#46

Saturday, August 11, 2012 & Friday, October 18, 2013

I'm driving. It's completely dark except for the road illuminated by my headlights and the moon, which is slowly rising just to my left. It's impossibly close, and every time I blink, it changes colors. Bright yellow. Blink. Pale green. Blink. Deep maroon. Blink. Vibrant pink. Blink. Sickly blue. Blink. Vomitous orange. The constant changes are making me feel dizzy, like I'm about to pass out. I want to look at something else, but there's nothing outside my car except the road and the moon. Only void to both sides. There aren't even any stars, something that has just come to my attention.

I check the time, trying to remember when I started on this strange trip, but when I look at the clock, rather than numbers, it's simply flashing the word "END" over and over. I try to remember how long I've been driving, where I came from, where I'm going, but I find I can't recall anything. I don't even know where I am now.

In an effort to distract myself, I turn on the radio, but no matter what station I tune it to, all that comes out is a bassy hum so low it threatens to rip my car apart. I try to turn the bass level down, but rather than changing the hum, this brings a high-pitched, nasal voice into focus over the droning sound. The voice is speaking in a harsh language I don't recognize, though somehow I understand - possibly because of the cadence - that this is part of a religious ceremony. The voice stops momentarily, and a congregation of guttural voices responds in the same language. This is followed by a scream that is suddenly cut short. The scream is unmistakably human.

My hand snaps up to the radio dial to shut it off, and I see a cassette deck I hadn't noticed before. There's already a tape sticking out of it. The tape is jet black with a strange, lustrous coating over it. There's something etched into the top, but when I reach to pull it out for a better look, the deck quickly sucks the tape in of its own accord. I'm able to make out the first two letters - GO - before the tape disappears completely. Seconds later, I hear tape hiss and a slight clunking sound. Then, my voice. I'm saying:

August 10, 2012. Having weird dreams again. Dreamt last night that I was in an old, old mansion. I had this big pickaxe, and I was running around killing all these people with it because somehow I knew they were going to kill me if I didn't. The weird thing was, they didn't scream or try to stop me or anything. Their faces were blank, expressionless, even when I sunk the pickaxe into their chests. It's like they knew it was going to happen and were completely resigned to their fates. Also, there was no blood. The axe would make a hole, they'd slump to the ground, then their bodies would just... vanish. No trace whatsoever. And the entire time, there was maniacal laughter ringing throughout the mansion. I knew that was the person I was really there to kill. Finally, I turned a corner and saw him. He was dressed in an undertaker's suit, and his face was pale - too pale. I would have assumed he was wearing makeup, only the blood covering his face told me otherwise. He had a sadistic, malicious glint in his eyes, and he was still laughing. He never stopped laughing, even when I ran down the hall and split his forehead open, sending blood and skull fragments and bits of brain exploding into my face with impossible force. I pulled my axe out of his head and stared at his lifeless body. Somehow, the air still rang with his laughter - and not dying echoes of it, but still at the same volume as before.

I turned and ran back down the hallway, determined to leave as fast as possible, when I realized I was lost. I hurried down hallway after hallway, his laughter following me no matter where I turned. I blindly sprinted around a corner and almost barreled into someone. It was him. He looked exactly the same as he did when I first saw him. And he was still laughing. I raised my axe and again drove it straight into his head, once more being covered in an explosion of gore. This time I struck him in the chest and stomach multiple times before resuming my search for the exit. And still, his laugh stalked me.

It was only a matter of time before I found him again, and again I murdered him with a blow to the skull, this time painstakingly dismembering his corpse with my pickaxe. But his laugh continued to hunt me. This went on for hours, desperately trying again and again to destroy this seemingly unkillable foe. Finally, I screamed at him, "What do you want from me!?" Immediately he stopped laughing and beckoned me into a narrow side hallway that materialized out of nowhere. At the end of it sat a folding chair and a television tuned to a dead channel. He gestured toward the chair, and in my head a thousand voices simultaneously and simply said, "Sit."

I walked past him with trepidation, but he made no movement, only stood there, arm outstretched. I sat in the chair and noticed a VCR on the floor next to the TV, with the cables ripped from the back of it. There was a tape in the VCR, neon red in color. "Put it in," the thousand voices commanded me. I turned to see where he was standing, but saw nothing but a blank wall where the entrance to the hallway once was. I turned back to the VCR and nervously pushed in the tape. The screen flickered, then showed an image of the house where I grew up. It was night. Whoever was operating the camera was standing at the end of the driveway. Slowly, the camera operator began walking towards the house, peering between a crack in the blinds on the front window. No movement. After a few seconds, the operator moved to the front door. A hand reached out, grasped the doorknob, and turned it. The door opened.

The camera operator walked through my living room without a sound. One of my cats was sleeping on the couch. She awoke, yawned, looked directly at the operator, meowed softly, then went back to sleep - which was odd, considering she was normally terrified by anyone outside of my family. The operator walked into the hallway then pushed open the door into my parents' room. They were both in bed, sound asleep. The operator walked around their bed, examining them, as if to make sure they were deep in slumber. Seemingly satisfied, the operator backed out of their room, returned to the living room, passed through the kitchen, walked down the steps to the basement, then turned into my sister's room. Her bed was empty. This made sense, since her car wasn't in the driveway. The operator turned, walked back past the bottom of the steps, and headed towards my room. A large mirror sat on the wall outside my room with a nightlight above it which gave off just enough light for me to see that the reflection of the operator's build looked extremely familiar. Then the operator opened the door to my room. There I lay, fitfully sleeping in my bed, tossing back and forth, blankets askew. The operator picked up a pillow that had fallen beside my bed and dropped the camera.

I woke up screaming and had just enough time to catch a glimpse of myself standing over me, face contorted with a look of insane glee, before I felt the pillow violently shoved over my face, stifling my scream as it suffocated me. Everything went black.