Posted by Thanatos on July 20, 2000 at 12:19:12:
Sorry for the absence. A short blast of pure horror this time, inspired by a particularly nasty...
Nightmare (c) Thanatos 2000
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In the darkened bedroom, she sleeps.
Her hair spills onto the pillow that cradles her beautiful face, and her head falls slightly sideways.
The moonlight illuminates her face; the chiseled features, the crown of beautiful teeth, the long hands that twitch gently on the cover.
In the corner of the room, a message light silently illuminates on the phone, and as if she has received it, a slight frown crosses her face.
Her eyes are closed, but beneath the eyelids, her eyes are moving. The corneas flick back and forth, as if seeking something that they cannot see.
She is dreaming.
What is she dreaming about? In the mists of the human mind, as it empties out its day-thoughts and purges itself, her mind wanders free in a dream of peace.
And into this gentle dream, like a poisonous gas rolling along the trenches nine decades ago, come the unbidden thoughts, the twin gods of fear and terror, and they invade her mind.
And the gentle dream vanishes, to be replaced by...
NIGHTMARE.
* * *
'Jeesus Christ!' she jerked awake in bed, her eyes snapping open in the darkness, her heart pounding. She rolled over to turn the light on, anything to banish the darkness for a moment, and she came to a dead stop.
Her arms were bound to the bed.
And her legs.
Suddenly, she was horribly awake, and the nightmare was forgotten as she found herself spreadeagled on her back on the bed, her arms and legs spread wide to each corner of the bed. She couldn't tell what she was bound with; it felt soft but unyielding, but the cover was still over her.
She became aware of another presence in the room, a deeper darkness in the shadows by the foot of the bed, and her blood ran cold.
She could hear his breathing (she knew it was a He, some sixth sense told her).
'Who's there!' she demanded, but her voice came out like a dry whisper in the darkness of the room.
There was a catch in the faint breathing, then she shrieked as the covers were flung back, and she was exposed. The moonlight flooded over her naked form, and she struggled, but she was held tightly by silk ropes, she could now see, that bound her at wrist and ankle.
In the roaring silence after her shriek, she could hear a series of soft clicking noises; each followed by a soft thump as small objects fell onto the floor.
Click, thump.
Click, thump.
He was emptying the magazine of her gun, that she kept hidden underneath the bed, and in that moment she knew that she was going to be raped, and her breathing was coming in short gasps of terror as she struggled against the silk ropes that held her down.
'Please,' she began, not knowing how to frame the words. Normally so calm and self-controlled, she always knew how she would handle this situation, but her voice quavered and shook as she blurted the words out into the darkness:
'You don't want to do this,' she gasped, 'I'm HIV positive. You'll get Aids from me.'
There wasn't even a catch in his breathing. There was a heavier thump as he dropped the empty gun onto the floor.
Something small dropped onto her stomach, rattling as it fell, and she screamed. She jerked in terror, and it fell off her body, onto the bed by her side. She craned her neck to see what it was, her pulse pounding.
It was a plastic bottle of aspirin, the only medication that she had in the house.
So he knew the Aids story was a lie, and now no more lies would work.
'Please don't hurt me,' she begged as his form came out of the shadows, 'I'll cooperate... please don't hurt me.'
There was a flurry of clothes falling to the ground, and she realized he was undressing. She bit her trembling lip, trying to imagine how it would be, hoping that it would be over quickly.
He emerged into the moonlight, but she couldn't see his face. She was surprised to see that his body was lean and well muscled. He had an erection; it pointed towards her like an eyeless alien that lusted after her blood, and he climbed onto the bed. She squeezed her eyes shut, and her whole body shook, tensing for the moment when she would feel his iron-hard flesh pressing at the dry entrance to her body.
But he moved higher up her body, and he knelt astride her, his penis brushing against her stomach.
She opened her eyes.
She saw his face, his staring eyes, his clenched teeth, and then the knife in his raised hand as he brought it down with a grunt, stabbing deep, deep into her flawless body.
She tried to double up; tried to protect herself as the knife plunged into her stomach, but she was helpless to stop the razor-sharp steel, and it went in up to the hilt.
It felt as if a car had driven into her.
Her lungs emptied in an explosive cry, and the pain hit her like a wave, and then the knife was coming down again, into her left breast this time, and then he went into a stabbing frenzy, and she tried to draw breath but couldn't, and her mouth gaped in a soundless scream. The knife plunged into her breasts, her stomach, her arms, her thighs, and she jerked convulsively against the bonds as he moved down her body, piercing her soft flesh with the cold steel of his blade. Somehow, she took in that his erection had become hard and urgent, almost throbbing as he stabbed her to death, and she knew she would not be spared.
There was a pause in the stabbing, and she drew enough breath to scream, a sobbing cry of despair that her life was being ended this way.
Oh, no, no, she saw him lift the knife again, and she was going to be stabbed in her vagina, and she shook her head from side to side, screaming in denial, as her legs were held wide apart by the bonds, and she was defenseless, and the blade hissed into her...
* * *
'Urghhhhh!' she snapped awake in bed, sitting bolt upright, and her hand flew reflexively to her crotch, and she shuddered as the phantom blow evaporated on the wings of nightmare. She drew her knees to her chest and rocked there, trying to comfort herself from the horror of the awful dream.
She felt nauseous.
She fumbled for the light, and it snapped on, and the nightmare was banished. She leaned over and felt under the edge of the bed, and her hand closed on the satisfying stainless steel of her gun, and she relaxed a little.
She was soaked in sweat, and she threw the covers off in disgust and padded into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She threw a bath mat on the floor in front of the cubicle and stepped in, and she let the hot water pummel her body and drive out the miasma of the dream.
She turned slowly in the shower cubicle, and the hot water sprayed over her skin and ran in shimmering ropes down her body.
Jesus, the water was hot. She fumbled for the temperature control, and turned it back a touch towards cold.
It fell off in her hand, and clattered onto the shower tray at her feet.
'Shit,' she muttered. The shower water was getting really hot now, and she bent down to pick up the metal handle, but the water scalded her back, and she stood up in pain. She made to step out of the cubicle, but the door was stuck.
She pushed it and pushed it but it wouldn't move.
Her skin was reddening now from the water, and the kicked at the cubicle door, which gave a bit but would not open. She grabbed the shower control with both hands and tried to turn it off, but to her horror it only served to increase the flow of water, and no matter which way she turned it, it only got worse.
'Owww!' she yelled, in frustration and pain, as the water got hotter and hotter, and steam rose from the cubicle in great waves, making it hard to see. Her skin was stinging now from the hot water, and she was beginning to panic. She tried to direct the showerhead to one side of the cubicle, but the metal was red hot when she touched it and she drew her burned hand back with a yelp.
'Nooooh!' she yelled in denial, 'No, no, NO!' as the water rose to boiling point, and it scalded her unprotected skin in savage red blotches.
Then the water issuing from the showerhead started to hiss, and turned to steam, and a jet of superheated vapor scorched down and filled the entire cubicle with searing, hissing pain. She screamed in agony. The pain was unbelievable, and she saw to her horror that her skin was coming off. It was peeling off her arms in long strips of white flesh, sliding off the flesh underneath, and the raw red flesh underneath burned like fire as the steam beat down on it. The smell of burning meat filled her nostrils, and the cubicle was completely dry now, not a drop of moisture to cool the skin, and she was shriveling inside it, it hurt to breathe, and then the skin of her back started to slide off in a great sheet...
* * *
She awoke, panting, and she was lying on a beach under a blazing sun.
She raised her head groggily and looked around, disoriented, then she realized that she had dozed off in the sun lounger, and the sun had moved round while she slept, and had been beating down on her. She sat up and took a deep breath.
A glass of Bacardi and coke fell off her sun lounger and spilled into the sand.
'You okay?' asked the hotel guest next to her, 'excuse me for asking, but you cried out in your sleep, you know.' He was stood over her, looking concerned.
'Sure. Just a, a nightmare,' she said, and she stood up unsteadily, and walked away. She had to get her head together. That would teach her to drink and sunbathe in this heat.
She found herself heading for the water and she hesitated, then walked through the gentle surf into the aquamarine water that beckoned.
She splashed into the warm water and dove into the gentle swell, and the clean water closed over her head and body, and washed away the memory of the nightmare. She swam underwater for several strokes, enjoying the rush of water past her body, the flicker of bright sunlight, the faint crash of surf on the beach.
She surfaced, and tried to stand up, but the bottom was way below her, and she went down briefly before surfacing again, treading water in slow, relaxed kicks.
The beach was far away.
The other swimmers were in the distance, by the shore.
She frowned as she tried to work out how she had got this far out with just a few strokes.
The people on the beach were waving at her, and several people were leaving the water, running, then turning round.
She turned around, expecting to see a boat or something behind her.
A dorsal fin was heading towards her.
It took her a moment to take in what was happening to her, and in that time the fin submerged. She carried on treading water in a kind of numb shock, almost wanting to believe that the whole thing had been in her imagination, that somehow the shark wasn't there.
Then something huge tore past her leg with a surge of water, and scraped her skin off in a stinging patch, and she knew the shark had swum past her, and she knew she was going to be attacked.
She spun instantly and swam frantically for the shore with the clumsy overarm, head-out-of-water stroke of the panicked, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. The people there were waving at her, urging her to hurry. Mothers held children close, or covered their eyes.
No, this isn't happening to me, she thought, but her breath was rasping in her throat now as she fought to reach the land. It just wasn't coming any closer.
Then there was a surge behind her, and a pain like nothing she had ever experienced before, and she was lifted bodily out of the water.
They were between the jaws of a huge shark, and the cold eye of a mindless killer gazed up at her as it rolled over and shifted its bite.
She screamed, and one of her legs tore out at the knee as the shark wrenched away. Blood sprayed into the water in red foam, and she put her hand down instinctively, and felt hot blood pouring into the water, and the ragged end of the joint of her femur. Scraps of flesh and springy strands of cartilage waved in the water, and the shock hit her like a wall.
She was struggling to stay afloat now; her legs wouldn't move, and her arms worked in uncoordinated jerks as she tried to stay afloat, tried to lift herself out of the water, anything, anything to save herself from the shark that was eating her alive.
She felt, rather than saw, the shark turn in the water and come back towards her at killing speed.
She felt the surge again, and she screamed, her last sound in the world of air, and the jaws closed round her middle, and she was dragged under in a cloud of blood, and through the churning water she could see the shark's eye staring at her as it fed. The membrane over the eye flicked once, incuriously, and the jaws shifted, and she could feel her ribs breaking, one by one, and her lungs were being crushed, and the air wheezed out of her chest as the shark dragged her down, down into the water.
Air streamed out from between her clenched teeth as it pulled her under, then it began shaking her from side to side in a feeding frenzy, and she could feel her joints breaking, feel the blood exploding inside her chest and abdomen as her internal organs ruptured. Then she was inside a red cloud of her own heart blood, and the water filled her throat, and the shark was feeding on her, tearing her apart, an arm falling away, and she felt her body sinking into its mouth, deeper and deeper as it started to gulp her down whole...
* * *
She awoke, and car horns blared round her as she skidded across the lanes of the freeway. Her blood ran cold as she swerved about for a moment behind a big truck, flinging the wheel from side to side, trying to control the skid.
The car steadied, and she slowed down to follow the truck. Her eyes were wide and terrified, and her lower jaw shook with fear. The pain of the shark's teeth in her chest was still vivid in her mind, and she glanced down at her chest to reassure herself that she was still whole.
Then the truck braked in front of her, and clouds of blue smoke belched from its tires, and her car went under the tail beam.
For a moment, everything went black and fuzzy, and then she was sitting in the driver's seat, pinned in by bent metal that pressed against her head and body.
She was alive but trapped; she couldn't move her legs.
Then the smell of gasoline filled her nostrils, and she felt a cold wetness spread across her lower body as fuel sputtered from a severed metal pipe over her clothes, soaking in. The smell was overpowering, rising to choke her, and she felt dizzy from the fumes.
The gas was soaking into her clothes all over now, and droplets of fuel sputtered over her upper body.
She could hear people round her, hear shoes scraping on the hot tarmac:
'Holy shit, what a mess.'
'There's someone trapped in there!'
'Get them out, there's gas leaking everywhere!'
'I can't get to them!'
'PUT THAT CIGARETTE OUT!'
WHUMP
She screamed.
The air around her body disappeared, and in the space of a few milliseconds, turned into a furnace of burning gasoline. She was trapped, unable to move, and she screamed her life out in an ear-splitting screech that the bystanders would never forget.
The flames went into her lungs, and she stiffened in an agony beyond words as the delicate mucous membranes scorched away, and...
* * *
She woke, sobbing, in bed, and her throat was sore from screaming. She rolled onto her side and vomited over the sheets from the pain of being burned alive.
The stomach acid burned the back of her throat, and she rolled off the bed and fell onto the floor, and blew scraps of vomit from her mouth and nose.
Birds were singing in the back yard, and she got up and drew the drapes aside. She just had to see the day again.
It was morning.
She sighed with relief, and started to cry again. The dreams had been awful. What the fuck had she eaten? Had someone spiked her drinks last night?
She lifted her head to the clear morning sky.
There were two suns in the sky, and the image moved slowly up her optic nerves to her brain for her mind to register, while behind them, her retinas were destroyed by the incredibly bright flash of light that had lit up the room.
A blast of gamma rays ripped through her body, churning the molecules of her body. She was aware of an electric thrill through her body, the sensation of nerve endings exploding, then a wave of pure heat hit her, and her eyes blew apart in showers of vitreous, and her hair ignited, and the skin was torn from her body in a moment, and there was a shadow on the wall behind her, a shadow of her shape in the world...
* * *
It was dark, and silent, and she was lying on her back, and it was blessedly cool here. Was she dead? Her mind couldn't function properly any more, and she lay there for many moments, staring into the cool darkness above her.
Then faint sounds filtered into her consciousness. Crying. People were crying, dimly, somewhere above her.
She tried to sit up, and banged her head against a low wooden ceiling just inches from her face, and she fell back again in surprise.
She tried to move, but she was in some kind of container, with very little room to either side. The walls were made of wood.
Made of wood.
She was in a coffin.
Something thudded onto the lid in front of her face, and skittered about on its polished external surface.
Then another. They were throwing soil into the grave, and she was inside the coffin, alive.
She was going to be buried alive.
At that point, reason finally left her, and she screamed like a mad thing, thrashing about inside the tiny space, feeling unable to breathe, her fingers scraping against the inside of the lid, tearing into the silk lining, trying to get out, but the sound of the falling soil was getting louder now, and the voices had gone now.
Then a huge mass of soil fell onto the coffin, shaking it, and she realized that they were using a digger to fill in the grave.
She beat on the lid with her bare hands, screaming in terror, begging for help, for anyone, to hear her, to come and save her.
But nobody came, and another mass of soil thudded into the grave.
She beat, screamed and kicked, until her knees and elbows were bleeding. The noises of the world were fading, and the sound of the falling soil was growing muffled, and the coffin, that had jerked slightly with every clod of soil, was imprisoned in a vice-like grip at the bottom of the grave, and tons of soil now held it in place.
It was utterly dark, and now the earth above her, right in front of her face, felt like it was pressing down, and the air inside the coffin was getting hot and scarce.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to make the dream end, but it wouldn't, and she felt horribly awake as her mind evaporated, and she struggled in a terrible frenzy, her legs and arms shuddering in uncontrollable spasms against the sides of the coffin, and she screamed, screamed, screamed at the top of her voice, unable to escape and barely able to move. But there was no death this time, no deadly blade penetrating her flesh, no hissing steam scalding her skin away, no hungry jaws eating her alive, no lungful of flame, no blast of fast neutrons.
Nothing, just the silence and the deep soil of the grave, and the worms that waited beyond the wooden walls.
She took a long time to die, and in that time she lost her mind, and words cannot describe what she went through, trapped inside the tiny enclosed space of the coffin, buried deep in the soil of the graveyard.
She passed out from lack of air after an hour or so, but she came round long enough to die from a burst artery in her brain as her terror rose to engulf her once more. Her body twitched and trembled for a few moments, then lay still.
* * *
In the silence of the grave, she lies.
Her hair spills onto the silk pillow that cradles her beautiful face, and her head is slightly tipped to the side. A tiny rivulet of blood has escaped from one nostril, but it has dried now.
Her eyes are closed, and beneath the eyelids, her eyes are still. Her eyes cannot see the nightmares any more.
She looks like she is dreaming, but if she is, it is not in this world, and so we draw away, rising up through the layers of soil, the trampled grass, and the drifts of flowers, back into the waking world where the nightmares stalk.
- - -
Thanatos_r@hotmail.com