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An Attempt at a Horror Short Story
Another day under my belt. Guess it’s time to get some rest.
School is full of jerks. The kid who sits in front of me spends too much time on his phone taking pictures of himself while he gives the finger to the camera. Who does anything that obnoxious?
And home was worse. My older sister, Hannah, is the most annoying person I’ve ever met. She has to whine to get whatever she wants. My parents have just given up on telling her “no”, she always wins. She could walk up to my mom and say “Hey, I need money to furnish my drug stash.” and Mom just say “Okay, here you go”.
I’m too tired to pass judgement right now, I’ll just go to bed.
I think I’m back in this reoccurring nightmare I’ve been having. I’ve had the same dream for the past few weeks, maybe about 2 months. It’s not constant, but more often than not it’s been coming back.
I’ve become pretty acquainted with this place. The stereotypical vision of Hell is the only way to describe how it looks. It isn’t necessarily hot, there’s not fire, but for some reason my everything I see is red. There are people screaming everywhere. Cries for help plague my ears and stay in my mind. They don’t fade; if I try to ignore them, the cries get louder.
Walking through here has gotten easier. I’m no longer bothered by the screams or the red. They don’t bother me, this is my nightly routine.
I pass the shack I see quite often in my passing through. Most of the time I stop in and there’s a man seeming to be at least sixty lying in his bed, covered in blood and something that smells like vomit. Sometimes as I start to walk out, he begins to cough as if he’s choking. That’s always been a little bit of a shock to me. I don’t know why I always stop in there, it always stands out as the most prevalent thing that frightens me in the whole dream, but I always wind up back in that shack, and that stays true today.
I walk in and, sure enough, there’s the man lying in his bed covered in blood and puke. Nothing unusual here, really, except what’s on the nightstand. Right next to the man, there is notebook. I’d assume it’s his and I’ve just never stayed in here long enough to notice it, but my name is on a letter covering the front. The letter should’ve been my first sign this dream was not part of any routine.
The letter read exactly like this:
Aiden-
Take this. Record everything you see. It will be reported back to your home for your measly family to see. This will give them an idea, but they will never have the full understanding of what is about to take place.
Welcome to your new, miserable and short life.
I took it, confused. I’ve learned over time that this dream gets a little less terrifying if I do as I’m told by the people. But who wrote this?
The journal was strange. Not in appearance, really, but in what it could do. I held it in my hands, and it folded into a small square, just small enough to fit perfectly in my pocket. Due to the thickness of the notebook, I don’t think that should be possible. It was normal in length, a notebook you use for notes in classes. But it was really thick, at least 500 pages. Figuring this was still a dream, I went with it and put the notebook in my pocket and walked for the door.
About ten feet from the opened door, I realize I didn’t hear the cough, so I turned around.
This is where everything got out of control.
The man lay there, not breathing. He’s never been really dead in the dream. I figure this was my opportunity to get a closer look at the dream, at him.
I walk over to his bed and just stare at him. His face is a very light shade of green. He looks like an addict who overdosed and was left to rot for several weeks. I put my hand on his head. He was freezing, like a corpse would be. It was absolutely impossible for this guy to be alive.
But he was.
As soon as I took my hand off of his head, his eyelids snapped open and he jumped out of his bed quicker than I imagined anyone could. A nanosecond later he’s got me by the neck and he’s squeezing. Hard.
“ALFRED WAS SLEEPING! ALFRED WAS TIRED! YOU DIE HERE!” He screamed as he spit in my face. He still had a green face and his hands still felt as if they had just been dumped in liquid nitrogen. At this point I was turning purple and the pain was all too real. He was still screaming at me, but I couldn’t understand him. My brain’s oxygen levels were so low I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. I felt he wasn’t bluffing when he said I would die here and I should just give in, but I found part of me that was still holding some courage. I grabbed into my pockets to look for something sharp. All I found was a very dull pencil. As hard as I could, I thrusted it into his eye. Immediately, he let go and screamed. He covered his face while blood ran out of the socket.
“YOU DIE! YOU WILL DIE! I FIND YOU!”
I was running as fast as I could, climbing every one of these hills that ran off the path I could to avoid this Alfred thing from finding me. Little did I know, Alfred was not the only thing after me.
I climbed to the top of the largest and most shaded hill I could. It was covered in trees covered in nothing but red leaves. The wood was also very red, just not as dark as the leaves. As soon as I reached the peak and tried to sit and watch my hunter struggle to find his prey, My feet sunk into the ground. I tried to lift my out, but they wouldn’t budge. As I kept trying, I saw a tarantula come from the distance. It was large from a distance but as soon as it got closer it kept increasing in size. The mouth and fangs it had were the size of my entire head.
Once the spider was right in front of me, my feet came loose. I tried to run, but the spider immediately shot a web at me that covered my whole body except my head and arms. I fell to the ground as the spider stood over me. Next to him was a man I didn’t see. The red shade did not cover him. He almost looked holy, in fact. He wore all white that was covered in numerous blood splotches.
“Hello, Aiden.” He said with a smile on his face.
“What do you want? What’s going on? Why haven’t I woken up yet?”
“Oh don’t worry about waking up anytime soon. We’ll be keeping you for a little while. In the meantime,” He says as he slowly points to the spider, “My friend here has to feed her little ones. You wouldn’t mind assisting, would you?”
Before I could even wonder what was going on, the spider sat down. Ten seconds later, it stood back up. Numerous eggs lay where she was. They spontaneously hatched and at that very second got up and ran towards me. I tried to wiggle out of the web, but it was too tight.
While I was still struggling to get out, the man stopped the laughing he started when I began my struggle to get out of the web.
“Say,” he asked, “Did you write anything in that journal I left for you”
“No!” I started, but he didn’t let me finish.
“Oh, that’s too bad. Here, let me help you.” He stuck out his hand and the journal flew out from inside the web in my pocket into his hand. He began writing as I continued to struggle.
“Alright, I’ll make sure your family gets this before they witness the same things you are.”
“N-” I couldn’t finish my frantic thoughts because at that moment the baby spiders began tearing away at my arm. The pain was unbearable. At least ten of them were biting down on my flesh. Once the muscle was gone, they began to spit on what was left. The burn was so terrible, I blacked out.
However, there was a plus side. Whatever they were spitting burned through the web. Once I saw the opportunity, I got out and ran. My arm was not gushing blood as I thought it would. In fact, the wound that was my arm had a thick scab over it. I didn’t dare touch it; every time one of those trees brushed it, it hurt more than anything I’d ever felt in my life, so I wasn’t going to prod it any more than it already was being prodded.
I ran on the path road that was laid out, that seemed like the safest method of transportation at the moment. Eventually, I found a house. This was completely different from Alfred’s shack, this was a full house. In fact, as I got closer, I realized this was my house. Could this mean an end to this torture? Could I wake up soon?
I ran into the house. Exactly as I remembered it. The red tint was nonexistent in here, just the house as I’ve always known it.
“Mom! Dad! Hannah!” I yelled, running around.
No answer.
I tried again, looking in all the rooms downstairs. Still no answer, so I went upstairs.
My room was on the left and the bathroom was on the right. There was a closet in front of me. I ran into the bathroom first.
It looked normal. Everything was as I remember it, but the curtain was closed and the bath was still running even though water was pouring on the floor. It took me a minute to notice a tint of red in the water. On the ground, but, nevertheless, I opened the curtain.
Lying at the bottom of the tub was my mom. It seemed she was stabbed at least 10 times in the chest and then drowned. I shrieked and then threw up all over myself. I had to get out, but I needed to find Dad and Hannah, so I kept checking upstairs.
I checked my room next. As soon as I walked in, there was Dad, head spread all over the room as if he was shot in the mouth with a shotgun. Another scream began to escape my mouth until I heard Hannah’s voice.
She was screaming my name, and she was nearby.
“AIDEN!” I heard, “AIDEN PLEASE! PLEASE, BEFORE THEY COME BACK!”
I ran to the hall. The screams continued, and it sounded as if they were coming from the closet.
I opened the door, and instantly hurled again due to the odor that had built up and was escaping into my nose. Hannah was there alright, on everyone of the shelves. My closet had two shelves. On the top were Hannah’s legs and arms. In the middle, right at eye level, was her severed head, staring straight at my face. A tape recorder was lodged in her mouth, playing her screams. Under the shelves was the rest of her. She must have been there for months, the smell was so bad.
I closed the closet door frantically, I couldn’t stand the smell. As soon as the door closed, my house started flickering. It was completely visible outside for a few brief seconds. Soon, the whole house vanished from under my feet. I dropped to the ground, which was now just dirt. I landed straight on my back. It hurt, but not as much as some of the other things I’d witnessed today.
I lay there; not knowing what was going on and what I witnessed in that house made me feel hopeless.
I sat up and looked behind me. The next thing I knew there was Alfred, running at me with an ax.
Aiden’s mother went to wake up her son. She knew he was having some troubles recently, she knew he was pretty upset over a lot of things, but she was very proud of him. He never really caused a problem. He was a very good kid.
That’s why she was so surprised when she didn’t find him in his room that morning.
She didn’t expect her son to ever run away. It didn’t seem like him. He always loved his mother.
She ran downstairs and got Aiden’s father.
“I’m telling you, I checked everywhere,” She said, “He’s not here.” She said, trying to keep herself together.
So they both went back upstairs to check his room again. While looking for clues, she saw a notebook. A note saying Read Me was on the front. When they opened the book, the first page had a note on it written in handwriting neither recognized.
To The Parents-
Your son is no longer in existence. He’s not even with us anymore. I know this is confusing, but do not worry, You shall soon understand.
See you soon.
The police were called. No one understood what was happening.
They learned that night.
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An attempt to push the boundaries I find in the Horror Genre. I added specifically what I find most fascinating about Horror movies, stories, novels, etc. I'm not sure this will get published due to its graphic nature, but it's the first work of fiction I'm proud of writing.