The Silent Man

A Story by Aixel Syd

The man is silent.

He could feel a dull, throbbing sort of aching pain in his shoulder, as though the area of skin and blood would soon form a large bruise. Of course, the first thing he should have noticed when he awoke should probably have been the fact that his arms and legs had been restrained to a table, restricting his ability to move. Or maybe, as he was drifting slowly to, he should have taken the time to allow the smell of dried vomit and urine to seep into his nostrils. Or he could even have simply mustered up the energy to open his eyes and allow them to settle on the figure that stood directly in front of him. Though taking note of the small injury he had sustained on his shoulder was probably enough for now.

But as he stopped drifting to and from reality, his dreamy mind losing control and his real mind gradually gaining the realization that something was not right, consciousness was forcing him to stay with it. Possibly, it was trying to him, trying to scream at him, anything it could do to let him know that something was amiss. And it wasn't just leaving his underwear on the floor again.

And before his mind could completely come to, when the clutches of sleep still numbed his body and attempted to hold him and cradle him back to unconsciousness, which the man didn't even realize how much he wanted, just how much he needed yet, the figure spoke.

Opening his slimy mouth, probably just crawling with all sorts of disgusting filth that must have been sitting in there for months and months at a time, he spoke. With that breath which reeked of utter decay and, oddly enough, death, he spoke. Oh, how the man would have wished that the other had just kept his mouth shut so that he could sleep, so that he could avoid the pain that he was about to experience. Alas, he knew not of any of it.

"Awake, my dear?" the voice was neither male nor female. The man's eyes, however, shot open regardless. And he found himself staring right into the face of some ambiguously-sexed (he should've thought "androgynous") thing. Didn't know what else to call it but a thing. And he completely ignored the question which it had posed to him, not even sure of what he had heard it say in the first place. It all sounded like mindless gibberish to him, and, in all honesty, he was just more surprised that there was even someone standing in front of him in the first place.

Though he didn't even know if it could be considered a "someone". It just looked so inhuman and so disgusting and so awful that he couldn't even bear to lay his eyes upon it any longer. Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting. But he was far, far too frightened to even attempt to look away. He couldn't bring himself to.

"Oh, good, so you're ready," the thing smiled as it hissed out the words that flowed like rancid butter of its tongue, as it reached for something on the table beside it. The man could only guess at what it was. But he didn't even want to know what it was. Oh, how did he even get himself into this mess? All he could recall was stepping out of the bar last night and suddenly everything went black as he finished saying "goodbye" to his friends. He wasn't expecting this to happen. He didn't want it. He didn't want it. He didn't want it. He didn't like this. And through all this frustration and suspense and fear, he found that the tears ran down his cheeks so very easily, glistening them up with salty-sweetness.

"You're crying already? How cute," its voice drifted off of its tongue like diarrhea drifts out of someone's a*s. And the man could see what it was that it held. A hacksaw. Holy s**t, it was a f*****g hacksaw. He was going to die. He was going to die. He was going to die. No, no, no. He didn't want to go; he had so much left to live for. F**k, why did he have to go that one night? And why did he have to leave alone? Why couldn't he have just gone with one of his friends already? Please, please, please, let this all just be some dream.

Please let it just be a dream.

But as the cold metal of the blade touched his bare skin, digging its way in, ripping his flesh completely apart, and causing such excruciating, unbearable, mind-numbing pain that he couldn't take it anymore, he knew that this wasn't a dream.

As he thrashed about, fighting his metal restraints as best as he could, making some awful sounds as he twisted some of his bones from the struggling and continue to smack himself down hard against the table, escape still just a distant, unreachable star for him, he knew that this wasn't a dream.

As the thing continued to speak to him, sending words of praise and thanks and love into his fragile, sensitive ears, still filled with the sound of his own pain, his own disgusting pain, and this thing was just throwing him harder into the ground, each time he didn't give a proper response, it hacked more slowly, allowing the pain to settle, settle, settle, and scrape against his bone, making a horrible awful sound, he knew that this wasn't a dream.

As consciousness slowly drifted from him, sending him spiraling into darkness, he knew that this wasn't a dream.

It was nothing short of a terrible nightmare.