Blink

I walked into the deserted house with my gun pointed directly in front of me. My hand was gripping it so tightly that my knuckles were whiter than the moon that was out tonight. It was the brightest one I have ever seen in my life, and it cast an amazing glow onto the pitch black ocean, which was so flat, it looked like a single sheet of glass.1

These were the kind of nights I had wished I had become a teacher. I had my nights when I loved this job, and my nights when I hated it. I worked a job that has no name. I wasn’t a ghost hunter, and I wasn’t a police officer, but I was somewhere in the middle. I was hired by the police department to track down the “mentally disturbed” as they called them. I liked to think of the people I hunted (that’s a better term than ‘track’ since what I do is in no way humane) were sadistic geniuses. If I hadn’t signed up for this career, I probably would have chosen theirs, but I must admit this pays better.2

I’m that guy that will find you in your own nightmare to stop you from killing an enemy. I’m that guy that will torture you in the same way you tortured others since you’re “too dangerous for maximum security.” My name is not important, since I can’t give you any information on who I am, in fear that one of you might get to me before I find you.3

I slowly pushed open the door into the living room, which had been splattered with burgundy coloured liquids, obviously blood. That turns from crimson to burgundy with time. I almost gagged when I entered that room, but I made sure that no sound emitted from my mouth, I couldn’t allow my location to be revealed. Each step I took you could hear the squishing sound that one would hear if you squeezed a sponge that had been soaked in water. I looked down at the carpet to see blood oozing from the floor. It was as if my shoe was the knife digging into a helpless man’s chest.4

The wind howled, yet as I looked out the window, there was no movement in the trees. Another gust came, but this time, it was more than just a sound, it was wind inside the house. One of the paintings of Jesus Christ being scourged, blood gushing from what seemed every pore in His body, fell with a bang too loud for what the weight of the painting appeared to be. I spun around facing the direction of the wind, then it stopped.5

I took a deep breath and exhaled silently, not wanting to make a single sound. I turned around again and for a split second I saw a severed head floating in the air. I blinked quickly, and the head was gone. I had lost my breath, but that was it. After working this for fifteen years, you get used to seeing things like that. It’s all tricks of the murderers, just optical illusions that they’ve set up to send the officers running with their tails between their legs. 6

I continued to walk through the living room and I turned to my right into the dining room. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was walking and my foot got stuck on a fairly heavy object. When I looked down I saw a leg which was disconnected from the body in such a way that the knee was bent the wrong way and the thigh looked as if someone had just ripped it off, not even bothered to use any knives. 7

I knelt beside the leg and examined it. It was defiantly a female one. It was cleanly shaved and on the thinner side. I got back to my feet and as I stood I hit my head on something. I quickly backed into the living room and pointed my pistol at the ceiling, yet there was nothing there. Confused I felt my head and pulled my hand away quickly after knocking the object off my head. When it fell to the floor I saw a hand, most likely male, from the amount of hair on it. I ran my fingers through my black hair, trying to get the maggots which had been eating the hand, and the blood at least a quarter of the way out. I wiped my hands on my jeans, cleaned my gun, and then stuck it out in front of me, proceeding forward. 8

I examined the dining table closely, and I cringed as I saw what looked like a human brain with a fork wedged in it. Then I felt something touch the small of my back just softly enough that it sent shivers up my spine, and just forcefully enough that I spun around in terror. I felt moist air being blow into my right ear, and I turned my eyes to see what was there and it was the head which I had seen earlier. I backed away, blinked, and opened my eyes to see the china shelf sitting there, nothing in front of it, or any sign that a severed head had once been resting there. 9

I reached up and wiped the sweat off my brow with the back of my hand and continued forward. My heart rate had yet to increase, but I was sure when I had felt the air in my ear, it has skipped a beat. Footsteps above started in the loudest fashion, as if an army of a billion men were storming into battle. The entire house started to shake, and the china fell off the shelf, then all was silent. 10

“Dave!” a voice screamed, but I couldn’t figure out from which direction it had come.11

I quickly walked into the kitchen, and I felt someone standing directly behind me. I could feel, not body heat, but rather, body coldness behind me, and the essence of rotting flesh. I spun quickly, being careful not to fire a single shot to find nothing there. I felt a foot go into the back of my knee and I fell to the floor, into a pool of blood and vomit. I looked at my shirt, realizing that it was my own vomit. 12

I got to my feet shaking, and wondering why I had gotten so sick. I wiped my mouth off on my long sleeved shirt, and continued into the kitchen. I almost screamed, emphasis on almost, when I saw the girl on the table. She was missing a leg, and her head was turned to face me, if she had any eyes they would have been wide open, and her mouth looked as if she had died in the middle of a high-pitched evil scream. Her face was contorted in rage, and her face was actually pink, rather than pale. 13

I approached her body slowly, my gun directly in front of me, in case she woke up, and looked at her from about an arms length away. I blinked again, and her eyes popped into their sockets. They were blood shot, and dilated, looking as if she had suffocated when she died.14

“Dave,” a deep, scratchy voice muttered, “enjoying my work, are you?”15

I whirled around trying to find the source of the voice. I suddenly felt a white hot pain spread through my entire left side and looked down as I saw a knife being slowly pulled out of my ribs. Once it was free of my skin, I turned to see the little girl, dragging herself with her left arm, with a knife in her right hand, grinning, those blood shot eyes boring into me. I made eye contact with her and I screamed at the top of my lungs. It felt as if someone had gouged my eyes out, I started crying and clawing at them to make the pain stop, and as suddenly as it had come, the pain stopped.16

I opened my eyes, to see not only the little girl, but a deformed man behind her. The second I saw him, I knew what was going on. I knew that ghosts were real from that moment on. This was a man that I had killed by orders for torturing little children, mostly girls.17

I felt a warm voice reverberating through my skull. It brought peace to me, but then the voice turned into angry and demonic. I felt someone slide their fingers across the back of my neck, and I spun in fear looking for the source of the touch.18

“I see you are afraid, I didn’t think you got afraid. I guess I am the only one that was able to scare you, eh?” the man said, yet this was in no way a man’s voice. It was low, but it was filled with pain and anguish that was not human in any form.19

I felt two pairs of ice cold hands seized my arms. At first they were freezing, then they turned into white hot. I looked won at the source of the pain to see two girls holding onto me. I could see blisters forming where their hands were. Pain rushed through my entire body as I made eye contact with a girl with nothing from the waist down. I screamed at the top of my lungs, and wished that I could just for one second raise my hands to my head to stop what felt like the maggots eating my face.20

Then the voices started. They came into my head pounding harder each and every second.21

“You’re worse than us.”22

“Please stop hurting me!”23

“I didn’t do it!”24

“Don’t listen to the pigs!”25

“I’ll see you in hell!”26

“You think you’re causing me pain?”27

The voices of every human that I had ever killed rushed into my head, and every single one of them was screaming at the top of their lungs. 28

“Make them shut up!!” I screamed at the man, finally being able to open my eyes.29

“Why should I? You sent me to hell, that’s what I hear every single day,” the man said in his voice that cannot be explained.30

I felt the strength from my legs leave as I fell to the floor and the two girls dragged me to the kitchen table. I felt my arms being snapped into handcuffs, and my feet experienced the same thing. I felt my shirt and jeans being ripped off aggressively. The shirt was cut down the center by the girl with one leg. She had done it so violently that the blade cut into my stomach.31

I heard the man snapping on rubber gloves over the sound of the voices screaming at me how evil I was. I saw him approach me, a nasty grin on his face. He pulled a scalpel from the drawer next to me and slowly slid down my chest. It wasn’t a very deep cut, but it still caused me pain to the point that I started to shake on the table. I felt my warm blood oozing over my own skin, onto the table and soaking my boxers. The man walked away for a few moments, then came back with a pack of cigarettes in his hand. He had filtered Lucky Strikes and he opened the pack quickly, stuffing the plastic wrap in the gash near my waist line. He removed each cigarette from the pack, removing about half of the cigarette. He placed a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, then reached for my chest with his left hand. He stuck his thumb and his index finger in my torso then spread the skin apart slowly. He then stuck the cigarette in between my two pieces of skin. He repeated this nineteen times. On the twentieth cigarette, he forced open my mouth and shoved it down. He closed my jaw as I felt the searing pain of the cigarette burning the back of my throat. 32

He pulled out another scalpel, this one slightly smaller, and began to cut away all my skin. He was careful to avoid veins, but he tore right through all my muscle, making me wish I could cry out. Yet the pain from the cigarette burn on my throat made it almost impossible to even breathe, let alone speak. 33

My heart was pounding as I felt each piece of perfectly tanned skin being cast carelessly to the floor. The voices in my head were getting louder now, as the cigarettes began to reach the end of their line. The man whispered something to the little girl with nothing from the waist down, and she left, returning only seconds later with a razor. The man walked over to my legs, and began to shave them roughly, making sure he cut me deeply. He laughed out every time I felt the blade roughly invade my legs, and being torn out with such quickness and intensity that pieces of skin were taken with it.34

I then felt all the cigarettes burning into my chest as the man laughed. He took a large knife and walked to my left side where the girl had stabbed me. He inserted the blade perfectly into her incision then turned it brutally to make a hole about the size of a hockey puck in my side. He grabbed what looked like a garden hose and forced it into me. I then felt millions of creatures flowing into me. I knew instantly they were the maggots. I cried out in horror as they began to tear through me, from the inside out.35

~---36

“I guess now we need to find a replacement for Dave,” the sergeant said after taking a sip of his coffee.37

“Who is Dave?” the chief responded as he left his office.38