The Nightmare Game (15 page)

“Stop it!” I howled. “Let me go! Please! Let me go!”
Even as I screamed the words, I knew it would do no good.

 The barbed wire became so hot that it seared into
my arm and I screamed in agony. In my excruciating pain I could smell my own
flesh burning. I lost all sense of myself except for the burning, piercing,
torturous agony in my arm. I became my right arm. There was no me except for it
right now, the pain was so extreme. Blinking through the hot, stinging tears
streaming down my face, I stared at the child, whose inscrutability had turned
into a smug, sadistic smile. She began to change again as the creature now
holding onto the wire, the source of my anguish, presented itself as a little
girl of about five years. At the next spurt she didn’t stop growing, but
continued to develop before my eyes, from a five year old into a ten year old,
a teenager, and finally, a young woman with long, dark hair, all the while
clinging tightly onto the wire. My missing memories of last night came rushing
back to me. The woman that stood before me behind the pulsating membrane,
naked, reining in the hot, searing wire, drawing me into the vortex was the
same woman that had stood at the other end of the alley last night, laughing at
me cruelly as I had struggled to lift myself up from its filth. She was young
and extraordinarily beautiful, but the evil creature inflicting this searing
pain upon me was none other than Rochere. I was wet, shaking violently from the
agonizing pain, yet I managed to curse her loudly through my screams, spewing
at her every swearword and epithet I had ever heard. She didn’t react at all.
She just stood there, holding the end of the wire, smiling coldly with evil,
wicked self-satisfaction.

I thought things could get no worse, until that
which I’d dreaded since first contemplating placing my hand into the miasma
began to happen. The temperature in the pit became sweltering, more scorching
by the second, until all of my arm was roasting. This pain was so intense that
it merged with the torture of the hot barbed wire and became one with it. I
screamed continually as I doubled my efforts to pull out my arm. My eyes, shut
tight in absolute agony, thankfully could not see her now, but my ears could
not shut out the cold, hard laughter of the creature Rochere. As I pulled
myself backward, shrieking, shaking and racked with pain, I began to pass out
from the torture I was forced to endure. Then my body began to shake all over
and I began to choke. My survival reflexes were the only things keeping me from
blacking out. My windpipe was being constricted from the outside; at the same
time something was stabbing me in the upper chest, pulling me back like a
carcass on a meat hook. This additional pain forced an awareness of the rest of
my body upon me, reminding it that there was more to me than just my horribly
wretched arm. I looked down for just a second and saw blood running down my
chest and over my abdomen. Something was strangling me, something was stabbing
at me. I struggled harder to release myself from the prison of the red
otherworld as Rochere pulled the wire to force me even further inside. But the
harder she tugged, the stronger the choking and stabbing pain assaulted me from
the other direction. I could feel my eyes begin to bulge and I knew that if I
did not breathe within the next few seconds that I would be a dead woman. No
sooner had this realization forced itself upon me through the barrier of
torturous pain than there was a sudden flash of light that actually seemed to
be coming from me along with an explosive force that blasted me out of the miasmic
world, clearing me completely of it. It blew me out of the bathtub, throwing me
backward. I felt the flesh of my arm tear from the barbs of the wire; I heard
my head crack as I hit the hard tile bathroom floor with force, my legs splayed
over the edge of bathtub. I tasted blood in my mouth and prayed I had only
split my lip or knocked out a tooth. My body was so racked with pain that I was
beyond being able to feel how bad the damage was.

 “Did you know that most deaths in the home occur
from falling in the bathtub?” I heard a little voice within my head say. At
least I thought it was within my head.

 “Yes,” my mind answered it.

 “Broken necks are not infrequent. Neither are
drownings from being knocked unconscious and landing face first into water. You
know you can drown in less than a half inch of water, don’t you?”

“I know, I learned about that a long time ago.” I
responded sluggishly. “But I didn’t land face first into the water.”

“Are you sure your neck’s not broken then?” It
continued.

 “What are you trying to say?” The little voice
was starting to upset me.

 “Say? Oh, nothing, really, just making
conversation. About deaths, I mean, you know, in the bathtub.”

 “What about them?” I asked.

 “I suppose the point is,” the voice, loud, dark
and ominous, continued. “How do you know this isn’t one of them?”

 “Such a cheery fellow you are,” I said to it as I
my consciousness began to slip from me. “Will I die if I can’t stay awake?”

 “That’s a thought. Enough to pass out on,
don’tcha think?” the voice said.

 “You really want me dead, don’t you?”

 “Well, it really has been a rough few days for
you, hasn’t it? Why not take it easy?”

 “Because you want me to, you lousy, filthy
bastard,” I thought. “If you want me to die so bad, go ahead and do it! You’re
not getting me easy this time. You want me, you work for me!”

 It took everything I had, every ounce of
strength, every fiber of my will, but I began to move. Only a toe at first, and
then my fingers, and then I made a fist with my left hand, for my right felt
like nothing more than burnt mush, nothing more than pain itself. It took all
my anger, all my hate, all my determinism, my love of life and my resentment of
life to do it, but I got three of my extremities to move. All of my life’s
triumphs and losses, all my rejections and all of my successes welled up inside
me and by sheer emotion and will alone, I managed to move my head just a
little. I was determined to show that bitch Rochere, who was now nothing more
than an evil voice in my head, that I wasn’t dead just yet. But while I had
moved a negligible amount, my body was still tightly glued to the floor. I just
didn’t have the strength to push myself off the spot I where I’d crash landed.
I started to cry, tears steaming down my cheeks so rapidly that only the heat
of the tears differentiated them from the water splashing over me from the
shower pipe now turned out of the tub, facing the bathroom, spraying water onto
the tile floor. While I could move my feet and left hand a tiny bit, I knew I
didn’t even have the strength to thrash about like a turtle, helpless on its
back. Out of my peripheral vision, I could see that my torso was covered with
blood and my upper chest was still bleeding. I wondered what my right arm
looked like, but it was in such an awkward position that I couldn’t move my
head enough to see it. That’s probably for the better, I thought. The barbed
wire had flayed it gruesomely and what was left of the remaining flesh had
gotten so badly burned in the vortex that it most likely looked more hideously
mutilated than I could bear. I swallowed hard and immediately regretted it
because my throat ached alarmingly from whatever had tried to strangle me.
Whatever it was, it had almost killed me, but it also managed to pull me out of
the vortex.

At least the floating, non-existent, obnoxious,
evil voice was gone and no longer infiltrating my thoughts. I hoped it stayed
gone because I’d already been tormented too much today, to say the least.
Thankfully, my body was going numb now and I could no longer feel my wounds,
not even my arm or the spot on my head where it had hit the floor.

With the voice silenced and no longer taunting me,
at least I now could die in some peace. I forced opened my eyes for what I
thought might very well be my final glimpse of the world. On the bathroom tile
on the interior side of the tub where that horrible red dimension had
previously been was now scrawled in what must have been blood, most probably
mine, “YOU’RE DEAD.”

“YOU’RE DEAD.”

Rochere’s words sent a single shock wave through
my nervous system and then fell flat. She had tortured me and she needed now to
terrorize me. Her efforts were in vain, however, because she had done her first
job too well. The impact of her message upon my emotions was only fleeting
reflex. Her threat had failed in its ability to linger in my psyche. How could
it? I was simply too exhausted, too traumatized and too injured to react; I had
no energy left for fear. Her death threat held such little weight only because
she was just beating a dead dog. The joke was on her now, I thought, because
after what I’d just been through, I realized that death would be a welcome
friend to me, a relief. I was ready to die. Living was just simply too much
effort at the moment. In death I could at least find rest.

Once the initial shock had passed, my response to
the bloody message was passive and unreactive.
Tell me
something I don’t know
, I thought dully. My mind, my body and my spirit
were simply too depleted to be impressed. I closed my eyes, wondering if it
would be for the last time. All feeling had left my body, but considering the
vast amount of pain I’d been forced to endure, it was a true blessing. I felt
myself begin to float upward, anticipating the most monumental event in life since
my birth. However, instead of floating up into the tunnel with the white light
about which I’d heard so much, I found myself back upon the familiar foggy
boulevard, once more following the beautiful, mysterious gentleman that I now
knew as Edmond. Once again he stopped and turned toward me when I approached
him. He held out his hand, took hold of mine and pulled me to his body,
enveloping me in his arms in a tight embrace. When I lifted my face up to his,
his lips met mine and for a second time he breathed his sweet-tasting energy
into me. It was now accompanied by a new sensation, a warm tingling that
emanated from his body and ran into my own, an energy tremendously powerful and
exciting as it flowed into me, returning me to life. By the time he relaxed his
embrace, my own breath was coming in short, hot bursts. I forgot my former pain
completely and my body was shaking once again, but this time it was with the
heat of passion. I needed him desperately, desired him completely. I longed for
him to throw me to the ground, to take me there and then; I wanted him to
ravage me fully. His energy had taken away all my fear, trauma and pain,
leaving in its stead a pulsing, radiating hunger. I felt not only whole again
but excited, filled with an erotic, yearning desire for the two of us to become
one.

Instead of giving me the consummation for which I
sorely ached, he held me firmly about the waist with his left arm while
releasing me with the other. His right arm, he outstretched, pointing his cane
toward an unseen spot within the fog. Beautiful music once again poured from
the mouth of its crystalline dragon headpiece, penetrating the dense mist to
reveal a monolithic black door. As we walked toward it, the music, which I
could somehow see with my eyes as well as hear, entered an enormous keyhole in
the door’s center. The entryway opened slowly and we stepped through it. No
sooner had we entered than it immediately clanged shut loudly behind us.
Startled, I looked back toward the closed door as, before my eyes, wild thorn
bushes suddenly sprang upward from either side of it, blocking it completely. A
huge, single black flower then burst forth from the keyhole, growing huge in a
matter of seconds. It moved in wavelike undulations, the blossom resembling
more a sea urchin than a plant. Vulgarly appealing, its petals, thick, black
and oily, throbbed and pulsated as it issued obscene sucking noises from a
mouth in its center, noises mingled with evil, hollow, malicious laughter. The
petals began to shudder profanely, discharging an earthy aroma that enticed me
beyond belief. I could not help but stare.
How bizarre
,
I thought as I let go of Edmond and, mesmerized, began to walk toward it. I got
near enough to the flower to be able to stroke its outer petals, which felt
rubbery, warm and wet, like a hot, thick inner tube from an old automobile
tire. I was enchanted by it and wanted so to enter its mouth, to be consumed in
its pungent perfume. The mouth continued making slurping noises as a large,
eager tongue sprang forth from its center, licking and flicking. I felt
compelled to reach out to greet it but Edmond pulled me back. The tongue began
to drip blood as the flower moaned a disappointed sigh.

“Don’t touch the mouth,” he told me.

“It’s calling me, it wants me, I have to go to
it,” I protested. “Can’t you smell it? Its fragrance is beautiful.”

“No, it stinks. It is foul. You’re drawn to it
only because the witch still has hold over you. It’s why I brought you here,
only to test the extent that her infection is still in you.” He pulled me back
farther.

“Let me go,” I objected, reaching out, so longing
to touch the flower again. “I want to go back, I need to touch it again.”

“You can’t,” Edmond told me. “It’s a filthy thing.
You’ll have to face it one day, but you’re not strong enough yet.”

He held me softly as the black door with its
thorns and obscene flower began to float away. The fog became denser until he
and I stood alone in a universe of thick mist. He began to stroke my hair as if
I were a child.

“Get some rest, you need to sleep, you need to
heal. A long journey lies ahead of you. Sleep now.”

In my dream, I became very drowsy. I put my head
upon Edmond’s shoulder and, as he continued stroking my hair, I drifted into a
deep, restful sleep.

I think I was out for a long time, although with
sleep it’s always hard to tell. I woke up on the bathroom floor, the tickling
sensation of my own drool awakening me. For a moment, I was completely unaware
of my surroundings or what had happened to me. I slowly came to my senses and
realized where I was. I ached all over and my head was splitting. When I rubbed
it, revealing a large bump, I remembered that I had hit my head on the hard
tile of the bathroom floor with a vengeance.

“Oh, shit,” I groaned as memory returned to me. I
looked around. I was still alive. I couldn’t believe it, I was actually still
alive. Feeling had returned to me and my body was no longer numb. I didn’t know
if that was a good thing, because it hurt dreadfully. My arm felt baked and
raw, my throat felt as if it had been slashed, my entire body felt almost cut
in two, especially when I breathed.
Ok, then, as the
old joke goes
, I thought, trying desperately to keep myself together,
just don’t breathe
. For some strange reason, that
made me feel a little better. If I was in good enough shape to be corny, I
reasoned, then my life force, although battered and bruised, must still be
intact.

I’d gotten some strength back, so I was able to
lift my head. The first thing that grabbed my attention was the YOU’RE DEAD
blood message on the bathtub wall. All of the events leading up to my landing
on the wet bathroom floor came flooding back into my mind. My corny sense of
humor, so recently resurrected, departed even faster than it had appeared. I’d
been so hoping that this message had been a part of a dream, that I’d simply
fallen and hit my head and that the shower from hell and all the danger I was
in had been only side effects of a concussion gone wild. But it wasn’t. Now
that the writing on the wall was in my conscious awareness again, it stared at
me through my peripheral vision wherever my eyes wandered. Before I’d been too
traumatized and too numb in every sense of the word to be overly bothered by
the message, but now it horrified me. Rochere was out to kill me and I finally
understood just how unstoppable her power must be and how large her grasp was.
I knew the bloody graffiti was more than a threat; it was a prediction. I
couldn’t stand to look at it a moment longer; it was terrifying me badly and I
realized that it was for this moment that she had written it. I had to maneuver
myself into another position, one in which the death threat wasn’t staring me
straight in the face, where I could think without that hideous thing commanding
my every attention.

Before I moved, though, I had to take stock of my
injuries so that moving wouldn’t do more harm than good. I prayed vehemently
that no real damage had been done, that despite my previous impressions I would
be merely hurt and not maimed. With a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach,
terrified as to what I would find, I reluctantly forced my eyes to glance down
for inspection. I studied my arm first since it was the easiest for me to see.
Instead of the cooked, flayed flesh that I remembered before losing
consciousness, my arm now looked and felt no worse than an extremely bad
sunburn. The cuts I’d seen going down to the bone, the ripped flesh I was sure
I would find there, were now only nasty red welt trails spiraling upward. I
sighed with relief, realizing that my right arm was still intact; I’d been so
sure earlier that its injuries were so extreme that I would surely lose it. My
chest, which still hurt badly, had been bleeding profusely earlier from the
spot where I’d felt something pierce me. All blood was washed away by the water
from the headless, undirected shower rod that was spraying relentlessly all
over my body and most of the floor. I realized now why the bathroom floor and
not just the tub contained a drain. I glanced down to see that the flesh of my
chest was red and still bloody looking; I was afraid to examine it too closely,
afraid of what I would find when I did. With a sick feeling in the pit of my
stomach, I reluctantly forced my hands down to feel my skin and breathed a sigh
of relief when I discovered nothing more than a few bruises and a nasty scab.
It was still quite tender and it hurt to the touch, but other than the scab,
there was no evidence of punctures or cuts. Finally, I felt my throat but found
there only the dragon necklace I still wore. I had no idea of what had tried to
strangle me; I only knew that it had come from behind me, from outside the
vortex. I was sure that I’d felt my throat being cut or crushed, perhaps even
both, but, as with the rest of my body, it checked out fine as well. It was
still very sore, but seemed perfectly intact. I knew that I’d been hurt
alright, but now I was beginning to wonder about the severity of the injuries
I’d received. Nothing heals that fast, I knew, suddenly realizing that I was
already in much less pain than I’d been in only a few seconds ago when I first
awoke. Had the intensity of the wounds been an hallucination or a product of my
own imagination?

My back still hurt terribly from the fall and
seemed more damaged now than the rest of me. Like my head, it hadn’t been
injured by any supernatural forces, but rather by the very mundane act of
falling backwards over the bathtub wall in my violent expulsion from the
shower. For some reason my head and my back, my greatest concerns now, hadn’t
healed quite as quickly as the rest of me. I had no strength in my legs, but I
could move them, albeit slowly and with great pain and difficulty. Okay, I
thought, I’d checked out well enough, so now it was time to rearrange my
position and slide off elsewhere, to get away from the water spraying down upon
me. Most importantly, I had to get out of eyeshot of that horrible message,
because now that I was no longer on the brink of death, it was preying upon my
psyche and my mind.

I began feeble attempts to adjust my position.
Even though I was so sore that my every move hurt and ached, my horribly
battered body was now at least ambulatory. Slowly and incredibly painfully, I
pulled myself along the wet, damp, slippery floor, grateful now still to be
alive, grateful I could still move at all. I continued these efforts until I
reached the wall by the door leading into the bedroom and propped myself up
against it. No matter how I shifted I could not escape the pain in my head and
in my back. I sat as best I could in a semi-seated position, feeling for all
the world like a broken marionette whose master had abandoned her for bigger
and better things. The floor was cold and wet, and still being soaked by the
shower pipe left without direction when it lost its head. I had turned outward
toward the bathroom during my fall and now noticed the large snail-like
semi-dry trail I’d left in my wake during the arduous crawl, a trail rapidly
disappearing by the shower’s flow of water. My position wasn’t ideal, but at
least I could see very little of the obscene message on the tile tub wall from
this vantage point. The linen closet to my left obscured most of it. The
bathroom door, which I’d left partially open before the shower, hid the words’
reversed image in the mirror. Maybe without having that abominable note staring
me straight in the face, I could actually assess my immediate situation better
and with more clarity.

Settled into this passably comfortable semi-seated
position, I wondered if I could get up. I needed to get up, because I feared
another attack by Rochere. I felt far too vulnerable sitting here on the
bathroom floor. I braced my hands beside my torso and tried to get traction
with my feet. The first time they slipped out from under me, so I tried again.
The second time I got the traction, but could not find the power to stand. The
third time I held onto the bathroom doorknob, trying for leverage to pull
myself up, but I didn’t have the strength for that either. Then I just quit,
too exhausted for another try. I was tired, really tired. All of my energy
reserves had left me. I needed more sleep and a lot of it. It wasn’t like the
feeling I’d had earlier, when I thought that blacking out would mean certain
death. No, now I was just really, honestly tired. The burst of steam I used to move
across the floor was all gone and I needed to rest. I felt as if I could, like
Sleeping Beauty, sleep for one hundred years, awaiting only my true love to
awaken me. I didn’t have that luxury, though. It wasn’t the sensible thing to
do. For all I knew, I could have a concussion and the worst course of action
now would be to let myself fall asleep. Since I was alone, I knew I should drag
myself into the bedroom right now and call an ambulance; but I was just too
exhausted. I couldn’t move another inch. I needed a little rest. I would just
close my eyes a little, rest for only a minute, and then maybe I’d have enough
strength to do what I needed to do. Yes, rest sounded awfully good right now.
So I closed my eyes, telling myself it would just be for a second, that I
wouldn’t allow myself to drift off to sleep.