Conner had never been cool. Actually, Conner had never even been considered ‘normal’ by regular standards. He was the loner, wannabe goth kid in school that even the goth kids wouldn’t hang out with. He lived a solitary existence the entire time I knew him. He didn’t go to parties; he didn’t have friends. Even in college he rarely left his dorm room.
I felt bad for the guy.
I’d known him since 6th grade and even back then it was social suicide to hangout with him, but I would from time to time. It wasn’t solely out of pity, I cared for him like I did for anyone I’d known for most of my life, but he was best taken in small doses.
Of course, once my ‘cool’ friends heard I was hanging out with him I had to tell them it was nothing more than an act of self-preservation – “Yeah, well, we’ll see who gets spared once Conner shoots up the school.” It got a round of laughs, but it still felt pretty shitty coming out.
As we grew older, we grew apart like most childhood friendships do. Until one day out of the blue he texted me. He said he had to show me something. Something he’s been working towards for years and finally accomplished.
Now, the last I heard of Conner, he was failing out of his Computer Science classes and probably wouldn’t graduate college and that had been two years ago. I had no idea what he could possibly be working towards, but I figured what the hell – I hadn’t seen him in a while. If anything, I could spare a Saturday night to see what had become of my childhood friend.
He asked me to meet him at his parent’s old lakehouse about an hour outside of where we grew up. Weird but whatever.
I got there around 8pm and the sun was just starting to set. The lakehouse was dark, but both his and his parents’ cars were parked in the driveway. Again, weird but whatever.
I went up the front steps and rapped on the door. A minute or so went by and I knocked again.
Nothing.
I pulled out my phone and called Conner. He answered on the first ring.
“Dude, I’m here knocking on the door, where are you?” The line clicked dead.
I started walking back to my car thinking I would probably never Conner again when I heard the door to the lakehouse creak open. I turned and saw Conner walk through the door then very quickly close the door behind him.
“Hey man, long time no see,” I approached him and went in for the hug. He didn’t reciprocate and stood there with his arms limp at his sides. Silent. I told you he was weird. As if sitting in that dark house wasn’t weird enough, now I get this welcome.
I pulled out of the hug and held him at arm’s length. He looked like shit. Smelled like it too. Hair was greasy and unwashed. His clothes were dirty and smelled musty. His hands were caked in a brown substance that caked under his fingernails. He was the palest person I had ever seen, as if he hadn’t seen the sun in years.
“You look tired, man,” I said, “You okay?”
“I want to show you something,” was all I got back.
Conner never had the gift of gab, but even for him this was a bit terse.
“Ok man, I brought a six-pack. We can hangout, drink a few and catch up”
“I need to show you first.”
“Okay, is it inside?” I asked, hiking my thumb towards the house.
Conner took a quick step towards me, “Don’t go in there.”
“Okay, chill buddy,” I raised my palms in submission, “Your old folks asleep already?”
When I asked him this, he changed a bit. Almost like he reverted back to a child for half an instant.
When he was a kid, he had this weird little tick he used to do all the time where he would make a fist really tight around his thumbs and squeeze. I noticed he was doing that. I hadn’t seen him do that in a decade at least.
“Yeah,” he mumbled, “They’re asleep”
Now I had gotten curious, “Well Conner, before you show me this…thing. I was going to ask you if I could use your bathroom”
Conner pointed at the trees, “Go there”
“Yeah bud, I would but it’s a number 2,” I lied, “Look if your place isn’t clean that’s fine with me you should see my house!”
Conner stared at me with a blank expression. More like he was staring through me than at me.
“In and out really quick. Just a quick dump,” I put my hands together like I was begging, “Please Condor, I’m prairie dogging it!”
“Ok” He said, “In and out,” then he walked off behind the lakehouse out of view.
The instant I cracked open the door to the house my senses were assaulted by a rancid odor that seemed to linger in my throat. I gagged and shut the door. My eyes watered. I took a deep breath, pulled my shirt over my nose and mouth and opened the door again.
Another blast of the heavy odor washed over me, and I ducked as a horde of flies at clung to the other side of the door flew out passed me. With another deep breath to steel my nerves, I stepped inside, wincing as the odor enveloped me.
The dark interior was painted in long shadows as the last of the day’s sunlight began to disappear across the lake. Dust motes floated in the air as my footsteps echoed through the empty hall.
The flies were everywhere. Buzzing in my ears and trying to drink the liquid from my watering eyes.
I reached the kitchen. An unrecognizable hunk of meat sat on the cutting board, so many flies crawled on it that it almost seemed to be alive itself.
I couldn’t be in that house any longer, not only because it was fucking disgusting but something about it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I was compelled to get the hell out of there.
I turned to head back to the door when I noticed something on the floor. At first, I thought it was another fly, but it didn’t move when my boot landed not an inch from it. I bent down and tapped it with my finger, which came away wet. It was blood.
I burst out from the cabin and greedily gasped the fresh air.
Conner was standing in front of me holding a Chihuahua.
“Where’d you get a dog,” I asked him
“The pet store,” He replied.
Why should I have expected a different answer. Even if Conner wasn’t trying to be evasive, he never really picked up on social cues.
“Follow me,” Conner said before turning and heading around the house and towards the lake.
The sun had just dipped below the horizon and I had to use my phone’s flashlight to light the path in front me.
He led me to the family’s firepit where we had once roasted marshmallows as kids.
He lit a fire in the firepit for light then handed me the Chihuahua saying, “Hold this”
This. I used to wonder why kids thought he would be a school shooter. I don’t anymore.
He pulled a bag out from behind a log. I guess he had stashed it here before I arrived. From the bag, he pulled out a can of black spray paint and sprayed a large, solid black triangle about 5 feet long on the stone floor.
I watched him work in silence as he pulled various knickknacks and doohickeys from the bag and placed them in random spots within the triangle. Its not like asking questions would get me far with him.
Eventually he stopped, took a deep breath and started mumbling under his breath. I leaned in to get a better idea of what he was saying, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t English. After a few moments of this he turned to me, and grabbed the dog out of my hands before saying, “When it shows up, don’t look at it. Keep your eyes on the ground and stay very still.”
Before I could even ask what he meant I heard a sick pop! and watched him wring the poor dog in his hands like a wet rag killing it nearly instantly.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” I yelled taking a step back, for the first time seeing this maniac like everyone else did.
Conner didn’t even seem to hear me, he had made an incision in the small animal’s neck and was sprinkling its blood within the giant black triangle he had drawn.
“Answer me, you fuck!” I shouted at him as he tossed the animals carcass into the triangle.
Conner looked back and said, “Don’t move. Don’t talk and keep your eyes on the ground”
“Un-fucking-believable,” I turned to leave when I heard a loud crack, like lightning. I turned back around to see the stone masonry the black triangle was spray painted on was cracking and falling away into a seemingly bottomless pit.
Conner stood motionless staring at the widening chasm before him. This might be, now that I think of it, the only time I’d ever seen him smile. I was paralyzed. My brain was working so hard to process what I was seeing it couldn’t be bothered to move my legs.
A red glow started to emanate from the pit as it widened. The cracking stopped as the rip in the universe that had just formed in front of us had reached the boundary of the drawn triangle. Conner and I stood in silence for a beat gazing into the pit when we heard a snort.
Then breathing.
Then a massive hand reached out of the pit and grabbed ahold of the ground in front of us. Something was crawling out.
Conner’s words immediately raced through my head. Don’t move. Don’t talk. Keep your eyes on the ground.
Another arm rose from the pit and landed with a thud at our feet. Thick, solid muscles in the arms flexed in waves as the beast pulled itself from the abyss. The grunting and snorting grew louder and the tops of two horns rose into our view.
My eyes shot to my feet. Don’t move don’t talk keep your eyes on the ground don’t move don’t talk keep your eyes on the ground.
The thing was completely out of the chasm it crawled from and was standing among us. I couldn’t see much from my peripheries, but I could tell it was massive compared to Conner and I and it smelled like burnt matches.
The beast approached us, its hooved feet shot echoes across the water. It was so close now I could feel the heat radiating off of its body. My legs trembled; I was afraid they might give out at any second.
Don’t move don’t talk keep your eyes on the ground.
It snorted and its hot sulfurous breath blasted the top of my head.
I flinched. Big mistake.
The beast grabbed me by the forearm and pulled me into the air to meet it at eye level. Massive orange eyes bulged out at me from goat-like face. Where the demon held me, my skin burned. It took all the power I could muster not to scream, cry, curse. I retreated into myself.
Don’t move don’t talk keep your eyes on the ground.
I could feel its square pupils inspecting me, it blasted me rhythmically with his hot stinking breath.
Then it dropped me. I lay on the stonework of the firepit for what felt like an eternity listening to the monster walk into the forests beyond the house. I would have laid there for the rest of the night until I was sure it was safe, but Conner broke first.
“Wasn’t that awesome?” he asked, almost giddy, “I can’t believe you got to touch- whoa! Look at your arm!”
I looked at my arm and saw on the inside of my forearm where the palm of the creature had grabbed me – there was a solid black triangle like the one Conner had drawn on the ground. Only the one on my arm was about 4-inches long.
I stood up, inspecting my arm, trying to rub the triangle off, “Why did you bring me here, Conner?” I demanded.
“I wanted to show you”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my friend.”
I would have rather died in a school shooting, if I’m being honest.
“Where are your parents, Conner?”
Conner again balled his hands up into fists around his thumbs like he used to do when he was younger. I had a good idea where his parents were.
I ran to my car and drove away.
I got home, blocked Conner’s number and did everything I could get that damn black triangle off of me. I scrubbed with soap and water until my skin was raw. Hand soap, dish soap, vinegar. It wouldn’t come off. It looked almost like a tattoo, except it smelled like burnt matchsticks.
Exhausted, I gave up. I crawled in bed and tried to sleep, but that damn triangle itched like crazy. The more I scratched it the more it seemed to itch. Eventually sleep did come to me, but it didn’t stay long.
I woke up to the buzzing. Something small and light bounced off my face in the darkness. I flicked on the lamp to see my room was infested with dozens of flies. Sickened, I ran out of my room and sat on my couch and stared at the black triangle on my forearm.
It itched like hell. I tried rubbing lotion on it, but it still itched. I decided I would jedi mind-trick this bullshit. I would stare at it and will my body to ignore the itch. Mind over matter.
I stared at that awful mark on my arm and the longer I stared the more it seemed to itch. The itch grew more and more intense but I didn’t scratch. Mind over matter. Still the triangle seemed to be getting darker, it looked as if the triangle itself was another pit. A chasm to that other place. I got the sense that if I poked the triangle with my finger, it might just pass through and get singed in the fires of hell on the other side.
I positioned my finger over the triangle ready to test my theory, but I was afraid. What if I was right? What would that mean? Fuck it.
Just as I moved in to test my hypothesis a jet of large, black flies streamed out of the triangle on my arm. I didn’t need to test it after all. Conclusion – I was fucked.
I battled across my house as the insects escaped from the hold in my arm, buzzing in my ears by biting just about every exposed inch of skin I had – tiny needle pricks that drew just enough blood for them to drink.
I swatted and flailed my way into the bathroom where I found gauze and medical tape. I wrapped my arm to stop the insect assault then I fled my house, to go sit in my fly-free car.
What the fuck was I going to do?
Don’t move don’t talk keep your eyes on the ground.
I sat in the car for hours thinking. I could feel the vibrations of the flies battering the inside of the medical gauze. How could I live like this? Do I go to a doctor? A priest? How much time did I have before something bigger tries to crawl through?
I felt a pressure on arm, before I could look down, I saw a fly buzz up out of my lap. I instantly turned my arm over saw a long, bony, red finger poking out of the medical gauze, tearing bits and pieces of it away. I grabbed the finger and wrenched it. I heard a muffled snap and then a roar from the hole in my arm.
I exploded out of my car, grabbed my toolbox and headed back inside. I didn’t think I had much time before something big came through, especially if I had pissed something off.
I carried the toolbox upstairs and threw it into the bathroom, then I went into my bedroom and grabbed a belt.
I tightened the belt just above the elbow on my afflicted arm and pulled it tight. I opened the toolbox and pulled out a pocketknife and used that to poke a new hole in the belt so I could keep the tourniquet tight.
I glanced back at the triangle on my forearm. Most of the gauze had been ripped away and an orange eye looked out at me from the once black void. It was now or never.
I pulled the hacksaw out of my toolbox.
I hesitated.
The entire night had passed in a dream-like quality. I had floated from one unreality to the next never truly considering the weight of the predicament I found myself in. Now for the first time the gravity of this impossible choice lay heavy upon me. Was there any other way? Did I even have time to find another way before I completely altered my life in a split-second decision?
Each passing moment seemed to stretch into an eternity, and my mind raced through the potential outcomes. I weighed the odds of survival against the certainty of death if I did nothing. Images of my loved ones flashed before my eyes, and the thought of leaving them behind added another layer of torment.
I glanced back down at my arm to see an entire hand trying to brute force its way through the doorway in my flesh. I felt a profound sense of disconnect from my own body. It was as if I was observing the situation from a distance, the pain and reality too overwhelming to fully comprehend.
My hands trembled, and my mind teetered on the brink of utter collapse. Amidst the turmoil, a surge of determination coursed through my veins. I had to act, to face the unimaginable and make a decision that would alter the course of my life forever.
I brought the saw down and made the first cut. My mind exploded with a blinding pain that radiated throughout my body, but I pressed on. My brain, in shock at being betrayed by my own body started to shut down. My breathing became shallow, my arms weak. Each pass of the saw and each heartbeat brought more blood cascading down into my bathtub.
I grew weaker each second. I had to use my body weight to press down on the saw itself as I slowly made my way through the bone. My mind began to fracture.
Donttalkdontmovekeepyoureyesonthegrounddontalkdontmovekeepyoureyesontheground.
A tentacle reached out from my infected arm and tried to pull the saw from my grasp. Too weak to fight it off, I lunged at it and caught it with my teeth, tearing off a chunk before it retreated back into my arm and I got back to my task at hand.
Donttalkdontmovekeepyoureyesonthegroundkeepyoureyesonthegrounddontmovedontmove
With a stomach-turning crack the bone snapped and I just had a few inches of meat left to get through. I puked into the tub.
Dontdontmovekeepyourgrounddontmovedontalkdonttalkkeepyoureyesontheground
My severed arm fell into the bathtub with a thud.
Dizzy and exhausted to the point of collapse, I picked up the arm and staggered downstairs with it. The pain was outstanding. Each step radiated a new lightning bolt of agony throughout my body and every second my vision was narrowing, darkness closing in from all sides.
Dontkeepyourmovetalkeyesdontonthegroundkeepyoureyesdontmove
Ants were now pouring out of the portal on the severed arm, a last-ditch effort from the other side to stop me. They chewed my hand raw, and worked their way up my arm biting as they went.
But I had already reached my destination - The kitchen. I slammed the arm into the garbage disposal and flicked the switch. The kitchen was filled with a harsh, grinding noise as the whirring metal blades of the disposal attempted to break up the hand.
I fell unconscious there.
It was light outside when I woke up to a loud buzzing sound. The garbage disposal was still on, most of the arm had sunken into its maw and was pulverized, but the hand remained intact as the thumb had preventing it being fully sucked into the opening. It twirled around in circles like I was in some sort of fucked up haunted house.
My wound looked bad, so I pulled off my shirt and wrapped it around my stump. I needed to call an ambulance.
I remembered I had left my phone in the bathroom and wearily headed back upstairs to the scene of the crime.
Upon entering the bathroom, I stopped dead in my tracks. It wasn’t the bathtub filled with blood and puked that stopped me, or the mangled hacksaw on the floor.
It was my reflection.
A mirror image of myself looked back at me from the mirror. Swollen and bruised. The left arm was severed above the elbow in such a crude way that exposed bone and ragged strips of flesh hung off the edges. The most shocking part of my reflection was the large, black rectangle about a foot long, that now resided in the middle of my chest.
A large orange eyeball with square pupils peeked through from the other side.
I know what I have to do. I hope it will work.
Goodbye, everyone.