The Ragdoll That Was Human

The darkness was nice. It kept reality away, memory vague. I couldn’t look to confirm or deny anything. How could I refute that this wasn’t all just a dream, that the horror show I’d seen wasn’t just a result of a fractured sanity? I could hear water dripping nearby and rain pouring down hard up above me.

But reality is persistent and insanity a slippery thing to grasp on to.

The wind blew in through the darkness, brushing against my skin. There were disturbing gaps of sensational blankness, where I could not feel the wind’s touch on my body, spaces where I felt nothing at all.

Wrong, that is wrong.

I tentatively inhaled deeper and along with the smells of the dampness was a faint trace of copper. Once I noticed the smell, the tasted of blood overwhelmed my mouth. It made me reflexively want to gag, but my instinct to remain still overpowered that reflex. I shouldn’t move. Moving would only bring discovery, answers.

A weight, that I had assigned to only being due to the heaviness of my body, suddenly shifted on top of me.

I was lying on my stomach and the body on top of me was sprawled across my back, effectively pinning me down. I hadn’t noticed it before because it had seemed natural that it was there—expected. I had known I wasn’t alone, but hadn’t bothered remembering that detail. It was very important that I not remember who it was that was there in the dark with me.

The sound of rain was overpowered by a deep throaty gurgle and my heart stop at the memory of that sound.

The weight shifted again and the gurgle turned into a full open mouth breathing, the sound bouncing off invisible walls, defining the space to be very small around me…us.

No, no, no, no, NO! I don’t want to know this! No more, please—don’t let me know more.

My companion in the dark rolled a bit on my back and cradled my left arm to…It. That’s when I noticed that particular limb was twisted incorrectly back behind my back.

Shouldn’t bend that way.

My uncontrollable mind tried to access my other limbs. I attempted to fight it but slowly my consciousness reached out to sense my right arm. I found it curled up tight to my side, hand just bellow my chin. My splayed fingers were digging into the rock and dirt beneath it. The same rock and dirt was under my cheek.

My right leg was found next. It was laying on the ground behind me, right where it should be. Once located my mind moved on to the left leg and had a bit of confusion.

Where is it?

I mentally traced from my right leg up and over to my left, but couldn’t find it. Over and over I traced and retraced. Frustration began to build up and that must have been what caused the twitch.

It was small, but immediately I knew the huge mistake I’d made. Through that small twitch, in my still present right leg, I felt a reverberation throughout the rest of my damaged body.

This is bad. That’s what I get for being too interested in reality. Very bad.

It…the person, being, creature, nightmare— lifted It’s head and sniffed in the direction of my leg, then laid back down and started licking my left hand. Its tongue was dry.

I fled deep inside.

When I surfaced again the safe darkness had deserted me. The light was weak, obviously having to travel a bit to get to me, but it was enough. I was in the shell of a bombed-out house, the un-floored basement to be specific. This sight gave me a tremendous sense of dislocation.

That can’t be right. It had pulled me from the mud into a second story building. I know, I looked down and saw the men in hazmat suits, the ones who had brought the nightmares. They were trying to round up the crowd of creatures down below. It had been concealing us carefully from those men when—

Us?

My eyes frantically searched past the dirt floor and ceiling rubble, trying to find movement.

There is no weight on me. What woke me up?

For half a second I thought to move, but then my mind came screaming back not to. Moving was a very bad idea. There was a noise. It was above, a shifting of cement and flooring, and then It jumped down. It knuckle walked over, sniffing.

The snuffing continued as it examined me from head to toe. Then It came back to my head again and examined me with one of Its larger-than-human eyes. Its skin was stretched tight across its skull and a few wisps of scraggly dark hair curled out of its scalp. Up this close I could see that It had fine hairs on its arms and the back of its hands. The whole time we were examining each other I hadn’t moved anything but my eyes. The creature finally took notice of this movement and got right up into my face. Its eyes had animalistic curiosity.

Then It licked me from chin to cheek with its dried tongue. I squeezed my eyes tight.

Its licking my dried blood.

When It ran out of the blood on my face it moved on to my hair, picking through it like a monkey, to find dried clots and then getting them out with its teeth. As it curled close for this task I noticed something else.

Okay, not an It. A Him.

His dried-up bit was the only part of him that didn’t seem to be tight skin stretched over an emaciated skeleton. He decided that leaning over me like this wasn’t comfortable and hooked an arm around my body, pulling me into his lap, head against his chest. I screamed—or at least tried to. It was the first time in—how long?—since I’d tried to use my voice. Now I found it almost completely gone. I was in some bad dream where I couldn’t move or speak and the boogieman was right on top of me. But you can’t smell your own blood on the boogieman’s breath in a bad dream.

He kept one impossibly long arm around my torso to hold me up like a ragdoll, my back to his chest. My locket fell against his forearm, the gold heart dented inwards. It was the last vestige on me that showed I’d once been a human, a regular human. Being held against his chest forced me to confront the rest of my denied body. It was impossible to look away.

A ragdoll—I was a ragdoll alright—one that the dog had been allowed to chew on. My mind was more confused than alarmed.

That’s not right, but don’t look. Think of something else. What is in my locket? What picture had I put in there?

I could no longer remember. I was such a mess that the confusion was only compounded by the improbability that I was still alive.

I should be—have to be—dead. Why…

The creature gave up on the dried blood, lifted up my left hand to its mouth, and bit sharply. Blood sluggishly flowed out and I watched, fascinated at the slow way it pooled.

Faster, faster. How am I ever going to die if you only drip out like this?

He suckled at the new blood and then bit down again when it started clogging too much. My mind wandered away from my hand and travel back to my wrecked body. How did I end up with this uneven missingness? Insanely my sense of esthetics was offended. It was a perverse imbalance to the eye.

Why?

—ah that’s right. I curled up into a tight ball when they had jumped me, instinctively protecting my vital organs.

Idiot. Should have just let them get me. Died when everyone else did.

And my right side…I hadn’t been damaged so much there. That’s because…the rain and the mud. It had been raining that night too. The car and streetlights’ glare had been smeared by the downpour. What had I done that day? For the life of me I couldn’t recall. There was no explanation in my mind on what I had been doing before the world came to an end.

But it had been raining and when the little nightmares jumped me I curled up and we fell into mud—deep mud. They had bit and clawed on top of me, but my right side had been pressed down deep into the mud. My left arm had been curled to protect my head.

I had been choking. The mud—the rain—it was choking me. But still I was not able to lift my head up, nature demanding that I protect my life and keep it down. They were gurgling, slurping…chewing. They—

I lost the thread of my thought and I drifted off into nothing once more. I had nothing left to dream of. My nightmares had already been surpassed by reality and I could not dream of anything ever happening past this. There was nothing more in the world of reality.

It was night again when I came back. The creature had pulled us into one of the basement’s corners and was curled around me like he was a small child with his dolly. Inappropriately I found this comforting, to be held in another creature’s arms, and let myself drift off into sleep.

He woke-up around dawn when water finally worked its way through all the smashed rubble over our head and started dripping on us. The creature tilted up to snarl and my head lolled back as he moved. My jaw was hanging open when a torrent of water suddenly broke through and drenched us. He dropped me in a furry and began roaring and growling at the ceiling. As my back smacked into the ground I was forced to swallow abruptly. The cold water that had filled my mouth flowed down my throat and then sent out shoots, like plant roots, to each of my damaged pieces.

Unexpectedly I was filled with a renewed panic. It came from nowhere and blinded me so much that I managed to jerk my legs and arms a little, a marionette plucking at its own strings. It took a few seconds to recognize this sensation.

It was the will to live. I suddenly, against all impossibilities, wanted to live once more.

I'm scared. I can still be scared.

The creature finished with his bellowing against the forces of nature and came back to me, curious to my movements. A small strangle was all I could force from my throat. Now I remembered why my voice was gone. It was because I had been screaming for so long that night, screaming without words. I had already screamed my voice away, joined with the voices of everyone else in the world dying and being eaten. He tilted his head at my small noise and then snorted in disinterest. He looked up again, cautiously, when some more rubble began to shift.

Hooking both arms around me, he lifted my frame easily, and leapt up an impossible length to the next floor above us. This was once a living room, the scattered remains of people’s lives soaking in mud. He awkwardly strode out of the building, and I saw the city, or what was left of it.

There was no sign of life left. The other nightmare creatures, smaller and larger than mine—gone. The attacking men with guns and in hazmat suits that were in control—until the nightmares turned on their creators— gone. Left behind was a broken, empty, wet world. And Him. And Me.