I had awoken from my quiet slumber with
a blunt thud to the floor. My face had found
an unfriendly acquaintance with the cold, hard,
wooden floor.
Something had pushed me off my soggy armchair.
I quickly sprung to my muddy feet and began running, for within the time frame of roughly three seconds after I made my wayward journey to the floor, a blood-curdling phantom scream traveled through my ears and bolted off around a corridor and into the darkness that is the hallway leading to my private chamber.
It was at the foot of this hallway where I stopped to compose myself and survey my surroundings as I noticed that I was not where I thought I was. Not where I remember laying myself to rest anyway -no I don't mean on the floor as opposed to the armchair, you dolt- It was my home, sure enough, but ... warped somehow. Like in a dream. This was no dream, however, as the pain to my face from hitting the floor made clear to me. All was a dark, monochromatic cobalt-blue under the moonlit sky shining through the tall narrow windows adorning the walls.
I clutched my bandaged hand and looked to the floor. I heard quiet cackling in my right ear as blood-red footprints began to form. The laughter seemed to move along with the prints as if teasing me to follow it. I hesitated for a moment in fear, but felt compelled to ensue.
Slowly, slowly ...
one by one the prints traveled ... pit ... pat ...
pit ... pat ...
And nothing.
They had turned towards a wall and stopped. My bandaged hand began to feel numb. As I attempted to shake life into it, a soft and low pitched hissing emerged from the wall and coalesced into a guttaral growling.
Silence.
The footsteps began again only going vertically up the wall it had just stopped at. I watched in confusion and terror as it went up and I began to hear moaning and the faint sound of tearing flesh. The moaning, interlaced with more periodic growling, got louder and louder. My injured arm's muscles and bones tightened slowly. All the faces of those I had wronged in my lifetime flashed in front of me and the images shattered away like glass as quickly as they came ...
Mr. Wellings, the Montreaux family ...
Sarah ...
all of them.
Tightening ... tighter ... TIGHTER.
My fingers violently twitched about as I could feel my wrist bones starting to grind. I couldn't just feel it. I could hear it. My wrist slowly rotated counter-clockwise. Further and further.
Suddenly and without warning, a hand reached through the wall and grabbed me by the chest and pulled me in.
And nothing.
Nothing at all. No sound. No light. Nothing. Just absolute darkness and the stinging pressure of where the hand grabbed me. But wait ... I could hear something. Once again, a very quiet noise, but a noise nonetheless: breathing. Maybe more of a wheezing ... directly behind me.
I slowly turned around and yelled in horror. There it was in a beam of etherreal light.