The Sneeze

Why do we say "bless you" when someone sneezes? To stop the devil from taking over your body

It had been five minutes since he’d sneezed and now white sludge spewed out of his mouth. He rocked his head back on the blue patterned head-rest, and no one even noticed. The fresh faced teen girls giggled as they found the latest hysterical video on Facebook. The college student, with his Beats headset on, looked blankly out the window. The old women chattered like best friends but not one eye was on the man with blood trickling from his eyes. The thing that caught everyone’s attention though was when his nose, red raw, burst into flames. A dark spout of fire flowed out each nostril. Even though all eyes were now on him, no one said a word. Twenty pairs of eyes watching the man and the bus was as silent as a crypt. But only for a moment. The man’s eyes clouded over, turned black and he spoke in a voice like fingernails scraping on a chalkboard.

“I am Damballa!” The high school girls giggled and one of them brought up the camera on her ruby red iPhone. “How dare you!” he said rising out of his seat. From where he was sat maggots crawled out of the fabric. “You filthy b***h, you should kneel before me”. The girls giggled again; they should have stayed silent.

He raised a clawed hand to the girl and dug the newly formed talons into her face. She screamed but could not move. It was now that people started to look round nervously. A few inches in, and then he jerked his hand left ripping her face with four deep and bloody tears. People screamed and started to scramble for the doors. The dead girl slumped to the ground still with the phone in her grasp. They frantically tugged at the doors. But they would not open. Then the whole world changed. Outside the window the street began to fall away. Blood rained from the sky and a charcoal-grey fog swallowed the bus like a snake devouring its prey.

********

The detective, lighting a cigarette, stepped out of his black MGB Roadster and calmly walked into the hustle of news reporters, cameras and photographers. The police strived to keep the cameras away from the wreckage that used to be the 959 local bus. Sighing with despair, he knew that all of them wanted to capture the moment when they would open the doors for the first time and catch a glimpse of what was inside. A clipboard was handed to him and he looked over it tiresomely. He had tackled hundreds of other cases and this one would be no different. He stopped at the unopened doors and stood on his cigarette, as if leaving his mark on the scene. Pushing back his long brown coat, he put his hands in his trouser pockets and signalled to the operator. The doors opened. The sickly-sweet stench of death rolled out of the bus engulfing the detective and making him gag. When he stepped into the wreck, his boots squelched on a sticky layer of what could have been strawberry jam, but he knew better. When he looked around, the horror met his eyes.

Scraps of flesh and slivers of skin littered the scene and a thin coating of dry blood covered the windows throwing the bus into a deep crimson colour. A half eaten arm clutching a ruby coloured phone lay on the floor next to a walking stick, it lay snapped in half and covered in an amber ooze. But the thing that made the detective gasp was a man. In all this carnage, one man sat untouched and clean. He wore a black suit with a clean white shirt underneath.

Author's Note

This is my first piece of writing for my Creative Writing course I have just started

Reviews

[Briana Noël Manzan..]

Great imagery; interesting concept.
I'll definitely make sure I say "bless you" to anyone who sneezes in my vicinity from now on!

[Donald Meikle]

Great start. gather momentum please