Oblivion

A violent storm swirling with threatening dark clouds, crackling with electricity rumbles over your house. The temperature drops as the wind rips through trees, tearing limbs and thrashing against your window. The blackened sky teems with lightning casting monstrous shadows around your room.

Amidst your cluttered bookshelves a hunched shadow appears, it creeps closer to your bed. Razor sharp fingernails curve at the end of a gaunt outstretched hand.

You wake involuntarily, heart hammering so loud you can hear it hot in your ears. Laying still a moment, eyes scrunched tightly closed before sitting up, your eyes dart around your room. Your eyes search your room finding a monster in every crack, every corner, as diabolical shadows dance upon your walls. Curiosity nags somewhere deep beneath this fear, your room feels strange, colder.

You close your eyes and slump back against your wooden bedhead, an uncomfortable attempt at calming your wired nerves. Without even a chance to take a deep breath your eyes twitch open, your shower curtains snapping against each other, the bathroom door creaks. You can taste bile burning the back of your throat. Your room flickers with lightning, sterile white, raising goosebumps along every inch of your still body. Cold settles silently around you. You shiver, your breath frozen in your throat.

You fumble with the now cold sheets, hesitating before leaving what felt like the safest place. The cold bed no longer stopped the chills crawling over your body. Placing your bare feet onto the freezing floorboards you tiptoe to the bedroom door.

Your hand grips the door knob and twists, you pull towards yourself, slowly at first too frightened to want to open it, then, you jerk it open, fear now spurring your actions. Not daring to breathe, you peer hesitantly into your hallway. It’s pitch black, all but a sliver of light leading away from you, it comes from your bathroom. You yank your head back into your room, blinking. Blinking, accustoming yourself with your soundings but you notice that it doesn't clear. There is no longer any light in there. You feel blind, ink black nothing exploits your vision. You widen your eyes, straining, an attempt to see something.

Anything.

A blanket of darkness surrounds you fuelling the feeling of impending dread. The darkness toys with your mind, forming sounds and things that are not there. You try to get the fear under control, or at least ignore it, you stumble backwards blindly, a step into the hallway. The dark is so thick it absorbs your body. Raising your palm to the wall, trembling, you look down your legs, invisible. The pitch black nothing forms a lump in your throat, a tightness in your stomach.

Feeling nauseous you gulp trying to moisten your dry mouth, to avoid bursting into tears.

The bathroom is only a step away but you can feel the pull in the darkness, the thickening air. It presses down on your shoulders, breathing is becoming a struggle for you. You force a foot forward and falter, the uproar of wind from behind the bathroom door deafens you. Paralysed with dread, you try to convince yourself to turn around.

Go to bed.

Forget this.

Just forget the darkness and this strangeness; but there is a curious voice inside your mind that has a dumb, stubborn courage. It encourages you to push past your evolutionary natural instincts that are warning you, flooding anxiety and adrenaline through your body.

And you listen to it.

You reach your fingertips towards the wooden door. Slowly, so slowly it doesn't even feel like you’re moving, you press your fingertips to the wood and it opens inwards, scraping across the floor. A strip of pale blue white light passes over your feet, breaking through the black, working its way up your legs. The door stops when it bumps into the bathtub. The bathroom light now illuminates the hallway in a freakish blue glow.

Again you hesitate before you place your foot onto the smooth tiles. It stings, and aches, the ache is in your bones and you can feel it in your knees. The shock of the cold is electrifying, numbing your feet. Pins and needles shoot up your legs, calves aching and cramping. You take another step, hoping the floor will warm in a moment. It’s so horribly icy, you grimace. The curtains are still thrashing ferociously, tangling themselves around your body sticky from the cool air.

You rush forward to the vanity, your hands grip the edge of the basin. Your fingers are numbing,the whites of your knuckles striking against the blood underneath your skin. You raise your eyes up to the mirror.

In a second, everything stops. Two lengthy heart beats later horror knocks the breath out of you, your hairs raise along goosebump riddled skin. It floods your mind. Like the ocean can be, your mind is chaos, a blur, nothing is a thought but everything is something, you feel like you can make out a word but it's all so overwhelming you can’t think about anything.

You release a shaky breath and a puff of white fog swirls in front of your face momentarily blurring the mirror. Dazed you stare into the mirror, an apparition stares back.

It is grotesque. Daunting. Hollow black pits for eyes, shadows suck its cheeks in, intensifying the sharpness of its cheek bones. Cracked lips pinched together in a wry smile. Its chest is nakes, violet bruises speckled over skin pulled so tightly its ribs are prominent and extruding on the left side. Herculean wings protrude from its spine, decaying feathers, ends torn. Long gnarled arms, gaunt white hands possessing razor sharp talons.

I watch blissfully as the colour simply drains from your face. It is the most beautiful display to see your expression of horror. I watch your body shake, in a literal cartoonish way, you tremble. I can taste the saltiness of the tears forming in your eyes. I can smell your blood, metallic, sweet.

In a split second the relentless wind halted. The bathroom lights flickered. The sudden silence raised goosebumps on your arms. The silencing felt final.

The thing in the mirror flaps its wings in one swift motion, the glass on the mirror ripples with the force from the gust. A blood curdling shriek resonates from your throat.

A taloned hand emergers from the mirror, in your haste to move away, you stumble backwards. Your knees buckle. You crash to the ground, pain searing up your spine, tears hot on your cheeks now. Pressure is felt on your chest as your back arches up and your arms and legs dangle, you’re jerked upwards to the mirror. Suspended in the air, another gust of wind from its impossibly large wings and you’re thrown against the wall. Your skull cracks with the impact and you slump into the ceramic bath. It towers over you an anguished groan pleading is all you’re capable of getting out. A bony hand rises into the air above you. Your eyes scrunch tightly and you screw your face as your brace for a strike. Talons slash along your body, excruciating pain is felt in your torso. Your body convulses. Crimson oozes through your prominent ribs, it dribbles towards the drain, staining the bleach white tub.

Your milky eyes roll to the back of your head, the whites withering, as I extract silky wisps from your chest. Pure threads of your soul, they curl around me talons and dissolve.

Eyes foggy, you fixate them on the light in your bathroom, everything is spinning, sickening, in loops. You close your eyes as a tingling numbness rapidly covers your body, hot and cold. Your pounding heart lurches, gradually slowing along with your breathing. You feel so heavy, so tired. Your body sinks into the bathtub. Images flash past your eyes, they fade, disappearing, and, as you float in the space between life and death, darkness comes. Whisking your limp lifeless body into oblivion.