Dear Maria: Chapter 4

Slowly, her senses tuned into the cold breeze around her. Where was this wind coming from? Her eyelids fluttered but they let in no light. Were her eyes even open? The ground was cold beneath her fingers. Where had her bed went? Slowly she made her way upright, standing on her feet. Her eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness. Patches and outlines of various objects and building could now be seen. Off in the distance, she could see a street light flickering. Light. Precious light. Like a fly to a bulb, Maria headed towards the flashing beam.

The usually soft clunk of her heels sounded loud and harsh as they echoed around the silent environment. She stood beneath the wavering light, staring aimlessly out at her surroundings. This wasn’t the town she remembered. What happened to it? What happened to her home?

Once green, flourished parks now stood as a dead barren. Rotting branches twitching as the wind blew; rusting swings screeching, old leaves becoming mulch. Piles of rubble lay on the streets, with large holes and cracks now cut deep into their surface. If the ground could bleed to death, these roads would have done so. The buildings were covered by a cloak of shadow, only the broken windows could be seen as the dying light reflected from their surface. Maria took a few steps away from the safety barrier of light, allowing her fragile body to be submerged into the darkness. The unnatural stillness of the town was uneasy, as if the wind dared to even breathe. The silence was deafening and seemed to close in around her. Dark, black silence. Her pupils widened trying to capture the hidden objects. A broken fire hydrant, a destroyed dog kennel, over turned pram, small doll laying on the road. Blood, at least, that’s what she thought. The darker stains could have been anything. She hoped it would be anything rather than her first guess. Maria could faintly distinguish a trail of the liquid leading up to one of the smaller houses to her right. The door was smashed and hanging off one of its hinges. A deeper darkness lay inside it. The mouth of the building called to her, called for her to come closer, to follow the trail that had been made. She obeyed. Every sense in her body told her to turn, to turn and run, but she obeyed the darkness, edging closer and closer to the portal of complete blindness.

She stood in front of it now; only centimetres between the door frame to the unknown. Maria could hear a very faint, deep rumbling. As much as the sound disturber her, she placed a hand lightly on the door. Its surface was rough; the once red paint had been violently rubbed off, creating millions of lumps and grooves in the door. Appling more pressure to her hand, the door swung on its hinge, revealing more of the shadows within it. It squeaked as it slowly moved to a new position, contemplating if it should remain stationary. The faint outline of some surface could be made, a desk perhaps. Hesitantly, she took small steps into the dark, reaching her fingertips out to touch the surface she could see. It was abnormally cold. Her hand ran over the surface of the desk, searching for something that she didn’t even know yet. She touched something thin and wooden; a pencil, something tall with lots of detail; an ornament, something wet and sticky; Maria didn’t want to know what that was. Finally, she found something rectangular and metal; a lighter. The lid opened with a small click. She spun the flint three times before a red flame emerged from the device. It wasn’t very big, but bright enough to show her surroundings. The wet sticky substance turned out to be what she had feared, blood. Now, she could clearly see the trail of blood she followed into the house. It led from the doorway into the hall and up the stairs. It was from the stairs that it had run down the wall and onto the desk. Maria edged away from the desk; staring at the large amount of blood the trail consisted off. Every last millimetre of her being told her to leave this place, to be anywhere but here, but she couldn’t, she knew deep in the depths of her mind that she couldn’t bring herself to walk out that door. She was on the leash of the darkness, and her master was tugging. Tugging the leash to lead her up the stairs, and she obeyed.

Dear Maria,
Welcome to our home, our town; the place we are forced to wander forevermore. I hope you’re making yourself comfortable. Are you ready to begin your breakdown? Your breakdown into disgusting nothingness. It’s going to start soon. Just wait. Wait for the pain. The suffering. It will come. Don’t you worry.

Maria stood before a door now. The trail had crawled its way underneath the small gap between it and the floor. The low rumbling she could hear earlier was louder now. No doubt its source lay beyond this piece of wood. She shouldn’t open that door, she knew she shouldn’t, but she also knew she had too. Her fingertips touched the doorknob, slowly forming a tighter grasp over its numb surface. It screeched as she turned it. The door was opening. A smell of decay flooded her nostrils and she winced at the stench. She could pass into the room now. Holding the lighter up, she cautiously drifted onto the blood-covered floor. The room had been demolished. It looked like it had once been a child’s room, most likely a little girls. Shelves had been knocked off the walls and lay as splinters on the ground. Stuffed animals of all breeds sat headless, soaked in blood with limbs scattered over the room. The once pink wallpaper was now a shade of deep maroon, caused by the large amount of blood that had been splattered over the walls. There was a small bed in the room too, that was where the blood trail ended. Maria tentatively made her way to the bedside. There were too large lumps underneath the sheets, one nearer the pillows than the other. Maria reached out her trembling hand and grabbed hold of the top of the covers, and, with one quick movement, she closed her eyes and uncovered the first lump. It took her several seconds before she had the courage to open her eyes. Her eyelids slowly parted and hazy images of the scene filled her sight. Whatever she had just revealed, she could tell it was not human. She relaxed and opened her eyes fully. It was a blue tiger and it too was covered in blood. A drip had run down over its glasslike eye, making it look as if the stuffed creature was crying red. Part of its chest had been ripped open, the toys fluffy insides pouring out onto the bed. It too had limbs missing; one leg and one arm. The arm rested only a few feet away from the side of the bed, but there was no sign of the other body part. Her eyes made their way from the leg wound and down the tigers tail, and when she reached its pitch-black tip, she saw something else. A hand. There was a hand clutching onto the tigers tail. A small little hand. It was caked in blood, deep wounds on the knuckles, fingernails torn off. Oh God, she thought, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God. She turned her head away from the scene and closed her eyes as tight as she could. With a final quick tug, the sheet was removed from the bed, now exposing whatever horrible sight waited to steal her glance. She feared to open her eyes, wishing to stay in this safe darkness she created, wishing for everything to be ok. Nobody heard her wish.

Maria’s pupils dilated - more from the fear of the image before her than the light entering her eye. The body of a young girl lay mutilated on the beds surface. Her eyes were glazed with fear, deep cuts on every inch of her rotten flesh and large, ragged holes in her body. Small strips of skin lay around her, and the leg from the blue tiger rested comfortable in her left, white knuckled hand. Patches of black hair had been ripped from the girls scalp, leaving huge, once bleeding bald patches on her skull. Maria staggered back against the sticky wall, covering her mouth, hoping to prevent herself from vomiting.

Why so shocked, Maria? You should be used to this.

Once again she could feel the hot acid make its way up her oesophagus. The burning sensation she felt was nearly unbearable. She could feel her skin screaming under the acidity of her vomit. As her body gave in to the liquid, it spilled onto the floor and mixed with the blood, creating a horrid shade of brown. She placed her whole weight against the wall, and slid down it in one quick thud, feeling drained, almost empty inside. She gazed vacantly at the still pool of fluid that had once been inside her, its colours swirling in the depths of her eyes. A small drip landed in the centre of the puddle, causing the thick substance to ripple slightly. More and more drips began to fall, creating a crimson tinge in the pool. Weary eyes traced the invisible column the water was trickling down. Up and up, until her eyes locked onto its cause.

Its large claws burrowed their way into the plaster of the ceiling, apart from one; the other clutched on to a heart, blood running over its lengthy nails and dripping over its bony arm. Each one of its bones protruded from the deep grey flesh. Its head was a stretched form of abnormity. Its mouth hung so wide it looked like jawbones were nonexistent. The skin was pulled so tightly over its skull that the deep violet and blue veins were visible. Certain ones would pump occasionally, following the tempo of the creatures pulse. Maria could see each one of the spine bones shift as the deformity crawled over the ceiling. It twisted its long, seemingly boneless neck round to face her, deep nostrils flailing at the scent of fresh flesh. The beast had no eyes, but seemed to stare at Maria, with carnivorous intentions in mind. Its long, deformed limbs twitched slightly as the neck of the creature twisted back to its original position. Then it paused, not a single inch of its grotesque form moved.

Maria’s weak body began to scuttle across the floor, her legs barely managing to push her along the ground. She dragged herself along the wall till she sat in a corner, knees pulled up at her face for a pathetic excuse of protection.
“What’s going on?” she sobbed in a voice so high-pitched no one would have been able to understand.
There was a large thud as the hard wooden surface below her shook violently. Again she scrambled, pushing herself further into the tough concrete wall. Dark trails of mascara ran down her tired face and dripped onto her dirty clothes. She buried her face in her bloody hands, no longer attempting to muffle the loud, sad, sobs of woe escaping her mouth. She could hear the thing, feel it’s evil presence, smell its breath. It was near her now. Too near. The boards around her creaked. She could hear the splitting of the wood as each one of its long claws dug its way into another plank. She was clutching onto her own head, nails digging into her own flesh. Self-inflicted pain trying to kill the fear. Maria could hear the drips of saliva splash onto the floor, just millimetres away. The warm moisture of the deformities breath could be felt on her cold skin, raising the small hairs on her arms. In a fleet moment of curiosity and boldness, Maria allowed her eyelid to loosen and take in a small sample of what was before her. The beast was looming over her, blood stained saliva now dripping onto her clothes, fangs only inches away from her skin. The smell of decay resided in its breath as it wheezed over her shaking body. In an instant, the vulgar demon thrusted its tooth-filled mouth towards her body, but before it even had a chance to hit, her eyes rolled back, and, as everything went black, Maria was sure her heart just stopped.