The half-forgotten
Other half of my short life
In short story form

 
Voice of Honey
2-24-2000

I went to a beach in a faraway land. It was a small beach, enclosed by a very small outcropping of rock. Pam was sitting underneath an umbrella. It was a very pleasant, warm day. There was oil leaking from a hole in the ground right by her, marking her territory. I sat down at the edge and made some conversation. She said she was planning on settling here for a long time.

I came back, years later, and she was still there. The oil had spread to cover a larger area, so I had to sit farther away to talk to her. I knew she wasn't making any money by staying here, so I told he she could come crash at my place...when I got one...should she ever need to.

So I followed Rin up north into the woods, where there was a subdivision of very large cabins...mansions actually...larger and more lavish than any homes I've ever lived in. They were all made of logs, though, and still maintained an authentic, natural, almost rustic feel, even though all the doors opened automatically and the televisions were always on. It was nighttime.

We toured several units. Noone was home at any of them, being only vacation homes. All the doors were glass, unlocked, and slid open when we approached. Apparently everything was free reign up here. Somewhere along the way, Rin turned into Xena, and my perspective shifted between hers and mine often.

We entered one home that was darker than the rest. Xena had a hunch that it held some sort of secret. Indeed, the staircase to the second floor just continued into the ceiling of the first floor. From Xena's perspective, I noticed a piece of paper wedged into a crack in the banister. I pushed on the wood and it gave way. Nothing happened. The camera angle rotated all around the banister as I examined it, taking arduously long, and I remember thinking how this TV series better have a good reason for drawing it out so long and wasting precious airtime. Finally the letters 'LTP' were revealed on the opposite site of the banister. I somehow knew that this meant I had to press on the other side. I did, but it didn't give until I performed some type of rubic's cube operation on it, after which some mechanism clicked into place and it fell into my hand.

The ceiling above opened up, revealing the 2nd story. On the immediate right was a bedroom. The door was open a crack, with light coming through it, and I could hear a voice behind it. Across from it was another bedroom, open and dark. Beyond these rooms was darkness. I was about to examine the lit room when a tall bald man dressed in a tuxedo came from the dark one, startling us. I somehow recognized him from 'before', however, and wondered how he got here and where he got the suit. "I was glad you made it," he said, and motioned us downstairs. He seemed to take no notice of the muffled voices coming from the lit room.

At the kitchen table, he went on, "I wanted to make it challenging, but not impossible, to make it upstairs. Any comments? I'm so glad you didn't give up. This is the sort of attraction I want." I guess we had a couple comments that satisfied him.

We followed him back upstairs, where he seemed to notice the lit room and cracked doorway for the first time. He opened the door, but only the top half of the door opened. I wondered if its purpose was to keep some small animal from jumping out of the room. I peered inside. It was a large, empty room with wooden floors. A humanoid creature moved very quickly and smoothly toward the doorway. It was only wearing a pear of blue jeans, and instead of a body, it was just a flesh-covered spinal cord with bony arms. It didn't even have a head. I immediately felt a sense of sinisterness. As I moved past, myself behind me (I'm at Xena's perspective, remember), toward the darker side of the 2nd floor, the bald man asked it a question I didn't quite catch. With an entrancing, honey-like voice, the creature said something like, "I don't know," or "Let me show you," as it casually pruned the bald man's upper half with one bony hand, leaving only his spinal cord above the waist. I dashed by, hoping to escape to the downstairs level, when I noticed the creature now had an inhuman skull. I found a rock in my hand and bashed at the skull, but didn't even make a scratch. It grabbed me and I changed perspectives to myself, letting Xena fend for herself. Xena escaped its grasp and ran with me out of the cabin.

Outside, the creature caught up with us, jumping Xena, who tried to smash its head with a plastic soda bottle. I joined in the fray with a plastic bottle of my own, neither of us doing any good. Somehow I ended up several meters away, and I saw Xena climbing up a green, slimy tree. At first, the creature couldn't follow, so I started climing a tree, too. Xena went out on a limb and the creature somehow managed to pull her down, grappling her once more. I jumped down, grabbed a rock, and threw it, hitting the thing in the back. The tree was covered in moss. Xena grabbed for some to get a hold, but it broke. Dozens of tarantulas came out, engulfing the base of the tree, including Xena and the creature. The ground rose up, and vines slithered up from the ground, entangling them both. The creature shouted, "That's not fair, I can't fight spiders! Don't leave me! You'll never rescue Xena in time!" and so on, his voice losing its sweet, hypnotic quality in its anguish. Rats started climbing around, too, and I jumped into the mound to pull Xena out of the entanglement before it all became swallowed up into the ground. She was covered in fur for some reason, but I managed to lift her out and bound down the slope. The creature was still complaining as the vines, spiders, rats, and garbage dragged him into the earth. Xena kicked a log that was somehow anchoring the entire mass to the surface, and it got sucked up into the earth, gone forever.

We got into a car and rode home to the city. We pulled into the garage, which was underground. The stairs that led up out of the garage to the foyer, I noticed, were just like the stairs in that house we explored. I also thought about how the bad guy in horror movies is never really dead. It was very dark, and I fooled myself into thinking there was someone else in the garage, but when I checked it out with a flashlight, there was nothing. We opened the "ceiling" at the top of the steps to get to the foyer upstairs. Underneath the door to the foyer, however, I noticed a very small door built into the actual steps, and I got another sense that something sinister was afoot. I commented, "Why put a medium-sized knob on such a small door?" That question seemed to say it all. I made sure it was locked, and someone else opened the door upstairs for us. We closed the "floor" back over the steps, granting access to yet another door that led to yet another garage. I guessed that was locked, too.

There were several people living there, all congregated in the main foyer area for some reason. It was dark inside, too, with phantom light coming in from street lamps through various windows. Suddenly there was a loud knock at the back porch door. Two really loud raps would echo on the left side of the door, followed immediately by two really loud raps on the right side...but shining a flashlight out through the vertical window in the middle of the door, we couldn't see anyone. I knew that the creature had somehow survived and followed us.

I heard some kid crying and screaming. I turned my head to the left and saw a little Indian kid staring at something beyond my vision (behind a counter or a wall). I yelled something to alert the others, and instead of helping him, some girl closed and locked the kitchen door in panic. Panic-stricken myself, I fumbled with the door, opened it, and thankfully saw the kid still standing there, frozen. I grabbed him and pulled him out of the kitchen. When I did so, I got a good look at what he was crying at. His shadow on the wall wasn't standing still like he was. It was animated, being eaten alive by the shadow of some lizard creature.

As I held the kid, comforting him, and as the rapping at the back door persisted, the same girl reclosed and locked the kitchen door. That was when I saw the same lizard shadow projecting on the door, and it dawned on me that it was coming from BEHIND me. How could I have forgotten about the front door?!? I jerked around to the right to face the front door, which was thankfully also locked, and through the window I saw the lizard-like creature, banging its head against the window, its crazy, blood-thirsty eyes focused intently on me. Very slowly, for I was literally scared stiff, I lifted my right arm to point at the door, and barely managed, after several hyperactive breaths, to say, "H...hey...g...guys...ov...over..er...here..." to warn my friends. With each bash, its face morphed into a better likeness of Pierette...except with much more angular, decimated features, eyes glossed over and zombie-like.


posted by Phlegm at 11/25/2003