I live by myself in a small studio apartment with no girlfriend, no kids and very few friends. I like my privacy and, being a natural introvert, I have no problem being alone much of the time.
So when a noise woke me in the middle of the night, I instantly knew something was wrong. I heard ragged, choked breathing coming from right next to me. Looking over slowly, my eyes adjusting to the dark room, I saw a woman laying on my bed, only a few inches away. She appeared to be looking right at me- and yet, she had no eyes. I saw only the empty sockets, like two black holes spinning in the void.
“What in the fu-” I began to say, when she grabbed me by the face. Her fingers felt as cold as ice, the skin loose and rotted above the bone, like slimy, soggy worms gripping my cheeks.
She wrenched my mouth open, her black, fetid tongue rolling out of her mouth like a snake. It kept coming, twisting, inches of it and then feet, covered in sores and smelling of rotting meat. Her empty black sockets continued to stare at me as it probed my lips with its tip. Then, without warning, the tongue shot out and went into my mouth.
It tasted horrible, like raw meat left out on a hot day. I tried to pull away, whimpering, kicking and scratching, but attacking the woman felt like fighting a statue. Even when my fingernails raked her face and left deep gouges that dripped dark blood, she didn’t respond.
The tongue explored my cheeks and teeth, caressingly, lovingly, before going down my throat. I gagged, choking, pushing against her with all my strength before finally pulling away from her iron grip.
I fell off the bed, the tongue sliding out of my mouth with a popping sound. The stench and the taste stayed with me. I gagged, feeling small pieces of the decaying flesh still stuck inside my mouth. I occasionally felt the writhing of a small maggot under my tongue or in the back of my mouth. Still whimpering and terrified, I began to crawl away over the cold wooden floor, spitting maggots and pieces of rotten skin as I went. I heard the boards creaking behind me as the figure rose on the bed.
I could see she was naked, with much of the skin on her stomach shredded, leaving the organs exposed. In the streetlight coming in through the window, I caught a glimpse of her intestines, as tightly coiled as a den of snakes. The torn tissue around it shone an angry red, seeming to glisten under the thick layer of flies that buzzed around the open wound.
“Help me!” I cried, hoping one of my neighbors would hear and call the police. “God, please! Someone help me!” Just as I made it to the bedroom door, I felt cold hands wrapping around my ankle, starting to pull me back.
With a rush of adrenaline, I kicked with my bare foot, feeling it connect with her nose. It made a dry, crunching sound as it shattered, almost like twigs cracking under a car’s tires. I felt the grip around my ankle loosen for a moment, and I quickly pulled away.
The bottom of my foot hurt like hell from the impact. I felt like I had kicked a brick wall. But the terror that filled me when I looked up at her eyeless face got me moving. I jumped up, crashing into the wall before seeing the glimmer of the door handle under the dim light of the streetlamps. I felt the fingertips of the woman on my shoulder as she reached out to grab me. I ducked and ran through the threshold, pulling the door closed behind me.
I sprinted into the kitchen, the darkness growing deeper as I moved away from the windows of the apartment. I tried finding the lights, but my hand kept feeling smooth wall. Cursing, I gave up on the lights, moving to the drawers as the bedroom door slammed open.
I ripped open one drawer after another, hearing soft footsteps approaching from behind. I patted the utensils inside with my palm, feeling spoons, forks, and finally, knives. In the process of trying to grab one, I slit my thumb wide open on the blade. A sharp, fiery feeling ran up my arm as the warm, sticky fluid covered my hand.
“God dammit!” I hissed, feeling as the blood made everything under my hand slick. I carefully reached back in, touching the smooth wood of the knife handle. At that moment, I heard breathing behind me, the lungs of the abomination gurgling with congestion. I heard soft crackling as she exhaled. Her breath smelled like a stream of sulfur and roadkill. I grabbed the knife without another moment of hesitation, the injury to my thumb temporarily forgotten as I spun to face my attacker.
I saw some slight movement in front of me. It looked like no more than a dark human silhouette in a black room. Using a slicing motion, I began to swing the blade from side to side in front of me, moving forwards slowly. After a moment, I felt it connect with something.
The woman’s fetid breath ran over me as she shrieked. The knife felt stuck. I pulled against it, using the weight of my body and yanking back on the handle. With a wet, sucking sound, the blade came loose.
I ran past the woman towards the front door of the apartment, hoping that someone would have heard by now and called the police. I feverishly ran my hands up and down over the dark wall until I found the door handle. With a triumphant yell, I pulled it open, letting the hallway lights stream in.
The hallway outside looked totally empty. I began to open my mouth to shout for help when the cold hands of the corpse pulled me back in. Without hesitation, I turned, seeing her standing only a foot behind me. I raised the knife high for a killing blow.
The corpse seemed to grin at me, the gums blackened and teeth broken and jagged. The dark, eyeless sockets always seemed to look straight at me.
As I brought the knife down, the woman jerked forwards, her face twisting in an animalistic scowl as she bit deeply into my neck. I screamed, feeling the skin ripping as blood trickled down my naked chest. Reflexively, I slammed the knife into the side of her face.
With a crunching sound, it went through her left ear, getting stuck for a moment in her skull. I felt her bite loosen as I yanked the knife out, pushing her away with my left hand. I raised the knife again and brought it down into her chest at an angle. The blood in her mouth, my blood, streamed down her chin as she stumbled and fell on top of me, knocking me to the hallway floor.
She continued to bite at the air, gnashing her teeth as her body landed on top of me. She tried to bite at my eyes and nose, but I twisted the knife with both hands as it lay in her chest, pushing with all my strength. She slowly lifted off of me, soaking me in her blood. With a grunt, I threw her to the side, pulling the knife out as I did so. I got to my feet, running without slippers and dressed in only a pair of boxers.
I slammed my fist on my neighbor’s doors as I went, yelling for help. I don’t know how long I was doing this, but it seemed only minutes later when two police officers stood there with their guns drawn at the end of the hallway. I looked down at myself, realizing I was not only mostly naked, but covered in blood and still holding the soiled butcher’s knife.
“Get on the ground! Let me see those hands!” one screamed. I was in shock for a second, not realizing what was going on.
“Get on the fucking ground now, or we shoot!” the other one yelled. Slowly, I dropped the knife. It clattered on the floor with a metallic ring. I raised my hands, lowering myself to the ground as they closed in around me, shouting orders and yanking my hands behind my back.
***
I waited in a cell at the police station for hours in my boxers, freezing, hugging myself trying to stay warm. They refused to let me wash the blood off myself, saying it was evidence. Eventually they brought me to a room where they collected it and took pictures of me, taking my boxers as evidence. Finally, they took me to a shower and gave me five minutes to wash the thick, fetid blood off my skin. Afterwards, they gave me a bright orange jumpsuit and sandals to wear.
Later that night, two police officers brought me into a very cramped room and took my cuffs off. A very fat police officer in a button-down shirt and dress pants sat there at a table, giving me a small smile and a nod.
“Mr. Eli Merriweather,” he said slowly, as if tasting the name. “Finally we meet.” I only nodded. I knew where this little song-and-dance was going. “I’m Detective Lawson. I’m from Homicide.”
I looked him over. He had small, watery eyes hidden under rolls of fat, eyes that gleamed with intelligence. His nose looked too small for his face, and he constantly licked his rubbery lips as he looked over the file in front of him.
He asked me some bureaucratic questions, such as my birthday, occupation, living situation and other typical police business. He asked me some questions about my account of tonight’s events. I repeated everything just as it happened, and he sighed.
“Put yourself in my shoes for a moment,” he said. “A guy is found covered in blood in the middle of the night with a knife in his hand. The blood gets tested and, as it turns out, it’s human. And it’s clearly not his. It isn’t yours, right? You didn’t do some kind of weird ‘Gone Girl’ shit?” I shook my head.
“I don’t know what that means,” I said.
“Not a movie buff, huh?” he said. I shook my head again. “What I mean is, this isn’t some kind of stupid prank. You didn’t go to a medical waste area and steal spoiled blood for some kind of YouTube video or something, right? Because if you did, now is the time to tell us. If we waste all kinds of police resources on this case and it turns out to be something stupid, the judge is not going to look at you kindly.”
“Of course not!” I said.
“OK. Then, back to what I was saying. Imagine if you were a detective. You just found a man mostly naked, covered in blood, holding a bloody butcher’s knife in the middle of the night. He’s running around the halls of his apartment building, screaming and scaring the shit out of everyone. He says he was attacked in his apartment, and there’s blood everywhere but no body to be found. What would you do?”
“Look, I had every right to defend myself in the situation…” I began before he cut me off.
“Moreover, the guy says that the blood came from a dead woman who magically appeared in his bed and attacked him. He says he doesn’t know where the body went or how she disappeared. I mean, imagine you’re on a jury, and the defendant comes up and tells you that story. Would you believe it?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say. I told you everything already,” I said.
“Look, Eli, right now, only you know what happened,” Detective Lawson said. “We’re just trying to get your side of the story. This is your only chance to tell us what happened. Once I leave this room…”
“I’ve told you guys what happened over and over,” I said, gritting my teeth. He leaned close to me.
“We are going to do a DNA test on that blood covering your body,” he said. “You do realize that, right? We’re going to find the victim eventually. We always do. So why play this game? Just get it off your chest. We’re all human, after all. Sometimes good people do bad things. Sometimes they get scared, or they get jealous, and they make mistakes. It doesn’t mean they’re necessarily a bad person, but maybe, just maybe, something went wrong and they lost control.”
“You have this all wrong,” I said. “How could I get rid of a body when there’s blood everywhere? That doesn’t even make sense. When would I have had time to get rid of the body? I was screaming for help!” He completely ignored my objections.
“Was it a hitchhiker? A prostitute? Maybe you picked her up and she had a weapon and you got scared. Maybe it was self-defense, I don’t know. Perhaps she attacked you first. But you clearly got rid of the body before your little act in the halls. Bodies don’t just disappear, Eli. Until you tell us the real circumstances of the events, I might never know the full story. But if you’re going to just sit there and give me this bullshit story about a poltergeist in your bed…”
“First of all, that’s not what a poltergeist is. Moreover, there’s nothing else I can tell you,” I said slowly, sighing. “If you don’t believe me, then what can I do? You do what you need to, and I’ll do what I need to.”
***
A doctor came into the cell after a while. I sat there with my hands cuffed to a table. They clinked together in the silent hall as I shifted.
“Good evening, Mr. Merriweather,” he said, smiling faintly. “That’s a very cheerful name you have, by the way. Merriweather. Hah. I like it. My name is Dr. Watts.” I frowned.
“Why am I here?” I asked. “I was attacked in my apartment. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Ah, yes, I heard the story you told,” he said, looking down at the file he held in his hands and flipping to a random page. He looked it over, chuckling. “Quite a tale, I must admit. Is this your first experience with seeing… ah… dead people in your apartment?”
“Of course it is,” I said angrily. “What kind of question is that?” He marked something on a clipboard.
“And do you have any thoughts of harming yourself or others at this moment?” he asked.
“No! I would never-”
“Do you have a history of suicide attempts or violence?”
“No! What kind of bullshit is…”
“Have you been on a drug or alcohol frenzy of some kind? Are you one of those people who likes to run around with a head full of acid and a pair of tea shades?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “And no one says ‘tea shades’ anymore.” He patted my hand condensingly.
“Good, good,” he said, rising from his chair. “Anyways, I am legally obligated to inform you that, at this point, you are not free to leave. You are currently being detained on a 72-hour psychiatric hold, the length of which may be increased by a judge if deemed necessary for your own safety or that of others. Do you have any questions for me at this time?”
“Yes!” I said. “What happened to the rotting woman in my bed?!”
***
From the jail, they brought me to the hospital. A doctor stitched up my thumb in the ER, and then I was wheeled, handcuffed and scared, to an empty hospital room. A police officer sat outside the door, reading a newspaper and sipping some coffee. I sighed, looking out the window.
I saw the eyeless woman there, hovering ten stories above the ground, her arms extended like those of Christ on the cross. She tilted her head at me, grinning, running her bloody fingers over the outside of the window.
I began yelling for help. The police officer looked in, frowning before radioing something I couldn’t hear. A minute later, a large, muscular RN ran in with a needle in his hand.
“What is it, Mr. Merriweather? What’s all the commotion?” he asked. I pointed to the window, but when I looked over, she had gone.
Only a bloody streak marring the clear glass showed she had ever been there at all.
The RN shook his head as I protested.
“Look, there’s blood on the glass!” I said, but he wouldn’t listen. Kneeling down beside me, he began looking for a vein.
“This is just something to help you calm down,” he said. “Don’t worry. You’re going to feel a lot better soon, Mr. Merriweather.”
“I’m not fucking crazy!” I shrieked. He nodded sympathetically.
“I never said you were. We don’t use the term ‘crazy’ here. You’re just having a temporary medical episode. You’re going to feel a lot better very soon, trust me.
“This here is a combination of lorazepam and haloperidol,” he said, patting my hand. “You might know them better as Ativan and Haldol. They should help with your symptoms.” A moment later, I felt the needle piercing my skin. My eyelids drooped as a sense of tiredness and lethargy overtook me. Before I knew it, I had fallen asleep.
***
I woke up with a start, sitting up in my bed. My head pounded in time with my heartbeat. I felt confused. I looked around, wondering where I was.
I found myself in a small cell with white walls and a small bed. A metal desk stood welded to the floor at the far end of the cell.
Memories started to flood back in- waking up in my bed, the attack, the interrogation, and finally, the woman flying outside the window.
I got up slowly, my vision turning white for a moment. I thought I might pass out. What kind of drugs had they given me? It took every ounce of willpower I had to not turn around and go back to sleep.
But my mouth felt as dry as a desert, and I needed water. I walked towards the door.
“Hello?” I called. “Can I please get some water? The cottonmouth is…” I leaned against the thick metal door, watching in amazement as it opened soundlessly.
I looked up and down the hallway, seeing no one. Outside my room, a chair was set up, a steaming cup of coffee laid on the ground next to it and a newspaper draped over the seat. But I saw no sign of the police officer.
I looked towards the nurse’s desk, seeing it empty as well. With a pounding heart, I went from room to room, looking in the unbreakable glass windows. Though I saw books flopped open on the beds, lamps on and TVs playing, I didn’t see a single patient.
I moved towards the windows, looking outside for people walking and traffic passing by. But the roads looked empty, and the buildings all stood dark and silent. The sky overhead looked black and empty, without a star or a cloud marring the blank, flat abyss stretching above the city.
“This is bizarre,” I said, my voice sounding far too loud in the eerily quiet hospital. Far below, I heard machinery turn on, a dull thudding sound that reverberated through the pipes and shafts, causing clunking and sputtering noises to echo throughout the building.
Still dressed in my sandals and bright-orange prison jumpsuit, I made my way to the nurse’s station. I saw a mini-fridge behind the desk stocked with juices, water and soda. Giving thanks, I grabbed a handful of drinks and began chugging them.
The cloudiness in my head seemed to dissipate as I drank my second bottle of apple juice. I felt much more alert, and the spots in my vision had gone. Perhaps the drugs the RN had given me were just leaving my system.
I looked at the computers, noticing that the Internet and telephones still worked. I thought about trying to call for help, but then I remembered the last time the police had shown up. I put the phone back on the receiver, sighing.
I made my way through the hospital with a soda in hand, continuously sipping fluids to try to get my energy back up. I found surgery rooms with soiled gloves and sheets next to the operating table, but no other sign of any patients or doctors. A couple soiled scalpels gleamed on the tray, the coating of blood drying and cracking on the carbon steel.
As I made my way through the corridors, I came across a familiar name on a door: “Dr. Franklin Watts, MD, Psychiatrist”. The room was filled with hardcover books and filing cabinets. A large desk stood in the middle. I saw a file open on the table.
I looked at the name on it, and even upside-down, I could read it easily enough: “Merriweather, Eli”. I grabbed the sheet on top and had started reading it when I heard boards creaking behind me in the halls.
“Hello?” I called. “Is someone there?” There was no response, but now I could hear someone breathing. It sounded gurgling and congested, their lungs full of fluid. It sent a chill down my spine as I remembered where I had heard that breathing before: in my apartment earlier tonight.
“Oh shit,” I whispered, feeling very hot all of a sudden. I started sweating as I stared at the door, the only way in or out of the office. I looked at his desk, seeing a heavy metal trophy with a marble base. I lunged for it, spinning around as the door crashed open.
In a blur, the naked, gore-covered woman came into the room, her movements inhuman and jerky. Her eyeless face grinned as she jumped at me, showing off her jagged teeth. I swung the statue at her face. It connected hard with the side of her temple, a dull thud echoing around the room from the impact, but she didn’t go down. Shaking her head, she opened her mouth wide. I watched her face come towards me, as if she wanted to kiss me.
But instead, she grabbed me and held my head in place as her mouth snapped forward. I felt a cold stinging on the left side of my head, then an agonizing fire as blood poured from the place where my ear had been. Pulling away, I saw her grinning face holding the severed body part between her bloody teeth. She spit it on the floor, a cloud of flies rising from her rotting flesh with her sudden movements.
“Piece… by… piece…” she hissed in a choked voice as I sank to the floor, my hands clasped over my spurting ear, my vision growing dark.
***
I woke up alone, feeling drugged and weak. The injection the RN had given me apparently hadn’t left my system as much as I thought. Dragging myself up with the help of a desk corner, I looked out, scanning the hallway for movement.
As I pulled the paper I had taken from the file out of my pocket, I ran my hand over my mutilated left ear. I felt small pieces of cartilage still sticking out towards the bottom. Near the top, I felt only smooth bone and slick blood.
I unfolded the paper from the Dr. Watts’ desk, reading his notes on my file. They were sparse and to the point. The top of the paper was covered in my blood, and I couldn’t make out the words, so I started reading near the middle:
“…may exhibit a legitimate fugue state, or signs of malingering. The latter can only be ruled out by in-depth psychiatric examination.
“Police believe Mr. Merriweather was involved in the disappearance of Mary LeBell, age 26. They have been unable to collect sufficient evidence to bring charges, however.
“I discussed the potential violent behavior of Mr. Merriweather with the judge in this case. He stated that current legal evidence is insufficient to bring murder charges as regards to the events of the last few hours. Because both the Mary LeBell case and the current case have insufficient evidence, we plan to detain Mr. Merriweather under a psychiatric hold…” At the bottom of the page, I saw a grainy picture of a beautiful, young woman. It was the same one who had appeared in my bed, the eyeless corpse. At that moment, memories started flooding back.
***
I remember the bonfire well. My friend, Luke, had invited me. I brought a couple cases of beer. By midnight, I had polished off an entire case by myself. Mary had been in the corner, hanging out with a couple of her friends and drinking.
Then someone had pulled out some coke and began cutting up lines with a razor blade. They passed it around, and I sniffed a couple. After that, I felt wide awake and totally sober. I cracked open another beer, and then my memory gets foggy. I remember drinking a lot more, sniffing some more coke, and then getting into my car. I remember driving down a dark road, swerving and blaring the radio, and then someone was walking on the side of the road, and I tried to swerve.
The next thing I remember, I’m standing outside, headlights blazing behind me. A woman’s body is under my car. The skin on her stomach was gone, and I could see her intestines and stomach through the gaping wound.
“Oh God, oh shit, God dammit, you killed her,” I said to myself, taking handfuls of my hair and gripping them hard. The pain brought me back to reality. She didn’t speak. Her eyes simply stared, her pupils wide and black in death.
Well, I thought, still panicking, still coked-up and drunk, no reason to ruin two lives over this. She’s already dead, and I’m alive. Why should I go to prison forever?
I got back into the car and backed it up slowly, hearing a thud and a crunch as the tire backed off of her body. Stumbling out of the driver’s seat, I began hyperventilating and panicking, trying to decide what to do. I walked in circles around the car a few times, stepping over the silent, broken body of the woman as I went.
Weeping silently, though I knew not whether for myself or for her, I decided on the decision that I knew was inevitable. I grabbed her behind the shoulders and dragged the body into the thick woods beyond, the smell of copper strong in the air.
The next day, I came back with a shovel, and found the animals had eaten her eyes and some of the softer parts near her stomach. The black sockets seemed to stare up at me accusingly as I dug the grave.
***
It came back to me, a flood of memories. I remember the paranoia after. I remember not sleeping, checking outside the window every few minutes, expecting to see police lights in my driveway. But they never came. Over time, the paranoia started to fade, and I wondered whether I had gotten away with it.
But maybe we never truly get away with anything in life. Perhaps if I went back there, to that lonely road next to the nature reserve, I’d dig into the black earth and find the grave empty.
Yet I know in my heart that I’ll never get a chance to see that. I’m not leaving this building, after all. She already told me the plan, and I fear it.
She’ll get her revenge piece by piece. I’ll eventually die from it, screaming myself hoarse in this empty hospital- a place where my worst fears became realized.