In this tense silence
I feel the air of the room begin to tingle,
As if at the onset of an allergic reaction
Then my heart joins in,
With a swishing, watery heartbeat.
I worry about the future… ~Suicidal by Jamin Clement
I groggily scrambled up from the floor. I could not tell for how long I had been lying there like a sick funeral dog. The lighting in the room was crepuscular and dappled. But even then, I could still tell what was around me.
I was dressed like a Hebrew slave in the ‘Moses and the Ten Commandments’ movie, and I honestly could not tell whoever had had the courtesy of lending me those clothes because I could not remember buying them.
I looked back and saw a door made of wood, half open with spasmodic flashes of lightning penetrating from outside.
The room seemed to be deserted, with several bottles of nothings lying comfortably on the floor; some broken and some, were half full with weird liquids. Some torn papers and worn out rugs could be seen in between the spasmodic flashes of lightning.
Confused with everything around me, I started moving towards the wall. It was then that I realized that I could not move without limping because I had a broken joint on my left leg. I kept moving nonetheless and the more I got to the wall, the more my vision became clearer.
I was a few inches to the wall when I got a much clearer glimpse of it. It appeared to be black in colour; black as the darkness around it. It had three horns with two of them protruding from the top of the head, and the third one coming from where the nose was supposed to be. I could not tell how it’s bottom looked like or what it was made of because of the darkness surrounding it but one thing I was sure of, was the fact that it stood on something.
Maybe I underestimated it and that’s why I moved a bit closer and was even tempted to stretch my hand and touch it. Hardly had I unleashed my right arm and stretched my phalanges and metacarpals for a feel of the texture when the object turned around like a robot to face me, and opened its eyes!
My heart banged painfully against my ribs, maybe to remind me of how subtle my action had been, to the extend of awaking an otherwise, lazy ghost. Yes, a ghost! At least that’s what I thought before realizing that it was worse than that! It literally defied description.
I returned my ulna and radius to their safety as I made several steps backwards though staring at the weird thing as it transformed. The skeleton came forward with the eyes glowing red and the skull set ablaze on fire, though it never seemed to be burning; like the biblical Moses and the burning bush!
I made an air-splitting wail before turning around and running as fast as a cat out of hell, towards the door, locking it firmly behind me. I was wrong to think that the door led to the outside of the house!
After locking the door, and making a sigh of relief, I realized that I had just moved to another room, with the skeleton trying hard to access it!
This other room had windows. I could not tell their number because the other end was not that visible from where I stood, but I could tell that the windows were wide open and the house seemed to be located in the middle of what looked like a forest. My heart stopped pumping and began thumbing!
Owls hooted, frogs croaked, insects zinged, night birds called, and crickets chirped frenetically and in harmony. The breeze added its own whisper to the cacophony, with the pine trees outside swaying gently. In my state of utter confusion, I could not tell whether I had fallen from a frying pan to a furnace!
I started moving forward, because there was no way I was going back to that other room with the skeleton trying very hard to break the door.
Suddenly, the lights were turned on!
This was when I realized that I was in something akin to a slaughter house!
The walls on my right side had words ‘Land of no return’ and ‘Highway to the grave’ written in bold and by use of fresh blood!
I sauntered on, keeping my eyes on the walls, though I could not fail to notice the rocky chair centrally placed in front of me. Suddenly, my left leg stumbled on something that felt more like a trashed book on the floor.
I picked it up and realized that it had tattered Pages with blood stains in them and some of the pages missing out. The cover was totally worn out and I could barely read the title of the book. With a lot of effort and straining of my eyes, words ‘Pages of Doom by Jamin Clement’ came out clear in a font that looked more like Rockwell, printed in red on a midnight black background.
The title awakened the lust of the ink that’s forever rooted in me, and this saw me open the preface page in a bid to get the nitty-gritties in a nutshell.
Unanticipatedly, the rocky chair started swinging back and forth recessively! My eyes opened wider than normal, and I could feel a small sweat forming on the tip of my nose.
As if that was not enough, he appeared from the wall with the assumption that the door was invisible to the normal human eye, and marched forward as if he was passing by before stopping and facing my direction simultaneously.
The hairs on my body short straight like an arrow and the legs lacked the strength to support me. I trembled like a drunk in front of a panel trying to prove that he’s a teetotaller.
His right hand held tightly to the long sharp, two-edged sword that dug deep through his heart to the back of his body. His dazzling white and blood stained shirt was half untucked. He looked terrible!
The wooden door behind me flew in the air, and landed with a thud. The lazy skeleton had employed the services of a power saw before pushing it. Then two other skeletons appeared holding double-bladed axes with fresh blood dripping from each of them. On a straight line, they matched forward towards me, then they readied their weapons to launch an attack.
I suddenly woke up after being sandwiched in the middle of two gargantuan men, who happened to be my cousins, for close to five hours. My heart was racing against the chorus of snores, rising and falling in the pitch darkness that prevailed then. I felt the wetness of the flannel sheets, covering the bed, as a result of my profuse sweating.
I regretted going against my own self-made promise of never watching horror movies, because of the nightmares that were always bound to happen.
Pricking my ears, I heard footsteps from outside moving towards our main door, after which, a ruckus followed which felt like someone trying to bring to life the engine of a spinning tool.
By Jamin Clement
Thoughts Garage 