(I'd posted this very similar story "Falling into the Darkness" but it didn't have a background, you didn't know who it was, or anything! So I cleaned it up, and criticism is greatly appreciated! Thanks everyone!)
The way this story begins is far from a “once upon a time.” and it doesn’t end with a “happily ever after,” because in a couple of peoples life, those two phrases don’t exist.
There are doors, doors that are open to the other side. Portals that to the human eye don’t know exist in our safe little world. Our eyes look over the crazed past that hides right beneath our fingertips. The side of sick thrills, chills, and insane phenomenon. There lie secrets of the unforgiving past. Secrets of the dead, the alive, the forgotten, and the forever lost. When you lose your mind, and feels like the room is circling around you and you can hear the ringing in your ears from demons screaming in the background. When you truly feel like your life is at stake and your heart is outrageously thudding from your chest, and when you know that this feeling will never end.
-Prologue-
When I was a little girl, six to be exact, I was always tortured by shadows in my room, demons as I called them. They'd dance around my bed when I was asleep, and give me nightmares. Not the regular nightmares either, the nightmares that wake you up and you don't know where you are. I'd wander into the streets when I had the nightmares, laying there screaming.
Usually when you dream and you get hurt, you either wake up right before, or you don't feel it. I didn't have that, I felt every time they would claw their nails into my back, or when they would burn my flesh, or when they would slash their teeth into my body. My frequent wandering into no where gave my parents enough concern to send me to a mental institution for kids. I was embarrassed to be going there at such a young age.
They chopped off half of my auburn hair, so it would fit the dress code. When they cut it, it made it come to my shoulders. It was un-even, ugly, and terrible. My brown eyes were filled with tears that whole day. I'll never forget the way my mothers arms felt when she hugged me for the last time. Or my father, I'd never seen him cry until that day. He picked me up and told me I'd always be his little girl.
“No matter how... troubled you are.” He'd said.
“But Daddy, I'm not troubled,” I whispered
He kissed my cheek and sat me down.
I walked to my mother, tears were already welled in her eyes, as there were in mine too. She hugged me tight and picked me up. I wrapped my legs around her and clutched onto her neck.
“I love you,” she choked on her words.
“I love you too, Mommy.” Tears were flowing down my parents cheeks, and mine too.
When Mrs. Jan came to say it was time for my patents to leave, I clutched harder to my mother.
“No!” I yelled, “I don't need to be here!” My mom unwound my small hands from her neck and my father got my legs. Looking into their eyes I knew it was probably one of the hardest things they ever had to do. My last image of them was my mothers pained eyes, and my father taking her into his arms to comfort her.
When I got my hair cut I cried, when I took a shower in the murky bath water I cried, when I was falling asleep, I cried. Non-stop tears were flowing down my cheeks that day.
The nightmares didn't stop once I got there. But more that they amplified, they got worse. More vivid and cruel. The demons would shout my name, “Laura!” they'd scream, “die!” would usually fall right after it. When I had the nightmares, I was always confused. I never really knew why I was, and every single one was something new. And in the nightmares it was like I never remembered that I ever had any. That I was shocked I was having them.
Besides my nerves, and my sight, I had no senses. I was completely numb. There were times I could scream or talk, I couldn't smell, or taste anything.
I was never safe from the shadows I called demons. I was never alone when I wanted to be, dead pairs of eyes watched me constantly. Except for when I didn't want to be alone, when I actually wanted some attention, is when they were not there. That at points were scarier than when they were there.
The teachers at the institution were mean to me, because I never made good grades. And my “excuses” were too ridiculous to believe. And that was that demons haunted me and never let me get anything done.
I got sent here to get help... but everyone refused to believe me. It got underneath my skin, and I was always mad.
I had a few friends at the institution, Dannie, Connie, Mike, Sandra, and Leah.
Dannie was one of the craziest kids I'd ever met - and not even mental crazy. He was daring. But he always refused to tell me why he was there. That always secretly worried me.
Connie was the prettiest girl I ever saw, hands down. Shiny brown hair, big eyes, full lips, all of the... normal boys liked her. But she was friends with me, and she got sent into the institution for her night-terrors. Kind of like me, but not as extreme, oh, and nothing was haunting her. She'd wake up crying and screaming almost every night.
Mike was the boy I had a crush on. On the playgrounds he would push me in my swing, and it'd make me blush. He got sent there simply... because his parents abandoned him. They didn't want him, they thought he was just a expensive inconvenience. When he told me that I cried a little.
Sandra had the most soothing voice I ever heard, and when she sang to you it put you right to sleep. I called her a fairy, because I believed she was magic. She too never told me why she was at the institution. I simply didn't see any reason she would have to be.
Leah was weird, quirky, and a total dork. I don't think she even got boobs until the age of twelve. But since no one else would play with her, I would. The reason she was there is because she'd talk to people who weren't there.
"Are they ghosts?" I was exited that maybe someone shared my curse.
"No," her blonde eyebrows pulled down, "just people. When I'm asleep I get comforted by them, they tell me fairy tails."
"I wish I was you." I was thinking about how it would be to hear fairy tails rather than being tortured as you fall asleep.
I grew up there, I'm still growing up here, and I haven't seen outside of the wooden gates for over thirteen years. Last year I got moved to the Adult Mental Institution.
But no matter how many times I talk to someone, move rooms, wings, or buildings, the nightmares stay. I still wander around, waking up screaming, and I have a funny feeling that this wont end.
And that one night I wont wake up.
****
I woke up in my parent’s bedroom. I hadn't been here in years. Everything was the same as I remembered it, the bed against the back wall horizontally, TV in the corner, and a couple family pictures hanging on the wall. Unease settled in my stomach when I realized my last picture was taken thirteen years ago. The last time my parents saw me. After the unease left, sadness replaced it.
What am I doing in here? How did I get in here? I started thinking after a while.
Then sudden panic sunk in.
I couldn’t get out of the web of blankets that I was under fast enough. I kicked the sheets off and threw the comforter out of my way, throwing myself in the direction of the door. My hands frantically searched for the doorknob. Once finding the doorknob, I twisted it left, and then right. It was like it wasn’t working; no matter how much I twisted it I couldn’t hear the “click” of the opening. While in the midst of opening the door, I was looking over my shoulder. The darkness started at the left, upper corner of the room. And it was cloaking the walls, the furniture, the floor, slowly. My heart was thudding, my breath was ragged, and little driblets of sweat were running down my neck - although it was very, very cold in the room, so cold chills ran down my spine… then started the blood curdling screams. The screams were a mixture of agony, pain, and sorrow. Wales of cries were very faint in comparison to the screams. I sunk my back down the door, grabbing two fistfuls of hair, adding my own screams to the evil song.
“Leave me alone!” I shrieked. When I screamed, it was like a whisper. Although the screams were coming from the pit of my stomach, I couldn’t compare to the immortal sound.
I felt trapped, I felt horror, I felt scared. And that’s something that I wasn’t used to. I wanted it to end, I wanted it to stop and just go away. But the end of the dream didn’t seem like it was near. I stumbled to my feet, and tried to feel for a wall, for a window, for the bed. But yet, I felt nothing. It was like walking into a black hole. The hole was getting bigger, and yet as I was running I could still hear the screams like they were right there. Screaming in my ear, taking my breath away, finally I gave up. I sat down and let the screams take control of me. I felt pushes against my body. And I was now laying down, my back to the floor. I felt an immense amount of weight on me. Kind of like being suffocated, but a thousand times worse, I could tell the demons liked my pain, now hearing screams, but wails of immortal laughs. And giggles of small children prancing around me. I didn’t exactly know what to call the things that were torturing me, therefore, that is why I settled on demons. I focused my attention on the children that were dancing around me. I reconsigned a couple of them, Dannie, Connie, Mike, Sandra, and Leah. Kids from the mental institution that had died suddenly in their sleep – all friends of mine... well, as close as you could get to “friends” in a mental institution.
It clicked then.
That the demons killed my friends, that they wanted me not to be happy. So they killed them. Sandra was softly singing the song that she would to put me to sleep.
"Watch me, watch me run. I'm now swimming, the water sparkling from the sun. I'm now singing, words rolling off my tongue," when she sang everything else went silent, like how it always had. I was mesmerized, and tears built under my eyelids.
Then age built in me, I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes. The one thing that made me feel close to normal, the one thing that made me the smallest bit happy, they took away. Because they controlled my life, because they owned me. I was theirs.
When I opened my eyes, it was my parents’ bedroom again.
The same confusion overwhelmed me. Then the same urge to get out. Then it started all over again. Just like a recurring nightmare. Just like how it always has been.
“Not again,” I screamed when I realized this nightmare just simply refused to end.
With my actions failing, knowing that I would wake up again, I tried something new this time. I opened myself up, I lay myself flat on the floor.
“Come and get me!” I screamed, “I’m not scared of you, come on!” I wanted to challenge the demons. Something I never had done before. But I felt braver right now, more powerful. But as soon as I saw… it, I regretted my words as soon as I spoke them. The thing I saw didn’t have a name, a specification, a gender, anything to identify it. It was just a thing that was staring at me straight in the eyes.
It had hair, long, raggedy, dark, damaged, choppy, hair. Its eyes were deep, pitch black, with little red dots dead smack in the center. The mouth was crooked, the teeth were points, and the bottom row was rows. It was like sharks teeth, but they screeched when it slightly grazed one another. Like fingernails on a chalkboard. The same noise that instinctively makes your hands fly to your ears and press against them hard. The exact sound that raised the hairs on your neck and send chills up your spine. Its breath was hard, struggled. The flesh of the thing couldn’t easily be skin, more like bones. The thing had no muscle on the bones, just black ashy bone with thin cracks. I hadn't ever seen this, it was absolutely new, and more terrifying than anything I've ever seen, or experienced.
With it standing right at my feet, looking right at me it scarred me, scared me.
It opened its mouth and let out a wild shriek. I couldn’t help but screaming, although it was a wasted effort, you couldn’t hear mine in comparison with its.
“Stop,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Leave me alone!” Pain shot from one point of my body to another. I had absolutely no idea what was causing it, either. My hands balled into fists, my toes curled and my face scrunched up.
It felt like my body was being burned,but there was no fire. But it still felt like every inch of my skin was set ablaze. The tips of my fingers and toes were unable to move. My body was unable to move. I was frozen; I couldn’t talk, scream, or move. This was different from any other dream. Because it didn't feel like a dream. It felt like I was awake.
But as soon as I was wondering that, I woke up in my parent’s bedroom, bewildered. I felt the urge to get out like before, but I stayed in bed.
Looking around for a while, the bed sheets started to swallow me up. I started having trouble breathing, hyperventilating for my staggering breath. I clutched my hands and fought against the sheets. I kicked a foot in the air and held it there. While doing so, I threw my fist at the blankets and that gave me a small amount of room to breath.
Finally I was able to climb out of the sheets, and relief washed over me. I jumped from the bed and again, threw myself at the door. This time it opened, and more relief came. I looked behind me, and the darkness was spreading more rapidly than I remembered it did in the dream – in the nightmare.
I stepped outside of my parent’s room to find everything looking strangely normal, but vacant. I could tell just by hearing absolute silence that no one was home.
My ears were ringing, my pulse was racing, and sweat dripped down my palms. I tried to contain myself, catch my breath; but nothing would stop my searching eyes, and my thudding heart. Something still just wasn’t right.
I walked and underneath my feet the wooden floorboards creaked. I walked slowly, constantly checking behind my shoulder. I walked all through the house. Finally I was at the kitchen. I got a cold glass of water and wiped the back of my neck and forehead.
It was still too quiet, too okay, too perfectly neat and so silent! What was with the silence, it was more than silence, but dead beat silence that roamed through the whole house, and what felt like the entire earth.
Maybe it was another nightmare, being alone and the last person on the earth. But, I didn’t feel alone. Because I felt like there were several pairs of eyes watching my every step.
Just, go sit down and I can figure this out, I can. I found myself thinking.
The sofa made squeaking noises as I sat down on it. After what felt like hours of sleeping, I was still tired. Sleep couldn’t be bad, but if I did sleep would I wake up to the never – ending nightmare again, or would it be normality? Or would I again wake up in my parent’s bed immediately almost suffocating after opening my eyes.
I lay down on the couch and pulled the blanket that rests on the arm of the couch over me. I closed my eyes shut tight, and not ten seconds later I was almost asleep. I was in that weird, delusional twilight sleep phase. The one where if you trip in your dream, you wake up with a jerk.
That wasn’t my case, I wasn’t lucky enough to have that luxury. Instead I dreamed of my previous dream. Of the darkness, the demons prancing around me, of the one particular demon that looked… indescribable. But at the end I was staggering around in the darkness, hearing frequent laughs, squeals, or screams far off in the distance.
“Hello?” I would yell. No luck.
I stumbled on my own feet and that awoke me. I was awake but my eyes were shut. I kept them shut for I don’t know how long. But I knew it was long enough to realize that what I was laying on was not the couch, it wasn’t the soft fuzzy blanket I was using, and I did not feel safe.
It was long enough to realize that I was laying on what felt like nothing, I had no blanket, and I knew why I was not safe.
Because I was in the darkness, and I knew that because I could hear the screams, and even beneath my eyelids, I could see the indescribable creature that was now standing at my feet.
But also because I realized, that this nightmare would never end.
“Never,” I heard thousands of demons whispers echo in the darkness.
Never, I repeated in my mind.
Never.
<---- Dancing Elephant!