“I know you don’t want to be here, but it won’t kill you to act like you’re having fun.”
The sentence was muffled beneath the sound of overused bass and snares and the empty conversations of the surrounding party-goers. “It means the world to me that you’re here though, believe me. I wouldn’t have had the balls to show up if you didn’t tag along.”
Jeremy, my not so innocent best friend since preschool, was much…much more into the “get drunk on Friday and sober on sunday” lifestyle than I ever could have been. He always found himself at some random person’s house on a Saturday night, inevitably being so inebriated that I would get the predestined jumble of incoherent texts and voicemails from him needing me to pick him up.
Mind you, we’re still in high school, so this entails me walking around town in the middle of the night, sometimes walking the streets as the sun begins to rise, looking for some house that had far too many cars parked in front of it to be considered safe. And yet I would consistently do it, because that’s what you do for your friends. You make sure their safe, and you save their asses from their holier than thou parents ever finding out that their son likes more than a sip of wine during Sunday mass.
This particular Saturday night, however, was a party out of town. Jeremy’s friend, Zach, told him about it, and since it was more than likely going to be a very long walk back, I ended up being conned into coming because, and I quote, I’m “way too responsible to let anything bad happen”. On top of that, and I’m still quoting here, “I really needed to find a woman, or a guy, or whatever in between that could get me and my pants off”. Jeremy’s a modern day Lord Byron with his words.
So here we are, in a basement that smells of sweat, spilled alcohol, tobacco and some other scents that I don’t think, and sure hope, aren’t human, being overstimulated by the sound of EDM turned up to twenty, people shouting over each other about who’s hot and who’s sleeping with who, while Jeremy is six drinks in and I’m holding a still full cup of rootbeer. Virgin rootbeer at that, and believe me, I see the pun in that.
“Jere, I know you’re having fun, but we need to get going soon,” I shouted over the copious sounds around us, “it’s nearly four A.M, and it’s going to take us at least an hour to walk home.”
Our eyes met, but I swear to you, Jeremy wasn’t there.
“I hear you man, and I agree…” his thought faded from his head as his eyes left my gaze and had locked on to something behind me, something that to him was so magnificently incredible that even my existence beside him became obsolete.
“Dude, don’t look now but I think you’re being checked out.” I went to look behind me, out of general curiosity before being greeted with a right hand across my cheek.
“I said DON’T look ,you nimrod. Maybe she’s looking at me. That would make sense. I mean like can’t even I mean just holy man holy ssssshhhhe’s coming over.”
Silence. Fear. My heart rate doubled in an instant. Was everything going in slow motion? Was the world spinning a little harder than it was a moment ago? Was gravity feeling a little more…gravity-y? What the hell does that even-
“Hi.”
Decadent caramel. The first warm day after the winter equinox. A baby’s first laugh. Getting a raise at work without asking for it. That first time you tried ice cream and remembered it. Being told that your clothing style is actually nice and you don’t need to lose ten or fifty pounds to look better. The embrace you needed on your worst day. Some gas you just couldn’t pass because too many people were around finally being released.
All of these things combined wouldn’t equate to the sound of her voice. She was shy, timid, and yet so pleasantly soft to my ears. How I heard her through the riotous party around us, I do not know, but the heavens opened and blessed me with this moment and I was so happy I couldn’t speak. I wanted to return the greeting but it was already too long of a pause. Or was it only a second? Was it a minute? How long was she here? Wait…what?
Girls don’t look at me. Guys don’t look at me.
I’m not something people look at.
She was gorgeous. Her long, flowing blonde hair partnered with her delicate facial features and her smile that made me jump over the moon. She was leaving me speechless.
Off ramp signs are more appealing than me, so how was she saying hello to me?
“Are you going to say hi back or did I make a fool of myself…?” Her voice was shaky, nervous over me not responding to her.
“No. I mean, not no I’m not going to say hi, I mean no I’m not not going to say hi, I wanted to say hi back, just so we’re clear. I mean I-”
She laughed. That laugh made my spine jolt with an energy I’ve never experienced. I wanted to run from one side of the planet to the other and carry that laughter with me so everyone could feel what I felt in that moment.
“Let’s start over.” She put out her hand. “My name’s Amber. And your name is?”
I continued to stare until I felt a sharp pain rip into my lung, the cause of it being Jeremy’s elbow shaking me from my stupor.
I shook her hand in return, “I’m Mark. Nice to um..meet you.”
My hand began to itch, slightly on the back, I didn’t want her to think I was some weirdo who believed in cooties so I didn’t bother with it immediately.
“Can we go somewhere a little quieter to chat? I’m not trying to make a quick move on you, you just seemed…interesting to me.”
“Yeah, yes, yes please.” I think I stood up before I even responded. Without even looking back to Jeremy, I followed Amber out of the basement and into the living room upstairs. No one else was up here, and the sound of the party was muffled enough that I could hear my breath finally.
I felt as if enough time had passed to finally scratch my hand, so I finally went to do so but was stopped by Amber grabbing the hand and looking at me, that bright smile melting me down yet again.
The itch wasn’t even that bad anyway. What itch?
“So Mark, what do you do for fun?” She asked as we walked to the living room sofa, sitting down side by side, hand in hand.
“Well, where do I begin?”
The itch was getting a little bit annoying by now, but I just buried it behind my focus on her. “I read a lot, I actually just finished reading Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.”
“That’s the books about the gunslinger and the man in black right?”
She didn’t. She knew the books?
“Yeah..that’s…that’s the one.”
The itch was now crawling to my wrist, beginning to feel like a thousand spiders burrowing into my skin. She was still more important.
“How about you? What do you do for fun?”
Focus. On. Amber.
“That’s an easy one. I find teenagers and destroy their lives with my devilish good looks and my…other skill.”
My entire hand was turning into white noise.
“Oh that’s nic…wait what?”
“I’m going to let you in on a little secret now, okay Mark?” Something about Amber’s entire posture…no, her entire being, changed. She seemed…taller. Her hair didn’t seem as nice, and there was something behind her smile. Something that wanted to hurt me.
I wanted to scratch my hand so bad but she just wouldn’t let me.
“You see, I’m not this young, beautiful girl that you thought I was. I don’t even know what you see when you’re looking at me, honestly. It’s like this.” Her eyes pierced mine, freezing me in place from fear and shock. Her eyes had gone completely black. Her skin was cracking open and…and breathing. This thick, green-white puss oozed from the cracks. “I’ve been alive for…I can’t even say at this point.” She laughed, and it sounded like an animal’s last dying breaths. “All I know is I was here before you humans found our Gods, and I’ll be here long after they all rot the fuck away on the pages you all created them on.”
The itch found its way to my elbow now, my entire arm an agonising plethora of senses.
“That itch you’re feeling? It’s like this. You will forever feel that. It was shrink and grow and moves around your body, and no matter what you do, it will exist. And when you die, you will still feel it. Your body will become motionless, you will rot and you will become a shell of existence, and yet you will feel that itch you just can’t satisfy. And you will suffer.”
Her body grew even taller now, she was taller than a basketball player at this point. Her skin was like coarse leather, and the puss from her cracked skin was flowing from every crevice on her. “Why me? Why are you doing this?”
That gross, mutilated laugh again.
“You asked me what I do for fun. Now you know.”
The skin cracked open, revealing a mass of puss and sinew and bones, breaking and reforming this…this evil fucking meatball of hate, it’s mouth an endless void of teeth and death. It breathed at me as it fell to the floor, staring at me with eyes I couldn’t see.
As I stared down into the void, I felt an impending fate for me. I felt everything she had said. I knew she…it took my sanity away from me as I began to itch. I scratched at my entire arm until the thing that was once Amber began to make this sound that I think was a laugh. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a spoon to scrape the skin. No effect. I grabbed a fork and drove the prongs into my flesh. It didn’t hurt, it didn’t change the feeling at all. If anything, it just made the itch intensify. I tore so deep into my arm I could feel the bone scrape against the metal but it did absolutely nothing to make the itch go away. I needed something more. Something sharper.
Just as I grabbed a knife, I heard the basement door open.
“Dude…what the fuck are you doing?” I turned to see Jeremy, who didn’t see what Amber had become because she…it was gone now. All Jeremy saw was me standing in the kitchen, a fork in my arm, which was torn to shreds like pulled pork, holding a knife in my only good hand.
This whole thing happened about three months ago.I’m now in a hospital getting professional help for my apparent mental break.
The doctors believe this whole thing was caused from “stress from trying to please my peers”, and my belief that a meaty, puss filled ball with teeth was from a paranoid break.
So when I tell them that I still hear that fucking laugh every night, they take it with a grain of salt.
And when I tell them that the itch is getting so bad that I even want to scratch them, they sedate me. And I feel it. The whole. Damn. Time.