by Eve Hathaway
Chapter One
I AM GOING mad.
Even as I speak, the words are twisting away from me, writhing like living creatures to whisper horrible things. They mock me, push me, tempt me to obey their lewd commands, and it is all I can do to resist them.
Nevertheless, I know that I must be heard, I must communicate my hell to the world so it can know what I know. So it can be warned. I have seen evil. Actual, true evil and I have looked it in the eye. Seeing something like that fractures the soul, and mine has been ground to powder.
The darkness is coming. Now my mind is clouding and the veil smothers me, but while I still have the strength to speak, I will tell my story until the last rattling breath escapes my broken esophagus.
Time has no place in this god-forsaken place, whether I have been here for a hundred years or a few hours, it is impossible to tell for sure. I only know that I can see the end to my hourglass. I am going to die. Death for me holds no fear but, but being forgotten...the thought terrifies me. I need to tell you who I am.
I was born Judas Stoker III, on January first in Albany, New York, to my mother, Ella Stoker. My father had long since faded from the picture and I neither knew nor cared to know his name.
My mother raised me by herself in a little apartment in the city, both of us perfectly content with each other's company. I remember we had a fat white cat named Moses who used to sit on my mother's violet beds and drove her crazy. Those memories are almost evanescent now.
The one constant blight to our peaceful lives, however, was my constant hallucinogenic nightmares. The darkness blurred the lines between reality and fantasy for me, and I became catatonic at times in my terror.
On more than a few occasions, I would wake up after an episode to find myself surrounded by four white walls with my wrists secured to a bed and my mother white-faced and large-eyed at my side.
"Oh Judas!" she would let out a shaky sigh and embrace me, her cheek, wet and salty against mine. "You're safe, baby, you're safe."
I remember looking down to see long, red scratches snaking up my arms and my fingernails reduced to bloodied stubs. These hospital visits would end in a long, boring session with my psychologist, who always concluded that a new brand of medication was in order.
Needless to say, my education suffered drastically and I spent more of the school year at home than in a classroom. Still, my mother did her best to teach me herself and thanks to her, I made it into high school with the rest of my class.
But I digressed. All of that is meaningless now. The happy, smiling faces of my schoolmates are a thing of the past. I doubt I shall ever see a single one of them ever again. I need to tell about The Night. The Night! The Night! The cold, thundering, September night when my mother left for work and never came home.
