Joel Smith

Forgotten Existence. Content Warning.

Chapter one. The town. She woke up, startled. The last thing she could remember was driving to her aunt’s house. But she had now awoken in an unusual place, it was an old ghost town, it had a wild west setting. There was little to no life, she had searched everywhere yet not even a chirp from a simple bird. The silence was loud, the wind passing as she walked through this odd town. She came to the conclusion she was completely alone, alone and quite afraid. She feared for who or what had possible could’ve brought her here, as she explored she stumbled upon a house that seemed to be quite modern to be in such a place as this. She opened the door, the door was loud and quite brittle. The woman was met with a horrid stench that could only be explained by rotting flesh. She shrugged it off as a simple smell of rancid food. She wondered around the house into different rooms, she looked inside the kitchen in search for food, she opened the fridge and immediately found the cause of the horrid stench. Inside the fridge was a dismembered rotting body, maggots crawling inside and out. She stared in horror and slammed the fridge closed. Where was she? Who could’ve possibly done this to someone? She was absolutely horrified, she opened the fridge again but confusion had struck, there was no body in the fridge. Had her mind made it up? In the fridge was now holding foods different foods, and she took out the steak that was now in the fridge, she sat down and started to eat. Something was strange about it, she felt something crawling in her mouth as she chewed. After the fifth or fourth bite she looked down at the food she was eating. She spat out the mouthful she had and screamed. She had looked down at a steak filled with maggots and flies. She looked down at her hand and the tingling feeling she felt was explained. Maggots where slowly chipping into her skin and almost completely inside her hand. She yelled in terror, she threw the food onto the floor and grabbed a knife in attempts to dig the creatures out of her skin. She was sobbing in pain and pure shock, her hand throbbing, she was almost unconscious from sheer pain. She stabbed the knife inside the hole the maggot dug and started shaving her skin off piece by piece, determined to get the horrid creatures out. She didn’t care for pain at this point, time had past, nearly 7 minutes and she had looked at her hand, pieces of cut up maggot merging with her skin. Her hand looked like it was mauled by a bear, tears rolling rapidly down her cheek. What had she done, what drove her to maul her hand with a simple butter knife. But she felt almost a sense of comfort in all this pain, was she crazy? How could she have ever felt this while her hand looked like it was put through a wood-chipper? About half an hour later she couldn’t feel the pain anymore, she simply didn’t feel the excruciating pain she felt a few minutes later. She looked back at her hand, holes and dried blood filled her palm. She picked the maggot out of her hand with her nails. It stung, as if a thousand wasps where stinging her hand. When she finished doing so, she then continued to wonder aimlessly around the house in search of a bedroom. She had gone down a long corridor, the floor boards creaking as she did so. She opened the door and entered the bedroom, she was met by a double bed and a mirror standing alone in the middle of the room, there where newspaper articles pinned on the wall, it was as if it was just cleaned out of all the valuables. She figured she would simply go to sleep, it was dark out. What seemed to be later on, she woke up once again. She had almost forgotten what had happened the night before, she got up and continued exploring the house, maybe she’d find food that doesn’t make her completely disgusted. As she wondered around she hear a simple ‘Hello?’. But how could that be, she had searched everywhere for a sign of life yet she hears someone, could it be in her head? She followed where the voice came from and there was nothing, nothing at all. Maybe she was mad, she felt a surge of paranoia hit her. What if she was being followed? She continued to explore the house, she found a lounge, including the same stench she smelt the day before. She looked onto the couch and stared in horror.A rotting body lay there lifelessly, she felt unbelievably nauseous. Was this hell?