I get on these kicks sometimes. I’ll find a fictional device and I want to play with it, exploring it from different angles. If you read last week’s story, you’ll get it. This one uses a similar structure.
Some of this stuff is straight from my actual nightmares. As such, I find this particular story haunting. Eh, it might not scare you. Horror is extremely personal that way.
Regardless, I’d love to know your thoughts. If you like it or hate it, speak up. Tell me what you think in the comments.
devil’s kiss
I woke with a start. Immediately I noticed the room didn’t feel right.
It’s hard to explain. My nightstand was there. The lamp. The alarm clock, those sideways eyes staring me down, blinking, relentlessly declaring the passing of time. A silent scream I can only ignore when I sleep.
But everything was all wrong, too.
The windows weren’t quite square, the tops tapered just enough to leave me uneasy. The blinds rattled in the breeze, and I struggled to remember why I’d left them open. I could hear rain, and the rational part of my brain, the part not really awake yet, tried to tell the rest of me I needed to close them to keep the sills from getting wet.
There was more.
Little things out of place on the dresser. The sense that my bed was shorter than it should have been. No glow from the streetlamp outside. Darkness enveloped me, like a thick blanket on a warm night, and I couldn’t seem to kick my feet free.
It felt like a caricature of my room. An artist’s rendition. It was close, but not accurate.
The darkness hung in the corners like the shadows had mass. They ran under the bed when lightning struck. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her.
She was short. Maybe five feet tall. Her hair was a tangled mess of black curls and leaves. She smelled like autumn and tasted, I thought, of dirt, though how I would know such a thing I had no idea.
She swayed beside the bed, not four feet away.
I strained to make out her silhouette in the dark, but she might as well have been a ghost. There was a flash and, like a cat, she was somehow closer by a foot. Her head was down, her face hidden in shadow and hair.
Another bolt, and she was closer. I could hear her nails scratching on the caked surface of her nightgown. Was this a neighbor, sleep walking in the middle of a thunderstorm? How had she gotten in? Was it safe to wake her?
Flash. She was beside the bed, near enough to touch. But I didn’t want to touch her. The pale hue of her flesh glowed in the aftermath of the lightning, and I became certain her skin would be cold to the touch. Not cool from the rain. Cold and … dead?
I felt panic rise in me, and I tried to move. Only I couldn’t. I couldn’t stand, or sit up, or even roll away. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. I strained, pushing myself to vocalize something, anything, but my lungs pushed out empty air and frustration.
Light filled my vision, and she was straddling me. I hadn’t even felt her climb on top. Her head hung down and I still couldn’t see that face – that horrible face, for I was certain she was a demon. A specter. A tormentor, and I, her prey.
I felt her weight settle on me, her crouch pressed against mine like we were making love with our clothes on, me and the mysterious dead girl. But I felt nothing. No inclination to caress or thrust. I wanted to vomit, but all I could produce was another neutered cry for help.
Flash.
She was leaning forward. I saw her lips, dry and cracked, blood oozing and glistening in the blue-white light of the storm. She was moving to kiss me, and something inside me knew, simply knew, that if she did it would kill me.
I began to thrash, moving what little I could, trying to break the paralysis. I strained my throat to produce even the smallest sound, and somewhere deep within my chest I felt it coming – the scream I wanted so badly to produce.
Just as her hair tickled my face, as I smelled her sour-sweet breath, as her ashen hand caressed my cheek, it happened. My voice broke through and I bellowed with enough force to break the spell, jolting myself from the nightmare.
I woke with a start. Immediately I noticed the room didn’t feel right …