Asphyxiation

Harris had moved his wife from their quiet, rural town in Nebraska to Colorado in an attempt to escape the overhanging grief from the loss of their two children. But he had not expected the move to worsen his wife’s heartache. The memory of their children had haunted their lives in Nebraska, and Harris had worked hard to find a new home in Colorado that provided a fresh start. He had chosen a house that shared little resemblance to their previous one for this purpose. The house was sandwiched between two others in a newly developed suburban neighborhood – its grey and white exterior camouflaging it amongst the other homes set against the Rocky Mountains. Their new life projected the affluent and ideal Western life so many transplants came to Colorado seeking – on the outside – but within, Harris was fighting a battle of his own.

“Ann, it’s time to wake up, sweetheart,” he said, rolling over and rubbing his wife’s shoulder. He slid out of bed and shuffled to the window, pulling back the curtains so that the Colorado sunrise would stream in. But when he looked back at Ann, she was still sound asleep. He decided to give her time to wake up and went to the bathroom.

Harris relieved himself before standing in front of the bathroom mirror to look at himself. His face was scruffy, and his eyes sunken. He couldn’t remember the last time he had shaved, but he just didn’t have the energy. All Harris could focus on was getting himself to work each day, no matter how he looked.

He splashed some water on his face and rubbed the sleep from his eyes before going back to the bedroom. Harris had hoped that Ann would be up and moving by the time he was done, but she was still sound asleep – despite the sun shining on her face.

“Ann, come on baby,” Harris said, failing to hide the annoyance in his voice. He didn’t have time to deal with Ann this morning – he had a business meeting today. Since he was the only one with an income, he couldn’t miss it. Harris pulled a pair of trousers and a sport coat from the closet, slipping them on before going to Ann’s side again.

“Ann, I can’t do this today. You need to get up – NOW!”

Harris grabbed her shoulder and rolled her onto her back. Ann’s face was moist, strands of her scarlet hair sticking to her cheeks and forehead. She jerked awake at Harris’ touch, her bloodshot eyes snapping open, wide as saucers. Ann grabbed Harris’ wrist with her left hand, digging her nails into his skin. Her fingers purpled with the pressure.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” she screeched, her voice crackling in the stale air. Harris yanked his hand away in shock, falling as he clutched his wrist and rubbed the red nail marks indented into his skin. Ann’s wailing stopped as her eyes shut once again. She rolled back over as though nothing had happened.

“WHAT THE FUCK, ANN?!” he screamed as he walked back up to her. Harris grabbed her arm and tried to yank her out of the bed, but she would not move. The harder he yanked, the more she seemed to sink into the bed – unaware of his touch.

“Come on, Ann, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t go through the loss of our children and the loss of you, too. Come on, just talk to me. We can work through this…please, I’m begging you…”

The skin of Ann’s arm began to boil, forcing Harris’ hand to recoil in pain. He looked down at his palm as a burn began to blister across his skin. Hot tears ran from his eyes and sweat flared on his forehead before making its way down his face. The skin on Ann’s arm erupted in livid, white blisters and began to pop. Puss sprang from each blister and splattered across Harris’ face and sport jacket. He sprang back in disgust and fell against the window, still clutching his hand. He tried to form words, but his voice had been stripped from him. As the puss from Ann’s blisters seized, he took a step closer to her to inspect the damage. But the closer he got, he realized that her skin was ripping as though something was trying to claw its way out.

“Ann?”

The ripples found their way to Ann’s gashes and fat stubs sprang from each blister. The stubs tore through each wound, maroon blood pouring from her skin. Harris shook his head in fear, unbelieving what he was seeing. As the stubs continued to rip through Ann’s flesh, he realized that they weren’t stubs at all, but fingers trying to claw their way out. As they tore through Ann, they revealed hands coated in cracking and yellowed nails. Puss oozed from each nail, igniting a putrid stench. Harris couldn’t control his gag reflex.

Ann’s eyes remained closed, but her left arm raised and grabbed the fingers protruding from her right arm. She grasped onto them and pulled with a sickening wet sound as she ripped a severed hand from her arm – tearing her skin to pieces. Ann threw the severed hand to the floor with a resounding thud. Her eyes shot open, red and coated in yellow mucus that streamed down her cheeks. She let out a blood curdling scream and began to tear at her eyes, her nails clawing into her eyelids and scraping through to her eyeballs.

Harris’ focus clicked back into place at the sound of his wife’s agony. He ran to her side and pulled her hands away from her eyes. Through her shredded eyelids he saw movement as pairs of tiny hands reached their fingers through her skin and crawled their way up from beneath her eyeballs. Ann’s screams intensified as he held her down, trying to stop her thrashing. The small, blood covered hands crawled down her face and across her body. They leapt onto Harris’ arms, causing him to jump back in shock. He tried to flick the hands away as they crawled further up his arms, but they continued to jump back onto his skin. He glanced back at his wife through his struggle and realized that the hands that had leapt onto him weren’t the only ones crawling their way out of Ann’s eyes. Streams of bloody, mutant hands continued to shred through Ann’s eyes from inside as her screams intensified before becoming choked. She tried to claw at her eyes to stop the hands from crawling out, but she was not strong enough.

“Harris…help me…” Ann choked out, before the mutated hands finished tearing through her eyeballs, leaving nothing but sockets.

Her body went limp.

“Ann!” Harris screamed, dread filling his body. His shock convinced him that he could wake her by shaking her arm, but she was gone. As he touched her cold skin, the mutated hands streaming from her eye sockets climbed onto his arms, his chest, and finally down to his legs. Harris fell back as he tried to wipe the hands off of him, but their sharp, yellow nails dug into his clothes before reaching his skin. He wailed as they pierced his flesh before he jumped up and tried to run from the room.

Harris did not notice that the severed hand that had erupted from Ann’s arm had made its way to the door. It leapt at his face and grabbed his cheeks, the fingers digging into his flesh. He pulled at the severed hand, trying to pry it off of his face before realizing that the hand was decaying and coming apart in sopping chunks of flesh. The hands coving his body continued to dig into his skin as though they were trying to get inside of him. He was finally able to peel the remains of the severed hand from his face and focus on tearing the small hands off of him. He threw them to the ground one by one, smashing them with his foot – the sounds a symphony of cracking bones, tearing flesh, and splattering blood. Harris shouted in anguish with each hand that he pried from his body and squashed, feeling them lose their power with each crush of his foot. His body was covered in blood, puss, and cuts, but the pain had reached a point so severe that he felt numb. Harris pulled off his sports coat and trousers – both of which were torn to shreds. This left him in a t-shirt and underwear. Harris could not process what he had just experienced, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at Ann’s body. Instead, he closed his eyes and walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him. Harris leaned against it and brought his hands to his eyes as he began to sob. His legs gave out and he slid down the door before crouching onto the floor. Maybe he was going crazy. He had always thought that Ann was the one who had gone crazy after their children had died, but maybe it was all him. When Harris closed his eyes, he could still see the marks on his children’s necks from where they had been strangled. Maybe the trauma from that memory had made him psychotic.

Harris pulled his hands away from his eyes and looked at his arms. They were covered in bloody pricks where the nails of the small hands had dug into his skin. It didn’t make sense. Everything that had just happened in the bedroom had been a psychotic episode, that was all. Ann wasn’t dead. But if that were true, then why was he covered in puss, Ann’s blood, and bloody wounds of his own? Harris threw his head back in anguish and screamed, banging against the door over and over.

“WAKE UP!” he screamed, hoping that maybe he could shock himself back to reality. Maybe this was a nightmare caused by stress. “WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!”

But when Harris opened his eyes again, he was still sitting on the floor in front of his closed bedroom door, covered in the stench of rotting flesh. This was certainly not a dream.

Harris’ vision went white with fear and an angst he hadn’t felt since teenagerhood. Hot, angry tears betrayed him as he sprouted from his eyes when he squeezed them shut. He could feel the deep gashes taxing him from the hands that had tackled his body and torn into his skin with their sharp, deformed fingernails. For a while he could still hear them tearing through Ann’s skin and eyes, the soundtrack reverberating in his head. He bashed his head against the dark, cherrywood door to shut up the sounds with more pain, and they eventually fell silent. Soon he was by himself, surrounded by silence, in the once picturesque hallway of their newly built home.

Harris’ heavy breathing filled the morning air with a humid musk. He pulled himself up from the floor, wincing as he felt the remains of the hands he had destroyed crush against the rough carpet. He made his way down the hall, trailing blood, bone, and flesh fragments with each step. Harris’ vision blurred from pain and aggravation, forcing him to hold his arms out and graze the wall so that he wouldn’t collapse. Once he made it to the bathroom he fumbled for the light. The bathroom didn’t have a window, and he found himself too scared to walk into the dark. Fear clouded his mind, but his basic instincts tried to save him by taking over. He felt the urgent need to take a shower and wipe away the coat of nauseating grime that permeated his skin.

Harris shut the door before pulling off his underwear and throwing it to the side. It landed with a thud and stained the tile red, matching the pattern of his footprints. He turned towards the shower and pulled back the curtain before placing his hand under the water to check the temperature. Feeling naked and exposed as he looked down at his wounds, Harris’ tears poured through him, his sobs robbing him of air. The water began to burn his hand, bringing him back to the present. He jumped and grabbed the faucet to twist it off. He could barely see through his tears. They had consumed him.

“Daddy…DADDY! Help me, Daddy! Please!”

Harris’ heart stopped. It couldn’t be. The voice belonged to his deceased daughter, and the sound of it brought a flood of memories back to him. He had to be imagining it.

He wiped his face with a handful of shower water to clear his vision before he placed his foot in the tub. He had to ignore it, it was just his imagination playing cruel tricks on him.

“DADDY!”

Urgent knocks erupted on the bathroom door, shaking the frame and soaking the bathroom in insistence. When Harris turned to look, the locked handle began to jerk and click.

“DADDY! HELP ME! Why aren’t you coming?”

Harris couldn’t help it, it was just too real. The voice spurred on his parental instincts. He stepped back out of the shower and ran to the door, grabbing the handle, and threw it open. But as soon as he did, the banging seized. He was met with nothing but the same, silent hallway. It was too silent.

“Come on, Harris!” he screamed at himself, slamming the door shut. “Get your head on straight!”

He locked the door for his own sanity. He hadn’t heard his daughter’s voice in so long, and the sound of it tortured his soul. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to focus himself and calm his mind; however, it just made him more aware that he was standing naked in his bathroom, bleeding all over the pristine bathroom tiles, utterly alone. Nothing could deter the feeling of debilitating loneliness.

“Daddy…”

Harris’ daughter’s small voice rang out from behind him, causing him to jump. He felt her two, small hands meet his skin and he flinched as she grazed his cuts.

“Daddy…it’s me…”

Harris’ heart stopped. His daughter’s strawberry shampoo flooded his senses, crushing him from the inside out. He had almost forgotten what she smelled like. There was nothing he wanted more than to bury his face in her brown curls.

“I’m here, Daddy…”

Harris turned around then, ignorant to his nudity. All he wanted was to grab his daughter and hold her tight; to protect her like he had been unable to protect her before. He was her father, he should have been able to save her from the entire world.

As Harris turned around, hoping to face his daughter, he was instead faced with the showerhead as it morphed into a large, rotting hand. The hand’s warped fingers creaked and moaned as the bones grew and sprouted five sharp, yellow fingernails. Blood seeped from the fingers as the nails tore through its grey, sopping skin with painful speed. The hand’s pointer finger extended its mutated fingernail and came at Harris – piercing into his flesh, breaking through his rib cage, and spearing into his heart. Harris tried to release a scream, but the pain was too incredible. His voice had been ripped from him, robbing him of his defenses. However, through the pain’s suffocating blackness, his reflexes fought through by taking over and forcing him to grab the finger that had speared him. He grasped onto it and tore at its decaying skin.

He shredded the finger’s sopping flesh, tearing it from torn muscle and cracked bone, throwing each shred of skin to the floor. The hand thrashed and arched with each piece of skin that Harris tore from it like a wounded animal. Once it had had enough it tore back through Harris’ middle. It broke back through his rib cage and tore straight through organs and muscle a second time, causing further destruction.

Harris’ body flopped to the ground, blood seeping through the jagged, torn hole in his body. Black splotches coated his vision and his ears began to ring. He strained his head back to glance at the shower, expecting to see the hand, but it had been replaced by the same showerhead he had showered under so many times before. He expected the bathtub to be splattered in blood and shredded skin, but it was spotless. When he turned his head back around, the ringing in his ears faded and the blinding pain in his abdomen subsided.

Harris rubbed his eyes, pressing into his eyelids with pressure that he hoped was powerful enough to save him from this nightmare of a hallucination. When he released his hands, white blotches coated his vision, adding to his confusion and further disconnecting him from reality. Harris pushed himself up from the bathroom floor, stumbling as the world began to swirl around him.

“Fuck.”

His voice reverberated around the bathroom, coming back around to him like the knife of someone else’s anguish. He screamed out of pain and fear, slapping at his ears. Harris hadn’t felt a pain in his head like this since the last time he had too many shots and woke up with one hell of a hangover. But this time it was worse; he was stone cold sober. Harris hadn’t had a drink since he had lost his family.

The thought of his family forced his daughter’s image to appear before Harris again with a crashing force. He could still smell the scent of her strawberry shampoo behind the stench of rotting flesh and decaying limbs. He was crushed by the memory of holding his daughter in his arms, her body warm in his embrace. But the memory was stolen from him by the hand that had speared through his chest. The pain from the hand and the pain from losing his family was the same.

Harris opened the linen cupboard for a towel to wrap around himself, but he was met instead with his wife’s robe. He pressed the terrycloth to his nose and inhaled her aroma. The scent brought tears to his eyes as he let out a loud, pained sob. He couldn’t seem to control them. The sobs had consumed his being.

Harris tried to muffle the sound by pressing the robe deep into his mouth and sinking his teeth into the cloth, but it did nothing to numb the pain. He kept trying to tell himself that he was dreaming, but if so, why was he so scared to go back into his bedroom to see if his wife’s body was still there?

Harris wrapped the robe around him and tied the belt in a double knot. The knot gave him some form of security. It was too short for him, only going to his mid-thigh, but he didn’t care. Having his wife’s scent envelope him was all that mattered. He needed the strength that she had once possessed.

Harris moved to the door and reached out a shaking hand, grasping the doorknob with his fist. He took a deep breath and tried to flood his mind with images of his wife and children of when they were happy – when everything was okay. His family was all that he had ever needed to make him happy, but now, the memory of them would have to do. Nothing was ever the same, or would ever be the same, again.

As Harris opened the bathroom door, he turned left into the wider hallway. He wanted to turn right and go back to the bedroom, but his feet didn’t take him there. He didn’t have the strength to fight them. Despite it being morning, the usual morning light was not casting a golden glow down from the sunlight into the hallway and over the family pictures that littered the walls. It was dark as though it were the middle of the night. Harris looked to the walls to try and identify his family’s pictures, but they were clouded in an overcast haze. He raised his head to the sunlight and saw swollen shapes of grey clouds coating the sky. Colorado’s sporadic weather had always fascinated Harris, and he chalked up the sudden lack of sunlight to the environment. He didn’t want to admit that the onslaught of clouds added to his feelings of unease.

Harris took a step forward, the rough hallway carpet scratching the bottom of his foot. He had always hated this carpet, but now it was more than that – it was sandpaper grating on his open nerves. Harris went to the wall and scanned the hanging pictures of his family. His eyes were drawn to the one picture he could identify, a portrait he had taken of his wife and children in the front yard of their previous home. His wife had her arms around each child, hugging them close. Their smiles could have lit up the sky.

Harris reached out a hand to the photograph, brushing his shaking fingers over their smiling faces. As his fingers grazed his wife’s face, he teared up at the glint in her eye and the flash of joy in her smile. He wanted to absorb her joy, but when he scanned her face and moved his finger to her eyes, they transformed into two bottomless pits – dead and empty. The glint was gone, and he did not recognize them.

“Harris.”

The minimal light in the hallway dimmed, forcing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand at attention.

“Harris…please…”

Harris’ wife’s voice pierced his ears – slicing straight through to his heart. Her voice sounded as though it were coming from behind him. Maybe he was right, maybe he had been hallucinating and his wife was in the bedroom finally waking up and calling for him. Relief filled his body.

“Harris…”

But the voice wasn’t coming from the bedroom.

Harris turned back around and stared into the photo, squinting his eyes as he locked in on the dead saucers that were his wife’s eyes – quick sand drawing him in. The further he fell into their gaze, the wider her smile became as it transformed into a sneer.

“Harris. You’re a fool.”

Her waxy, illustrious lips stretched around each word, revealing a set of sharp, slicing teeth. They sunk into the flesh of her lips, creating pinpricks that erupted and splattered blood across their children’s faces.

“Ann?”

Harris was too far gone, lost in the eyes of Ann’s photograph. He couldn’t separate reality from fantasy. He couldn’t look away.

Ann’s fingers twisted and grew, cracking and moaning with each new inch. Her hands latched onto the chests of her children, digging into their flesh. They began to scream, and with each wail the skin on Ann’s fingers split and blossomed - forming a new hand on each finger. The hands continued to multiply as their children wailed, until dozens of hands had sprouted from Ann’s twisted fingers and were consuming their children’s bodies.

“NO! ANN, STOP IT! THIS ISN’T YOU!”

Harris’ anger broke him free from the spell that the photograph had used to capture him. He ripped the photo frame from the wall and slammed it to the ground, the glass shattering against the carpet he despised. Final angry tears flooded his eyes and streamed down his cheeks. Harris jumped on the frame over and over, ignoring the pain from the broken glass tearing at his bare feet. The physical pain was nothing compared to the pain he had been experiencing for months.

Having run out of breath, Harris stopped jumping and put his hands on his knees – his lungs screaming for air. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to put a stop to the tears. After catching his breath, Harris stood up and stretched his back. He brushed his hands under his eyes to try and erase the tears that disgraced him.

“Harris.”

Harris’ heart sank. No, please stop, he thought. I can’t take any more of this.

This time his wife’s voice echoed throughout the hallway, ricocheting off of the walls and repeating.

“HARRIS!”

The force of her voice charged down the vestibule and into Harris’ body, forcing him to the ground. He fell on top of the photograph, shards of the broken picture frame slicing into his hands.

“STOP! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?”

Harris had reached his breaking limit. The physical pain was finally getting to him and tearing at his emotions. His tears quickened to a pour, but now they weren’t just tears. They were acid, burning through his eyes and down his skin. Harris wailed from the pain and raised his hands to his face. Through his blurred vision he saw that his hands were trembling and shaking – but he couldn’t feel them. They had become phantom limbs. He watched as the fingers twisted and strained like his wife’s had in the photograph, moaning and cracking with each new inch.

“No…NO! ANN! SOMEONE HELP ME! PLEASE!”

The skin at the tip of each finger split and peeled back, revealing raw flesh and bone that splattered blood across Harris’ face and on the walls of the hallway. From the bone of each finger new, small hands grew – coated in a putrid, birthing mucus. They squelched, coming to life with a force that Harris was not in control of; and just like his wife’s hands in the picture, his hands continue to multiply and grow until dozens of foul-smelling hands had erupted from the fingers that were once his.

“You’re a fool, Harris. A damn fool. It is YOUR fault that we are dead. It is all your fault…You are just too much of an ass to admit it.”

Harris’ hands turned on him, his wrists twisting to face him. The dozens of hands on each arm seemed to blink at him – their fingers opening and closing in rhythm.

“And now, it’s your turn. Did you really think you could get away with it? A new house doesn’t hide your shame. You’ve infected this house with it.”

The hands flew at Harris’ face, clawing into his flesh as they sprouted sharp, needlelike nails. Each finger tore into him with a force too brutal for him to combat. They shredded his cheeks, lips, and eyebrows before digging into his eyes. Harris tried to scream but the pain was too severe. He had reached the point of no return. He was no longer in control of his body.

As the hands tore Harris’ eyes from his sockets - the veins popping and spraying blood – his sense of smell took over to compensate for his loss of vision. The smell of puss and mucus from the dozens of hands tearing at Harris flooded his nose and exacerbated his pain. He heaved and hurled, unable to control his stomach. The scent had entered and consumed his body.

But the hands were not deterred. They pulled back and writhed as new hands continued to grow from each finger. Each new hand intensified the smell of shredded flesh, puss, and mucus. Harris was to the point of blacking out, but something pulled him to his feet. He could not use his hands to propel him, but all of his strength had transferred to his legs. He could hear his multiplied hands bending and snapping in front of him, adrenaline numbing his pain and giving him some reprieve.

Go, daddy. Just walk.

This time it was his son’s voice that Harris head, but it was coming from inside of him. He took a step forward, then another, before falling into a full out run.

Turn, daddy.

Harris turned and ran down the stairs, his muscles retaining their memory and carrying him down each step. The hands grabbed and tore at him, but he was beyond pain now.

Push, daddy.

Harris’ body slammed into the front. The hands climbed onto his body and aimed for his nose and mouth, suffocating him. He was overtaken by the rotten taste of their pus coated fingers, but he continued to slam his body into the door, his back to the wood. The door clicked, the sound of it unlocking, and with his next slam it opened, and he fell through. His son had cleared the way for him, saving him from his nightmare, he just knew it. The sun had returned, and he could feel it beating down onto his body. The hands writhed in the sun and slid out of his mouth and nose before falling away from his face.

“Daddy…we’re here. You found us.”

His children’s voices came from in front of him now. They were so close.

“You came for us, Harris. You saved us.”

This time it was Ann’s voice. They were all together in the front yard. Waiting for him. He was safe.

“I can’t see you. Any of you. I’m so sorry…” he said.

“It doesn’t matter now, Harris. You came for us. We can all be together again.”

Harris head his wife and children come towards him. He felt them place their hands on his body. Even though he could not see, he could picture his children’s tiny hands and the hands of his wife that he had held so many times. He felt at peace. The pain was gone. But something still did not feel right.

Their hands retreated, filling him with a debilitating emptiness.

“There’s just one thing left to do,” Ann whispered into his ear. She was so close. “And then you can stay with us.”

Harris felt the phantom hands connected to his body pull up in front of him, moving his arms on their own. They came in closer to his face, filling him again with the same toxic odor. He felt his wife press her hands to his eye sockets, somehow giving him back his sight. He blinked, his vision clear once again. It did not make sense to him, but he was so far gone that anything seemed possible. He looked at his wife and children standing before him, smiling. Then he looked down at the hands in front of him expecting to see them multiplied like they had been in the hallway, but they were his ordinary hands again. When he looked back up at his wife’s face her eyes had darkened like they had in the picture and the sneer had returned. His heart sank for the last time.

“These are the same hands that killed us, Harris. These are the hands that strangled us and stole our lives. Don’t you remember?”

Harris’ eyes looked back at his hands before they tackled his face. His fingers latched onto his eye sockets, pulling themselves into his skull, tearing through his nerves, and wrapping themselves around his brain. The pain was blinding, more than anything he had just experienced. He screamed with every ounce of his being.

“You have to remember. You were the one who did it. YOU destroyed us, Harris. IT’S YOUR FAULT WE ARE DEAD!”

With a final grip the hands tore Harris’ brain in half, pulling grey matter back through his eyelids and throwing it to the ground. He went silent for the last time.

Ann lifted a foot and pressed onto Harris’ brain matter that littered their front yard, smearing it into the hot concrete. Her children followed suit before they grasped Harris’ hands, the hands that had robbed them of their lives, and ripped them from Harris’ torn, dead body.

They were free.