Rot, page 9
What will happen if I move, even just slightly? Will it grab me – or worse – bite me?
It’s licking me; like a… cat. It’s disgusting – the tongue’s rough and large – thick. Its teeth are brushing against me, they’re sharp. What do I do – what do I do? I want my hand back. It feels, perverse, its tongue is unnaturally long and, wide. This thing must be big, like a tiger it so bloody big. I’m still holding the bottle, but I’ve spotted something far worse in my desperate hunt for escape.
The Vodka bottle dropping and hitting the floor should have made me jump out of my skin. It didn’t. I can’t move – I’m too scared. The thing under the bed pales in comparison to this. I remember now. I remember a vague dream enough to know that, what I see in my wardrobe mirror opposite the bed poses the most immediate and extreme danger in this room.
In the mirror opposite I’m still asleep, in bed. How’s that possible? The reality here, it’s, it’s all gone. Am I dreaming? I must be dreaming, or hallucinating? This is bad. This is very, very bad – I can’t look away, and a part of me, a part of me is insisting that I have to be imagining it; a much bigger part of me knows, I’m not.
There’s something far darker moored in the shadows of my room’s reflection. It’s barely visible as it stands near the bed where my reflected self is sleeping. I can barely make out the wild, unruly hair. But it’s the eyes. In the obscure silhouette, I can see, the eyes have an eerie faint glow to them.
Stepping out of the shadows it stares back at me. Please no, it’s not real. None of this can be real. These things don’t happen in real life; it’s a twisted, sadistic version of me. I’ve seen it before – in my dream – my nightmare. It looks just like me, but rancid and wet. It’s naked body’s so old and catching what little light there is, looks horribly tortured. And those teeth, those demonic teeth. I look… I look, possessed.
On seeing me, my possessed self reels in shock, or surprise. But it quickly recovers and hastily bolts back into the shadowy gloom and spider-like, it scurries up into the darkest recesses of a corner and waits. Only its faint glowing eyes betray its location as it stares back at me. I want to look away, check the corner of my own room. But I daren’t. This is the first time I’ve seen anything of my supernatural tormentors. I’m too old and weak for this; what can I do against such evil. Until this point it’s all been secrecy. Has it been somehow cultivating my fears. Perhaps this is it, perhaps this is the endgame – the harvest. Is this, thing what I’ve been afraid of this whole time? Myself?
It’s still there, up in the corner. Hidden in darkness. I can see now only a suggestive glint in its eyes. But that’s all.
It’s so silent up there. So still. I feel that if I look away it’ll move and I’ll lose it.
There’s something else up there, something far more terrifying next to those unblinking, staring eyes. It’s something I remember from my dream. It, is up there, too.
The sleeping version of me isn’t stirring. It’s so vulnerable, so familiar and knowing what’s coming makes it all the more worse. I’m too scared to watch… too scared to look away. Too many eyes are watching me. I feel them everywhere now. I feel like a centrepiece on a dining table.
The bed shook, I only glanced away for a second and my corrupted, mirrored self is glaring back at me; it’s laying on top of my sleeping reflection. The look on its face, how can something grin that hideously and those eyes, they’re the yellowest, sickly eyes. Yet they burn right into my soul. The shadows of the room, cast by the unseen moon are working well to exacerbate the brutalised features of this demonic me.
I know what’s coming. I can feel it. Like I’ve done it all before. Like what I’m seeing is a horrifying rerun of a movie I’ve already seen.
Looking away before the first savage bite into the sleepers still flesh, I glance straight into the barely glinting eyes of, it, lurking behind me, up in the dark corner of my room. What is the purpose of all this? Looking away, back again at the reflection, I see the awful deed is done. The grinning, demonic me is resting now, it’s old haggard body glistening among the entrails in the soft moonlight; it doesn’t look like blood in this light. But I know it is. I must be in Hell to be witnessing this painfully protracted and surreal nightmare. I can’t watch this anymore, I just can’t.
What’s happening? I closed my eyes for a second and now I’m before myself at the mirror and, I’m standing. When did this happen? I’ve no recollection of when I moved from the bed. My mirrored self is standing opposite me at an equal distance away, four or five feet maybe; grinning with those disturbingly sharp, flesh-strewed teeth and those sickly, yellow eyes – it’s hideous when seen this close; the layering wrinkles add to its horror as they forcefully accommodate that broad, unnatural grin.
It was just a blink this time and I’m closer still to this demonic monster and again we’re at an equal distance to one another, three feet maybe. I can’t move, I can’t physically move.
Another minor blink, I’m still three feet away, however, my hand is outstretched, mirroring this monstrous evil before me. I don’t want to touch it, what happens if I touch it? In the next moment, the next inevitable blink, our hands are one as the mirror ripples, like breaking the stillness of a silent lake at night.
It’s got me! My God, it’s got me, it’s so strong! I’m being pulled in. Is there nothing around me to help, to… how’s this possible? Looking back at the bed I’ve just come from, I can see myself still laying there – does nothing matter now, is reality here so fickle? The sheets… the sheets of my bed are drenched in my blood. My wrists cut wide open with my own blood-soaked paring knife, while an empty vodka bottle rests on the floor by a pile of my scattered, bloody clothes. I’m dead! How long have I been dead? Did I do this?
From under the bed, things are moving. I’m slipping through the mirror, unable to stop. I see rats. They’re swarming my corpse. They’re biting me, they’re… they’re eating me. I don’t know how, but I feel each one is possessed by a ravenous demon from the other side; the place I am being pulled to. What’s waiting for me where I’m going? What’s going to happen to me?
The silent, corrupted grin of my dark mirrored self is facing me now in this silent, black void and she is all I can see. All I can do is stare into those cruel, sickly yellow eyes and I know, this is, it.
Richard Coiley, Rot
