Chapter One: In The Flesh

A Chapter by Vastrane

His parents were never like this, before he left. There was something about their callous gaze, and blank expressions that filled him with guilt, and tipped him off that something wasn't right...

The warmth of the food slowly subsided as we sat in front of it. From across the table, both their eyes looked dully at me. I stared down at my food, feeling their neverending gaze. Glancing up and meeting their eyes with mine is already a mistake I had made several times, but the worry drew my sight, if only for a few brief seconds. Not a word had left their lips since I got back, and that’s why my eyes always darted back onto the plate; the guilt of what must’ve made them change so much. It’s always hard to say sorry, no matter how much you feel it. Their faces remained unchanged as I finally stood from the table, their gaze of callousness unbreaking. I stood in front of them, words wanting to exit my mouth, but none that I know of. In silence I walked away, the three plates remaining full in quantity, but barren of warmth.

I closed the door behind me, facing a room unfurnished with all but a bed. The walls were blank, and the carpet spotless. I had left everything here, but come back to nothing. I let myself collapse on the bed, staring at the ceiling, but looking at nothing. With nothing else to distract me, my mind ran rampant. Every one of my preconceived predictions coming to the precipice of my thoughts, tensing my shoulders and putting a sliver of ice in my chest.

I took in a deep breath, trying to loosen the grip my mind had around my body. As I pulled the air into my lungs, I caught a glimpse of the stench wafting in from outside my door. I shot up, looking around. Perhaps something hadn’t been cleaned out of the room I used to inhabit daily. A room so untouched could garner the decay necessary to produce such a sordid smell. I settled my eyes on the door. Unmistakably, that’s where it had been coming from. Naturally, my mind instantly jumped to all the worst reasons. With a small bit of logic, unconsumed with the anxiety flooding my body, I pushed past my all too rampant imagination, beginning to approach the door. I sucked in my breath as I reached the handle, holding it, for it would only get worse once the door was open.

With a twist of the handle, and a swing of the door, I once again locked eyes with my mother, our faces mere inches away. Her face remained unchanged, as the direction of her gaze. I would say the biggest difference from the face my eyes had grown accustomed to seeing would be her fingers, plunged into the flesh of her cheek. My body froze as my heart dropped into a pit of ice water, confronted with an image of my mother I simply could not understand. As her fingers pulled down, the tearing of her flesh adorned with her gushing blood, her expression twisted into a smile at last. Her eyes widened as she bared her teeth, the blood spraying onto my shocked face. I fell back, the door slamming against the cream colored walls. Looking at her with a gaping hole in her face, her entire skin began to sag off her skeletal form. Underneath this layer of flesh and blood seemed a being far from human, claws pushing through the flesh at the end of her fingers.

My mind had gotten lost somewhere in between that doorway, the fear finally pulling me from my fall into utter bewilderment, allowing my body to stumble to it’s feet. I backed further into the empty room. One door. One window. I had nowhere to go. Triggered by this creatures occupation of my mother’s body, the walls around it began to rot. As it stepped towards me, the carpet beneath its feet turned black. I backed up further, my heart pounding, my eyes stuck on the gaze that was once my mother’s. The skin hanging off it slumped onto the ground with every step it took, staining the black with streaks of red. The smile remained as the beast’s true ashen skeletal form became unburdened by flesh. The entryway became sullied with decay as it cornered me in my own room.

My eyes once again darted across every inch of my room, trying to find anything I skimmed over the first time. Bed, Door, Window. Out of the corner of my eye came the thing I so expected to be there, I gave it no thought. The two doors to the closet, unable to be detached from my otherwise stripped clean walls. I lurched forward at them, quickly pulling them open and getting inside. Unlike when it hid behind a human form, the creature moved faster than it’s form implied. It’s arm, aided by the claws fashioned at the end, burst through the frail wooden doors of the closet I had run into, spreading the rot. I slid open the other, slamming it against the demonic arm as I leapt out of my confinement. It did not hesitate to tear itself from my cheap trap, reorienting itself towards me. I dashed past it, and through the tainted doorway, into the openness of the living room. As I escaped the twisted thing my mother had become, I caught a glimpse of another in the corner of my eye. As a wave of fear once again permeated my body, I faced what I could only assume used to be my father, sharing the likeness of what crawled from the flesh of my other parent. I backed against the front door, as my mother turned the corner, both creatures smiling as they stared me in the eyes, and walked their mangled forms at me, knowing they had won. I desperately grabbed down at the handle, my hands soaked in the sweat my beating heart had induced. As their shadows cast over my terrified body, I sunk to my knees.

My life did not flash before my eyes. I did not see a light. All I saw was the destruction of all I had ever known approach me, in bodies created from something I wished I never knew. My body went numb, and for once, my mind laid bare, the smiles taunting the eyes I couldn’t force shut. The silence of my mind superseded the sound of the world.

Shattering my illusion of destruction, and the calm emptiness occupying every corner of my mind, an arm tore its way through the door behind me, gripping my face with it’s sharpened fingernails, and slamming my body against the door. The creature’s teeth remained bared, but their smiles disappeared, as they finally stopped their assured approach. A head, covered in long brown hair pulled itself with the pointed fingernails through the door my back rested upon. Little by little, the body of a girl crawled its way in front of the creatures. Petite and dirtied, she didn’t look much more inviting than the skeletal horrors that stood before me, but anything would pale in comparison to the fear they struck in my heart.

She lurched forward, her hands reaching the face of the skeletal monstrosity. From there, the sounds of cracking and gushing keyed me in on what she had done. Just as I had done, the beast fell to its knees, but it’s body soon followed. I couldn’t help but look down at the crushed skull and leaking brains that had been taunting me moments earlier, and raising me much before that. In a move forign to my eyes, the other began to run from the girl, but her fist plunged through it’s chest before it’s feet could carry it far. As the last monster fell to the ground, she turned her glare towards me. I couldn’t help but not notice, my weary eyes, and daunted soul still focused on the two things so adamant on killing me moments earlier. My breaths were short, and my heart beat fast, as my mind raced to process all that had happened to me. She scoffed.

“You should be a lot more damn afraid of me.” She said, in a voice not nearly as eerie as the look she seems to have chosen for herself.

“Well-” I managed to choke out, “I’ve kind of been through a lot, and-”

“And?” She asked demandingly.

“Well, you look a little like a cartoon witch.”

As soon as the words snuck past my lips, the regret had already set in. My mind was still stuck trying to understand the experience I had just, well, experienced. For this she grabbed my collar, dragging me up the wall and to my feet.

“You’re lucky I’m not the one here to kill you.”