There is only one reason you are here," said the Boogeyman, the guide, forebodingly. "You must be dead."
The word tasted at once bitter and sweet. Dead: he tried the thought again and again in his heart. Deceased; no more; worm-food; rotten and not what once was.
"But somehow I don't think you are. I can't quite see you. You are transparent." Peebles meowed, tentacles and drool flying from what would, one would presume, be lips. He looked down at the cat, and saw that they were transparent.
"You are partially here and partially not. You must be holding onto something." Boogeyman's eyes pointed downward in sorrow. "I once knew someone like that." He smiled awkwardly, looked at Andrew. "But that is a tale that would take quite awhile to tell."
The world was fading, blinking in and out. He looked up at his guide, and somehow he knew that he should trust this green, scrawny creature with pointy teeth. "What if I don't want to be dead?"
"Then, beware Nihile."
"Hey buddy."
The world was fading, blurry and flowing like liquid across his senses. He could see the connection between worlds, could feel a presence stronger than anything he had ever felt before. His blood began to flow as if it were a great waterfall, and he could feel it moving at great speeds through his veins and into the veins of the worlds, thin strips of energy connecting him and allowing him to see more than one world at once, allowing him to converse with a dead god.
"Hey buddy, wake up."
He felt something splash against him. Water. But as the water splashed across his face, for a moment, he thought he saw something between the droplets, a face that was at once rotten and vibrant. It was one face and many; the face looked at him coldly, frowning.
"You will bow to my god," it said, and he felt empty and angry, felt all the emotions that put him into this state. This is how he knew that the face had to have been Nihile. "You already have," said Nihile, "and you know that this world deserves nothing; to be nothing at all, to cease; to be stripped to its constituent parts until everything can be seen from a distance."
"BUDDY!"
His eyes opened, and for a moment he could still see the face. As his eyes began to focus, he could see the face of a familiar shopkeeper.
"Josh," Andrew said simply. The shopkeeper looked down, shaking his head.
"Clean yourself up." It was beautiful, this minimal conversation; everything was understood, and for the first time, Andrew understood.
He returned to his wife. He found her asleep, clutching the picture of the two of them. He was reminded of the dream figures. Were they real? It didn't matter. Nothing, nihil, zilch-- that was what his life was like if he left her, if he separated himself. She knew him. And he knew he wasn't perfect, had done some things he was not proud of. She had stopped herself-- he had not believed her at first, but now it seemed like holding onto that doubt was akin to wanting the destruction of all things. He had sacrificed his heart to the great god Nihil, the destroyer king. But he had not sacrificed as much as he thought, for still something was felt deep down as he looked at her.
He took her favourite blanket, a wretched and beat up old thing that she would rub against her lips to calm herself, and wrapped it around her. His lip quivered, but this time it wasn't in pain or suffering. He knew she had not lied to him, that nothing had happened. And even if it did, it was irrelevant. In that look of pain she gave him as he walked out that door-- he knew that she had died as much as he did.
He kissed her on the cheek. He knew things would not be solved; he knew pain would not go away, wounds would still smart. But paranoia was wrongly placed. She was afraid of him, afraid of committing to a relationship that could never be certain because nothing in the world was certain-- but at the same time, he knew she loved him, and that he loved her.
Existence is uncertain but undeniable.
He curled up beside her, kissed her cheeks, and fell asleep, crying not with pain or even guilt, but with love and the knowledge that there was something, hiding between worlds, with a face that changed and stayed the same, that wanted not only his death, but-- more impossible, more frightening-- hers as well.
Whatever she had done, whatever they had said, he could not allow that to happen. He knew that he would fight impossibilities and the gods themselves to keep her safe. His life was tucked away, kept safe inside her. Without her, there would literally be nothing but a darkness, open to pain that was impossible to comprehend.
Without her, he would be without love itself.
--
I have a host of other horror short stories (among other things) at my website: The Psychomantium (http://www.geocities.com/sjsstever/index.html) .
...unless he was afraid, scared, and suicidal.
"Don't do this," she warned him. She was trying, but she knew what it would look like to him. It would seem as if she was turning away. She was afraid and indeed wished to have some protection against his instability. There was something inside this beast that she loved, and if she just held on...
He looked at her. "And you think I don't know about him?"
A cold chill broke throughout her entire nervous system. She could feel it crawling up her back, reaching around to her face;
"What do you mean?"
So coy, he thought. She will play this game until the bitter end, pretending and hiding. Secrecy breeds like bacteria. "You know what I mean," he said simply. He could feel tears coming up, tickling the back of his eyeballs. "You killed me."
"Don't say that!" Looking into his eyes. "Don't do this." She had misunderstood what he had meant. He was not suicidal, he was broken and shattered. He stared at her, eyes narrowing.
"That's not what I meant. I mean you killed me. You took my heart from my chest." He felt them falling, and he cursed her. "Did you think I would never find out? Did you think I was so blind?" His head was heavy: everything was pressed firmly on his shoulders and the weight was excrutiating. He looked at her, and his eyes filled with her angelic glow. He saw her in the perfection that he always had seen her, but though he wanted to believe it, his heart told him that she was a threat.
"I have to go." He had said it many times before, but this time somehow it had more power. She broke down into tears, stared at him in desperation.
"Please don't go."
He looked at her, walked up to her. He couldn't help himself; he kissed her forehead delicately. Both of them broke into tears; their body violently shaking in one great mass. He stopped, looked down at her. He knew that she had chosen to chase him away, and he had chosen to ignore the hints... how had he been so blind?
The chill had begun to move all over his body. So this is what it feels like to die, he told himself. Not in the physical way, but in a way much deeper, more permanent. He closed his eyes, but he could still see her, and he knew that he had to run.
She tugged on him, begged him. His breathing began to sharpen, become painful; the mission had become dangerous.
It was easy at first. But he could hear her crying. It broke his heart into as many pieces as a human could endure without simply dying. And even then, he did not understand how he was still alive, how his heart had simply not just stopped.
It was an attack, and she knew it. But she had to try something, even if it would fail and blow up in her face. "Please stay!"
His eyes caught a photograph of the two of them; he was blissfully staring at her, but her gaze was pointed somewhere else. He did not remember what she would have been looking at, and before he knew it, tears were flowing. "You want him, not me. I'm not that man anymore," he said pointing at the picture.
He didn't know how it happened, but he had escaped the apartment and found enough alcohol to kill an elephant. A part of it was suicidal, he knew, but it was not conscious. Just as cigarettes and fast driving is technically suicidal, it is never conscious but something the subconscious tries to justify, as excitement, or 'living', or extreme adrenaline. I was not that he wanted to kill himself per se, but he wanted to make certain that his mind was destroyed so that he might not think; his thoughts were like razors, slowly cutting every nerve. When he closed his eyes, his imagination ran thinking about what she had done, and there were emotions that occurred at once. A part of him was hurt, destroyed; another part was guilty and felt like he had betrayed her, pushed her to this heinous act and now he was punishing her for his inadequacies; another part of him simply wanted to be angry that he was bottled up inside, boiling his blood. He wanted to cry, curse... to implode.
"Hey, wake up."
His eyes opened to a sight. Staring down at him was a green creature with floppy ears, and he felt a wet substance rubbing against him. He looked down and found a one eyed cat licking his fingers. He had fallen asleep on a park bench, but now...
"Where am I?" he muttered. "Who are you?"
"They call me the Boogeyman," the creature said, looking down with a smile. "Who I truly am has been lost with time; I have forgotten more about myself than anyone possibly could. The smelly thing licking you is Peebles."
"There is only one reason you are here," said the Boogeyman, the guide, forebodingly. "You must be dead."
The word tasted at once bitter and sweet. Dead: he tried the thought again and again in his heart. Deceased; no more; worm-food; rotten and not what once was.
"But somehow I don't think you are. I can't quite see you. You are transparent." Peebles meowed, tentacles and drool flying from what would, one would presume, be lips. He looked down at the cat, and saw that they were transparent.
"You are partially here and partially not. You must be holding onto something." Boogeyman's eyes pointed downward in sorrow. "I once knew someone like that." He smiled awkwardly, looked at Andrew. "But that is a tale that would take quite awhile to tell."
The world was fading, blinking in and out. He looked up at his guide, and somehow he knew that he should trust this green, scrawny creature with pointy teeth. "What if I don't want to be dead?"
"Then, beware Nihile."
"Hey buddy."
The world was fading, blurry and flowing like liquid across his senses. He could see the connection between worlds, could feel a presence stronger than anything he had ever felt before. His blood began to flow as if it were a great waterfall, and he could feel it moving at great speeds through his veins and into the veins of the worlds, thin strips of energy connecting him and allowing him to see more than one world at once, allowing him to converse with a dead god.
"Hey buddy, wake up."
He felt something splash against him. Water. But as the water splashed across his face, for a moment, he thought he saw something between the droplets, a face that was at once rotten and vibrant. It was one face and many; the face looked at him coldly, frowning.
"You will bow to my god," it said, and he felt empty and angry, felt all the emotions that put him into this state. This is how he knew that the face had to have been Nihile. "You already have," said Nihile, "and you know that this world deserves nothing; to be nothing at all, to cease; to be stripped to its constituent parts until everything can be seen from a distance."
"BUDDY!"
His eyes opened, and for a moment he could still see the face. As his eyes began to focus, he could see the face of a familiar shopkeeper.
"Josh," Andrew said simply. The shopkeeper looked down, shaking his head.
"Clean yourself up." It was beautiful, this minimal conversation; everything was understood, and for the first time, Andrew understood.
He returned to his wife. He found her asleep, clutching the picture of the two of them. He was reminded of the dream figures. Were they real? It didn't matter. Nothing, nihil, zilch-- that was what his life was like if he left her, if he separated himself. She knew him. And he knew he wasn't perfect, had done some things he was not proud of. She had stopped herself-- he had not believed her at first, but now it seemed like holding onto that doubt was akin to wanting the destruction of all things. He had sacrificed his heart to the great god Nihil, the destroyer king. But he had not sacrificed as much as he thought, for still something was felt deep down as he looked at her.
He took her favourite blanket, a wretched and beat up old thing that she would rub against her lips to calm herself, and wrapped it around her. His lip quivered, but this time it wasn't in pain or suffering. He knew she had not lied to him, that nothing had happened. And even if it did, it was irrelevant. In that look of pain she gave him as he walked out that door-- he knew that she had died as much as he did.
He kissed her on the cheek. He knew things would not be solved; he knew pain would not go away, wounds would still smart. But paranoia was wrongly placed. She was afraid of him, afraid of committing to a relationship that could never be certain because nothing in the world was certain-- but at the same time, he knew she loved him, and that he loved her.
Existence is uncertain but undeniable.
He curled up beside her, kissed her cheeks, and fell asleep, crying not with pain or even guilt, but with love and the knowledge that there was something, hiding between worlds, with a face that changed and stayed the same, that wanted not only his death, but-- more impossible, more frightening-- hers as well.
Whatever she had done, whatever they had said, he could not allow that to happen. He knew that he would fight impossibilities and the gods themselves to keep her safe. His life was tucked away, kept safe inside her. Without her, there would literally be nothing but a darkness, open to pain that was impossible to comprehend.
Without her, he would be without love itself.
--
I have a host of other horror short stories (among other things) at my website: The Psychomantium (http://www.geocities.com/sjsstever/index.html) .