TWs: >!child abuse, mutilation!<
This weekend wasn’t going to go well, but it’s now way worse than I had thought. Sure I slept in, but it came at a grave cost: my partner was angry at me, very angry. The first thing that tipped me off were the screams coming from upstairs.
“ANDY, COME QUICKLY!”
I ran up there as fast as I could. I turned the corner into the master bedroom, staring at her on my bed. I must look like crap but it didn’t matter to her, all she saw was an incompetent fool.
“HE’S BARELY BREATHING, HE ISN’T BREATHING…”
I diverted my attention to the child next to her: my son, Gerald, and the terrified expression on his pale face. I hadn’t started my morning routine but, like normal, I walked around the bed to care for my son. Though I had been used to this nightmare by now, I was almost repulsed by what I saw.
Gerald’s head shot forward and the stitches on the back of his neck gave out, a single white bone sticking out of his neck. My sewing hadn’t gone as planned, and it couldn’t stop my son’s corpse from falling apart.
“HE’S DYING, ANDY, HE’S DYING. SAVE OUR BOY, SAVE OUR BOY!”
Like normal, I picked up the corpse of my son and left the bedroom. Walking down the stairs, I made a move to brush his hair aside but found there was nothing left. A single eye looked up at me, the other socket full of cotton and mulch. The eye was like my wife’s, but not the thing she had become. I wasn’t repulsed by the horror of it anymore, just content with what happened.
Once downstairs, I sat him gently in the tub and turned it on. I scrubbed the grime and dust off his body, then I sat him upright. The water may have been a mistake, I thought, as soon as I had noticed bits of slimy flesh falling off his face and into the water.
I looked at the face of what was once a kind boy. All that was left were mummified tendons, green and stretched from the bones behind. The single eye sat there, almost pleading. But I knew that I was too far gone to help. I never could have guessed what the accident would do to our family- and whatever thing had stepped in to fill my wife’s mind had only made things worse.
Gently, I began to sew a rag onto his face. Like normal, I thought again. All of this has become far too routine. A single tear rolled down my face as I tried to embrace my son. I let go as soon as pieces of his back stuck to my flesh and weaved together like fabrics.
I picked him up and walked back up the stairs, entering the bedroom. In my bed sat the pale, towering figure I began to call my partner. It sat nearly nude, a silky layer of flesh hanging off white bones. I sat my son next to it, and it spoke to me now.
“You’re okay, you’re okay, baby, you’re okay…”
It extended its skeletal hand to brush aside his hair, the last strands falling out with more skin. The compassion in its voice faded as it diverted its gaze to my own, telling me the same four words I always hear:
“You can leave now.”
Quietly, I walked downstairs. The house was dark and hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, a stale odor hanging over the dusty floors. That was supposed to be a part of my morning routine, but I never had the energy for it. Not after it arrived.
I made my way to the kitchen, the tiles still stained with the remains of Gerald. I grabbed the sharpest knife I could, and made my way to the basement. The only place in the house that’s been untouched since the accident.
I sat down in the corner, where I am now. The corpse upstairs will not last much longer: even the bugs have gone, and soon it will collapse. Gerald will finally be free from this horrid plane of existence. Then, that thing will ask me to bury the bones under where I sit now. Just like it did with my wife.
But I don’t want to do so. When it screams, I will not run upstairs like last time. I will sit here and wait for it to face me, tired and content with the fact that I will be next.