"Whispers in the Darkness"
a short story
Gary Baker, March 2013
(part 3 of 3)
The
screen flicked on. A dark, scratchy scene glazed in apple green.
A
lone bed along the back wall hung by steel chains and ceiling bolts,
hoisting a decaying mother and fetus for all to see.
A
smashed lamp beside the bed lay like a fallen pillar with it's
tungsten wire dangling in just the right position to create constant
sparks. Each spray of light gave truth to the insanity that was the
floor coloration.
Bloodstains
coated the floor like an intricate abstract painting.
Quietly
the camera turned to the blonde reporter back on her chair, her eyes
seeping with disbelief, horror, and grim self loathing. Her hair had
turned darker over time, mostly grease and bodily oils combing
through and adding tones through her life-sentence.
She
shuddered violently. Her body had become an earthquake more
terrifying than anything plate tectonics could muster alone. Her
teeth grit fiercely, she forced her eyes open to stare wicked daggers
into the lens with all that she had in her. "That
man." Anger consumed her features and her hands
clenched until her nails began to open passageways for blood to flow.
"Last night he attacked me - another human being
forced me to... to... to-"
Unable
to hold it back any longer, she threw herself onto the counter and
burst into heavy gasps and tears. Her whole world had just broken
down around her and left her to tell the tale as her only way of
coping.
"What
have I done to deserve this?" She convulsed as more fits of
absolute degradation passed through. "What has any of us done to
deserve this?"
She
lifted her head just enough to look longingly at the still-sparkling
lamp, where long orange-peels of glass lay where they had landed not
long ago.
"Every
day those shards become more appealing than the alternative,"
the reporter groaned. Her eyes twitched and she drug her arm across
her lips to wipe away dripping mucus.
Then
she looked to the camera, staring into the lens as though into the
eyes of someone viewing it however far away. Her voice barely
registered on the audible scale, "but there is no god... there
cannot be."
With
a soft scratch, the scene suddenly snapped to darkness.
----
The
screen flicked on. A dark, scratchy scene glazed in apple green.
Along
the back wall hung a prison-like bed where a woman's carcass slowly
melded with the sheets, the flesh hanging from her bones like
gruesome left-over party decorations. What skin was left had a
colorless-green quality to it, her ever-open eyes leaning forward as
if to soon drop from their sockets and lay with the thinning lump of
flesh in her bony hands.
The
camera turned as a sharp gasp came from the wall nearest the door. As
the ghostly blonde woman came into view, several forms in the
distance could also be seen staring toward the sound.
Someone
shrill gasped again, this time followed by a grunt and sounds of a
struggle. "Stop!" Came a woman’s voice, more struggling,
and finally a harsh slap that brought out utter silence.
The
reporter covered her eyes with one hand and turned the camera toward
the noise of more shuffling, where the recording light illuminated
the brute with the scar forcing himself on a now-unconscious brunette
who lay face down beneath him.
It
was visceral, obnoxious, and unending.
By
the time the woman was coming to again, the brute already had her
more than pinned. She could only protest as he kept on.
Her
tears gave new meaning to the darkness around them all.
There
would never be hope for them again.
Already
facing the camera to avoid the victim's pleaful gaze, the reporter
clamped her teeth together and shut herself off from what still went
on behind her, what still played on in the eerie background beyond
her left shoulder.
"I
cannot go on like this," the reporter told the camera. "I
just can't do it."
She
looked over her right shoulder to the shards of glass in the
flickering electricity.
It
took serious concentration and effort to pull herself back to the
camera where she winced and lifted her arm above lens again.
With
a soft scratch, the scene suddenly snapped to darkness.
----
The
screen flicked on. A dark, scratchy scene glazed in apple green.
Along
the back wall and beside the flickering remains of a still-powered
lamp, hung a bed with the sheets nearly black in the green overtones.
The full-sized carcass of an adult woman had been shoved aside and to
the sides, creating a loathsome throne where the man with the
rake-like scar sat hunched over, gnawing on the bone of another of
his own kind.
He
just sat there, tearing oozing flesh from blood-stained bone without
any sense of humanity left in him. He had become an animal by any
definition possible.
The
camera kept focus on him, even as the reporter's raspy voice trailed
in from the side. "No one can move," she began,
motionlessly indicating the dwindled number of other people still
huddling against the walls, "he senses our fear... but it
doesn't make sense."
Something
shook in her voice, a need for an end as bright as the flashes from
the humming of the live wires. "And the shards," the broken
glass of the light bulb still lay beside the bed, beneath and around
the buzzing wire, looking like pale peelings of an oversize orange,
"they're too close to him...."
As
she trailed off, a man just barely in view on the left side of the
screen shifted slowly and almost yelped when the man with the scar
grunted. As the lesser man eased his eyes out of the locked stare
that the brute had him in, his would-be attacker glared and wrapped a
hand around his extended self.
Again
the man with the scar lost himself to the darkness of animistic
instinct as he began stroking himself faster and faster. His eyes
never left the lesser man who cowered in the corner.
With
a soft scratch, the scene suddenly snapped to darkness.
----
The
screen flicked on. A dark, scratchy scene glazed in apple green.
Along
the back wall hung a slim bed furnished by no more than blood-stained
sheets and the displaced corpse of a woman in her late twenties. The
sheets had been pushed back, along with the limbs of the deceased, to
create an oddly grim throne-like seat, currently unoccupied.
The
man with a scar like a rake wound paced the center of the room,
wielding a human arm like a club. Some pieces had been torn free,
letting the skin turn to peeling off where the deep crimson flesh
appeared black by the green overtone.
Now
and then the man paused to lift the arm to his face as he ripped
flesh from bone as though eating from a massive chicken leg. As he
ate, his eyes watched everything, flashing in the recording light and
flickering live-wire.
Slowly,
so terribly slowly, the camera turned from the bed and the brute,
until it faced a point of bleak oblivion and began to tilt toward the
floor.
There
under the plane of the desk, sat the reporter with wild eyes and
unkempt hair. It was obvious by the way he huddled herself against
the wall, in the shadows of the desk's side, and how she shot her
eyes to the cannibalistic brute that she thought herself hiding.
She
winced as he turned toward her, froze like a deer in headlights for
the several seconds that the man took to turn back to the bed and
pace away from her again. With his back turned, she regarded the
camera with a glimmer of hope, though dampened by something unseen.
"He killed another last night," she whispered almost
inaudibly.
He
turned back toward her at the end of his route, and began his pacing
again. It seemed to take several minutes for him to take those five
steps in her direction before he turned once more and began back for
the bed. "He tore their arm off and let them bleed to death."
She cringed as though remembering the horrific screams, "he's
been eating the flesh ever since."
In
an uncontrolled gesture, the blonde wiped her face with a stained
cloth before bringing it to her lips to try to lap up the moisture.
When nothing came from it, she tried again to no avail.
Finally
she gave up and watched the feral human-being turn away once more. "I
haven't eaten in days..." her eyes dropped to the cloth and she
hefted it as an example, "I can only drink what liquids I can
get my hands on... but even these moments have turned savage."
She
shuddered and convulsed as though crying, yet no tears fell from her
eyes. Aside from the motions and lines of stress evident on her face,
nothing could have told if she were in a fit of sorrow or extreme
joy.
But
it was more than obvious; nothing was joyous here.
The
reporter clenched her eyes tight as she seemed to ward away another
ghost. "It got so bad that last night - I think it was night - I
was forced to drink my own vomit."
She
found her eyes slowly turning to focus on the shards of glass beneath
and around the raw energy coursing from the still-powered broken
lamp. There her gaze lingered for a painfully long time. She was
leaning forward, her body ready to sprint past the brute for that
final release, when she caught herself and shook her head violently.
"No...
I can't do it." Her eyes sought the cynical friendship of the
camera lens, and with a quoted chant she told herself "I won't
do it."
With
a soft scratch, the scene suddenly snapped to darkness.
----
The
screen flicked on. A dark, scratchy scene glazed in apple green.
The
camera sat facing the reporter hiding in the corner between the desk
and the wall, with some extended floor laying within view.
She
cried silently to herself, rocking to and fro on her heels while
clutching her knees. All the while she chanted to herself "they're
coming, they're coming" to the point where her voice had gone
raw. The others nearby watched her with wary unease, clearly
unsettled by her lack of mental clarity.
Just
then the doors burst open and the shadows appeared in the light
again.
In
response, the inhabitants screamed and crawled into dark corners
furthest from their attackers. All but the man with the scar. Instead
he alone stood like a beast with his territory under siege, growling
much the same.
It
was then that the shadows fearlessly stepped in through the doors as
though nothing were unusual about the feral man and his temper. As he
charged with a deep battle cry the shadows didn't even seem to
notice.
It
was only when he raised his fists to the lead shadow that the others
reacted, splitting up to convene at the man mere inches from the lead
creature. They held him as he thrashed, as unphased as statues. These
were not beings to be crossed, it seemed, even by one with nothing so
much as one's own humanity to lose.
It
was a brutal trick. They almost appeared to have done this to the man
on purpose, just for the sake of what they were about to do.
Which
is when they fell on him, amoebic silhouette arms rising and falling
like energy signatures, his cries bursting from him like shotgun
fire. With each blow, the others could only watch as his blood was
flung high to splatter here and there on hard stone-like flooring.
Nothing
could stop them.
It
was even more clear that no one would even try.
Moments
later the bloodshed ended with one final wet smack from the shadow
closest to the feral human-being. His body lay more than unconscious
on the floor, bones jutted from his flesh like the hull of a broken
galleon, and in the green overtone a pool of murky black began to
consume the floor nearest the doorway.
One
shadow looked to another and some unspoken command was given just
before they all slipped back out of the room, dragging the new corpse
with blood still flowing into the cell like water from a spigot.
The
door slammed shut with startling clarity. A bang that almost depicted
the death that had just occurred.
As
soon as the silence returned, the blonde woman along with several
others whom still lived slinked across to the pool and began to lap
away like dogs. Only one human failed to follow this carnal instinct,
and instead sat with her back to the wall while blindly smearing her
own excrement across her calves.
At
long last the reporter made her way back to the camera and stopped
suddenly, looking to the camera with her hair and clothes newly dyed
by congealing blood. Shame took over her features, her brow dipping
in anguish and her eyes alight with clear self-annoyance.
She
snarled at the camera then, shouting into the darkness between her
and the lens "I had to!" She looked violently into the red
light above the recording lens, "Don't judge me!"
The
blonde cursed under her breath and turned to set her back firmly
against the wall beneath the counter. She sat there for a moment,
whispering to herself about indecencies and hypocrites, before
cursing once more as she reached her arm toward the camera.
With
a soft scratch, the scene suddenly snapped to darkness.
----
The
screen flicked on. A dark, scratchy scene glazed in apple green.
Near
the door hung the obvious shadow of fear over the large bloodstain
with two trail marks that coursed beneath the metal door itself. The
camera came to focus, facing once more the slate-gray desk alit by
the recording light with total darkness beyond.
With
a soft scratch, the camera turned and tilted up to face the blonde
woman looking confused and caught unaware.
"I
keep blacking out," she told her closest friend. She pulled her
shirt out just enough to let the light fall upon the blood stains and
traces of gore. "This isn't mine. My shirt, yes, but not my
blood."
Suddenly
the blonde scrubbed her face with her palms and fingernails as though
to try and erase all memory of the capture from her mind. When
nothing came of it aside from reddened eyes and an even more weary
look, she winced to the camera. "This last time I woke and
found... god, what's his name, um... well whatever it was, the man
with the nasty scar was gone when I came to."
She
heaved a sigh and sat down on the chair that had been found once
more. "What must have happened to him?" Leaning onto her
uplifted left palm, she winced in pain of her own doubt, "I wish
I could say he got away... but I know that isn't the case."
Turning
in her seat, she looked around the room with longing clearly written
across her face.
"There
are only five of us now..." back to the camera she didn't even
try to hide what it was they were all asking themselves "who
will be next?"
As
suddenly as if the door had broken open, the reporter shook her head
with enough force to cause some damage if she chose to keep it up.
When she ceased at last, a smile moved over her lips and she breathed
a shaky laugh, "no, no, nowhere to go!"
Her
wiry laugh pierced the darkness like a spotlight.
With
a soft scratch, the scene suddenly snapped to darkness.
----
The
screen flicked on. A dark, scratchy scene glazed in apple green. Near
the door hung an obvious shadow of fear over the large bloodstain
where two trail marks coursed beneath the metal door.
The
reporter fell heavily into the chair at the counter. Her messy blonde
hair intermingled with thickly-collected strands coated in congealed
blood like gory hairspray.
Her
eyes held no light of hope, bags of darkness beneath them seemed to
exude their own bags, and those bags subsequently seemed to have
their own. Her cheeks appeared to be more than capable of covering
her bones with plenty of room to spare; ridges revealed where
substance had once held secure to the muscle beneath and dark lines
indicated tiny veins that had dried up over time.
She
looked cryptically old, as though she'd slept in a tomb for the last
century.
The
reporter mumbled aloud as though talking to someone inches from her
lips then startled, noticing the camera, and lifted her chin to speak
up.
“They
came again!” She moaned, “they came in and took the others!”
She
broke down then, losing herself in waterworks that wouldn't come upon
their insistent summoning. “I'm the last. I'm the last. I'm the
last....”
She
clamped her eyes shut to ward off the silence of her torment, her
head shaking to and fro as though this alone could save her. After a
moment of nothing she slowed her shaking and hesitantly began to open
her eyes. This was it, now or never. If the others were still there
and that this had all become some disillusion of a fractured mind
then surely they would be in her cell after a fit like that.
The
reporter let her eyes be drawn by her nose and soon she was peering
this way and that with fearful worry plain on her face. Seeing
nothing around her but the desolate waste of her bloodied cell with
nothing but a carcass-strewn bed and the broken lamp to keep her
company she fell forward onto the counter again and became a constant
tremor of remorse.
“I
saw it all,” she wept, “I saw it all but couldn't do anything!”
The
reporter lifted her head to face the camera lens as a sudden sense of
clarity took over. “I'm losing my grip, I'm losing my own self!”
Before
she could change her mind she threw herself from the chair and let it
tumble into the bed frame behind her as she grabbed a long, curved
shard from the midst of the broken lamp. Instantly the shard was upon
her wrist, pressing into her skin already as though eager to see the
final end of a human life, eager to taste what it had been beckoning
for some time now.
At
the last moment, as a trickle of blood made its way down her palm
from where the reporter had gripped it too strongly, she lifted her
gaze to the camera in one final plea.
“God
help me.”
The
slice was quick. The glass drove into her flesh like a loosed hound
thirsty for blood, and her face contorted in horrific pain.
It
was unending. Her scream broke the barriers of silence around her
like a high-pitched gunshot, and she fell upon her spraying limb with
eyes turned back. She lay there moaning, calling out uncertainties
blemished by pooling slurs of turmoil, crouched onto her knees like a
fanatic in deep worshiping prayer for an eternity and a half.
Finally
her moans fizzled into breathless panting, and her panting into the
last gasps of a fish out of water. She fell to her side, then, pushed
by the last of her will and energy to allow herself one last glance
at her one friend through this all. Eyes set upon the camera lens as
though upon the very sanctified image of hope, she lay there in her
own expanding pool of blood before finally whispering one last
“goodbye”.
Then
her breathing slowed. Her eyes glazed over. Her free hand fell limp
to the cell floor with the echo of the splash that it made upon
colliding with the portal of gore.
Moments
passed and her eyes lost their color. Her skin began to fade white
while her shirt took it like a sponge, the darkest tones still
staining in the deep paint. Then her wrist stopped pulsing, no longer
pushing the occasional tidal spout of blood out and over her skin.
Nothing
moved. Her splayed hair became one with the grim portrait where
nothing but the molecules hanging in the pool had the indecency to
make light of the situation by shifting now and then. But even then
they too eventually stopped.
Her
blood slowly became a large rug of gelatinous red; no longer alive,
and no longer imprisoned.
The
reporter's eyes held to the camera lens like ropes. Even as they lost
their once-glorious blue tones, the blonde reporter seemed to stare
into the lens through death and beyond.
Then
a light struck the scene from the side, an arch of white that
glimmered on the surface of the red. The light grew larger and
larger, then, until a shadow could be seen to the far corner of the
view standing over the reporter's body demeaningly.
The
bipeddaled being stood at her feet in long, billowy robes of
silk-like fabrics, watching her as though waiting to see her rise
again. When nothing happened, the being turned to the camera
curiously and tilted it's head to the side.
It
paced over the pool of congealed blood to reach the counter where it
quickly knelt from it's indeterminable height to peer wonderingly
into the lens. It's face was hidden in the shadows of it's hood, but
the recording light shone upon gleaming black eyes like those of a
deep-sea predator, and skin wrinkled like the hide of a jaded
rhinoceros.
"Mānusēra
parīksā, nambara
37: byarthatā..."
the creature let out air in a heavy sigh while it reached a long
cloaked hand to the side of the lens, "ābāra."
With
a loud scratch, the scene suddenly snapped to darkness.
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