An experiment in fear.

This short story idea is based upon a childhood game I used to play, yes I know, must have had a sick childhood. We played a very simple, innocent version and no doubt lots of you have too, so now its time for an update. My idea is to write an inter-active story so that you, the reader, can take part and actually feel (maybe taste too), some of the story. I have no idea if this will work, that’s for you to decide.

Before we start then you need to gather a few things together. I reckon that most homes will have the items listed but you can always substitute something else if you like. This is what we need;
One cherry tomato or an ordinary small tomato.
A tub of soft margarine (anything from the fridge that spreads)
Some coarse grated cheese shavings, just a few.
An open tub of yoghurt (or thick cream or any similar dessert)
One egg, broken into a small dish.
A jar of Jam, or Syrup or Maple Syrup –something like that.
An open tin of spaghetti (you could use beans but its not as good).
A thick chunk of fresh bread.
Some granulated sugar.
A dry stick, say about twice the width of your thumb.

Okay then, do you want to play? Dim the lights first, better yet, light a candle, make sure you are alone, so that nobody can hear you scream...

The rain was falling down like a curtain of water and the feeble windscreen wipers on her aged Chevy were barely keeping it clear. She struggled on through the dark night, driving north on Interstate-85. In the distance, thunder boomed and great jagged forks of blue-white lightning flashed like strobe lights, reflecting from the shiny wet road. As she passed the occasional remote house she couldn’t help but envy the people all tucked up safe and warm inside, in their beds. She had been on the road for three days now, on her way back home from the Florida Keys to Northern Maine. Her eyes were red, puffy and tired but she pressed resolutely on, knowing that this was the last part of the journey.

There were no Police to worry about, not out here in the nothingness, not out here in this god-awful weather, so she pressed her foot down harder on the accelerator because the faster she went the easier the rain seemed to cascade away from her vision. She caught the eyes of the Deer in her headlights, seeing them glint like two jewels and then in a split second she saw the dark shape of the animal, standing in the middle of the road. Instinctively she swerved to avoid the creature and her car ploughed right off the road and down the shallow embankment at the side. She held onto the steering wheel with all her strength and jammed the brake pedal down hard but the tires found no grip on the wet grass. The car hurtled on, a ton of steel moving at seventy miles and hour. It hit small saplings, tearing them from the ground. She devastated clumps of bushes but every impact slowed the car a little more until at last it hit a Birch tree, right in the middle of the front bumper. The impact forced the car forward and the tree destroyed the radiator and part of the engine block before the car was finally halted.

Her air-bag had triggered and saved her from breaking her neck, but so hard was this last impact that even as the air-bag deflated she was flung forwards again, striking the broken windscreen so hard that she fell back unconscious in her seat. There was a red smear on the cracked glass and warm blood ran down her forehead. The side window shattered and showered her with tiny glass fragments. The rain carried on for most of the night but when she awoke she could not hear it, nor could she see. For a second she panicked and thought she had been blinded, but then saw a tiny chink of light from under the door. Under the door ? Where was she ? How did she get here ? She explored her pounding head, feeling the sticky blood that matted her hair –

Dip your fingers into the syrup, feel it, imagine it is blood, your blood.

Her hand came away wet and there was a coppery smell but the smell seemed far too strong for the wound she had found. She ran her hand back through her hair and winced as she found dozens of tiny glass fragments, some of which cut her fingers and others that stuck to her sticky hands.

Its time to feel the sugar between your fingers, but its not sugar is it ? Its glass fragments that will scratch and cut you if you are not careful. I warned you about that.

She fumbled her way in the dark to the door and found the handle but when she tried to turn it, it was locked. Near to the door she found a light switch but when she clicked it, no light came on. “Hello ?”, she called out, “Hello ! Can anybody hear me ?”
There was no answering call, so she tried again, louder, ”HELLO! IS ANYBODY THERE ?”
She heard footsteps, heavy deliberate footsteps and they were coming towards her.

The door opened and framed a man. She looked at him and began to scream – it was the stench of him that invaded her senses first. He reeked of that unique coppery smell of blood that she had noticed before but it was a minor odour to the smell of rot, decay and faeces that surrounded him liked a disgusting cloak. He was easily a foot taller then her and massively built. His one good eye stared out from a ravaged skull, the other side of his face burned to the bone. Bits of charred flesh hung to his cheekbone and she seemed to imagine that they had been stuck on like some grotesque make-up. His hair was long and encrusted with filth, it fell down below his shoulders in a revolting greasy tangle, oh yes, and he had a smell, a smell like nothing on this earth, a smell of death.

Listen, is that somebody outside now, coming to you door. Who is it ? Is it him ?

She tried to struggle but she had no chance at all and although she pounded him with her tightly clenched fists he paid her no notice at all, picking her up with one hand and taking her away, to another room, deeper in the labyrinth of long abandoned cellars. When he entered this room there was a light and she wished with all her being that there was not. All she could see scattered around like some disgusting abattoir were limbs and body parts of....of people. Worse, much worse, were the sightless heads, each with their eyes missing, slung into a heap in the corner. The monster that carried her made no sound at all as he tied her to a roughly made table. The table was little more than a few rough hewn logs nailed together.

He tied her legs down first but she refused to give up and as he bent over her to take her wrist she reached up and clawed at the good (good ?), side of his face. He howled as her sharp nails dung into his revolting skin and she raked her fingers downwards, feeling the soft putrid flesh open up.

It was like running a finger along the inside of a tub of rancid margarine...

He tugged her hand from his face and his distorted mouth opened. Live maggots wriggled from that awful opening and with a grunt he snapped her wrist, like a dry twig,

Like the small stick you have and can snap now, feeling it crack, imagining that it is your wrist, that the jagged ends are the ends of your bones, grating against each other as you scream in outrageous pain.

She knew she was beginning to lose her mind but still she tried to fight him. All her efforts were useless and he tied her fast. The bones in her broken wrist sent white hot spears of agony where the broken bones jarred against each other. It was like no other pain she had ever felt, until the next new assault on her senses that made it seem no more than a scratch. He approached her with a sharp knife and she watched in terror as he placed the blade against her smooth white leg. With the utmost of care he used the razor sharp implement to take slivers of skin which he placed on a plate, on the table.

The skin slivers were like shards of grated cheese and as you run your fingers through those pieces that you have prepared, you know don’t you, that its not cheese at all...

Her leg was bloody and raw and he stood there now, laying the skin, her skin, on the ravaged side off his face. It was as he did this that she realised with awful certainty, what he would be doing next and because of that she began to scream all over again. There was nobody to hear her, or you. When he did it the first time she passed mercifully into darkness. He placed the tip off his knife beneath one eye and with a practised flick of the blade, popped it from its socket. It hung by the optic nerve and she crazily saw the top of the work table out of the misplaced organ before she fainted. He cut the nerve and the eye dropped into his hand.
When he tried to insert the sightless orb into the destroyed cavity of his own face he pressed too hard and his finger punctured the eye...

The sensation was like poking a finger into the yoke of an egg and the thick optic fluid dripped down to his filth encrusted fingers. He licked his fingers clean on the goo; you might do that too, now that your finger has been inside the eye you had ready.

Somehow, cruelly, she regained conciseness. She didn’t want it and she willed herself to die but she couldn’t, not yet. Soon though, very soon. He used his knife again, this time returning to her bloody legs but what he did was beyond any endurance or reasoning, sending her to the welcoming depths of insanity, and she joined him in his world, briefly. With skill that belied his appearance, the creature eviscerated both her legs, laying the veins and arteries along the outside of both limbs, like...

...like stands of tinned spaghetti, like those veins and arteries that you can dip your fingers into now and fell them wet with blood, slippery, slithering between your fingers, and how it hurts, doesn’t it ?

He removed her other eye with the same precision that he had used for the first. He looked at it for a while and then placed in into his mouth, holding it between the black and ruined stumps of his teeth. And then he snapped his mouth shut.

The eye tasted good. The feeling was like biting into a small tomato, the skin is firm at first and then it tears suddenly. If you are not careful the insides will spurt out, like optic fluid. Did you enjoy eating that raw eye I asked you to have ready ? I did.

He was nearly finished now, but he was hungry and there was always a meal to be had. Using a rusty hacksaw, he cut off the top off here head and mercifully at last, she left his world and ours. Which world are you in now, I wonder ?

Inside her skull, the matter that surrounded her brain was like a very thick yoghurt. He dipped his fingers eagerly into the cavity, tasting the substance, enjoying the taste and texture as you might now enjoy,

The tub of yoghurt that you and I both know is not yoghurt at all really. Well is it ?

He relished every drop and used his fingers to scoop out every last trace until the skull was cleaned, leaving just the brain. As he sank his hands into that final delicacy it was like, you know what it was like though, don’t you ? You’ve been there. Go on then, do it.

You push your fingers into warm fresh bread and the feeling is just liked plunging them into a human brain, the brain of somebody who has only just died and it still as fresh and warm as new baked bread.

Your candle burns out and your room is in darkness.

You hear footsteps, and they are coming to your door, so you scream.

But there is nobody to hear you scream , so you wait....

...I’m coming.