by Jerod Lollar
As I stumbled through the parking lot foaming from the mouth, my vision going in and out, another wave of white pain hit me. I could hear sirens getting closer.
The rock pulsed a regular beat as it sank a little further into my skin. I wanted to claw at it and rip it out of my leg. I didn’t care what damage that would do. I started to run.
Up ahead of me I saw a wash. Alongside of it next to the road was a bike path. I stumbled down to the path wanting to stop and lay down. But the pain wouldn’t let me stop.
The pain was more intense than when I broke my hip. I stopped on the edge of the wash as I heard my pants rip. I looked down at my leg gasping in horror.
My lucky rock had fully attached itself to my leg. It had grown all the way down to the knee and all the way up my upper thigh. The silver specks glowed as it pulsed, bubbling like it was alive. I clawed at it in an attempt to rip it from my body. Another wave of pain sent me to my knees.
I tumbled head first into the wash, my body flaying around. Hitting the bottom with a loud thump I knew I had broken bones. There could be no way I could survive a fall like that. As I lay there in pain, I thought of my brother and how I would miss him.
My brain started to shut down. I welcomed the dark oblivion. My last thought as I started to fade was remembering where I had seen the fairy before. She was there when I got hit by the truck and broke my hip.
What did she want with me?
The rock pulsed once again. Then darkness.
Chapter 3
I am home, standing at the front door. I can feel the sun on my back and there is no pain. I look down at my leg and it is fine. No pulsing mass. No parasite thing draining me of life. I don’t know how I got outside the door of my brother’s house, and, to tell you the truth, I don’t care. I am home and that is all that matters. I rest my head against the door as relief washes over me. It was a dream. It had to just be a dream. That was it. Just an over-the-top nightmare. I don’t even care how I got outside. I am just glad I'm home. I take a second to shake off the last images of the nightmare. I reach into my pocket to get my keys. I feel the lucky rock as I dig around for the key. It feels warm. I pull my hand out of my pocket quickly. I'm breathing heavily and I break out in a cold sweat. I laugh at how silly I'm being. I dig in my pocket again getting out the key. I unlock the door. Before I open the door, I notice black smoke swirling around my feet.
“How weird,” I think as I push open the door.
The door slowly swings open into a dark long hallway “This isn’t right,” I think as I take a step back. But I can’t step back. I try to turn away from the gloom of the hallway but I can’t move. The dark swirling smoke is crawling up my legs to my waist. It starts to force me into the dark hallway.
As I step into the house, the heavy dark smoke surrounds my head. I see my parent’s car. I hear the crunch and the crash and a scream. It’s my mother. I can hear the cars crashing into each other as the speeding drunk T-bones into my parent’s car. I run to the car hoping to somehow help this time, knowing it was hopeless. This was all just a dream, a vision, a twisted nightmare. I get to the car and looking in, I see my dad. His head is hanging down as blood drips across his face. His head turns.
He looks at me and says, “It’s your entire fault, Jack. We were rushing home to you when we were hit. It’s all your fault.”
Tears stream down my face as the black smoke pulls me away from the scene.
I’m at school. The boys in my fourth grade class are holding me down forcing me to drink out of a can of coke that they had all peed in. I saw my teacher, Miss Rose, walk by. This time she doesn’t stop them. She stands there laughing as they force my mouth open to make me drink.
“Take a long drink Jack," she says as she laughs, “take a good long drink.”
The next step is me breaking my arm when I was eight. This is more than a memory as my arm starts to ache. I can feel the pain. I look up and see my friend Mike standing at the top of the stairs.
“I pushed you,” he said smiling. “All these years you thought you tripped and fell but you didn’t. I pushed you.”
I am being forced to go through memories of pain, anger and sadness from my life. But all these memories are twisted. I am being dragged into despair. There is no hope in these images, no relief from the pain. I pull against the smoky blackness, fighting, trying not to take another step.
I am at the crosswalk where I am hit by that truck. I scream in pain as the pins that are still in my hip push their way out and fall to the ground. I lay in the street moaning in pain as a crowd of people gather around laughing. I beg for help but no one helps me. Everyone is laughing as I see my beautiful deadly fairy. She kneels down and whispers in my ear.
“You’re not going to make it Jack. You won’t survive this."
She smiles, stands, and kicks me in my bad hip.
Another forced step and I am back in the street from earlier that day. This time the truck speeds up hitting me, knocking me in the air. I hit the ground bones breaking. I see my fairy laughing at me as she gestures to me to cross the street.
I’m forced to move again. The living room is just ahead. I can make out a dark shape swinging back and forth. I know what is there and I don’t want to see the horrifying reality of what is before me. It’s my brother. He’s hanging from a rope. His neck is broken and his head is tilted to the side. His lifeless body sways back and forth. I can hear a creaking sound from the rope as it moves across my brother’s neck. A long low moan escapes me in despair of this horrific sight. This is not a memory but a dark hidden fear.
Suddenly, my brother opens his eyes and smiles. I try to back away as he reaches up and grabs the rope around his neck pulling himself up.
“You’ve always been a burden, Jack,” he says in a strange rough voice, “You have failed at everything you've tried. I tried to help you but it never worked. I have given up because of you. All the dreams I had for my life are washed away because I had to take care of you. It’s your entire fault.”
With those last words I feel the parasite on my leg finally rip open. I scream in pain as thousands of spiders start pouring out of it. He laughs as the spiders crawl all over my body biting me and tearing at my skin. He is no longer dangling from the rope. He steps toward me, his broken neck making his head wobble and flap around his shoulders. He grabs my arm. His hand melts over my arm as the spiders continue to tear at my body. I am slowly being pulled into my brother as he melts around me. I try to scream but no sound comes from my mouth as I am slowly being pulled into my brother’s body.
I hear laughing and the mocking voice of my brother saying over and over again, “It’s your fault."
I feel strange warmth around my feet. It starts moving up my body, getting warmer as it rises. As it moves up my body, the spiders began to fall off. They disintegrate into a grey powder. The pain begins to melt away. As the warmth continues to cover my body, my brother releases his hold on me. He backs away, a look of confusion on his face. I start to fight. A strange new hope begins to well up inside me. I will not let my past fears destroy me. I will not allow my own doubts bring me to despair anymore. I am better than that. I am not useless. I am not a burden.
I pull myself away from the living room, the black smoke fighting to keep me there. I break free. The thing that looks like my brother makes a last attempt to grab me. This time I am ready. I turn the tables on it. Grabbing the thing that looks like my brother by the throat, it begins to dissolve in my hands. The final thing I see in its face is surprise as it melts away.
I feel stronger. More confident. I am going to get away. The black smoke grabs at me again and as it touches me I feel flashes of pain. It's trying to get me to return to that feeling of despair. I kick and swing at it, beating it down. I am mad! Mad at this blackness, mad at the way my life has turned out, and mad at myself! I'm not going to take it anymore! I stomp the black smoke to the floor. As I run for the front door, the house stretches and twists back on itself. This dark
evil thing in my dream isn’t done with me yet. There's a screeching sound behind me and I turn to see the black smoke coming down the hall. It pours itself down like spilt water. A stretching dark clawed hand moves all around the hallway trying to find me. In the blackness I can see images of the nightmare twisted memories that it had tried to get me to believe were true. I could feel its frustration as it tries to get into my mind again. Creeping down the hallway that was now impossibly long, I was now somehow hidden from it. It can't see me and is blindly searching for me. I have my back up against the door now, trying to open it and escape. There's a roar, a loud triumphant sound.
“Is that part of the dream?" I ask myself. The warmth spreads up my body and a strength fills my heart. I stare at the darkness and know I have won. It doesn’t matter if I get away or not. I will fight it. I will not let it take me away.
I can feel its presence searching for me. Feel the anger swelling up like a giant wave as it comes closer. Its frustration thumping in my mind has replaced the twisted nightmare memories. Something is wrong. This is not supposed to happen. I am not supposed to get away. It is impossible. Something is supposed to happen, something that will allow this dark evil thing to take me. But it isn’t happening. Fumbling with the door, I finally get it opened, falling backwards into a sunlit day. I hear one last scream from the darkness as I fall backwards, and then I wake up.
I opened my eyes, a yell stuck in my throat. Tears of relief ran down my face as I lay in the dark. It's over. “Where am I?” I said out loud.
Chapter 4
Wherever it was, it was dark and smelled. It smelled like rotten fruit and meat. I wanted to throw up.
I tried to sit up and was hit with a Wave of nausea. A dull ache penetrated every muscle in my body. I was lying on my back and I could see only a faint gloom. There was a ceiling I could just make out about twelve feet above. I was in some sort of a cave. A cement floor scratched at my back as I tried to sit up again. Big mistake. Dizzy and weak as I was, my mind was fuzzy and I was having a hard time concentrating.
Trying to break through the fuzziness, I started to go over the day. Remembering the pulsing bubble that had formed on my leg, I grabbed for it to check if it was still there, slapping at the imaginary spiders that poured out of it in my nightmare vision.
That move was a little too much for me. The throbbing ache flared up and became a burning sharp pain. It shot through my entire body. Slowly it faded away and was replaced by the throbbing heartbeat ache that now seemed to be a relief compared to the other. I was definitely hurt, was in a place I didn’t recognize. I tried to make sense of it all. Back to the moment I saw the fairy on my walk, to everything that happened after. I wanted it to be a dream. None of it could be real. But here I was in a dark cave of some sort. Something had to have happened to me. I must have gone on a walk and fallen into the wash and hurt myself. Everything else was just a dark and twisted dream. That made sense to me, except, how did I get in this smelly cave?
I had no answer that made any sense to me; the only thing that seemed correct was it all really happened. The fairy, the parasite thing, and the fall. All of it happened. A strange rumbling sound passed over my head as a vibrating sensation passed through the cave. There was something familiar in that sound. A comforting sound. If I could just place it, I would be ok. A small bubble of panic was forming in my mind. I took a few deep breaths and realized that my ribs were fine. Another wave of relief washed over me. It had to have all been a dream. I remembered falling down into the wash and feeling my bones break. If I could breathe without pain, I must be ok. But I remembered the pain. I felt it. I tried to wrack my brain to see if I remembered anything I had ever read or heard regarding someone feeling pain in a dream as if it was real? Why was I so weak and hungry? I had to get ahold of myself and get out of this cave if I could.
I started a check list in my mind. I could breathe without difficulty. Check. I could see even if there was not much to see in this gloomy dark cave. Check. Another rumbling sound passed over the cave. I checked off hearing.
I knew I had to move to get out of here. Even though it seemed like I had no broken bones I wanted to be sure. First, I wiggled my toes. Check. They seemed to be ok. Now I checked my fingers. Not too bad. Now I checked my feet. I went down the list moving every inch of my body carefully. When I got to the point of bending my knees, I was beginning to think that I was ok. I was fine. By the time I reached my head and moved it carefully, I had convinced myself that I was going to be ok.
”Take that, you stupid fairy. I’m going to live,” I mumbled to myself. I was sure the fairy had something to do with all of this.
“It’s always the pretty ones,” I said.
I laughed a little and the dull sound of it brought me back to the reality of my situation. If this day was all just a fevered dream, I had to figure out what had really happened and I had to get out of this cave. Slowly I started to roll over.
“No pain. Good,” I mumbled as I moved. I saw daylight. That was the way out of the cave. I didn’t think I had the strength to stand up. As I looked to the light, I heard a sound that made me realize where I was. It was a car horn. I was still in the wash. I must have crawled under the road into the tunnel under the street. But what happened? I had convinced myself that all the fairy and rock stuff was a dream. I must be sick and needed help; psychiatric help.
Puzzling over the day, I was reminded of the old line from the Sherlock Holmes books.“ Eliminate all the other possibilities and whatever is left, no matter how improbable, that is the answer." I had to find out the truth. A dream or truth?
Ok, first I needed to see if that thing was still attached to my leg. I slowly moved my hand toward my right leg. I had to fight to keep it from twitching at the idea that the spiders would be crawling over what I was sure would be a gaping hole across my right side. The ache in my entire body had diminished, making this task of moving much easier than it would have been just a few minutes ago. Reaching my leg I felt skin, smooth skin. No cuts or damage. The bubble was gone. My “lucky” rock was no longer attached to my leg. Another sensation of relief washed over me as I let out my breath I had been holding it in without realizing it.
Was this just a dream? I felt around my leg. Then I felt something that was a little alarming. It was my clothing along the right side of my body. My clothes had been ripped, torn to shreds. I moved my hand up the right side of my body. Just shreds of jeans and T-shirt.
“That was one of my favorite shirts,” I groaned.
I moved my hand all around my right side, not even trying to figure out what kind of nightmarish thing that could have happened. Putting my hand down by my side again, I gasped as I put my hand into something sticky. It squished and that horrible smell hit my nose again. I dry heaved. I raised my hand away from it and moved my back a little. I felt a strange squishing sensation. The smell intensified. It took all of my concentration to keep from retching again. I was lying in this smelly stuff and I had no idea what it was. With a groan of pain, I rolled over onto my stomach covering myself completely in this mess.
“Could this be blood?” I thought. “Is it my blood?"
There was so much of it. If it was my blood, I would probably be dead. I found no comfort in that thought. I reached my hands in front of me, and with my whole body screaming at me in protest, I began to half crawl, half drag toward the sunlight.
The same thought played over and over in my mind. “What is this stuff? What is this stuff?"
My imagination started to kick into overdrive. This had to be the cave that the fairy brought her victims to. The sticky stuff was the blood of countless others, and soon she would be there to finish me off and add my own blood to the mess. I could almost hear the spiders crawling out of the darkness to swarm over me, tearing the flesh from my body and eating me alive. I had to get out of that tunnel. It was the only way I was going to survive. That fear gave me the strength to crawl. Now covered in the sticky, smelly mess, I had to peel my
hand from the floor of the tunnel to keep moving. The soreness in my muscles seemed to be fading in my panicked state, just a dull ache that kept time with my heartbeat and ragged struggling breath.
The black darkness of the tunnel started to become less and less as I actually made progress toward the end. I saw my hands and I got a look at the sticky mess. There was a yellow look to it and in this gloom it seemed to shine. There were black specks and a cockroach had gotten stuck in it. The roach moved. This sent a new wave of nausea through my body. I yelled out and clawed at my hand causing me to land hard on the floor of the tunnel. I hit my chin so hard on the ground that, if I had been sticking out my tongue, I would have bitten right through it. I lay there shaking and listened to my gasping breath. I rolled over onto my back. My sore muscles throbbed.
“This is it,” I said to myself, “I’m either going to die here or wake up in a hospital somewhere.”
I stayed there breathing through my mouth to keep from smelling that awful stuff. Eventually the pain started to drain away from my body.
Another car drove overhead and I could hear the music from the stereo as it zipped by. I yelled out hoping someone could hear me. I stayed still for a few minutes hoping to see someone or hear someone call back to me.
Then it hit me, my cell phone. How could I have been so stupid? I never even bothered to check and see if I still had it. I reached into my left pocket and there it was. Now things were going right for me. One look at the cell phone showed me it was impossible. The phone was covered in slime, completely unusable. There was no way I could make a call and get help. I had to get out and flag someone down for help.
