it lives in the shadows part 2

    For twelve years I live nothing but a blur. I went to school, then work, then my therapist and then I came home. In truth I don't even remember what I did in those past twelve years. I just know I didn’t like a single moment of it. I felt so detached so lonely. There was nothing there for me even in the place I was forced to call home. My aunt was there for the most part I think. She saw me every day and never said a word. She was so focused on her work, the money, and all the stupid shit I didn’t care for.

    It stressed her out often. She had medication to aid in some of the anxiety that followed with her work. Everything had stopped for her one day. It was my twenty-third birthday and I found her lying on her bed. She was grey and cold, her hand loosely clutching her chest. She was dead and I didn’t care. I thought it was the best present the world could have given me for my birthday. From this moment on I didn’t need those pills, that therapist, the stress or her.

    I felt that I needed to at least attempt to have her body discovered so it didn’t just rot here in her room. I wandered to the phone still very numb from my past. I dialed 9-1-1 and held the phone to my face.

    “You dialed 9-1-1, please state your emergency…” A soft voice came from the device I held to my head.

    “My aunt is dead…” I mumbled.

    “I’m sorry sir, can you repeat yourself?” She pressed on.

    “My aunt is dead.” I stated clearer this time then hung up the phone. I packed a small backpack full of clothes and a couple books. I left my cellphone and took some money from the safe in my room. I took the elevator down to the parking structure and walked to my car. It was bland and grey just like my life was. I sat inside and only for a moment I thought I should return.

    After suspending such a stupid idea I placed the key in the ignition, turned on the car and I left the apartment building. I had no idea where I was going but I had a full tank of gas and no comprehensible history.

    I drove for a couple hours and came to a small town. I pulled into a motel and found myself a room. It was not the most luxurious I had lived in but thinking back when I was a child this is still better.

    I took my small bag and dropped it on the bed. I rubbed my stomach feeling my hunger pains come on. I sighed and took a ten and placed it in my wallet. I moseyed out of my room, locking it behind me, and started to wander around the town. I stayed on main streets and memorized them so I wouldn’t get lost trying to find my way. I entered this small little corner store on the end of one of the streets. I found some snacks I had been dying to eat.

    It was mainly junk; my aunt never let me eat anything that wasn’t according to the doctor’s strict diet. Personally I think they were just trying to torment me. I couldn’t exactly trust adults to do things for ‘the better’.

    Happy with my selection I made my way to the register. Behind it stood a beautiful pair of icy blue eyes draped in soft chocolate hair, surrounded by flawless tanned skin. Her name tag said Linda. I couldn’t help but stare; this was the first conscious memory of a female since my aunt or my mother.

    “Will this be all?” She smiled.

    “Huh…oh yeah.” I rubbed the back of my head nervously.

    “You’re new around here…” She stated happily while ringing up my total.

    “Yeah, just arrived today.”  I awkwardly laughed.

    “That will be $7.82.”

    I handed her the ten and she returned my change. I took my bag of junk food and left. Half way down the street I slapped myself, I can talk to anyone but I couldn’t say a thing to her. I sighed returning to my dank room. I opened a bag of chips, turned on the news and ate. I kept thinking of the icy eyes I had seen though. It caused me to return to that corner store often.

     

     

    After three months I had found a job, I was able to move out of that motel and into my girlfriend’s apartment. I think she just felt bad I lived in such a bad place. Personally I wanted to work for my own apartment and have her move in but this would have to do for now.

    Everything was so nice. I remember this elated feeling of joy once so many years ago. Me and mother went out for my birthday. Then it hit me again, this sorrowful torment washed over my body as I unpacked one of my many boxes.

    I fell to my knees panting, grabbing my stomach feeling this painful growl of hunger. It made me nauseous to the point I had to stumble to a nearby trashcan to vomit. I was heavy and shaking violently clinging to the metal bin for dear life. Linda had come into the room and saw me. Worried she rushed over to help me. I inhaled deeply and sat up. She kept asking if I was okay and I smiled nodding.

    “I’m just a little under the weather.” I lied. She helped me up and brought me back to our bedroom. She laid me down telling me she was going to go the store to get some medicine for me. I nodded to her and watched her leave the bedroom.

    After hearing the outside door click and the loud lock turn I sat up. I then swung my feet off the bed and stood. I took myself to my bathroom and looked into the mirror. There stood me staring at myself. I looked fine, full of colour and life. I chuckled to myself and dismissed it as just a relapse. I wandered back to my bed and tucked myself in. I allowed my eyes to close for a moment, after being sick to my stomach I did have a habit of napping. It just exhausted me.

    Little did I know at the time, it wasn’t just a relapse…it was a reminder.

    Over time I started having nightmares of the shadow creature. I would wake up in a cold sweat and salivating like I had when I was a kid. Often I sat in the bathroom by the shower until morning where I would make breakfast for my Linda and pretend everything was okay.

    I started becoming paranoid about people. I felt that all of them had looked like my aunt…my dad…my mother. They haunted me day after day. I felt bad for Linda because I started to avoid her. I started having dreams were I ate people and where I scared people. I didn’t want to hurt her.

    There was one day it had gotten to the point where I couldn’t stand it anymore. I took her hands and sat with her on the couch. I was filled with regret and guilt and it showed on my face. She looked so worried.

    “We can’t stay together.” My lips trembled as the words fell from my mouth. They were so heavy and discouraging.

    “What?” I saw the tears well in her eyes.

    “I can’t…explain it to you but for your own good I need you to leave me.” I held her hands tightly, I was shaking and she could feel it.

    “Rodger what's wrong?” she was so worried, “Why can’t you tell me?”

    “Because you will think I am just as crazy as my aunt thought I was and I can’t handle being stabbed again.” I tried to explain it loosely. She refused it and held onto me.

    “Do it tomorrow then…” she sobbed, “Let me have one more night.”

    I wrapped my arms around her. “You’re the greatest thing that has ever happened to me Linda…” I didn’t want to go, but I carry too much bad luck to allow her to stay with me. One more night was all we had and I wasn’t going to let that go.

    That night she slept in my arms. We were close together under the covers. I listened to her soft breath leave her mouth as I watched her sad face bury itself in my chest. My eyes closed. I only wanted to stay with her like this forever.

    My hunger, however, had other ideas.

    I had a clear nightmare. This time it took place right where I was lying. Beside me there was a beautiful woman consumed with sadness, then wrapped around her ever so gently was a claw. Three long fingers draped in a deep crimson and up that came an arm of pitch black. I felt my jaw snap and cheeks rip as my mouth opened wide. I saw these thin, long, monstrous, razor sharp teeth protrude from my torn face. What followed was a long slimy tongue that burned through the fabric of the blanket as if it was made of highly acidic saliva. I saw the icy blue eyes again, only this time they were filled with fear not sorrow. They looked right at me. She mouthed words I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t help myself. I held her down and leaned towards her. I was just so hungry.

    When I woke up I was facing away from Linda. I saw the dark closet filled with my clothes and the lamp on the nightstand. The alarm clock just under it read four o’clock. God I hated when I woke up so early. I turned on my light and saw on my hand a dried crimson liquid. I shot up on my bed and looked down at my pillow. Blood.

    I started to hyperventilate as my eyes slowly traveled to the other side of the bed. There were holes in Linda’s blanket and an arm lying on the bed. I stood and began walking around the bed. On the floor there was the body of my girlfriend, headless and still bleeding. I stumbled backwards trying to keep myself from screaming. I held my hand over my mouth and scurried to the bathroom. In the mirror I saw burns around my bloody mouth. I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

    I screamed turning the knob on the skin and quickly washing the blood from my face and hands. When I looked up again I saw a tall thin shadowy figure rise behind me. I slowly turned my head and looked up at this smooth dark head on a long thin neck, his chest was like a triangle and at the bottom there was a long thick strand of darkness leading to the floor, for his arms they were long and had two of the bloody claws for hands. Its body dripped the dark shadows it came from through the stringy mess it had hanging from his limbs head and body.

    It was the creature from my nightmares….no….not nightmares.

    I cowered into a corner remember having the dream of eating my mother and all the nightmares of being clawed at as a child. Then I thought of Linda.

    “n…no…” I trembled fiercely, my eyes trailed from the tall creature down to shadow on the floor, it drug itself all the way to my own shadow. This wasn’t just any creature; it was a part of me.

    “You will…feed me…” it demanded.

    “wh…what! No!” I protested.

    “Then I will destroy you…and eat your head…” it sunk into the darkness below it.

    I should have just agreed then.

     

    I hid the body of my girlfriend and lived life more paranoid than I had before. Anyone could be next at any point and I had no idea what to do. But it knew what it was going to do. It tormented me. It went into my memories and showed me everything I didn’t want to remember. Over time I had found these patches of skin with acidic like burns on them. I had large bald spots on my head with clear burn marks. My eyes had lost their irises and eventually my pupils. There was nothing to my sunken eyes than the veins making up for my eyes. I saw perfectly fine I just didn’t see them in the reflection. As I began to pale I started seeing my veins more and more, they were a bluish green at one point then they all turned black.

    I couldn’t breathe. This looked nothing like me. It wasn’t me at all. It is like I had my own mind but the rest was whatever that shadow creature wanted. I slept less and eventually I quit my job. There was no way I could get back there. Not now, not ever.

    One night I bundled myself up hiding both my eyes and my hair before I walked out into the night. I wasn’t going to go far, eventually I would be found out but what was I going to say. There was this shadow walking creature making me do things I didn’t want to do? No that was stupid; they would lock me up forever. Well…they were going to lock me up regardless I suppose.

    There was a slight fog tonight, which wasn’t too abnormal. But what was abnormal was this person running down the street screaming. She stumbled and fell and behind her came a girl in black pigtails. She sat on top of the woman screaming for help and plucked out her eyes. Then just as fast at the girl had come she disappeared into the fog. I walked over to the woman lying there begging for help bleeding from her eye sockets.

    “Eat…it…” the shadow ordered. I sat by the woman and obeyed.

    I got home that night leaving the woman to bleed on the ground. I sat in my dark apartment dripping blood from my lips still chewing on remnants of the head.  I swallowed feeling full. It made me wonder how long it was going to last. How long would I be full?

     

    Nearly a week later I was arrested. They found my girlfriends body and countless others with missing heads. Their search led them to me. I sat in my cold seat facing the one way glass bundled to hide all of my defects. The people interrogating me pressed on about the missing heads.

    I only responded in silence.

    They called me a sick bastard, they threatened I would never return from where I was coming from. I merely looked at them from behind my shaded lenses. I was hoping that would happen, this way I didn’t have to eat anyone else.

    “Rodger you need to tell us where the heads are…” The older one pleaded nicely. He reminded me of the officer that visited me at school when I was a child.

    “They are gone…” I responded honestly, because there was no way they were going to have the heads back at this point.

    “What do you mean gone?” he asked.

    “You will never see them again.” I kept my gaze on him.

    “Can you remove those glasses please.” He demanded.

    “If you want…” I lifted my gloved hands to my face and grabbed the arm to my glasses. I placed them down on the table and looked at him. He took a step away from me looking like he had seen a ghost. I then gave up on hiding it; I removed my gloves to my burnt fingers, my hat hiding the bald patches of melted skin, and the coat hiding my black veins and bruised skin. All that was left was me in my white button up shirt and my blue jeans then shoes.

    “My god…” he stumbled back. I guess I was that monster shadow creature wanted because at this point I was hungry. I wanted his head.

     

    I left the police station riddled with blood and headless bodies. The shadow was content and told me he was going to rest for a while. It said it wanted me to go into the forest and keep walking. I lost myself. There was no more of this pleasant Rodger there used to be. It didn’t sicken me as much as I thought; after all I was just the shadows host.