I don’t really know how to start this off. All of this began to happen after… an incident. The familiar presence I feel everywhere I go, the one that can be traced to this one night. A distorted familiarity that I was sure I could place if I could just get a little bit of clarity…
Anyways, tonight was nothing special. All seem to go normal at work, which was a rare blessing that I used to take for granted. I did the usual, fist bumped my coworkers on the line, stole some food for the way home (that the managers “conveniently” tend overlook), and made the walk for my car. It was dead of night- closing shift- so even though the lights came on in the car after I opened the door, my weariness still caused me to blindly shove the key next to the steering wheel. After some time I felt something give, and my key smoothly slid into the ignition. I turned it over and heard that familiar roar of mechanical life. I pushed my head back on the headrest, closing my eyes for a moment in exhaustion.
In that few seconds, I opened my eyes finding myself already moving and going over American 90 on a residential road, feeling effects of a booze-binged night washing over me. All of the sudden, the view of headlights loomed and screamed in front of me as I took the turn way too wide and felt the car starting to go off the road. I was now face to face with this growing and blinding light until-
The sound was deafening. Ears ringing was all I could hear. I watched in slow motion as the passenger side of my car caved in and then I flipped multiple times into the field. I briefly looked into the rearview and saw it… that distorted, bloodied, unrecognizable face with what seemed like metallic antlers coming from its head and dirt smudged all over. I forcefully shut my eyes closed.
Not real, just a dream, in the past, not real, just a dream…
All of the sudden I was back where I started. Waiting in the parking lot, engine running, about to leave. I looked again in the mirror and briefly saw it. Blood was pouring down and I was to blame.
I force my vision away from the face and waited for my heart to calm down. After a moment, I looked back. The only thing left in the mirror was my face and its slightly, freshly, irritated scars.
The drive home was, for the most part, uneventful. My heart was still beating and pumping from the adrenaline and waking nightmare I had experienced not that long ago. I could feel, and was acutely aware, of every part of my body. You know, the thing that happens after being scared shitless, thinking that every slight twinge of hair on your body is a spider crawling, ready to plunge its pincers into your sweet flesh, or that something is watching you in that dark corner of your room, always just out of view.
I roll my car to a stop and park it in my driveway, hearing the crunch of the gravel and asphalt under the tires, and turn the key out of the ignition. The engine dies down and the lights flick on instantly. And there it fucking was.
My face was reflected in the windshield, looking back at me distorted. Something was very wrong. The uncanny valley of my reflection hit me in full swing, until I noticed that it wasn’t just my reflection, but something hiding just behind it as well. Seemingly hunched, it moved back and up, revealing its sheer magnitude, and I looked upon it in horror.
It was the same distorted and mangled face as the rearview from earlier, and after it raised its head to its natural, monstrous height of what could easily be 20 feet, I got a real good look at what it was.
The thing had the body of a deer, but incredibly and titanically larger than any I had ever seen. It was absolutely towering over the car. The face replaced the head of the deer, with what looked like giant splinters all over the skin and mud smeared over it. Blood was constantly pouring out of every opening and its mouth was twisted open in constant agony. Constant suffering.
Eternal suffering.
From its bloodied and patchy hair on top of its head sprouted ridiculously large and abundant antlers, with what looked like flecks of metallic substance fused in it. Every now and then, they more looked lodged into the head rather than grown, as if something jammed it into its skull. They webbed all over the top, and seem to constantly weigh down on the neck of the beast, leaving the creature in a constant state of misery and looking down, its eyes glazed in the direction of Hell itself. The many tips of the antlers always seem to curve inwards and pierce the flesh of the creature, more often than not on the face, making deep, infected wounds.
But that wasn’t the worse part.
The butchered and torn corpses of a father and his toddler were impaled onto the antlers of the monster. Bodies I recognized all too well. They were arched upside down, with their heads rotated 180 degrees, bones jutting out of the neck, seemingly caused from a sudden blunt force trauma, snapping it instantly and whipping it around the other way. The wrong way. Their chest and torso were littered in puncture woods of metallic antlers, seemingly snaking up and constantly moving like smoke, causing constant suffering. They were covered in burn and skid wounds as well, blood pouring in heaps, making everything a sickening color of crimson red. The mouths were always contoured and screaming into the ears of the beast, causing the beast to scream in painful agony in response, seemingly begging for its torment to stop. The sound was deafening.
Just as I registered everything, the noise stopped. Slowly, the heads of all three turned slowly to face the car. To face me. With a guttural, drowned voice the creature painfully retched out three words.
“Rot… In… Hell…”
The fear completely overtook me, and without thinking I opened my car door to make a run for my house.
The moment the car door opened, I stumbled out upon an open field.
The open field from that night.
I found myself crawling out of the car, now flipped over on the side of the round. A warm wetness could be felt trickling from my face, and slowly surrounding me as the grass around my dragging body turned a shiny black. Blood. My face erupted in fiery pain and I felt what seemed like hundred of tiny shard of metal splintering every bit of my skin. I slowly brought my hands to the back and top of my head, and felt what I could only assume was bits and pieces of my steering wheel jutting out. I screamed in pure and total agony. But I also cried out in overwhelming guilt.
Holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck! I just fucking caused a serious accident, and potentially committed a felony if they decide to test me. Why wouldn’t they? I was on the wrong side of the road, not them, fuck fuck fuck-
Maybe I could blame it on a deer? Maybe I could spin it off as a deer running into the road. My father probably had enough money to make all of this amount to a slap on the wrist, and no one would every know I was drinking that night. Guilt continued to flood over me.
I continued to crawl away from the heaping, smoking mess of metal that was once my car. The metallic and smoky aura of the crash filled my nostrils and lungs. Hopefully someone would see me soon and call the ambulance.
LOOK.
I didn’t hear the voice. I felt it. All around me, as if it was from something divine.
Or worse.
I turned around slowly to look at the road. And then I remembered. I wasn’t the only one involved in the crash.
I found myself face to face with the ejected body of a middle aged man, battered with wounds and a neck that was bent too much the wrong way. Horror filled my entire body, pumping my blood full of icy and pure fear. I tried looking away but I couldn’t. His eyes were full of blame.
I finally was able to look down, and noticed the pool of blood surrounding me. Not just my blood, his as well. In the liquid reflection I could see something. The face. That face. That fucking distorted, familiar face, preventing me from truly recognizing it. Belonging to a monster. Metal antlers protruded from its head, as if they were jabbed inside. Some even looked like straight up debris where others looked natural. It looked at me with more blame than the man. It looked at me with pure hatred.
“ROT. IN. HELL.”
I suddenly felt like I woke from something, and heard the dinging of my car as it reminded me of my key, still in the ignition. The lights were on in the car, reflecting only my face in the windshield and the scars from the shrapnel in my head, and the car door was simply open at the side.
My blood was still pumping in my veins, even though what I saw was clearly not real. Only, it was. A mix of memory and supernatural fear. I did hit that dad and his daughter on the road that night. I was young, and I was drunk, and I stupidly got behind the wheel to get home.
I grew up in a small town, and Daddy was Mr. Big Shot, so after they found us sprawled out after the collision, they bought my lie about a deer jumping in the way. This was based on couple day-old hoof-prints (but this was the country, there were animal tracks fucking everywhere), and didn’t bother testing me for my clearly wasted behavior.
Those innocent people ended up paying for my transgressions. Not me. Them. And I escaped punishment.
But I never escaped my guilt.
And I knew all too well that I will most definitely never escape my judgement.
These, these visions- or what-ever-the-fuck you want to call them- were torture. I lived in constant fear, constant terror, never knowing when I would see that face again.
It happened all the time. I couldn’t sleep or else I would be reminded of it. I could barely function at work, especially when I could never know if I would look up and see the customers face, or if it would be replaced by that pierced, splintered, bloodied, muddied face of that familiar monster, as would often happen. One more incident and boss-man said I would be cut. Let go. Fired. Terminated. Punished.
Every time I closed my eyes, I could see those eyes looking back at me. Soulless, but not dead. They would stare back into me, back through me, and I could never escape it.
“Rot in hell.”
I looked up. My eyes met the familiar others in the mirror. I took a shake and deep breath, and exited out of the car. My legs wobbled so aggressively from before that I didn’t think they would be able to hold up my weight for a second. I caught my balance just before I would taste gravel, and I could feel the pain from the accident flare up. That was normal, anyone who has been in a collision could tell you that the pain never really goes away, it just dulls. It’s chronic. But what wasn’t normal for me was that I could almost feel them happening again, in real time, and it was only after I see the face.
I make my way to my house. My keys fumbled in their lock, making the janky noise as the door finally opened to my house and I stepped inside. I rarely felt alone anymore. It always felt like that thing was in there with me. And for a moment, it clicked that it would always be with me. It was my monster.
I do the standard routine for bed, always drawn out so that I could prolong the time it takes before I would have to sleep. Before the incident, sleep was my favorite part of the day, but now I spend my time dreading it. If I could suffer through three hours a night for a whole week, it would be progressive. But I can’t. I won’t.
It always looks at me when I sleep. I could see that familiarity beneath my eyelids and could always feel its huffs as it stood beside me, watching. Waiting. Judging.
Tonight was no different. When the exhaustion of the day finally overtook me, I saw those eyes. Before I could wake myself up, the eyes took me over and I slipped into one of my all-too-familiar dreams.
This time it wasn’t reliving the horror of that night, or being stalked by that deer monster, but something simpler.
I found myself face to face with that thing above me. I could see every splinter, only this time it wasn’t wood, or antlers, but metal. Debris. Car debris. Shiny debris, slick with the blood pouring from its face and its wounds. Everything was identical with that familiar face, only this time felt much, much more real. Much more human. Much less distorted. More more familiar.
The mud was replaced with bruises, which looked like blunt-force impact. The antlers were entirely replaced with those jutting pieces of curved debris. The eyes were the same, absent of the soul. Void.
Just before I could place where I knew it from, it opened its mouth in that insane, twisted agony. Blood poured from it, landing and covering my face, as I twisted and revolted. It began screaming.
“ROT. IN. HELL. ROT. IN. HELL. ROT IN HELL ROT IN HELL ROTINHELL ROTINHELL ROTINHELLROTINHEL-”
I screamed in response, in horror. The blood pouring from the face projected into my gaping mouth, and I instantly woke up.
I rushed to the bathroom, bile filling my throat, and did my business. When I was done, I wiped my lips and splashed my face with cool water from the sink.
I looked in the mirror, and then I saw it.
As is stood there, I looked at that face.
A face no longer distorted.
A face I had complete familiarity with.
A face I had grown to hate.
A face I had associated with a monster, ever since that fateful, awful night.
A face of torment. Of guilt. Of suffering. Of judgement.
It was then I knew.
I was already rotting in hell.
One of my hells was to be alive, letting my guilt rot my head, my soul.
The other hell was to suffer eternal misery after my inevitable death, to be physically and painfully contorted into the lie I conjured up that night.
To visit the mortal world, bringing judgment and torment upon the one monster I ever truly hated since that night.
Me.