The DARK

The sky was dark as ink, not a single star could be seen as Sam walked down the road. He was alone trying to stay brave as the last of the lights from the town faded away behind him and the darkness closed in, surrounding him on all sides. Even the lantern he carried with him didn't give much help. It felt to Sam as the darkness wanted to reach out and grab him and drag him deeper in to its hungry belly.

He was on his way to see a witch who he believed could help him on his quest. He had been directed to her hut on the edge of the deep woods by a local barman. He was told to bring a bag of gold and to show up after dark. As he walked the noises of the woods around him become louder and louder, at the same time he could hear his hart beat in his chest like a bass drum. He may have been afraid of the dark woods but he had to stay brave. He was on a quest for his king and if he failed to bring back they crystals it would not matter how brave he had been before, the king would have his head on a spike on the outer wall of the kingdom

As he walked down the road towards the witch’s hut he went over what he had already come though on his quest. His king had sent him out to find the rainbow crystals. They were crystals that held much magical power. He first checked the hermit in the high mounties but the hermit did not have the crystals, next he checked the marshes of lost souls. he almost was a lost soul him self until he found the hut of a dweller. The dweller turned out to be a puppet for a swamp monster and Sam had to fight it off. He barely escaped with his life, he was able to finely kill it by chopping off his head. It had left him wounded and bloody. Now he found him self on the road to a withes hut surrounded by blackness that seemed alive.

If the witch did not have the crystals her self, Sam was sure she could lead him to them, The witch was the wicked witch of the deep woods. The locals in the town said she been there for as long as the town it self. They said her powers came form the crystals she kept in her hut, no one had seen them but Sam was sure that she must be the keeper of the rainbow crystals he been sent to find.

Finely as he turd a corner he could see light up ahead coming form a shabby looking hut set to one side of the road. As he reached the hut, he damped his own lamp and crept up in total darkness.

The front door of the hut opened and the witch walked out with her own lantern, “come forward sir so I may see you in my light.”

Sam walked out of the dark into the light of her lantern, “ I am here witch, to find the rainbow crystals. I have a bag of gold to trade. If you don't trade them for the gold, then I am duty bound to take them from you.”

“I see you are well armed sir, but you are mistaken I hold on crystals” she said as she turned back towards the open door of the hut.

Sam drew his sword and spoke loudly, “ Then I must insist I check your hut witch!”

“You sir can not enter my hut! If you try I will have to defend my self and you will be sorry” she said and then forked her fingers in the sign of the evil eye.

Sam knew he had to act fast, if she was a true witch then she had just cursed him and he must have her recant the cures or kill her, before what ever evil the cures had set free fell upon him. As he moved forward to strike, the witch entered her hut. The door shut and the lights went out and a evil laugh come out of the dark Sam knew he was in trouble. He light his lantern and with sword in hand he stormed the hut. The door crumbled away to dust in his hand, not finding this comforting at all, he entered and found the hut empty. It looked like no one had been in there in a very long time. As the light from his lantern flickered in a draft he heard the witches evil laugh. He turned to leave but where once the was a door, he only found another wall. The door had vanished. Turning from wall to wall Sam finds him self trapped in a wooden cell with no way out. As the light of his lantern finely flickers out the darkness swallows Sam up and all is heard is the cackle of the witch.

LOST SOUL

I nuzzled my face into the darkness of her bosom. Her tender skin, felt like warmth of the sun on a beautiful summers day. There was a light fragrance to it as well, that of the morning sea air. She abruptly pushed her self away from me. With ease she escaped from my embrace even tho I struggled to keep her near to me.

As she ran away down a white sandy beach, her voice came to me in a whisper. It was like I could feel the breath of her words on my skin, as tho she was standing beside me. “Take care my love for soon we shall be together forever.”

I began to ran after the figure of her escaping down the beach. I wanted to catch her and never let her go. The more I ran towards her tho, the more the distance seemed to grow between us. I tired calling to her but she took no notice to me. Then came the sound of knocking as if far away. Stopping,I looked to my left and saw a very large crab standing in the distance. It was knocking a massively deformed claw against a door. A door that seemed to be standing on it's own in the sand. As the sound of the knocking came again, this time much closer, it awoke me out of the dream I was having. I sat up in bed and shook my head. the last of the dream slipped away. The woman in those fleeting images, made my hart sink. Every time I dreamed of her she always ended up out of my reach.

Then the sound of knocking came again. This time I realized it was some one knocking on my bedroom door. I got up and went to see who it was. On my way, I coughed up a huge wade of blood specked phlegm and spat it into a rag I always carried around with me.

“What the fuck a duck do you want.”, I said roughly.

Standing in the doorway was the captain's effeminate cabin boy. The wear and tare of life on the sea and the constant physical and sexual abuse from the other men had left him pale and pasty. It had striped away any of his boy hood charm leaving him much older looking then his seventeen years of age. A timid creature with soulless eyes.

“Capin told me to come get you, we got to ship out today.”, he said meekly.

I stood there staring at him with the evilest look I could muster. My voice filled with hatred. “What the fuck do I care what mister fancy pants wants. For all I fucking care, he can go buy himself another man to do the job. I'm tired of his ways. Fuck a fucking rock I'm to old and sick for this shit.”

The little maggot shifted his wight from foot to foot, like he had to take a piss. “Capin said if you didn't want to come that I was to say, he still had the bill of sale and you were his till you payed off you debt to your kingdom.”

My anger raised at the thought of that fat pig of a man, gloating over this little maggot of a boy. I could almost see the evil glint in his eye and that self riotous smug smile of his, as he told him what to say to me. It made me want to scream, Instead I broke out into a fit of coughing. I hacked up another bloody wad of phlegm,this I spat at the boys feet. “Get out! Tell your fat fuck stool of a captain that I will be there sooner or later.”

With a little whimper the boy scrambled out of my door and down the hall. I slowly got dressed and took my time packing my meager belongs into my one and only sac. Flinging the sac over my shoulder, I coughed out another chunk of phlegm. The crimson red flecks were unmistakable. I sighed and shrugged it off. Taking one last look around the tiny room, I walked out and shut the door behind me. When I went downstairs to return my key, the pretty daughter of the hotel keep was sitting behind the counter

“Mista Shanks, what ya be doing up so early? Ma tolled me not ta wake ya till evening.” She said as she batted her eyes and smiled at me.

“Sorry May. But looks like I wont be needing the room any more. My fart sucking, ass munch of a boss wants to go on another one of his silly quests.” ,I said trying to act causal.

“ Aww that's to bad mista Shanks. I kind liked having you around the place.” She batted her eyes at me again and I smiled back at her with the nicest smile I could muster.

I didn't have the hart to tell her this felt like last time I would ever see her again, so I simply waved goodbye and walked out the door. As I walked down to the pier of the port town, the ship I had been basically imprisoned on came into view. She was a squalid looking thing. With some effort tho, she did clean up nice. She could end up looking as pretty as a thistle. Her name was The Rose Of The Sea and she had been my home for years now. Since becoming part of her crew, I had grown to lover her and hate her at the same time. Most of our time we were out on the seas. Traveling form one creepy local to another. We were sent places, by collectors, to find hidden secrets and magical items. Any other items we found along the way we would keep for our selves and would sell to the highest bidder back on land. The captain loved to make as much profit as we could off a voyage. We had only been at port a few days before the captains butt buddy Percy came to get me. I had spent the days sleeping off the drink, the nights I had spent tomcating around the towns bawdy house's. When I dragged my rum soaked head in to sleep, it was nice to be able to share banter with the pretty lass May.

I boarded the ship and went to stow my sac under my bunk. I found the ship mostly empty, tho I did see Percy slip off into a corner. I then went to find Captain Smilt. I did not like him at all, even his name to me stank of filth. He was ; miserable, opinionated, smelly, fat and just a all around bastard. He may once have been a fairly wealthy man. He claimed to be a bastard son of a king in some backwoods kingdom. What ever his past may have been, he was not as wealthy as he once was. All he seemed to own now was The Rose Of The Sea and was such a cheep bastard that he bought his ship's crew out of the debtors slave market.

It was in those slave markets that Smilt had found me. I was expected to sail with him for another two years before my debt would finally be payed off and I would be a free man again. Tho I knew I would never make it through those next two years alive. Something was eating away at my insides it was making me very sick. As my illness had grown I had made my peace with death and I now gladly waited for my judgment day. For I knew on that day at the end of the path I would be in the loving embrace of the woman in my dreams.

I found Smilt sitting in his cabin, going over the details of the voyage, with a strangely dressed fellow. I began yelling the moment I opened the door. “Smilt you fat fuck stick! What the fuck, do you think you were doing sending Percy for me? You knew I still had thee days leave left.”

“Calm down shank. You know the rules. Your a prison sailor. What ever I say goes until your done paying back your debt. Now shut the fuck up and sit down. You worthless pile of debt dodging dung. Let this fine gentleman here finish telling me the details of our next voyage.” He nodded to the man to continue.

I took a seat in a chair. The man cleared his throat and gave me a quick snide grin and continued his conversation with Smilt. “As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted my employer has requested that you bring the book back here in one mouths time or the contract is void. If the book is damage the contract is void....”

While the two men finished talking, I sat daydreaming trying to recapture images of the woman from my dreams . Her beauty was so exotic to me. At the same time she seemed so very familiar. Lost in my own thoughts I barely noticed when the man left.

Trying to sound interested but not really caring, I asked Smilt about the book and a smile broke out onto his face. “Well it's called The Book of the Gray old ones. It is a magical book that grants wonderful powers to any one who will learn its secrets.”

Trying to sound impressed I asked, “ And where do we find this Book of the Gray old ones?”

His voice went quieter and he leaned forward like he was telling a secret, “Well heres the thing Shanks, it's on the Island of the dead.”

I almost fell out of my chair when he said that. That was the last place I wanted to go. “The Island of the dead? you got be kidding me? You do know, that no one who ever has come back from that place, has come back sane?”

Leaning back in his chair, resting one leg over its arm he said, “That's why I have you Shanks. With your keen sense for danger, we are sure to pull it off.”

All I could do was stare for a moment in disbelief. Then I said “For the fuck of a flying dog. I don't want to go Smilt! I'm tired! and you know as well as I do that I'm dying. You wont tell me you haven't noticed. I rather die peacefully, in a warm bed. I don't want to die on some god forsaken dead island. No one even knows how to get there for sure anyway. Any one who has come back, hasn't been sane enough to give directions.”

He smiled once again “But what you and every one else don't know is that I know the directions to the island of the dead. I have known them for a very long time. What I didn't have up till now was the map. Soon as we get to the island, it is as simple as following the dotted line through the graves. It will lead us strait to the right one. I'm even told this map is very special. That it is made from the skin of one of the Gray old ones”

For a long time I kept trying to argue with him, to find my self some sort of way out, but it was hard to find one. Smilt had a excess for every thing and when he didn't he would play the debtors card. Finally I broke him down and we came to a understanding. I would agree to give formal protest to our voyage, but to sail along anyway with out any hassle and Smilt agreed that once the job was done, to finally set me free from my bond and be rid of me. happy with our agreement we gathered the rest of the crew. That afternoon we began our voyage for the Island of the dead. There was a fine wind in our sails and not a cloud in the sky. Some where on that god forsaken island was a magick book we were being sent to find. But at that moment I didn't give fuck about the book or the man who was supposed to be buried with it. Or his skin that had become the map to his final resting place. All I cared about at that moment was the warm sun and the cool breeze.

The voyage to the island wasn't supposed to be very long. From the sounds of it, this trip was something Smilt had been planning for a long time. We had sailed on many longer voyages then we planed on sailing in this one. On one such voyage, we lost half the crew and the ship was almost destroyed. When us that remained alive got back to land, we drank to honer our dead shipmates and to to every sailor lost at sea.

To kill time, I spent as much of it as I could on deck being master of the watch. As the captain would steer from the helm, I kept the rest of the ship working like clock work. During the day I would do any mind numbing chore I could find. Anything at all to take my mind off the endless pain in my gut. What ever was eating away at me, wanted to be done with me soon. In the evenings, when I would finally relax some. I would pass the time, playing cards with a couple other sailors. We would gamble and drink till We stumbled to out bunks and pass out. You wanted to be stinking drunk when you went to pass out on your bunch. Sleeping next to all those other unwashed and smelly men was a horrid experience. All the sounds of snoring and farting was enough to drive a man mad. on the night before we reached the island, I had spent my evening sitting up in the crows nest watching the night sky. In the moment a shooting star shot across the night sky I came to a realization. Our time on this earthly realm was no more longer then that shooting star was. also that I lacked any hope of expecting to live though this adventure.

The next day we anchored in a sheltered cove on the edge of the Island of The Dead. Even before we left the ship Smilt began pulling his tricks . He started to complain of pain from some old war wound and he was unable to join us on the map quest. Not very surprised with this, I quickly agreed when he suggested I take three men and follow the map to find the book. once ashore we found that the route marked out on the map began at the same cove we had anchored in. The first thing marked on the map was the old wooden dock we found when we rowed to shore. Following the map was to be pretty simple. It began by following a overgrown foot path through some dense jungle. This was not that hard to travel along, due to being able to make out the path fairly easily.

It took a while but we coasted though it until we reached a very high wooden log and iron fence. Stretching out of sight to the left and right through the jungle. It was over grown with crawling vines and exotic looking flowers. We stopped for a moments rest so I took a close look at the fence and found strange markings engraved on the logs. were the path met the fence their was a gate broken off it hinges and thrown off to the side twisted and broken. It looked like something had wanted in or out real bad. Once in side the fenced in area we found that most of the jungle had been cleared away and in its place were thousand and thousands of tombs crypts and head stones. Many were damaged,most looked very very old. What few trees were left standing were dead or very sickly looking. It was as if all the death was slowly being sucked up by the trees.

As we began to make our way through the many graves we had to stop more and more to check the map. We twisted and turned deeper and deeper into the grave yard. The atmosphere around us became creepier and creepier until it felt like the spirits of the dead were at any moment going to spring out and use some sort of hoodoo on you. It was so strong that before long I begin fearing for my life but I tired to stay brave for the men with me. A long time passed and nothing happened until as we rounded a corner entering a small wooden lot. The tress were old looking and covered with vines. As we entered, it quickly became to dark to see. We were forced to stop to light torches. As the light flared from our torches into life, the man standing next to me was snatched up screaming into the branches of the trees. Only his torched remand. After a panicked moment of not knowing who or what had attacked us ,the mans screams died away.That's when his body crashed down through the tree branches to land beside us half eaten.

Scared wit less, we ran away from there regretting leaving our shipmate but fearing for our own lives much more. We ran on until we were out of breath and it felt safe enough to stop. Even tho the atmosphere around us was as dark and gloomy as ever we took a few moments to rest and try catch our wits. With no help of that happening, we consulted the map and continued on. We followed the directions and the path till we came to a spot were we had to go under ground into a dark tomb on the edge of a small lake. The lake was to large to walk round so the only option was to continue following the map. Neither of the other two men would go first so I took the lead. As we entered we began to find arrows painted on the wall corresponding to the path on the map, appearing to mark the way through the passages. We passed a room full of open coffin with their contents grimly spilling out on to the floor. A shadow sprang out of one of the open coffins and became a solid black mass. This shadow monster latched onto one of the men with me and dragged him kicking and screaming off into the dark of another room.

In the glare of our torches we could see nothing. A second later he fell silent. With no hope of saving him, me and the other surviving man ran through the dark corridors. Following the arrows until we escaped back into the night air and even then we moved away from there quickly. When I next checked the map I noticed that where the other two men had died a strange symbol had appeared. Marking the spot like each man's life had become a sacrifice to some unknown god .

It was very apparent at this point that it was to be every man for him self. Tho I did not wish ill will on the man with me, I knew that when it came down to it, I would leave him to his fate like we both had with the others. He probably thought the same thing of me, tho neither one of us said any of this. Their wasn't much to say at this point we just had to push on. It had gone dark long ago and our torches were almost burnt out. We were passing a fairly large tomb stone when with out any warning a huge leathery beast jumped out from behind it and attacked and mauled the other man to death. In a flash, the beast had the mans throat ripped out with his mouth of razor teeth. All I could do was scream and throw my dyeing torch at and run. I ran and I ran. I ran until my sides hurt and it felt like I was breathing fire.

When I finally got control of my self, I checked the map by what moon light there was and found myself to be just outside the center of the island and the ending of my quest. Soon I would find the horrid book and be off of that forsaken island. Here the trees grew more lively. They grew so closely together that they blocked out all the light. It became so dark that with out my torch, I had to slow my pace to a crawl. With my hands stretched out in front of me to ward of any dangers i stumbled my way through the dark. It was some of the most terrifying moments of my life and nothing happened. Just the anticipation of a attack, drove me mad. Soon I began to see a faint glimmer of light in front of me. I came out of the pitch black of the tree cover, into the lite of the night sky. I found my self in a clearing. It was shrouded on all sides by the thick bit of forest that I had just walked though, toped off wit a amazingly lite star filled sky.

In the center of the clearing, glimmering with almost it's own light, was a large evil looking sarcophagus. It appeared to be made out of a white stone. From this distance it was a massive thing. Close up, it would be over the hight of a man. At the end of it, farthest from me, was a large Colum that ended at a point. At the other end was a stone slab alter, about chest hight with something laying on top of it. When I went to examine the alter, I found the book. On the alter as well as the sarcophagus were engravings of stang symbols. Some were like those on the map. All looked freshly carved, even tho they probably had been there for a very long time.

The cursed book that I had been sent there to find was horrid. It made me sick to even look at it. The cover of the book appeared to be the skin of some ones face. I could only imagine that it was the same man who's skin went into making the map. The rest of the book looked to be covered in the rest of his skin. At that point I did not care what happened to me. I had the book and all I had to then was leave the island and this nightmare would be behind me. Once I picked up the book, every thing changed. I was instantly transported out of my body and into some dark and lonely place. I could feel some one near to me but I could not see who it was. When I called out no voice spoke back. What did happen, was suddenly before my eyes. My life began to be played back to me, as if it was a movie, projected onto some sort of screen. Beginning from the moment I touched the book, right back to the moment I was conceived. When that moment was reached the screen blinked out of existence. I then suddenly felt like I was being transported somewhere very quickly. I could feel air whooshing around me.

When it felt like I had stopped, a voice began to speak. Out of the darkness, it began to explain to me the mysteries of the universe. When it was done this, it began to answer any and all questions I ever had about life until my mind was satisfied. I must have been alone in the dark with that voice for a very long time. When it was all done I was quickly sent back to into my body. I found my self standing with the book cradled in my arms. When my vision focused back into the reality around me, I became aware that Smilt of all people, was standing in front of me pointing a pistol

With tears streaming down my face, I held the book out in front of me. Like it was some glorious object. “Smilt! May the wonder have mercy on your soul! How did you get here?”

He waved the gun at me. “That does not matter, what matters Shanks good buddy, is that book. I want you to hand it over to me.”

I hold up the book as if it was some holy relic. “Oh this thing? You wont believe what this thing has shown me Smilt!”

His voiced raised in anger and he cocked his pistol. “I know exactly what I know and I know you need to be handing me that book. Or I will put a bullet in your scull!”

“Ok, OK, the book is yours.” I drop the book to the ground and stepped back.

All I see next is the flash from Smilt's gun. Then their was a bright flash of pain in my chest and I began to have to struggle to catch my breath. I was quickly over come and I fell to my knees, then on to my back. When Smilt next came into my field of vision, he was framed by a background of billions of stars all slowly dimming out.

He leaned down close to me and said, “What ever the book may have shown you is a tiny faction of what it will teach me. But their could only be one and I am it.

I whispered back with what little breath I could muster. “You promised I was a free man when this job was done. You promised to set me free! You fat fuck!”

He placed his hand on my chest and said, “Oh but I did my friend, I did.”

Finished saying what he had to say, Smilt walked away. I could hear his boots crunch in the gravel until they faded off in into the distance. As the last of the stars also fade out of existence, I am not worried. I am calm and happy. Soon I will be in the arms of the woman from my dreams and then I shall be finely free.

LIBERATION

A priest, wounded and covered in blood
walks into a church. He limps his way up to the alter. Collapsing at
its base he looks up towards the ornate golden cross and in a harsh
whisper he began his confession to his god.

“Oh lord my father in heaven, I have
acted in horrible ways in your name and in the name of my own mortal
power”

As the words finished leaving his lips,
the church doors flew open and in out of a dark and stormy night
stepped a group of soldiers. One soldier stepped forward and
addressed the priest, barely keeping the anger in his voice under
control.

“Stay right where you are father.
Make a single move and it will be your last.”

In a sudden rage the soldier's face
twisted up in anger, making the scar that ran across the right side
of his face twist into a grotesque shape. The words that burst out of
him were filled with a primitive rage.

“ Father your time has come. Payment
for your sins! Do you hear me father? You my friend are a dead man!”

The soldier waved his hand for the rest
of the men to follow and began to move up the isle towards the
priest. The rest of the soldiers followed tightly behind. Each face a
mask of hatred and rage. Each set of eyes were dull and lifeless. As
they move past the first few rows of pews at the back of the church a
lone man stood up out of the shadows where he had been quietly,
waiting for that moment to happen. At the exact same time as he
stands up a large bolt of lighting flashes outside and thunder
rumbles the building. He draws two pistols from holsters under his
shoulders and with incredible speed begins to fire. Three of the
soldiers at the back of the group go down before the others have a
chance to swivel their guns towards the threat. Before they the have
a chance to open fire, the man has already ducked down and rolled
away. As a hail of bullets rips the spot where he just was to shreds,
he pops back up again and fires off a few more precisely placed
rounds. Two more soldiers drop dead, leaving only two men and the
leader left standing.

Dropping back down behind a pew, the
man from the shadows press a button on the screen of a device
strapped to his wrist. Out side, to the left of the church a large
explosion erupts. In the shock of the blast, the man from the shadows
pops back up and shoots the remaining soldiers. They fall to the
floor in a heap with the rest of the dead. In a blink of a eye, the
man from the shadows moves to the bodies of the soldiers. As he
reaches them, one of the soldiers springs up with a weapon. Before he
has it fully raised, the man from the shadows, with blazing speed
puts a bullet between his eyes and the soldier falls dead. Before he
leaves the mass of bodies he pauses a moment at the body of the
leader and fires a few rounds into the soldier's head, whispering
something to him self. With the soldiers taken care of, the man form
the shadows turns his attention to the priest. Walking up to the
priest he reaches out his hand.

“ Father I believe it will be safer
for you if you came with me.”

the man from the shadows helps the
priest to his feet and then helps him walk towards a door on the
right of the alter. The man from the shadows opens the door and the
priest finds him self staring in to bright sunshine. In a stammer the
priest jesters towards the light streaming out the door and asks

“ Am i dead and is that heaven.”

The man from the shadows speaks with a
voice that sounded far away, like he was remembering something long
ago in his past.

“No father were not going to heaven,
I don't think you should see that place, but that's not for me to
judge. I'm just taking you some place safe, your work is not done
yet. You have caused much suffering and must fix what you have done.”

The men walk through the door in to the
sunlight. The door shuts behind them leaving the curch quiet. the
only noise comes form the crackling blaze, started from the explosion
out side. On the other side of the door the priest find him self in a
sun lite hospital ward. The man from the shadows lays the priest down
on one of the beds and lays his hand on him.

“You father, are a evil man. The
death and pain you have caused in your quest for power, has unleashed
a great misery upon the world. People with more integrity then you,
have decide your going to fix your mistake and destroy the machine
you manipulated those scientists into building”

The priest struggled to protest but
the man from the shadows firmly pressed him back down into the bed.

“ Lie down and be still father, the
nurses will be here in a moment. Don't speak, for if I hear your
voice again I may kill you my self.”

With that the man walks away from the
priest towards the double doors at the other end of the ward. Just as
he reaches the doors, they open and two nurses walk into the room.
one pushing a trolley of medical supplies. The man stops and speaks
with them gesturing towards the priest for a moment before leaving.

When the nurses reach the priest, they
begin to tend to his wounds in silence. The priest tries to speak
with them and ask questions. With no reply to his questions , other
then the sharp prick of a needle in his arm as one of the nurses
injects him with something, the priest falls back agist the pillows
and pass out.

When he next awakens the priest finds
himself strapped in to a chair, unable to move even his head. As his
eyes adjusted to the light, he finds in his field of vision, a
darkened screen floating a few feet in front of him. The room around
him appeared to be a white operating room. With out any warning the
screen comes to life and starts to play recordings of aftermaths of
battles. down the right side of the screen, a stream of data scroll
scrolls form top to bottom displaying dates,places and names of the
dead and wounded. The images on the screen flicker from mothers
wailing and crying over the bodies of the dead children , to images
of burnt out and scared battled fields. Faces scream towards the
camera in endless agony. The voices of the dead and dying echo
through out the white sterile room. Until its like the priests mind
is being buffeted by waves of sound in a sea of pain. The priest
yells out loud into the empty room trying to make his voice herd over
the echoing screams.

“What is this? Why do you show me
these things?”

A voice that seemed to come form every
and nowhere,began to speak. The voice was loud and without a hint of
feeling. It sounded to the priest like it was inside his head as well
as outside.

“These images are of the violence
you have set loose on the world with your meddling. Did you not
consider the evil you would unleash building that machine. You
manipulated so many people to get it done and now you will now pay
for your sins.”

As the voice finished speaking a green
gas began to billow out from vents high up on the wall. In moments
the room was filled to the ceiling with the heavy green gas. The
priest tried to hold his breath for as long as he could but he was
soon over come by the hallucinogenic properties of the gas. Soon he
is screaming and struggling in his restraints, as seance of death and
torture endless plays out on the screen in front of him. After hours
of the endless scenes of violence and the intoxicating gas the priest
finely passes out. When he next woke up he found himself back in the
hospital ward, and the man from the shadows standing beside his bed.

“Its time we went now father”

“Yes I believe it is. I see what I
must do now and why it must be done. I just thank my lord almighty
for the chance to set it all right.”

The priest did not know exactly how
long he had spent in the hospital but he did now it was longer then a
few days. The drugs and reeducation had made time slippery in his
mind. After getting dressed the priest and the man from the shadows
left the hospital in a military armored vehicle. They traveled a long
while in silence before reaching the front lines of a battle raging
around a large white building in the center of a field. The building
had a large blue beam of light shooting out the top reaching up in to
the sky. The field around the building was a mass of dead bodies.
Their was small pockets of men still standing, entangled in hand to
hand combat. Leaving the safety of the armored vehicle the priest
takes a moment to shake the hand of the man form the shadows.

“I thank you stranger for this chance
at redemption”

“I did not do it for you father. I
answer to higher forces then you will ever know.”

Having nothing else to say to the man,
the priest begins to walk toward the white building. He walks slowly
as bullets fly around him leaving him unharmed. As he passes one of
the small groups of men fighting hand to hand, he stops for a moment
to lightly touch one of the men. As he touches him, a blue light
seems to jump from his hand into the soldier then form one solider to
the next till all the men near by stop fighting and begin to laugh
and huge each other. With a smile on his face the priest continues on
to the white building. As he reaches the building he walks by the men
that were manning large machine guns, the blue light that first
entered the soldier he had touched had spread to these men and now
they were hugging each other crying.

upon entering the building the priest
is is confronted by three heavily armed men, yelling at him to stand
still. The priest simple raises his hands and the men drop their
weapons and fall to their knees weeping. The priest walks by them and
up a winding stair case in the center of the room to the top of the
building where the beam of blue light was coming from. As he reaches
the top of the stair case, he enters into a lab with men in white
coats franticly running around form computer terminal to computer
terminal yelling things to each other. Around them warning lights and
sirens were blaring some sort of warning of impending disaster. In
the center of the room was a large mechanical device that emitted the
beam of blue light up throw the ceiling into the night sky. The
priest simply walks by the lab techs almost unnoticed. Only one of
the techs notice him and yelled, rushing towards him. Before the tech
could reach him, the priest had reached the device and lifted himself
up on it and stood inches form the blue beam. With out hesitation the
priest simply walked into the beam of light with his arms
outstretched. He spoke out loud a few last words before being
consumed by the light and the machine exploding.

“I see. I see”

THE BROTHERS GRIM

Hans and Franz Grim, two twin German brothers were once world famous chefs. They were the Rock stars of the restaurant industry. For a entire decade the were the face of fine dining. But as fame has a way of doing, it quickly slipped away from them in allegations of sexual harassment, embezzlement and whispers of kinky fetishes, till the brothers were shamed back to their fathers butcher shopfront. No one herd from them for years. Then one day the open sign appeared in the window of their little butcher shopfront. They opened the shop again selling their exotic Blot wurst sausages to a select clientele over the internet. for a few years all seemed well for the brothers . Then a spattering of missing local homeless people caught the eye of the law. After that all hell broke lose in the lives of the brothers Grim.

After the investigation in to the disappearances of the homeless men began the police followed the evidence back to a community homeless shelter where the missing men had been staying , the homeless shelter was quickly shown to be a front for a blood farm that fed a local blood bank. The blood bank had been using the homeless from shelter located next to it as livestock. The seven homeless men that went missing from the shelter disappeared after there daily appointment at the blood bank. After the blood bank was shut down the investigation took a bizarre twist when it was found that the blood bank had been selling its supply of fresh blood to the Grim brothers in a fiendish scheme to mass produce blood sausages made with human blood collected form the blood bank.

The two men, had been working out of their small shopfront located in a crowed shopping district only few moments away from the blood bank and the homeless shelter. They had been using the shop front as grotesque factory for making their specialty Blot wurst sausage. Using the blood collected from the blood bank they produced mass amounts of their popular sausage which then they sold all over the world. They learned of the recipe for the sausage from their father who had run the shop all his life . The father had kept the recipe secret till his death. On his death bed he gave his sons his privet book of recipes.

Their father's recipe for the traditional Blot wurst sausage called for beef's blood, onions, bacon, spices and breadcrumbs. The recipe told the cook to make sure the blood is fresh and the bacon cubes diced finely with a nice proportion of fat to lean. Not use too many breadcrumbs but if the blood starts to curdle stir in a teaspoon of wine vinegar. The brothers also started out using beef's blood but the demand for their product grew. That demanded they find a closer source of fresh blood because the slaughter house that they got the blood from was on the outskirts of town and by the time they got the blood back to the shop most of the supply was useless for the recipe.

Other then the sausages the brothers did small specialty orders in exotic meats during the brothers murder trial there was many allegations of secret online auctions for exotic meats of many endangered or rare animals and it was believed that the homeless men were butchered and sold for their meat on one of these secret online auctions. The brothers were arrested and put on trail for the murder of the seven homeless men. They became media sensations again but only this time they came to be known as the sick and demented Brothers Grim.

During the trial it came out that they had blackmailed the blood banks lab director with images of him engaged in illegal sex acts with minors. And that the three of them hatched up a scheme to supply the brothers with a constant flow of raw material. The man who ran the homeless shelter was scammed into believing that he was helping out society and earning the people under his care a bit of cash by having them all give blood daily. He was the one who originally set the police onto the missing homeless men when the last man went missing. When the police had searched the house of the brothers they found in the basement very large antique butchers blocks and a large assortment of cutlery that were believed to been used to butcher the homeless men.

A HOUSE IN THE NIGHT

There sits this house on a dark street where something evil was spawned and ran a mock among the living. It looks like any other quiet house in a quite neighborhood.
On the gate in the front fence this house there is a wood sign. Painted in big red letters on it is 225 Hillside. Why they named the street Hillside when there are no gosh darn hills around this storyteller will never know.
But what I do know is the story of this house and the events that happened here. They are dark and filled with much sadness. So sit back and let me tell you the story of the events and people surrounding this unremarkable looking house that has one remarkable history.
This house stands and probably will always stand as a monument to the emotional havoc and horrific pain that living beings can endure. While others lived out their full lives, a unlucky few had the misfortune to be sucked into this house's history, and were only able to live a short time on this earthly realm. There lives were ended short by shocking and horrid events. Some with such gory details that one must try not to speak of them as to ward off bad luck.
You wouldn't think that this empty old house. Keeping its own silent vigil on its corner of a darkened street. On one side of the house, a street ends at a metal barrier that separates the road from a bit of brush. There is a small creek running throw it that runs along the back fences and of all the house on the street. This bit of brush separates the houses on the block from a school yard.
Surrounded by other houses of similar size, the house does not much pop out of the back ground. Its only when you dig into its past, that you believe this place could be a place where horrific acts may have been done in magical rites to old gods. Sitting there in the dark with only a single street light to illuminate its yard, it looks like it would not be such a bad place to live. If you were to stand in front of that house on some quiet night it wouldn't appear to be that creepy at all. Sitting there in the quiet night just like any other family home gone to bed for the night, but its not a happy home. Its the birth place and home to a demon that caused much havoc to those it came in contact with.
It started out as just a lovely small farmhouse house on a nice size piece of land. No other houses around for a mile or so, just out side a small budding town. As the town prospered the farm died off and the land and the house it self was swallowed up by the town. This peaceful little farm was gobbled up leaving the house just one among many. As the town grew up and out, a large section of the farm land surrounding the house was bought by the local school board to build a new school. The rest of the land was sold to local developers that built up the neighborhoods around it, till there was nothing left but the house with a fair size backyard sitting on a corner with a dead end street on its one side.
The house it self never changed much. A few fresh coats of paint, a new porch, but no major renovations ever took place. It's haunted past and strange happenings were always quickly and quietly swept away. The reason for all this secrecy around the house and what happened there was because of one particular owner. He become a infamous town legend and the the house along with him. That owner who first brought forth a demon into this cursed place, begins this story of death and secrets.
His name was John J Jacob. Jacob's was arrested and put on trial for murder when he was found living with the remains of his family in his small house on the edge of town. To those few that had know him while he worked as a local farm hand, he appeared to be a quiet, but likeable man. Living with his young family, in the nice little house on the edge of town. Then one day he and his family just stopped showing up in town. The towns people began to wonder where they had gone. There were rumors of infidelity and strange happenings going on at the house, but that was drunken talk of the old timer in town. Told in tall tales at the local bar to earn a free beer. Once the police had found out what happened at the house, he was arrested and put on trial. He was later found guilty of the murder of his wife,son and daughter and sentenced to death.
During the trial, Jacob's legal claim was insanity, but he maintained he wasn't guilty. That it was the demon living in his house that had possessed him and murdered his wife, his teenage son and young daughter. It came out during the police investigation and his trial, that part of his family's remains were found placed on alters in separate rooms of the house. What was left of his wife's body was found in the root cellar in the basement. In the testimony Jacob gave at his trial he stated the demon had driving him mad and taken possession of him. Under the demons control he had placed his wife's body there for preservation. To the shock of those sitting in the court room, he also testified, that while he was possessed by the demon, it made him take out his wife rotting corpse, for the demon's sexual gratification, on his wedding anniversary. He said the demon made him defile his wife's corpse in a ritual violation. A police officer later testified that they found the wife's head on a alter in the master bedroom.
While the police were searching the house they found Jacob's daughters room left completely alone. With a thick layer of dust over every thing, it looked like the young girl who had lived in that room had just left it one morning and never came back. Until they found her body that is. Her body was found prepared carefully in some sort of mummification to preserve her. She was wrapped in strips of bedsheets and laid out on her bed. During the only interview John J Jacob ever gave to the press shortly before his trial, he was asked why his daughter's head had been found underneath the shed out back. He claimed he had a dream were she told him that she should stand guard for him and help keep the demon from escaping. He buried her head in a ritual manner so that the demon in his house would be kept locked away.
The boys bones were found in a heap on the lower bunk of a bed in another room. His scull was never found. Later found in diaries kept by a local priest, was the written account of what was said to the priest by Jacob before his execution. In it he claims that Jacobs told him that the demon and eaten his boy as away to get back at him for some act it had not liked. He also confessed that he had broken free from the demon's influence and was using his family's remains as talismans. In what he believed was a battle to keep the demon locked away in the house.
No one knows exactly how long Jacob lived in the house with the remains of his family but records show that he officially owned the house for 10 years. There is much speculation and debate about Jacob and his life before he and his family moved into the house. There is rumors that Jacob may even have had access to the house and land before his official ownership of the property. But that is only more stories . What is know of the early life of John J Jacob is hidden in old shadows.
He was believed to be born in Alaska. To a native woman of the night and a drunk of a father. Abandoned by both his parents at a young age it appears he was mostly raised by a church going grandmother. At the age of 18 he moves away and the next time he pops up, he is in Hell Michigan. In police reports of the time their was found record of a domestic dispute call. One J. Jacob twenty one years of age was arrested at a local sleazy hotel for beating a native woman. Spent one evening in jail and was set free the next day.
No other official early record of him is ever found but we know other facts from people who claim to knew him personally. It is though these people that we can know That from a young age Jacobs was interested in black magick and the occult. At the age of twenty five, he joins a close nitted occult group. He is well accepted among the group and gets deeply involved in their community. After spending a few years with the group, he has some sort falling out with them. The details of which they never divulge and he disappears again. He doesn't show up again until he shows up at the town court house one day, with a wife and two children, to get the name changed on the deed to the farm house. Who the wife and children were before meeting Jacob and moving into the house is one of those fact hidden in the shadows of time.
After working as a farm hand for a year or so, Jacob and his family stop showing up in town. No one ever heard about or from Jacob or his family again for along time, until one night a neighbor to the property called the fire department and reported a shed on fire. The fire department called in the police when a female's head was found buried underneath a burnt out shed. On investigation by the police they found Jacob barricaded in his house and would not come out or let the police in. when they finally got inside, they found the horrid and squalid state Jacob had been living in.
when the remains of his family were found he was arrested and put on trial for their murder . His trial lasted one week and was the most scandalous event to ever happen to the town. It became fodder for the local news papers. he was tired and found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Shortly after being found guilty, he was was put to death at the court house and was pronounced dead.
After the the trial was over and the scandal died down, the house was cleaned out and the property sat empty as the whispers about the house being hunted began to grow. It sat dormant for a long time before the land was sold off and the town swallowed it up. The house changes owners hands a few times, some owners having the misfortune of death entering their life while they lived in the house. The wife of one owner committed suicide in the attic, the brother of another owner shot him self in the back yard. And the neighborhood had always many missing pet reports.
Then one year a 911 call on Christmas eve sent the police to respond to a claim of two men fighting naked in the snow, in the back yard of the residence. When the police got there they found the house completely unoccupied and empty of any furniture. The only thing that was found was a old used mattress in the attic. In the back yard there was evidence of some sort of struggle. Large pools of blood were found, but no bodies were ever recovered. The owner of the house at the time was recorded as one George Bunny.
After that the house sat empty passing from one property company to another. It was shown to a few prospective buyers but no one ever made any real attempt to buy it. Then on one dark and rainy night, the kind of night your glad when your home warm and cozy with your loved ones while the wind and the rain howls outside. A local group of four urban explores deiced to do a ghost hunt at this now infamous haunted house the locals had dubbed The House of Sadness.
The group split into two. A husband and wife team go to explore the top floors of the house and two other men explore the bottom two. Finding the basement empty of any activity except a few odd reading on some of their equipment they decide to explore the large roughly dug cold cellar where they believed Jacob's wife's body had been found. While examining a very old shelving unit against one wall, these soon to be lost souls find a hidden passageway leading to a room with a very old looking well made out of large rocks in the center of the room. The rocks of the well are oddly painted in faded colors and symbols and is capped with a ancient piece of wood.
The first man is pulled into the well by something when while examining the strange markings on the lid in the gloom of his flashlight, the lid crumbles away to dust under his weight and something drags him down into the well. His fiend rushes to his aid and looks over the edge in to the well. To his astonished eyes, in the light coming form the flashlight at the bottom of the well. His friend appears to be dissolved away by what looks like water at the bottom of the well. It does not act like water tho, it acts like it was acid. It eats his flesh from his body as he thrashes wildly about. The man at the top of the well does not hear a single scream come from his friend as he dies in agony.
The man at the edge of the well stares down in slack jawed amazement, as the water appears to evaporates into a mist and rushes up at him as it try's to escape the well. Before he even has a chance to scream himself, a corrosive mist passes over him and eats away the flesh from his body. Leaving only a pile of bones with bits of of undigested flesh sticking to them. It passes out of the room and rushes up towards the attic where the other two urban explorers are checking out a closet at one end.
As soon as they had got up into the attic. They had started hearing a male voice and had begun to see shadows darting all about the place, the activity had led them to the closet at the back of the attic. The voice they herd, they believed to be the ghost of the son.
All the souls of Jacob's family and the others that had died in the house were still trapped in side. The spirits were hidden away by the demon. He kept his power over them by bullying them into submission. The wife's sprite he locked away in the mater bedroom. The son's he had trapped in the attic with the others souls he had collected. The daughter's spirit had grown to powerful for the demon to control and held domain over the yard and had been keeping the demon trapped inside the house.
When the demon pops up from the basement into the closet in the attic, it draws to it the souls of the son and others trapped in the attic. It devours them creating enough energy to swing open the closet door and manifest it self as a bunch of rotting arms. Each with a reaching hand that grabs the woman and pulls her kicking and screaming in to the closet. The door slams shut and it goes deathly quiet. In the silence left,the man begins to scream himself and he runs out of the attic. Only to get chased down the hall and into the master bedroom by the demon.
Consuming the soul of the wife trapped in the bedroom, the demon creates a whirlwind that swells up around the man. As the air around the man speeds up it picks up glass form a broken mirror on the floor. The demon rips the man to shreds with the glass and suck out his soul. Being stronger then he ever was before, the demon is able to over power the ghost of the young girl in the backyard and escape from the house. And so after that night of horrors the house goes silent once again.
After all the death he has caused at the house, the demon becomes strong enough to leave the house and roam around, but by morning it begins to weaken and goes in to hiding in a crumbling old mausoleum in the local graveyard. He pass his time floating around the city at night, Invading people's dreams until he finds those that are of weak mind and soul. He manipulates their dreams drawing them to the grave yard, where he marks them as his own.
By placing a bit of his essence in each like a little seed of evil he begins to control their thoughts and emotions. At first he does this for his own amusement and to test out his abilities. Then he begins to gather up all those poor soul that he has marked. Manipulating them into joining a cult dedicated to bringing him into a physical form. Even tho he is very strong, he is still not strong enough to to do more then influence peoples minds and move a few objects. The demon craves for pleasures of the flesh.
The demon set out to use his cult to preform a magical rite, so that he can take over the body of a new born child and be born into the world of the flesh. On the night of this rite he gathers his members in the basement of the town hall. He has them set up the new born on a alter. As one man beats a drum,the rest chant and dance around the child, to draw the demon into the child's body. While in the middle of this magical act, the demon's influence is weakened just enough to allow the love of the mother for her child to break her free of the demon's influence just long enough to allow her to take her mind back. She steals the baby off the alter before the demon has time to enter his body and try to escape. This cause the demon to go mad with anger. Using what power he has left over the cult he force them to kill the mother and child with their bare hands. But before she and her child are ripped apart by them, she is able to set the room on fire with a candle. The fire quickly spreads around the room and kills every one except one man.
The only one who doesn't die that night is a fat and balding man. He is over come by some sort of calm after being released from the demon's influence and a voice spoke to him and told him to trap the demon in a alter bottle.
He walks over to the alter, picks up a glass bottle that had been used to hold some sort of ceremonial fluid, dumps the liquid on the floor and begins to speak words no human mouth could form. It just bubbles forth from his mouth. As he speaks the words, he thrusts the bottle into a mist that had formed over the alter and the demon gets sucked into the bottle. The man escapes the burning building unharmed not even a scratch on him. You would think that alone was weird, even if you dint believe he escaped and runs away into the night with a now cursed bottle, with a demon trapped inside.
Bad lucks follows that fat man where ever he goes. cars begin to always have accidents around him and he begins to notice he keeps losing money when he goes to sleep at night. Owning the bottle becomes to much of a burden for him, so he quickly sells it off to a unsuspecting antiques dealer. The antiques dealer quickly becomes aware of its true value and enters it in a auction where he markets it as a haunted object. It was sold along with other items as morbid pieces of art to willing bidders.
The mans who buys the bottle and also becomes the last owner of the creepy old house of our story, is the great grandson of one of the original founders of the occult group that Jacob joined. He may even be related to the same family that originally built the farm house. This young man, who became successful at a age where most were dealing with raging hormones and acne,had become bored with the mundane pleasures of the life of a millionaire playboy and began to search for more harder to come by pleasures.
After having many odd adventures and interesting pleasures, he begins to follow in his family's tradition of occult study. After much study he is lead to the few serving members of the occult group his great grandfather had help found but once they find out who his family is they don't want anything to do with him. We next take note of him when personal tragedy falls on him when his father dies unexpectedly.

After his father's death he is intrusted with his great grandfather's personal journals. In a hand written letter inside the front cover of the journals, his father warns any reader not to fall into the same traps as those that came before him. In these journals he begins to find bits and pieces of the story of Jacob and his time with his great grand fathers group. He learns that on a trip abroad, Jacob finds a very old manuscript and brings it back to the group for study.
Jacob wanted to have the group start working with the book but the leaders of the group begin to see the hardships and misfortunes the words in that book would bring to them and decide that they don't want to go down that road. His great grandfather becomes jealous of Jacob and his book. After having him banished from the group, he steal the book from Jacob and goes into hiding with it. The old man try's some of the magic in the book and is almost destroyed by it so he hides the book in a library somewhere in the world.

The young man now becomes obsessed by finding an owning this book and spends a fortune trying to track it down. After many dead ends He finds it in the library of a small old church in England where it has been kept a secret in plain sight on a bookshelf for such long time that it passed out living memory of any one left at the church. He was only able to find that this was the place that held the book because hes great grandfather kept talking about the church in his journals that he visited often in his youth.
After finding the book and learning form it that it is about summoning demons, he begins to research into Jacob's life. That leads him to he house and once he looks into the house history, he realizes Jacob's must have used rituals out of the book to call forth a demon into the house that he could not control, and it ultimately killed his family and drove him mad.
He then buys the house but on finding no evidence of anything left in the house, he begins looking for odd things that might have happened in the town. That leads him to the night of the fire at the town hall and to the only survivor. The fat bald man. He learns from the fat man about how he came to own and then sell a demon trapped in a bottle.
Once again the man uses his wealth to track down what he wants this time its the bottle .He finds it in Africa, the owner gladly sells the cursed item to him. Bringing back the demon to the house along with the book , the young man is able to release the demon from it prison cell in exchange for the demon's servitude. The demon is then forced to do the young mans bidding. Bringing him more wealth and fame


On Halloween night the demons presence in the house awakens the ghost of Jacob's daughter in the back yard. Finding the demon is back the house, the ghost of the little girl hunts it down. She finds the demon asleep in the well. At the bottom of the well In a gathering of little glowing blue lights the ghost of the little girl traps the demon and destroys it.
The presence of the book then draws the little girl's ghost to it. Hovering around it like a moth to a flame, the ghost of the girl waits for the book's owner to return. He returns later that evening in a drunken stoop-er after a night on the town and pass out in his bed. The ghost of the little girl then kills the young man in his sleep. slitting his throat with a rusty nail that it had taken out of the back yard.
destroy the owner of the book then frees the little girls ghost to take ownership of it And she floats off into the night leaving the house empty never to be heard from again.

Till death do us part and then some

She was the love of my life and even in death I still loved her. That is why I reburied her. I had to do it. I had to put her back in her grave I had to give her some sort of peace, even if she did try to to kill me and probably would have eaten me to if she could. I could not just leave her there to rot away in the heat of the empty house.
Before I went to bed that night the reports had just started to come in from all over the country. Stories about violent attacks perpetrated by groups of unknown people. Bodies going missing from morgues. One story about a suspected gang of grave robbers digging up all the fresh graves in a small town. They were saying it was all isolated incidents and not to worry. So I turned off the TV and drunkenly stumbled my way to bed.
At first I thought I was having some wired dream about having sex with a fish. Cold wet lips on my member slowly sucking me in. A small cold hand cupping my balls just like my wife used to love to do while she sucked me off. It wasn't till the hand started to squeeze tighter and I felt nails dig in that I woke up with a gasp.
I woke up to find my recently dead wife lips warped around my engorged member and she looked like she was about to bite it off. She glanced up at me and appeared to smile. I screamed and kicked her in the forehead. she let go of my balls and my member slid out of her mouth with a wet popping sound. I scrambled out of the bed as she hissed at me. As she jumped off the bed and ran at me I freaked and threw the closest thing I could reach, at her. Which was the big bottle of her favorite perfume that she always kept on the bedside table. It hit her in the head and smashed on the floor. It stopped her for a moment and she stood there looking at me.
My beautiful wife was gone and some horrible monster had taken her place. The dress was the same one I buried her in. The wonderful yellow summer dress she loved to wear when we went out on Sunday drives. I remember the day I bought it for her. She had looked so happy as she twirled in front of the changing room mirror. Now it was all ripped and torn,covered in what looked like mud and blood. What was left of the front of the dress was torn open exposing her perfect breasts. I could see the horrific Y shaped incision stapled shut, starting just above those lovely perky breasts, from where they opened her up for the autopsy. Her skin was the color of a old bruise, a sickly yellow with tinges of dark purple. Her lovely blond hair was all matted with dirt and there was a large bloodless gash on the side of her forehead where the perfume bottle had hit her.
I could almost see tears in her dead black eyes, as she stared dumbfound at me. Almost pleading for me to help her. Then the scent of that perfume I used to love to smell on her while we kissed became a overpowering stench and the spell was broken. She screamed and rushed at me again. I made it to the bathroom and locked the door behind me, just as she crashed into it. She let out a inhuman scream and slammed into the door again. The door held but I could see that a few more slams like that and it would give way.
The only other way out of the bathroom was the window. It was way to small to wiggle out of and drop safely the 15 feet to the ground, before she broke down the door and dragged me back in. So i looked around feverishly for something to protect my self with. Anything would do. Anything at a all, but there was nothing, not a god dame thing. Nothing I could use to protect my self from the inhuman monster that once had been my wife.
She slammed against the door again and gave another one of those inhuman screams. She sounded so angry, like what I expected to hear from The wild banshee from the old ghost stories I heard as a child around the campfire, right before it dragged me away into the night. I could see sawdust on the floor from the screws in the door hinges were they were starting to pull out from the wall. I knew that those hinges were about to let go and that if she slammed into the door again like that, the door would give way and I would be killed and probably eaten by the woman I once loved. Who was now nothing more then a rotting corpse determined to make me what she had become.
Then in a flash it hit me. Next time she rushed the door I would open it and let her momentum carry her into the bathtub. I could then slam the glass shower door closed giving me just enough time to run away. I got down on on my hands and knees and peered through the crack under the door. I could just see the bottom of a foot only a few steps from the door, she moved back wards getting ready to make another run at the door. It was now or never. I jumped back up and grabbed the door handle. She gave another inhuman scream and ran at the door. Soon as I felt her slam in to the other side of the door I swung it open.
She looked surprised as she skidded past me and fell into the bathtub. I slammed the shower door shut and ran out of the bathroom. I ran out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen. Stopping to catch my breath for a second, I felt a cool breeze on my skin and realized I was still naked. All my clothes were upstairs with her and that shower door wasn't going to hold her long enough for me to get dressed. Just then i heard what sounded like the shower door being smashed and another one of those inhuman screams and I knew then she had gotten free and that I had to do something quick
So what was I going to do next. I could run out of the house to the neighbors next door and ask for help. Or run down the street naked, screaming bloody murder like the mad man I knew I had become. Someone would probably call the cops and then I would be rescued. They would probably shoot my wife like some rabid dog. Killing her again if bullets could even work on the undead. Or I could just drive. Drive and drive till I figured out what to do next.
Then I saw the large meat clever on the magnetic strip on the wall. And knew I had to be the one to put her down. Remembering all the zombie horror movie I watched when I was a kid, one good whack to the head with that meat cleaver and she would go back to being nothing more then a corpse. It had to be me. I couldn't let her go on being the inhuman monster she had become and I couldn't let some stranger mow her down in a hail of bullets like some mangy dog. I had to be the one to put her out of misery I knew she had to be in. I had to do it for the sake of my own sanity and the for the love we had shared. Taking a deep breath, I garbed the meat clever off the wall and still naked as a new born, I crept back up the stairs.
At the top of the stairs I heard another one of those inhuman screams and then something large crashed to the floor. I thought it probably had been the dresser. When she didn't come running out the door I peeked into the bedroom. I found her staring into the mirror transfixed with her own reflection. Staring at her self like some kitten noticing its reflection for the first time.
When I step into the door way she noticed me turned and ran at me. Just before she was able to grab me with her out stretched arms, I sunk the meat cleaver deep into the center of her forehead. The sound the meat clever made when it sliced into her skull reminded me of hitting a over ripe melon. She dropped like a sack of potatoes to the floor. Before I could think about what I was doing, I stepped on her chest and pulled the meat clever out of her head. The sound of it coming out made me gag and I turned my own head and puked into the hallway.
With the smell of the half digested dinner of a burger and fries I had last night in my noes, I sank to my knees in front of her body and wept. Wept for the love that I had lost and for the ungodly thing I had just done to the woman I had loved so much and with out realizing what I was doing I began to chop up her body. I was pretty sure she was going to stay dead this time, but I was already out of my mind with grief and anger that I just kept chopping till there was nothing more then a pile of limbs and ragged meat and her head staring up at me with her cold dead eyes. I could see her brain matter through the large gash in her head from where I had struck her with the meat cleaver. Cradling her head in my arms I wept some more, rocking back and forth. When I came back to reality, I realized what I was holding and I throw her head to the floor with revulsion and stood up. Looking at my self in the full length mirror,I didn't recognize my self at all. I still looked the same man but at the same time I didn't. There wasn't that happy go lucky guy I once new anymore. What was left was a hollow empty shell of man with congealed blood and gore sticking to him. In a state of numbness I cleaned the glass out of the tub and showered. After dressing quickly, I bagged all of my wife's body parts up in trash bags form the kitchen and carried her down to the front door.
Looking out the front door I noticed for the first time how wrong the world had gotten, since I went to bed the night before. There was blood all over the ground a car was stopped in the middle of the road its engine running and all its doors hung open. I could hear screams close by but could not tell where they were coming from. At the end of the street there was a car smashed into a pole in front the house on the corner. The house it self was going up in flames and as I watched there appeared a man on fire dragging another man by the hair kicking and screaming out of the front door. Going back inside I went to the basement got my shovel and headed back upstairs to go bury my wife for the second time.
Driving through the city was like driving through a war zone. There was death and destruction every where. People who looked to be alive running this way and that. Zombies chasing a few of the living and a few of them just stumbling around. Some dressed, some not and a swear I saw a mother eating her own baby with the umbilical cord still attached trailing between her legs.
I got to the grave yard around noon. It was a peaceful place, or had been at one time any way. Driving up as close as I could to the spot where I had buried my wife only a week before. I got out of the car and walked the rest of the way to her grave site. As I walked up with the shovel in hand to the lovely shaded spot me and her brother had picked out. I noticed that there was a depression in the soil in front of her tomb stone, where she must have pulled her self out. I stood there staring down at it, wondered how long she spent clawing through that dirt. It must have taken hours for her to blindly claw her way through it. It sent shivers down my spine. I brushed the thought away and began to re dig my wife's grave. The dirt was still pretty lose from when she was buried the fist time so it didn't take me long to dig down to her casket. The lid had been almost completely smashed to splinters. When I opened it there was what looked like fingernail marks on the inside of the lid from where she must have been scratching at it. I tried to block the image of her scratching away blindly in the dark and went back to my car to get my wife.
after reburying my wife I started t walk back to the car. A man came stumbling out from behind a tree dressed in nothing but a hospital gown. He had been chewing on what appeared to be a foot he still had clutched in his hand. He saw me, dropped the foot and came running at me. Before I could think about it I raised my shovel and slammed the flat edge into his scull just above his eyes nearly taking the top of his head clean off. He drop to the ground with the shovel sticking strait up. I pulled my shovel out and calmly walked back to my car I sat in my car smoking my first cigaret in years. I had kept a pack in the glove box just for a reminder of my old ways and as sort of a safety blanket. Tossing the cigaret butt out the window I drove off and never looked back