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Ashley.
That was my name. I was named Ashley… something. I was born on June 4th, 1965. I was born male. Now I’m distinctly not anything. It wasn’t fair how it happened, but not everyone is lucky.
My girlfriend had dumped me. Her name was Gabby and she had this beautiful dark hair and her skin was tanned from her time in California before she moved to No Where. She was beautiful and was everything a guy like me could want. We almost never fought.
The only time we fought was when the whole relationship ended.
I was raised religious, and while I wasn’t particularly religious, I didn’t want to have sex before marriage. I was subconsciously still scared of damnation. I’d take that over whatever Hell I live in now. But Gabby wanted to have sex with me. I had gotten off work and driven to her house, and she said she wanted to relax me and kept fidgeting with my clothes. I told her to knock it off because I didn’t want to have sex, and she immediately dumped me and told me to get out. I left without a fight, I was never one to raise my voice.
I was, as anyone would be, upset. I drove stewing in self-pity and wanting to cry. Dancing Queen by ABBA was playing, but I didn’t feel like turning the radio off. The window was rolled down and the wind was whipping my hair around and into my eyes. I was smoking, so upset I didn’t know what to say.
I guess I wasn’t paying attention, because an animal (I think a raccoon?) darted across the road. I gasped and sharply turned the vehicle, crashing off the road. I was stunned and it hurt bad. I didn’t move, just sobbing and slumping down, my face pressed to the steering wheel. I was so tired, I couldn’t take it. I was going to be fine but it felt like the end of the world.
I didn’t move for what felt like forever. I didn’t move until I heard…something. Something that was dragging its claws on the roof of my car and breathing laboriously. Looking out of the window, my heart beating fast, I saw this smoky sort of amalgamation. An imitation of a human, or something humanoid.
I was pulled out of my fear when the cold smoke crept in through my window, claws touching my long, curly blonde hair. I was trembling, trying to back away, but it caught me by the throat. When I tried to scream, the smoke filled my throat.
Agony.
It was colder than anything I had ever felt, it felt like it was freezing and stripping layers of my throat away. When tears were forced out of my eyes, they froze on my cheeks. It was so cold it felt like my skin was peeling.
Then it stopped. It withdrew and I slumped back down, heaving until I puked up this black blood that trailed down my chin and stained my clothes. I passed out immediately afterward, too tired to care about the pool of blood in my lap. The little strength I had was drained. I heard some distorted voice tell me, “Just calm down, it doesn’t hurt.”
It was a demand, not an attempt at comfort. It was an order to calm down, it was demanding for me to agree that my pain didn’t exist. And I did, somewhere in the back of my mind I agreed and it somehow hurt less. I didn’t notice my lips turning blue and my finger tips freezing and turning black and oozing purple slime.
It went like that until I woke up, I guess? I was in my car, my blood dried on my chest and face. It was this weird dark color that I couldn’t pin down.
I stumbled out, wandering until I reached the road and walked home, with a lot of trouble. I told my mother what happened, and she was worried but didn’t pry when I said I was fine.
I got worse. I was throwing up blood and purple slime and something that looked like mold everyday, to the point where I spent all day on my knees in front of the toilet, hacking up everything in my body until chunks of flesh from my throat were tearing themselves out. It was gross and painful, I remember my little sister took a video of me writhing and vomiting on the ground because it felt like my body was trying to destroy itself and she needed to be sure that it was real. My body was really trying to eject whatever that thing had been, and it was failing.
My mother finally put her foot down and took me to the hospital. I fought her and screamed, scaring my sister and brother, they thought I was possessed. I suppose I was and still am.
My mother told the doctors what was wrong and I parroted what she said when they asked me questions. They admitted me, and I started to scream and scratch at the doctors wrestling me down, right in the lobby. They injected me with a sedative and tied me down to a bed so I wouldn’t attack. They had me sedated constantly until I stopped attacking. Then they let me draw sometimes, to distract me while they tried to figure out what was wrong with me.
At some point I wasn’t me anymore. It was that thing in the woods that I only knew as dire. It pushed my consciousness to the backseat and did everything for me, and it eventually attacked the staff. A sweet Mexican lady was blinded by me because this thing wanted out. People died because I scratched and bit them.
It ran me out to the woods where this started and I haven’t left. My body is trying to kill itself because this thing is ruining me, but it won’t let me die. It hurts, people are hurt because of what it made me do. My face is gone, there’s nothing left for me to even recognize. I’m more or less blind.
This is the Hell I tried to avoid, I should’ve just done it because this wouldn’t be happening to me if I did.