Blue

A Love Story

The clouds at the horizon slowly lose their golden glow as they dim into a more mellowed orange, melting into the deep haze of violet stretched across the sky. While the birds return to the trees to sleep, the flow of traffic doesn’t dwindle in town. A Gray-Haired Man emerges from a nearby pub and begins his return, like the birds, to his place of rest, crossing through a market place. The path is still unfamiliar in the new environment, and as he passes a woman, bending back up from having dropped a bag of groceries, their eyes catch for a second. Her eyes, those perfect, beautiful, sapphire eyes, so similar to the ones he remembered from years ago.

            She drops the groceries she had just retrieved from the earth, staring, opened mouthed into the man’s face. A tear falls to the ground as she mouths a name of insignificance to the Gray-Haired Man. She repeats this name, her breath catching the vocal strings in her throat. At first, a feeble step is made towards him, but then a sudden rush forwards, feeble arms embracing around his waist. She repeats the name, but the word falls on deaf ears.

            How many years? How many years had it been since he had felt this tight embrace around his middle, a soft face pressing deeply into his lower chest. How familiar the sensation of feeling his breath leave his lungs as his beloved squeezes him affectionately.

            He remembers her, more clearly than ever now; golden, flowing hair, streaming around the Aphrodite-esc face, framing two, oceanic gems. He remembers that golden stream flowing across his chest as they lay together, all of those years ago.

            The elder woman whisper’s the name again as she slowly, without loosening the embrace, stands on tiptoes, lifting her soft, aged lips to the Gray-Haired Man’s cheek. The warm burn and flush of blood to his face recalls the feeling of his lover, years ago; the memory of her whispering his name and leaving the print of her lipstick on his neck, cheek, lips. Their first kiss drifts into his mind. He was fifteen, a moon lit night, sitting beneath the star speckled heavens. The Gray-Haired Man closes his eyes as he vividly recalls how she had leaned across and kissed him in the same spot that had so recently made him blush.

The Man’s lungs expand as he takes in a deep breath. Then reality shifts into his mind and the heavenly perfection he was experiencing fades. His lover, for what seems an endless pass of moons, is dead. The experiences they were to share, to hold, and live together were stolen from him. This woman, despite how much he may wish it, couldn’t possibly be the woman he had fallen in love with, decades ago. This woman, with those incredible, heart stopping, angelic eyes, was nothing but a stranger.

            Let her hold him. For just a brief moment more, he longed for her embrace, before going back to the cold, lonely reality that awaited him. She pulls away, eyes closed, a smile tracing her closed lips. Even the way she pulls away from him, after sealing her love with a kiss to his lips, so many years ago, causes the man’s soul to yearn for time to allow him even a second more with the now reenacted memories that had tormented his existence for so many years. He sees in the structure of her face, she isn’t the woman from all those years ago, yet the eyes, those incredible, sky-filled eyes, seemed unmistakable. When her eyes are closed, he knows it’s not the woman that had danced in his arms, as they were joined in holy matrimony. It’s not the woman that had slipped a ring onto his finger, and forged a bond with two, simple, yet powerful words. It’s not the woman, who would tell him the three most important words of his life.

After slowly revealing her pair of blue shaded diamond irises, a wave of shock spreads across her face. The smile dissipates. The realization of her mistaking a stranger, for her own long lost lover, washes through her body, filling her heart with a burning sorrow, ripping away at her very soul.

            She denies it. Her arms release the Gray-Haired Man. She repeats her denial. The unrecognizable name fills the air with repetition. She backs up slowly, tears rolling down her cheeks as a sob escapes her lips. Denying the loss of her dreams, sobbing the name of her lover, she turns and runs into a near alley. In her rush, she runs into a portrait vendor’s stand, knocking over a large painting.

           The sales vendor curses at the wind that had knocked over one of his masterpieces. He gets up and crosses over to the fallen artwork, and lifts it back up again, revealing the painting of a woman, bent over to retrieve a fallen bag of groceries. She is looking up, out of the painting, staring into the eyes of the Gray-Haired Man with her eyes, those perfect, beautiful, sapphire eyes, so similar to the ones he remembered from years ago. The man turns slowly, leaving the painting of such familiarity behind as he returns, like the birds, to his place of rest.

Not sleeping. Not dreaming.

Author's Note: The concept of this story comes from a screen play by Jason Werlinger
A Horror Story

The yellow-green digital dial reads 2:14am; and I am a moment from death. Like a scared adolescent, I hide under a child’s safety shield of sheets, as though it offers protection against the beast that awaits my awakening. A small peek-hole from the covers forces my unblinking gaze to stare at the morbidly disfigured, terror frozen faces of my murdered parents. My god…I’m going to die. Maybe I can run. Maybe I can scream and flee out the back door into the moonless night, and just maybe my shriek shall alert the neighbors. But that won’t save me, and then perhaps my fate will be shared with my neighbors as well. Besides, I am as frozen with fear as my parents’ bloodied faces.

Many people have experienced sleep paralysis: rousing from REM to discover a disobedient body, refusing to obey commands to move. Most people, or to my knowledge, everyone can overcome the stiff bodied cage through sheer will. Some struggled shakes, eventual twitches, and the body begins to obey. But when I was nine, and I first began to be taken hold by some daemonic control, I was not so capable. One morning my parents came into my room, angry I ignored their calls to come downstairs for school. Indeed, I heard their requests, eventual shouting demands, but despite my greatest efforts, could not stir in the slightest. The episodes were seldom for a year, but began to take hold more frequently. Perplexed, perhaps as panicked as I, they scheduled me with a psychiatrist. Prescribing a drug, though intended for much more minor cases than mine (for he had heard of no cases as severe) my parents were reassured that I was soon to be cured. So intent on ridding me of the immobility that held me every morning, blinded by intelligent ignorance, they ignored my pleas to seek another mode of abet; side effects included nightmares and slight delusion, hallucination. I was subject to both, though I would not dare to label the hallucinations slight at all. For they were so great, I began to lose connection with what was real and what was dream, figments of my insane imagination. I also can not call the dreams I had, “nightmares” as the doctor did, but rather night-terrors. In each, the absolute dream awareness, lucidity, depth and sensory perception convinced me without a doubt they were real. One might think with having them every night, one could start to tell the difference, or say to oneself, “it’s just a dream.” This I did at the start, but by the ending of each, without exception, would have the thought, “My god…it’s real. It’s really happening.” --If God, be there a god, gives me another night to dream, I am positive I could know the difference now. I am not dreaming. I am not sleeping. The mutilated bodies of my parents assure me: I am going to die.

In my night terrors, there was always a hope, even in the absolute certainty my experience was real, that I might wake up. I have forsaken this hope. I am not dreaming. I am not sleeping. I must not let the creature know I am awake, or I shall surely die…Maybe if I wait long enough for the sun to fill the room I will live. A childish thought, for as soon as it knows I am awake, death shall follow. I could accept this freedom from a tormented life, if torture would not be the means of my decease. But I have watched the creature now, and it will not be so kind as to deliver a painless departure. Its amusement, its only pleasure as I have observed, comes from the repetitive stabbing, slashing of its victims. It does not speak, it only laughs a gargled, sputtering laugh from its throat that causes red fluid to leak dripping down its jaw to the floor from its fanged, broad grin.

I heard her scream just after midnight. Unlike the startled shriek of a woman startled by some spider or small rodent, this scream was shriller, more terror stricken than any I had heard before. For a few seconds, fear grasped my throat in a tight clench. I couldn’t breathe. Adrenaline sent my pulse into a rapid race while every muscle tightened, foretelling a fight or flight. I do not know how long I battled emotion and logic, but eventually, and still unsure which had won, I grabbed the baseball bat beside my bed and began to investigate the cause of such a cry. I did not go far, for as soon as I stepped out my door into the hall, I could see a pool of blood in the entrance room, still growing in size from the blood that poured from the edge of the stairs, leading to the master bedroom above. The sight set flight my only priority, and as a scared child would, I fled back into my room, hiding beneath my shield of sheets where I still hide now. It must have been not more than five minutes, though it seems like such a greater time, that I cowered in the covers. Then I poked the small peek-hole that I now cannot remove my gaze from. The clock read 12:25am. After the five clicked to six, I heard something, someone, fall from the side of the stairs. There was a nauseating crack I knew to be breaking bones, as I had heard the sound a thousand times in dreams. But I am not dreaming. I am not sleeping. Then I heard a thud on each stair as a semi-struggling person was dragged down, down to the entry room. The thuds kicks, scratches on the floor as someone's nails and feet fought the creature, clawing the hardwood floor. I could hear another body being dragged: they were unconscious or dead.

Into my room, the monster came. The terror…the absolute, sickening terror is all I felt. I cannot describe in any amount of words the horrible appearance of this carnal creature. As nauseating its form may be, it was not the beast that leaves me stiff with dread. For behind it, with long, disproportioned arms that stretched below its knees were dragged my mother and father. Mom was surely dead: her half decapitated head that parodied a Pez-dispenser assured me of this. Even in the dark, I could see how ghostly white she seemed to glow. No blood was left in her body to drain onto the floor. The bloodied streaks that trailed behind her were from the blood that soaked into her skin, nightgown. Dad was slightly struggling in vain, his hands clutching five deep punctures in his stomach, crimson blood dripping out of the wounds. And so the creature positioned them directly in my line of sight: Mom’s head sagging sickeningly to the side and Dad beside her, too weak and hurt to make a sound or struggle. The creature, on the wall behind and above their heads, just where I could see, smeared its clawed hand across the wall, leaving streaks of my parents’ blood. Then it reached down and sunk the terrible claws deep into Dad’s legs. He did not scream, he only gargled as blood dripped out of his mouth. I had to watch. I could not tear my gaze from his eyes that slowly glazed over as death crept forth to claim him. For an hour, the creature drew upon the wall and tortured him, until all movement ceased from his now mangled body: he had finally, mercifully passed. And I knew I would be next if the creature knew I was awake. Oh God…I really am awake. There is no waking from this living nightmare.

Watching people I love die is nothing new to me. The night terrors filled with perfect sensations of sensory perception have convinced me many times that people I care about, any person I held dear, is being tortured and slaughtered before my eyes. But I am not sleeping and I am not dreaming. As I previously mentioned, I would tell myself over and over, “You’ll wake up. It’s just another dream. You’ll wake up.” And every time, in the end before I would be freed from the imprisonment of anguish, I would say to myself, “My god…I’m not asleep. This is real, and I’m really going to die.” But I am not sleeping, I am not dreaming. There will be no escape if this creature knows I am awake.

If only the sun would rise. This vain hope foolishly seemed my only safety. Maybe if the sun rises, the daemon will leave. Children always feel safer in sunlight. The beast, even after Dad was dead, continued to stab, mutilate his body for fresh blood. And I realized after long, it was painting a message on my wall. I tried in vain to read the message, but the night was moonless and the stars were dark. I could only see the defaced faces of Mom and Dad. The creature was patient, and crafted its masterpiece slowly upon my wall. Oh God. I’m really not waking up. Just let it think I am asleep…let the sun rise, and let me live. For if this creature knows I am awake, I will surely die the same pain-filled death I have heard and watched of my parents.

The dials on the clock glow 5:45am, and still the creature perfects its painting.

The dials on the clock glow 6:12am, and the first trickle of light from the rising sun penetrate into the room. I clench my eyes tight. Let it think I am asleep. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. Oh God, why couldn’t this just have been a dream? No terrible nightmare has ever lasted this long. I really won’t wake up…My parents are dead, and if this thing knows I am awake…I will surely die as well.

My eyelids are now a light orange, brown, and yellow. There is sunlight in the room. Oh, God, why couldn't this have been another dream? I hear the beast walk towards my bed and then crawl beneath it, waiting. Waiting for me to wake up as patiently as it had painted upon my wall. I slowly open my eyes to the bloody message above the mangled, bloodless corpses of Mom and Dad:

I KNOW YOU ARE AWAKE