By Kay Aluvanze, Grade 11
I open my eyes and I’m completely engulfed by darkness. An ominous silence hovers, like a consecrated urn. The only thing I could recall was taking a nap. Maybe I overslept. Yeah, sounds like something I would do. I arise from the worn-out mattress and reach for the light switch that’s usually right behind my bed, I can’t feel it. After much thought, nothing feels like what I’m used to. My intuition is telling me that something is amiss.
I stand up, desperately looking for something of familiarity, my phone that I always keep right next to my bed stand, not there. My bed stand wasn’t there either. I get out of bed, hands wiggling in the darkness, desperate to find something to help me get a sense of where I was.
I’m constantly stumbling and accidentally walking into things in this vicious and sentient darkness. There’s a rank and pungent smell mixed with a tinge of sickening sweetness, almost like rotten cheese.
There’s a door a few steps ahead of the bed. I open it and I’m greeted by tall shadowed pines stretching like arrows into the sky. The tree’s branches clattered like skeleton bones. I blankly stare at the moon’s transcendental shine through a lattice of leaves. A full moon, as bright as a new nickel. In the back of my mind, I’m thinking of how the moon was a crescent yesterday. Has that much time elapsed? I slowly look back at the wooden shack I just emerged from that stands alone in this seemingly old and pathless forest.
The fluorescent moonlight makes it possible for me to see what’s inside the shack. I stare at the single bed that stands in the middle of the room. I quickly realize the crimson blood spattered all over the wooden panelled walls in messy strokes. What happened here?
I felt my breathing rate accelerate as my eyes widened, I was trying to process what was in front of me. A million agonizing thoughts swarm through my mind as I grow more terrified. I begin to scan the room, my vision blurred, head dizzy. In the corner of my eye, I see a football laying beside the bedside table.
As I turn in the direction of the football I slowly watch as it morphs into a decapitated head. Maybe I’m hallucinating. I rub my eyes and take a look, I’m not imagining things, that’s someone’s head. That’s where the smell is coming from. The head is severed, an eye missing from the socket, face devoid of emotion, and skin as pale as the haggard features of despair. Is it a man or a woman? I can’t tell. Probably a woman, the hoops dangling from her ears and the frail hair falling over her face in heaps sold it.
I want to let out an ear-piercing scream, but nothing is coming out. It’s as if fear grasped me by the throat and left me mute. Next to the severed head is an equally bloody machete that’s dripping blood onto the already mud-stained carpet. I notice the flies swarming around the pieces of rotting flesh on the carpet. I bend over and hear a sick noise in my throat. I threw up, then and there. I watch as my vomit pooled beneath me, my stomach clenching in pain. It was all too disgusting. I walk a few steps away from the nauseating shack in need of fresh air.
I felt too many emotions at once, dizziness being the main one. The smell of my vomit clinging in the air along with the rotting flesh was horrid. I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. My chest felt so heavy and my breathing slowed. I drop to the ground, trying to compose myself. One….two…..three…. I count as I try to take deep breaths, but nothing, I still can’t breathe. It’s as if someone is strangling me, restricting my airflow. While soaking in the thick, gooey mud I realize breaking down won’t help. I have to get myself out of here.
I take a quick glimpse at the severed head and stare at the machete. I swiftly grab the broad blade. It’s heavier than the sands of the sea but I’m in danger, and I can’t risk going out there alone, unarmed, and as vulnerable as a newborn baby, I step into the dark forest, my heart beating hard against my chest. The only sounds that could be heard were my hushed plods along with the sounds of the long and sacrificial blade grazing the ground.
That’s when I hear it, the soft rustling and crackling of leaves, almost like someone’s lurking around stealthily behind me. I turn around, eyes shut, heart racing. I open my eyes, expecting the worst, but I’m greeted by more darkness.
“Ki ki ki, ma ma ma,” distant whispers echo throughout the forest. The sounds are so familiar, I’m as sure as eggs and bacon that I know the whispers.
“Hello?” I faintly say, it felt as if my voice was ringing in my ears. No response. “Is anyone there?” I say uproariously. Again, nothing. Why are the whispers so familiar? I stand there, frozen and unable to move, my skin tingling. The whispers are getting closer. Unconsciously, I drop the machete and run into the darkness, farther from the safeness that I felt in the shack. Suddenly I see them amid the trees. Six feet tall, machete in their hand. An ugly countenance they had. I could tell in the moonlight that their skin was burnt and rubbery. That’s when the person starts charging at me, I don’t run, I don’t even try to get away, I’ve accepted my fate.
I watched as they walked towards me with the blade and stood in front of me, their stinky breath all up in my face. I feel what I think is a punch but realize it’s the machete. The sensation of the hot blade piercing through my stomach and the puncturing feeling of my lung. A tearing sensation runs through my body as I watch the blood flow out from the agape hole now in my body, the blade still in me. I watch as they remove the blade from me and I’m pushed back, that’s when the excruciating pain hits. I clenched onto my stomach, as I dropped onto the ground. I looked at the sticky blood on my fingers and closed my eyes. At least my fear of being murdered was over.
I wake up in the shack again, this time the door is open. I look to the side and the decapitated head is there, along with the machete that I had picked up before. I look down at my body, there’s a big stain on my shirt from where I got stabbed but no wound. I look up and there the person is at the door.
No, not again.
Elements Magazine 