by L. A. Tafe
Inner Horror
By L.A. Tafe
Inner Horror
By L.A. Tafe
Copyright 2011 L.A. Tafe
[email protected]
CHAPTER ONE.
Finally home, I think as I walk into my bedroom. “Long day.” I say to myself as I plop down on my bed. Feels great to relax, getting more and more tired by the second. I pull out my phone to check the time, seeing I have a text from my girlfriend. “You know how much I love carnivals! I had so much fun, hon. See you in the morning! Amy.” I smile and lay out on my bed, the sheets have never felt so comfortable. With my phone on my chest, Amy’s text still open, and my clothes still on, I close my eyes and slip into a deep sleep.
I open my eyes open a fraction then shut them tight . . . I jolt awake, sweating and panting for no reason. What is going on? I look about my room in a panic, scanning for whatever woke me.
Light shining through the window in the corner dimly lights the room. My eyes quickly adjust after a few moments. Looking up from my bed, I see the ceiling is painted dark blue, with a modern white ceiling fan in the middle. I sit up slowly, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
I glance around the room, a flat screen TV mounted inside a cherry cabinet against the far wall, with a cherry table in the corner to match, light coming in from the window above it, making the tabletop shine in the moonlight.
I’m awake. Good. I let out a long breath. My panic leaving me, sleep beginning to nag at me once again. I sigh. Sleep. Sleep is a good idea. I lay my head back down, gazing up at the ceiling before closing my eyes, something catching my eye.
My eyes shoot open. Are those scratches? Long deep gouges glow on the blades of the ceiling fan. Those weren’t there a moment ago!
Black fingers move my face, sharp nails impaling my flesh as they crawl across my skin. Not Him. It can’t be Him! I grimace in pain but don’t move; I’m too scared to move.
The sound of tearing fabric fills my ears, my bed rips apart beneath me and I fall into oblivion. It’s pitch black as I fall into a never-ending void, only the sound of the wind rushing over me to comfort me.
His legs wrap around my waist and His horrid laugh rings in my ears. “I’m Back!” He whispers to me, His voice raspy with a sick amused tone to it, like the devil telling a joke before he steals your soul.
In an instant He rips down my face with both of his claws. Excruciating pain stings at my face as my warm blood begins to pour from the gouges. He pulls back the skin from my skull and rips it off in one powerful tug.
He leaps from my back and I scream out in agony, finally finding my voice. When I hit the ground, every bone in my body feels like it’s going to shatter from the impact. My body tries to double over in pain it hurts too much to move.
Flat on my back I lay still, unable to move or scream, pain shooting throughout my whole body, helpless, utterly helpless. When my breathing finally comes back and the pain subsides to a dull ache, I realize where I am. In His room. The cage I made for Him. How the hell did He get out?
Fear prompts me to stand, but I don’t get to far. Falling back down in another fit of agony. I can do this. This is my dream. I can do anything here. I try to stand again, moving slowly to my knees and then to my feet, numbing the pain with my thoughts.
As I stand I realize I'm just a bit off center, my upper body flops from side to side with each movement. My back must be broken. I focus my thoughts on my back being healed, how it looks and feels when it’s healed, and the realignment of the vertebrae.
Suddenly my posture is righted. The noise of my spine cracking makes me cringe, and the pain drives me back to my knees. But it’s healed. I willed it and it’s done.
I get back to my feet and look around the room, shocked at how much it looks nothing like how I left it. An old boxy black and white TV is sitting on a wooden chair in the corner, the screen blaring static snow, casting shadows around the room.
In the corner sits an old wooden table, rotted and run down, two of the legs are missing making it lean awkwardly. The room has no windows at all, giving the room a stuffy claustrophobic feel.
As I look around the room I unknowingly creep backwards, bumping into a wall and getting covered in a putrid sticky liquid. It’s blood! I don’t cry out but I jump forward from the wall, coughing and gagging with each new breath. I take a look at all the walls, each of them have blood splattered all over.
Small chunks of the wall are gouged out like someone with razor sharp fingernails has been trying to claw their way out. With nothing more to inspect I look up, instantly wishing I hadn’t.
From the ceiling hangs human faces, hooks poke through each of their foreheads. All of them look familiar but I recognize none of them. I weakly fall back on my ass, dry heaving and swearing. Who does shit like this?
“Do you like my collection?” a raspy voice asks from across the room. I find the source of the voice in the corner, sitting on a bed. The mattress is stained a dark color.
He is wearing the skin of my face over his head like a mask, taunting me by bobbing his head left and right, hopping from his seat to me. He gets in my face and lets loose a maniacal giggle he must have been holding in this entire time.
“Lancifer.” I say, appalled by the bloody mask. “Didn’t miss me?” He moves from the bed and parades around me holding his new mask tight against his face.
“You know your face is my favorite!” He says, motioning to his collection hanging from the ceiling. “Do you like them? Can you think of who they are?” Lancifer asks, tossing my face at me and grabbing another mask from the ceiling. The new mask looks like a man I’ve seen jogging at the beach once or twice.
I catch my face and stare at it, a sick feeling rising from my stomach. I hold the skin to my face and imagine it healed. I grit my teeth as my face sows itself back onto my skull.
Lancifer watches as I heal myself then asks me, “So? Have you figured it out?” I look at him, frustration clear on my face. “I don’t give a shit. How did you fucking get out of your cage?”
Lancifer leers at me for a moment then rushes me. Before I can move, he grabs me by my neck and pins me up against a wall, lifting me slightly off the ground, the cold blood on the wall sticks to my clothes and skin.
“It will be revealed in time.” Lancifer growls. He’s stronger than he once was. He puts me down and begins to pace the room, talking more about his collection.
“They are everyone you have ever met. People you have seen and forgotten as soon as you saw them, their faces doomed to float around your subconscious forever. Well here are my favorites. Not much else to do while your locked in a fucking cage!” His last words are soaked with hatred. Time for me to go.
I walk around the room, looking at the deep smeared blood that covers the walls, soon finding what I am looking for, running my fingernail down the wall, creating a slit in the concrete like a slit in fabric. I step through the now open wall, getting only half way through the slit before Lancifer stops me.
His hands close around my shoulders as I step through the slit, his claws rip chunks of meaty flesh from my shoulders as I continue walking.
Blood pours from the wounds, running down my arms and into my hands. I hear his heinous chuckle echo behind me as I go all the way through the slit.
It’s almost pitch black, but I know where I am. I created this place, my dream house, just after I put Lancifer in his cage. I begin to walk down the stairs, old and rotten, broken in every place you can see. Looking nothing like how I left them. All around me the walls are just as rotted as the stairs, what the fuck is going on?
Quickly I move down the steps, tripping over several as they cave beneath my feet. I reach the bottom of the stairs with the front door of the house directly in front of me, dark wood
en French doors, once my proudest feature of the home. Now as broken down as the rest of the house.
Something is posted on the door, a poster. I snatch the poster from the door and read it: “Welcome to your new home, Lance.“ The whole thing is written in blood, long slash marks underline the words. Lancifer’s laugh echoes through the empty house, giving me a chill that shakes me to the core.
I open the door and stumble through, mouth agape at the sight before me. From the hill my house sits upon I can see what used to be an empty space that stretched on forever in every direction, mine to do with what I wanted each night. Now stands a massive amusement park, a carnival, stretching on for miles and miles.
I slowly step forward, half of me not believing anything I am looking at, the other half of me scared beyond recognition of what will come next. What is lancifer doing?
Small familiar looking girls with blood-smeared lips chase a mangy looking cat through a crowd of clowns that is beginning to form at the bottom of the hill.
“Come one, come all!” Lancifer’s voice bellows from behind me. I spin around to see him walking out the door of my house. I catch a glimpse of the outside of my house and a sinking feeling sets in. The whole house looks like it’s a wind gust away from collapsing to the ground.
Lancifer walks past me, looking down at the clowns smiling from ear to ear. I look all around me, trying to take in as much as I can. Carnival rides, fun houses, carnival games, all of them with their own devilish additions.
The clowns are dressed in every which way, some of the women not wearing much of anything at all. Red noses, painted faces, frizzed out neon colored hair. Some of them have piercings all over their bodies; limbs missing or twisted into sick ways, all of them looking more like monsters than anything like a real clown. Each and every one of them are looking up at me, murder in their eyes. How did He do this?
Lancifer whispers in my ear, I didn’t even realize he was no longer in front of me. “It’s all for you, Lance” He puts his arms around me, touching the wounds on my shoulders, the numbness I’ve been focusing on fades and a sharp pain sets in.
My head is spinning, slightly from the pain and mostly because I can’t grasp any of this. “How have you done this?” I ask, my words barely loud enough to hear over the carnival music that’s echoing through the park.
“Oh I have had a lot of time! You have not visited in so long.” He says it with such charm in his voice. “How did you get out of your room, Lancifer?” Anger boils within my words.
He doesn’t answer me, just lets out another hellish laugh. Everything goes dark as Lancifer puts his massive claws over my eyes, his hands soaked with my blood.
I claw at his hands, ripping them off my face, the odor of blood lingering in my nose. It takes a moment for me to realize where I am, that I am no longer on the hill above a legion of nightmarish clowns. The walls are painted a navy blue, the hardwood floor beneath my feet is a dark cherry, and the musky smell of the carnival is gone. I'm back in my room again. But I'm not awake.
I spin around to find Lancifer sitting at the dark cherry table in the corner of the room. He grins and tips a bottle of vodka upside down in his mouth, chugging half the bottle. “I hate this shit. I want the real stuff.” Lancifer says, disgust in his voice. The real stuff?
“What are you doing Lancifer?” I shout at him, “The carnival? Do you think I won’t just put you back in your cage?” Trying to sound like I'm not scared shitless of him.
Lancifer looks over at me and hurls the bottle, I duck out of reflex and it smashes on the wall behind me. I pick a shard of glass from my back and see that my shoulders are still bleeding from when Lancifer gouged me.
“Do you even remember how you put me in the cage? You talk as if you did it alone!” He yells at me, murder in his voice. I fall back on my bed at the sound of his bellowing voice. Lancifer lets out a howl of laughter, clearly happy with my reaction to his outburst. Such a coward.
I imagine the shattered bottle of vodka in my hand and it materializes from thin air, back in one piece. I unscrew the top and take a quick drink. It burns the back of my throat on its way down.
I sit down on my bed with the bottle in my hand, taking another drink, already feeling drowsy from the first. Why is everything so real? My dreams have always been to real but never like this.
I look over to Lancifer still sitting in the corner behind the table, legs crossed, picking his teeth with his sharp claws. I need to take care of this now. Before it gets any worse.
I throw the bottle of vodka at him, aiming for his head, hoping to stun him long enough to for me to rush him. One moment the bottle is flying through the air, nearly too fast to see. The next, Lancifer moves like a blur, grabbing the bottle from the air, taking a big gulp from it, seeming to not move at all.
I slump back to the bed, hoping Lancifer didn’t see my intensions, defeated before any fight at all. Lancifer looks up from the bottle, “This will soon be your home, Lance. I sure hope you like it.”
The second drink of vodka begins to it me and confidence ensues. “What the fuck are you talking about, Lancifer? How did you get out of your cage?!” I yell at him, “ANSWER ME!”
Lancifer’s voice gets low and serious, “Your cage wasn’t as secure as you thought, my foolish friend.” “You’re going back, Lancifer!” I roar, standing from my seat, clenching my fists in a vodka fueled rage. The truth is I know I can’t face him and win.
Lancifer laughs at my anger, his hyena like cackle. I snap, rushing Lancifer full speed, crashing into him, grabbing him by the throat and throwing him up against the window with all my strength.
The window cracks and splinters but holds as I wail on Lancifer, bashing his face in with my fists. Blood drenches my knuckles as I beat him into the window. Another part of my brain focusing on the glass, I don’t want it to break, so it doesn’t, it stays as solid as it can.
Lancifer continues to laugh as I grab him by the neck, shaking him viciously, banging the back of his head into the glass window. His laughing fuels my rage until I'm in a blind fury, not stopping until Lancifer is nothing but a bloody pulp.
Harder and harder, I pound him into the glass, his blood running down to the bottom of the windowpane and onto the floor.
The glass starts cracking under his skull; I can’t keep the glass together any longer. Lancifer abruptly stops cackling and slashes his claw across my neck, spraying blood upon Lancifer as my breath is taken from me. Oh fuck I cant breath! He got my windpipe.
I panic and release Lancifer, grabbing at my neck in terror, trying desperately to heal myself with my thoughts. Lancifer shoves me and begins another fit of laughter as I nearly fall onto my back.
The slice in my neck suddenly seals closed and I pathetically gulp in air while I choke up blood. I cough and wheeze until I catch my breath, forgetting entirely about Lancifer.
Lancifer holds up a small mirror to my face. In the reflection I can see the slash across my neck, now a sickening scar with black veins sprawling out from it like a web; venomous poison from his claws. In seconds my neck begins to feel like it’s being torn apart, a fiery sting that spreads like a cancer throughout my whole body.
I cry out, falling to a knee in agony. Without laughter or any emotion, Lancifer says, “That’s it, fall to me, let the poison take hold.” “Fuck you!” I scream, breathing rapidly through grinding teeth.
Lancifer smashes the bottle of vodka over my head and I fall face first to the floor. My body goes limp, my head pounding and spinning. My eyelids get heavier and heavier till even the thought of keeping them open escapes me.
“Sweet dreams, my dear,” He says sweetly, “Ill see you real soon.” My eyes close shut, the last thing I hear is his monstrous laugh and then not any sound at all.
CHAPTER TWO.
I jolt awake in my bed, yelling at the top of my lungs, covered from head to toe in sweat. I immediately look around the room, wondering if I'm really awake or still stuck in my horrid dreams.
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br /> The room is dark except for just a little moonlight coming in through the window, dimly lighting up shapes in the room. I get up and run to my bathroom sink, turning it on and splashing water into my face, trying to rub away the sleep from my eyes. I'm awake!
Relief floods through me and I release the breath I’ve been holding since I woke up. I look into the mirror, checking myself for a scar on my neck; it isn’t there. I take a deep breath and blow out, my heart finally beating at a normal rate. I go over to the shower and run the water till its as hot as I can get it.
Water pours from the showerhead, the hot water scorching my skin, a constant reminder that I'm not dreaming. The rhythmic pounding of the water entices my mind to wander as I sit under the hot water. Flashes of a nightmare not long ago plays through my head.
“It’s over, Lancifer. I won.” I say to him, smiling at his mangled body on the ground, nearly every bone in his body is shattered from the beating I gave him. “I’ll get out.” Lancifer chokes, body face down on the ground, muffling his voice to a gurgled whisper. I move to him and raise my foot over his neck. “No, Lancifer. You wont.” I sneer, bringing my foot down on his neck, a loud crack echoes in the silent room. “Rot in hell.” I tell him, motioning to the cage he is in. Lancifer doesn’t make a sound as I leave him and the cage I made for him.
I defeated him once and I can do it again. But you didn’t do it alone, did you?
My eyes shoot open and I catch myself panting hard breaths of steamy air. I put my face under the steaming water one last time before the water begins to go cold and I get out.
Lancifer never leaves my thoughts as I get dressed, always there nagging at me. I wish I never created him. It seems so long ago now. But was just a few years back, a horrible night of pain that would go on for many nights to follow.
Nightmares have plagued me ever since I can remember, but never like him, never so powerful, never so real. I would go days without sleep as a child, staying awake as long as I could, trying hopelessly to avoid my nightmares.
