Asylum - 13 Tales of Terror (5 page)

“That woman had a heart attack, it was just a coincidence, and you’re just a voice inside my head. Maybe I’ve got a tumor, maybe I’m going mad, but voices are just voices. You are as powerless as I am.” he said firmly.

“Pinch it.”

“No.”

“Fair enough.”

Duncan held his breath as the girl drew closer; she looked around seventeen with a cruel hard face that did not belong on such a young woman, one barely above a child. She swaggered with the arrogance of youth; her ample figure refusing to be fully covered despite the cold wet weather. She looked at him with raw contempt through her heavily smoky black eyed makeup. Her thick foundation verged on the wrong side of orange and her lips were smeared with a greasy looking pale red gloss. Duncan could not take his eyes off  her as she reached him; he was terrified that she would suddenly drop dead of something harder to explain than a heart attack.

“What you looking at?” She sneered as she reached him.

Despite physically towering over the girl, she viewed him without fear and spoke likewise. Duncan looked down at the ground, embarrassed. “Nothing,” he mumbled.

The girl stopped and stared hard at him, “What are you, some kind of perv? Like looking at young girls do you?”

Duncan backed off and tried to walk away, but the girl started following him.

“Oi, perv,” she shouted after him as he ducked his head and attempted to move away.

There weren’t many others walking along the promenade and for that he was grateful. His self-esteem was low enough already without being publically ridiculed and bullied by a teenage girl.

“Yeah, you just keep walking you bloody paedo,” she called after him, “Next time I’ll kick your bloody arse,” she shouted without an obvious filter or volume control.

Duncan kept his head down low as he passed a street sweeper who only smirked at him with the relief of the standerby, rather than the taking part. Duncan was almost safely away when he heard the screech of tires followed by a heavy wet thud. He turned back to see that someone had stepped into the light traffic flow. There was sudden pandemonium as bodies began rushing to and fro and a high pitched women’s scream was soon not alone as others joined the ghastly choir. Duncan hurried to the side of the road; half of him wanted it to be the girl for her shaming of him, and the other half was terrified as to the consequences of the voice. He reached the curb and peered into the crowd. A large dark salon car had swerved sideways and two wheels had mounted the pavement. There was a female body laying sprawled across the car bonnet and her dead eyes stared back up at him through heavily made up smoky black lids.

Two days later Duncan was sitting in a quiet café nursing a coffee; the once hot liquid was now rapidly cooling. His hands were wrapped around the still warm mug and the sharp tension of not sleeping was now being replaced by a soft foggy haze. The voice was now a part of him; it governed his life and shaped his days. He no longer had the fight left in him to even argue, if the voice told him to jump then he would only ask how high. He was vaguely aware that he must be suffering some kind of breakdown but his sleep deprivation had left him unable to process the facts.

The waitress walked past his table; her not unappealing pert behind jiggled past inside a black cotton skirt. He merely obeyed and reached out with a finger and thumb in a pincer motion. The waitress yelped and whirled around angrily; she slapped his face and he took it with a growing acceptance. The voice laughed riotously inside his head; it seemingly never tired of the familiar prank. He had pinched more bottoms than he could count in the last two days. He had been slapped, punched, threatened, abused and even propositioned once. He had found that if he obeyed his orders then no-one came to any serious harm. So far the voice seemed content with relatively harmless, almost childish actions. He didn’t like to think about the day when immature pranks would no longer suffice.

He stood and wandered out of the café; his weary body shuffling across the linoleum floor, accompanied by the harsh glares of the other patrons. His natural anonymity had so far meant that no-one had provided the police with any detailed descriptions. He could only hope that they had bigger fish to fry than a bum pincher.

“In there,” the voice directed him to a supermarket.

Duncan could only follow; part of him wondered just how long this was all going to take. If he was truly going mad then surely at some point he would either collapse, be arrested, or sectioned.

The voice was whispering again, he’d missed it through his sheer exhaustion; it wasn’t a good thing to try the voice’s patience he had already found to his cost.

“I can’t,” he said after catching the instructions laid out for a second time. His voice was hoarse and desperately sad, “Please just let me sleep.”

A woman serving behind a deli counter suddenly began coughing violently; her skinny body began jerking and retching. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and pretty, her curly blonde hair fell in waves from under her white hygiene hat. She wore a white overcoat and matching apron; her nails were manicured and sat beneath clear gloves as she worked. Under other circumstances Duncan might have watched her from afar, not quite daring to approach her for conversation, instead ending up with a multitude of unwanted delicacies from her counter. But now he could only watch as her face turned blue and her eyes rolled back in their sockets as her coughs were silenced and she began to choke soundlessly.

“Alright, alright,” he told the voice wearily.

The woman suddenly began to hitch and cough noisily again as her chest heaved in great gulps of precious air. Her male companion on the counter pounded her on the back in panic. Her face began to fill with color again and she slapped the back thumping hand away.

Duncan did as he was instructed; he climbed up onto a large display advertising washing detergent.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he shouted loudly, “Your attention please,” he said following his internal script. “Today’s special, sausage, buy one get one free.” With that he dropped his pants and fluttered free in the breeze. All the while during his humiliation he watched the girl from the counter; she was shaken but apparently thankfully unharmed.

He was discharged from the police station later that evening with an official caution, it had been the first time that he had been in trouble, and it wasn’t pleasant. He had managed to convince the desk sergeant that it had all been a stag night prank. Just too many beers - which wasn’t true - and a childish sense of humor, which was. The laughter continued to echo around his head until he thought it would burst. His eyes were now narrow pin pricks of light and everything hurt. The one thing that he had discovered was that if he concentrated hard enough the voice couldn’t hear his own thoughts. He could speak to the voice inside his head, but he could still lock away his own thoughts deep inside the vault. He could picture the huge steel door; the thick metal was impenetrable, with vast locks and uncrackable codes. It was in here that he could truly think away from the voice; he could only hope that the voice had not found the door.

He walked away slowly through the deserted police station parking lot. The night was in full effect; the darkness had taken hold with icy fingers and would not let go of its bony grip until the morning light. He stumbled across the asphalt surface; his legs barely had the strength left in them to carry him home, but he knew that he had to stay away from people. He was a danger to anyone that his eyes caught sight of; whatever the voice was, it could only see through his eyes.

“Excuse me?” A soft voice called through the darkness, “Hello?” It persisted as he tried to walk away.

“Where do you think you’re going big boy?” the voice suddenly piped up.

Duncan had been dismayed to find that the voice seemed to be getting stronger and required less and less rest between their demonic sessions. Unwillingly he turned and saw the girl from the deli counter at the supermarket. She was even lovelier in the flesh and his heart sank before he could throw his thoughts about her in the vault and slam the door.

“Well now, Duncan’s got himself a little crush has he?” The voice chuckled meanly.

“Leave her alone,” he hissed inside his head, “You’ve already nearly killed her once tonight, surely that’s enough for one day.”

“I just wanted to make sure that you were alright,” the girl said kindly.

Up close he could see that she was a little older than he had first thought. She actually looked closer to his own age. Her cherub face was now framed with beautiful thick blond hair that hung in waves around her face. Her eyes were a deep blue and her cute cheeks were peppered with freckles. She looked light and fragile as though a stiff breeze might blow her over.

“I’m Primrose by the way. I heard about the prank at the supermarket, I’ve seen you in there before, but you never struck me as a nutter,” she laughed.

Duncan began laughing and found worryingly that he couldn’t stop.
Over a week without proper sleep and a domineering voice inside his head would do that to a man
, he thought and the voice agreed. It was only when he realised that she was staring at him with apprehension in her beautiful big worried eyes that he managed to stop.

“Sorry,” he muttered, “It’s been a long few days.”

“Are you OK?” she asked with genuine concern.

Duncan opened his mouth to tell her that he was fine when he found himself dangerously close to tears.

“Ask her out,” the voice said.

“What?” he replied incredulously.

“Hey I’m not a monster,” the voice said.

“Oh really, you just happen to go around killing people for jollies, that sounds pretty much like a monster to me.”

“Oh fine, hey I was just trying to help,” the voice pouted, “If you don’t want my help I’ll just shut up.”

“Oh God I wish you would,” Duncan spat furiously. He suddenly realised that the girl had been looking at him strangely the whole time he had been having an internal argument.

“Looks like she’s changing her mind about you being a nutter,” the voice said happily.

“Sorry,” Duncan said to her, “Just wool-gathering I guess.”

“Look I don’t want you to think that I’m forward or anything, but would you like to go for a drink with me sometime?” She asked.

Duncan could only stare back at the picture of cuteness asking him out, “Really, me go out with you?”

“Oh hey, there’s no need to be rude, I only thought that you might like to,” she said taking his inference completely the wrong way around.

“Say yes,” the voice said.

Duncan could only stare on in disbelief as she stomped away.

“Say yes or I’ll give her a stroke,” the voice prodded him.

“Yes, YES!” He shouted after her.

----------

It was nine months later; Duncan and his new bride had moved in together at her apartment. It was large and spacious with glorious views out across the ocean. He had sold his parents’ house and banked the money into a joint account for them both. Their life had been gloriously happy; she loved him and he was the luckiest man in the world - well almost. He still had the voice to contend with, but he had grown to believe that it was a relatively small price to pay. The voice in fact had helped him greatly during his clumsy wooing attempts. The voice gave him strength and confidence that he never knew he had. The voice had told him what to say and how to say it; it had been his very own demonic Cyrano de Bergerac, and the courtship had been successful.

He was now working mainly from home as a freelance graphic designer and he got to pick and choose his assignments. He had put together several album covers for moderate to successful bands and his reputation was growing. His work was dark and almost Lovecraftian. His mind was full of long tentacles reaching out of the blackness; great hidden monsters that lurked just out of sight threatening to destroy a man’s sanity with only a glimpse of true forms. He had grown into a compromise with the voice; an understanding that would allow them both to survive and thrive. Once a month he headed into London’s murky inner city dwellings, to streets that ran with dark promises of cruelty and malice. The voice was in charge for those days; he would lock his own mind away in the vault. He would only dare to emerge when the soft sounds of crashing waves and the call of the seagulls drew him home. When he returned, the only remnants of the voice’s expeditions would appear in his work. Shadows and red slashes of death would flourish and the ghoulish metal bands would be grateful. The only trouble was that the voice had now been absent for the last two months. Normally he would feel its junkie fingers scrabbling around his mind ready for another excursion into depravity. Only in the deepest darkest corners of his vault did he realise that he had begun to miss the voice. As depressing as it seemed, it had been his oldest and closest friend. The voice had missed one monthly appointment and that was now drifting towards two.

“Primrose, is that you?” he called when he heard the apartment door open and then close softly as someone entered. He stood puzzled by the absence of her gentle voice rising to greet him.

“Prim, is that you?” He tried again.

He walked across his home office space warily; his wife had been to the doctors this morning, as she had been feeling a little under the weather for the last couple of weeks. She had dismissed his concerns saying that it was just a bug going around at work, but he had nagged her into going. She had finally agreed this morning just to put his mind at rest. She had made the appointment and he had fully intended to go with her - as much to make sure that she went as for support - until work had intervened.

“Prim?” He called again growing frantic. What if it was really bad news? What if the doctor had found something? “PRIM!” He shouted, panicking. He rushed out of the room to find her in the kitchen waving a bottle of champagne at him.

“Pull out a glass,” she grinned “But just the one, I’m not allowed,” she said rubbing her stomach, “At least for the next nine months,” she laughed and flew into his arms.