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Horror D’oeuvre #14

Thursday, July 5th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

TRAPPED IN THE REFLECTION OF YOUR EYES

by Kurt Newton

When they revived your mother twenty minutes after her heart had stopped, you could tell by the distant stare trapped in the gel of her eyes that twenty minutes was far too long to be absent from the here and now.

And when it was later recommended that her life-size doll-like body would be better looked after and tended to at a large facility in upstate New York where the world was as quiet as the patients it housed, you agreed without a second thought.

And when, upon your first visit to this facility, after meeting with the Administrator, a tall and oddly bland and emotionless man with large unblinking eyes who showed you to your mother’s room, where you spoke to her with words that were meant to be encouraging but were merely an excuse to occupy the stinging silence…you wished there was more to this life after life but before death for your mother to enjoy.

And afterwards, when you leaned in to kiss your mother goodbye, your fingers accidentally touching her temple and discovering a small pencil-sized hole in the side of her skull just beneath her soft grey hair, you knew something wasn’t quite right, but aside from the hole in your mother’s head, you couldn’t quite put your finger on it.

And when you suddenly excused yourself to go to the bathroom, only to become lost among the endless network of empty hallways that accessed room after room of sitting, staring, living corpses, and while searching, stumbled upon the Administrator’s office, which was more like a library, shelved from floor to ceiling with books on the occult and the afterlife…you realized that maybe this wasn’t the best place for your mother to be looked after and tended to, after all.

But when you turned around to run, you ran instead into the man whose eyes looked even larger than before, and whose mouth perhaps betrayed a subtle grin, and whose hand, which struck as quickly as a cobra, plunging its single metal fang into the skin of your neck…you knew it was too late.

And when you awoke, it wasn’t like waking, it was more like rising to the surface of a cold, dark lake only to find the light that you thought was the sun at its surface was nothing more than a mirror, and in that mirror floated the face of an oddly bland and emotionless-looking man with large unblinking eyes.

And, perhaps, most disturbing of all, as you sit immobile, staring at a reflection that isn’t your own, there is a soft, almost imperceptible feeling that a tiny window has been left open in the side of your head, a window that won’t close until everything that was once inside is gone.

There Are 11 Responses So Far. »

Comment by SLIM on 5 July 2007:

I love these things, Good one kurt. Give me the address, I want to send my wife on vacation and now have the perfect place
I can’t wait to have these in print!
Comment by Scott Berke on 5 July 2007:

Nice job Kurt!
Comment by kresby on 6 July 2007:

Excellent creepy tale and when mom is involved the emotions run wild. I love the tension created by the writing style of this being told after it happened yet the reader wants the poor soul to have a way out. Except poor Slim who wants to throw another soul at this creature….of course I’ve never met his wife…
Comment by kurtnewton on 6 July 2007:

Thanks guys!
Comment by Juergen Karle on 6 July 2007:

Kurt,
if you tried to disappoint me ,you failed.
Beautiful job,even though I was expecting a somehow more aggresive end.Well, I’m honest:I can’t think of a better ending.
Comment by kurtnewton on 9 July 2007:

Thanks Juergen! In my poetry collection, Life Among the Dream Merchants, there’s a 500-word prose piece called “The Waiting Room” which is written in a similar run-on style but less subtle. The two are kind of like bookends. Maybe Shane will allow me to post it here in the comments section. Shane?
Comment by Shane Staley on 9 July 2007:

Sure, no problem with me, Kurt!
Comment by kurtnewton on 9 July 2007:

THE WAITING ROOM

You wake up in a cold, dim-lit room, your body sitting rigid in a wheelchair parked just inches from the wall, and you tell yourself you’re not the one who just woke up, because the same thing just happened in the dream you were just having, a dream in which you find yourself in a cold, dim-lit room, your body sitting rigid in a wheelchair parked just inches from the wall.

You try to turn your neck, to shake the images from your head, but your neck and shoulders refuse to move, they are held in place by some kind of brace or tightly wound wrap. So you move your hand instead and hear a soft tear as your arm pulls free of the wheelchair’s metal frame.

Your heart begins to beat a deep, loud thrum as your fingers grip the wheel and the chair begins to turn. But something isn’t right. It’s much too quiet, and yet you have the distinct and undeniable feeling that you are not alone inside this room, as a warm, wet, sticky fluid puddles at your palm.

The wheelchair wheel grows more difficult to grip as the smooth metal begins to slip beneath your grasp. You are nearly halfway turned around when you hear the sound of footsteps in the outer hall. And you know what’s coming because you’ve seen it in the dream you thought you were having, so you hurry, thinking there has been some kind of mistake. You’ll soon wake up and all of these memories will just go away. But your hand stops dead when a dozen shadowy, wheelchair-bound strangers greet you like a mirror.

Some of these strangers still face the empty walls, but most have also managed to pivot around and are scrambling much like you are to move, to do something, anything, but sit and wait for the footsteps to arrive. And you remember now how they stole your life while you were sleeping and brought you here to this special place to make you more like them, and to make them more like you.

And you want to call out but your chin is bound to your chest, your skin sewn in places that didn’t need to be sewn, and a soft mewl is the only cry that you can utter, as the door flies open and light floods the room. And what enters is a misshapen creature, hideously deformed, that belongs in some kind of wheelchair of its own, but for some reason what’s normal isn’t normal anymore and what wasn’t normal before is now in charge of all the patients on the floor.

And the light brings to life each patient as they flop and breach with futile grunts and join you in a chorus of whistles and drool. And you realize, as the creature begins to push each wheelchair back into place, yours included, and chooses the patient sitting next to you, and whisks him away out the door, down the hall, to where dreams end in screams and nightmares come true, that you will just have to wait your turn.

END

First appeared in Life Among the Dream Merchants © 2005 by Kurt Newton. All Rights Reserved.
Comment by kresby on 10 July 2007:

thanks Kurt. Chilling.
Comment by Juergen Karle on 11 July 2007:

Thank you ,Kurt.
Just found out that I’m not the subtle kind.
To me “The Waiting Room” is really creepy.What’s more, I’ve got to find me a copy of “Dream Merchants”now.Anybody has a spare ,he’s willing to sell?

Juergen
Comment by kurtnewton on 11 July 2007:

Juergen — Thanks again. Shocklines still has signed copies and they’re on sale for a measly $5.00! Here’s the link: http://shocklines.stores.yahoo.net/liamdrmebotp.html