Young Writers Society

I opened my eyes, shooting up in my bed. My skin was cold and slick with sweat. My heart still raced in my chest, the blood pumping in my ears. I looked around fearfully for a few moments, before accepting that what had I had seen was nothing but a nightmare.

Moving to pull off the covers, I realised that I was already sleeping on top of them. I shrugged, must have crawled out of it during the night. I glanced once at the toilet nearby, rubbing my eyes blearily. Scratching my chin, I turned away from there. I didn’t need to brush my teeth anyway.

I pushed my room door open and cried out, recoiling and covering my burnt eyes. I rubbed them but the pain grew stronger. The light of the corridor seemed so bright, too bright. I held one arm against my forehead to shade my eyes and went out the corridor. Leaning over the railing, I shouted, “Hey Dad! What’s up with the lights?”

No response. Strange. He shouldn’t have left yet, it was still early. Frowning, I called for my father again but he didn’t answer. Must still be in bed, or in the toilet. I probably should wake him up if he was still asleep, but I was so hungry.

Following my daily routine, I sat on the smooth wood rails and let myself slide all the way down the flight of stairs, cringing slightly at the intensity of the lights above. Looking around, I saw a figure seated at the kitchen table. Her brown tresses, streaked with too much grey and silver for a woman her age, fell back across her back. I knew her, obviously. Slipping into one of the seats, I asked cheerily, “Morning, Mum. What’s for breakfast?”

She didn’t answer. Her head lay in her arms, her hair splayed out in a wild halo. I cocked my head. Was she asleep? How could anyone find rest in this searing light? Then I noticed something under one of her arms, a large glass bottle with some strange liquid still sloshing around inside. I sniffed once and recoiled. She smelled of something acrid and bitter to me, alcohol. My mother wasn’t one to drink, and at most just a sip or two of wine. But by her state it seemed she’d drunk half the huge bottle and spilled the rest on the table.

“Mom?”

I reached forward with one hand to shake her awake, letting my palm rest against her shoulder. Yelping, I fell forward suddenly, my weight pitching forth as I teetered on my seat. I managed to regain my balance, glad I didn’t hurt myself, then a more pressing question reached me. Why didn’t I feel my mother’s skin? I reached forward again, prepared this time, and let my fingers fall upon her. All five digits seemed to fall through her skin.

I screamed, loudly. Falling back off my chair, I pointed at my mother fearfully, “What the hell!”

She didn’t hear me, for she bore no reaction in her sleep of inebriation. I backed up till I could go no further, the stove at my back. I reached over to grab something for self-defence from whatever sat in that chair, grasping for a knife, but my fingers seemed to grasp air, passing through the rubbed handle of my weapon.

My skin paled and the pallor left it as I looked at the knife that had passed through my hand. I grasped again but my fingers yet again passed through the handle. No. The nightmare couldn’t be true.

I reached for another knife, a huge silver cleaver, but my digits phased through that as well. Then I realised something else. I couldn’t see my reflection in the cleaver’s mirror-like blade. I reached for another item, a bread knife, a butter knife, a steak knife, even a fork, my hand just passed through all of them like they were air. I swore and cussed like a sailor. This couldn’t be happening. I felt like crying as I saw myself unable to touch any item before me. My nightmare couldn’t have been real. It couldn’t have been.

“It’ll be alright, dear.”

I spun around and saw a man sitting with my mother, my father. His once strong features, so calm and regal and stern, were now shattered. His eyes seemed red and bloodshot. He wrapped one comforting arm around my mother and cooed, “It’ll be alright.”

She woke but barely moved. “How? How will it be alright? My baby, my sweet Baby…”

‘Baby’. That was her name for me. My heart raced even faster. I asked frantically, “Please. Tell me I’m here. Tell me you can see me. Tell me you can hear me.”

“Baby, my sweet little Baby, he didn’t deserve it…”

I slammed my fist on the table and yelled, “Hear me!”

They didn’t flinch. My father said, “The police are making an investigation now. They’ll catch the killer and he’ll be brought to justice.”

“But how about us! How about our Baby! We’ll never get him back. Never.”

I paced around, trying not to believe the truth. I put my head next to my father’s, yelling, “HEAR ME!”

He didn’t blink.

I slammed my fist into him, but it just passed straight through. I kicked at my mother but my foot just flew into empty air. I slammed my head into the table as hard I could but didn’t feel any pain. “This cannot be happening.”

My father didn’t answer my mother after that, both of them falling into a chilling silence. I paced around for a while, before falling into one of the chairs, letting my face and my tears fall into my hands. Before long a cold voice whispered, “It’s time.”

I looked up and saw a figure framed in the doorway. He was old, very very old. His face was a valley of wrinkles and his skin mottled with age. His eyes were sunken in but still had a sort of youthful air to them. He wore a sharp black suit that would have looked more at home on a 60s Chicago mobster and leaned heavily on a glossy cane, black as night. “I’ve come to collect you.”

I knew he was talking to me. I knew my parents couldn’t hear him. I knew what was coming. Stuttering, I protested, “I-I can’t go yet, my parents, they-”

“Are strong,” he finished, “Exceptionally so for humans their age. They will move on, in time. As you must as well.”

I shook my head frantically, getting up. I gestured at them, “I need more time! Just a few hours, please! To make my peace!”

“I’m truly sorry, child. It troubles me to take away one so young, but life is life, and death is death.”

No. No. No. I looked at my parents, wrapped in each other’s arms, mourning a son that didn’t breathe anymore. A son who saw them but they couldn’t see. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

The Old Man didn’t say anything, he just stood there with a doleful expression on his face. I advanced to him, against my will, as if he were a giant magnet and I the metal.

I paled in anticipation for what lay beyond. “I’m not ready.”

He smiled grimly and his image seemed to flicker, for a moment he changed, growing taller and looming over me, his suit turning to a torn cloak and hood, his skin turning to shadows and his cane into a seven foot pole with a wicked scythe at its head. His tattered robe billowed and snapped in a wind I couldn’t feel, and the darkness within his cowl seemed to beckon and call to me, before he turned back into a harmless old man. “People are rarely ready. But when we cannot change things, we must learn to accept them and move on.”

I wrung my hands and looked one last time at my parents, before sliding my hand of smooth skin into the Old Man’s wrinkled palm.