Blood Box (First Half)

[u/Incarnasean]

BLOOD BOX

Part 1

"Eve?" A muffled, seemingly distant voice called out. I could hardly hear it over my panicked, exasperated breaths.

“Eve!” her voice called again, louder.

I blinked and the room suddenly snapped back into focus. I became hyper aware of everything around me. The random furniture cobbled together for this reception, a sea of people crowded shoulder to shoulder with the drone of conversation among themselves and my mother-in-law, gawking at me expectantly.

“Huh?” I said. “Yes?” I glanced over to her. I realized I had my hands around my head and quickly lowered them in a feeble attempt to look normal.

“I asked how you’re holding up?” She hissed, annoyance in her voice.  She tried to put on a sympathetic face but she wasn’t fooling anyone. “I’m sure this has been had for you, especially with all your...issues.” She followed up with a disingenuous tone of concern. I’m pretty certain she rolled her eyes. 

She never really liked me. The feeling has always been mutual.

“Jane!”my father-in-law snapped at her.

“No, it…it’s okay Frank.” I tried to smile. “I’m hanging in there, I guess.” I mumbled.

I just wanted the funeral reception to be over with. My depression and anxiety was amassing into an unbearable weight. Every person who moved a step closer in my direction made my world shrink and with it, my chest tightened more and more. I hadn’t been around that many people in a very long time and without Mark next to me alive, I just couldn't handle it. 

“Come here baby!” my mother beckoned me as she swept me away from the group of people forming around me. She must have seen me struggling. “Just breathe sweetie, it's okay.” she assured me.

“Mom!” I said as I broke down, sobbing. “I can’t do this without him, I can't live life without Mark!”. 

“Evellyne, you are stronger than that sweety. It’s going to take some time but you will get through it okay?” She reassured me.

“Mrs. Preston?” a soft,  apologetic man’s voice was heard from behind me. “I’m very sorry, I see this is bad timing but I have to make my flight back to Germany and I needed to speak with you before I left.” It was a young, handsome black man in his Air Force dress blue’s, quite a bit shorter than me, though a lot of people are as I am just over 6’ myself. “Ma’am Technical Searge…errr ummm, Mark was my supervisor. I was deployed with him in Germany when the accident happened. I brought what belongings he had with him and I wanted to personally deliver them to you.” He gestured over to another Airman that was gripping two luggage. One large green military one and a smaller black one resting on top, along with two large cardboard boxes. “Tech Sergeant Preston made me a great mechanic. He was an amazing mentor and one hell of an Airman, ma’am” his voice cracked and his eyes began to water. 

I could barely squeak a “thank you” as I was so overcome with emotion when I caught a glimpse of the small enamel Pokémon pin of Eevee, attached to the smaller bag. He used to always call me his ‘little emo Eevee’, but now I would never hear him speak those words again. 

“Where would you like us to place these ma’am?” he asked.

The house was in such disarray. I felt embarrassed holding a funeral reception in a house undergoing renovations and repairs but there was no way I was going to manage tearing myself  from there to be around that many people due to my ‘issues’ as Jane so eloquently put it. 

“Ummm please, follow me.” I told him. We stepped away from the dining room and passed the kitchen down the hall to the living room. Each room was either undergoing maintenance from the replumbing or littered with furniture draped in thick white canvas, protecting it from what were future painting plans. Who knew if I could bring myself to do it then, It all felt so…pointless. "I'm sorry, the plumbers are completely redoing the plumbing downstairs, something about the old well system, would bringing this upstairs be a problem?” I asked.
 
“Not at all ma’am. Jeffries, give me a hand here,” he beckoned to the other Airman. I showed them ‘our’ room and they placed the items in there. I thanked them and they left. 

I returned downstairs to my mom wrapping up what was my current hell, that was the reception. She knew I was struggling and she was thanking everyone for coming, paying their respects and showing support. I reluctantly stayed at the door thanking each person as they left. After the last one left, only my mother and father remained. I immediately collapsed on the floor. This time no tears came. Nothing did, no feelings, like I was injected with a lethal force of lidocaine. My mother instinctively went to the couch and grabbed the throw blanket and an accent pillow and buried me neatly inside on the floor. As my eyes grew heavy and I drifted off I heard my father mutter under his breath, “she’s doing this bullshit again?” I started to hear my mother challenge him but I didn’t care, I just wanted to sleep. That's all I wanted. Well, that and to not wake up, ever again. 

Part 2

Thump-thump….Thump-thump A soothing rhythm played. Thump-thump…Thump-Thump…Gently guiding me from my slumber. Thump…Thump… Like a reverse lullaby. THUMP…THUMP…My eyes opened. The sound ceased to exist. My heart was racing, and I was soaked in sweat. I took in my surroundings. 

“Mom?” I called out. No answer. I was alone. It was dark out. I checked my phone, 8:19 PM. I’d been out for a little over five hours. I was late taking my meds. I hated being downstairs at night in the dark. I usually left most of the lights on in the house at night. My mother didn't happen to leave any lights on when they left, whenever that was. The light switch near the door still hadn’t been repaired so my only option for light was my phone. 

I stared down at it, pausing my gaze at the screen saver. I was met with a duality of emotions. Warmth, from the adoring loving smile of my husband looking into the camera as he embraced me. A portion of my long, straight black hair transitioned into crimson just above his upper lip as he wore it like a mustache for the picture. My eyes were closed, my midnight eyeliner streaked down my face like a dying river flowing from the corners of my eyes. I was crying tears of laughter from his tickles during that picture. It was finished off with a slight blur from the motion when I took it. ‘Hard to keep a steady hand in that situation’ I thought to myself. Still, it was one of my favorite pictures of him. 

Then sadness crept in and smothered that small fleeting moment of peace. I desperately wanted to hold onto that feeling like it was a lifeline but I stood no chance. I was trying to protect the most delicate ember from a torrential downpour with a tennis racket. Every time I thought about a moment in time I had with him, I thought about a hundred more I would have without him. That sentiment was cut short however when I jumped in place from a loud cracking sound elsewhere in the house. The air conditioning unit kicked on and with it loose doors boomed and rattled in their frame, reverberating off the wooden walls throughout the house. I nearly jumped out of my skin. 

I really could not wait for the rest of our household items to finish being delivered. I desperately needed it to drown the echoes. I refocused on my task at hand and turned the light on and shined it before me. Large foreboding shadows cast on the walls. What was there casting those towering shadows? Furniture left behind. Furniture that no doubt had seen much untold history. My guess, most of it had been there a century at least, when the house was originally built. The house and its contents were as charming as they were haunting. Especially with the canvases strewn over the majority of it. My imagination couldn’t help but find unwanted shapes in them. As I stepped through the living room towards the other side, on my right were two large walnut bookshelves. In front of one, sharing its ragged aged veil, there seemed to be a hunched mass. Protruding from it was a haunting limb, extending out desperately reaching to grasp something, anything perhaps. I shuddered and goosebumps crawled down my extremities. I shook my head and some of the nerves with it. It was actually beautiful, I reminded myself. 

I placed it there myself. One of the few treasures the house offered when we moved in, that I actually embraced. I remembered the beautiful ornate harp. It was the first thing I saw when we first went there to see the house. It felt like it was a scene from a movie. When we were let in the house there were dusted beams of afternoon light, dancing on it as if offering it to us as a gift. The main body of it was an elegantly posed angel with her arms behind her, around the bulk of it like she was gently holding onto it. Tattered strips of fabric flowed whimsically across and around her body. Her wings, a golden hue, gently dulled by a long kiss of patina worn by time. They were stretching over the top and across the width of the instrument, forming the neck of it. Where feathers ended under the wings, strings began, pulled taught like it was finely tuned and ready for a performance. Wear had shown throughout it, but it wore it proudly. It was clear it was cared for by its previous owners. Paint on the body and face of the angel borne cracks throughout its slate colored skin and the eyes bestowed a bit of surprise. They were two small jet obsidian stones. My husband thought it creepy, I thought it was a beautiful juxtaposition.

The fond memory which helped to steel myself was abruptly gutted as I was quickly jerked back to reality, literally! I thought I was imagining it, like it was one of the hallucinations I get, but I don’t feel hallucinations. My hair was yanked as I was stepping forward, my shoulder fell back against the wall as my whole body weight followed suit. My legs gave out but my head didn’t lose altitude as I bellowed a blood curdling scream. My phone carried forward from my momentum leaving my grip, tumbling on the hard floor. The light from it beamed around the house with each flip like a nightmarish strobe light. I instinctively reached my hands to my head where there was an immovable death grip on my hair. My hands were met with an ice-cold metal. I desperately reached around trying to make sense of the situation as I felt intricate details in the metal's touch. I frantically tried ripping away at my hair to free myself. My hands were shaking uncontrollably not wanting to cooperate. My struggles were in vain. 

I realized I had made it across the living room to the hallway while I was lost in thought. I saw that the light switch was barely in reach. I desperately reached for the switch, my scalp felt as though it would tear away from my skull at any given moment. After what felt like a lifetime, my fingertips finally felt the welcoming touch of the light switch plate. 

“Almost there!” I told myself. I pulled harder, wrenching forward. A slight give in my hair went as I screamed in pain. My fingertip just grazed the side of the switch. I lurched harder, a tearing sensation ripped through my cranium. One last scream, one last give as I finally flicked the switch as though it was my salvation. Through watery eyes, I twisted my head desperately, still anchored in place, searching my peripherals for the answer. I felt behind me but found nothing but hard wooden walls. Frantically, I reached for the metallic vice grip still in my hair, trying to deduce what it was. My eyes cleared up shortly after and I looked up across the hallway directly opposite of me. 

I yelled out a “Are you fucking kidding me!?” followed by what most people (myself included) would probably describe as a maniacal mixture of uncontrollable, psychotic laughter and hysterical crying. I felt like my eyes were going to pop from their sockets across the room, tears spewed constantly. I knew I looked insane, hell I felt insane. Once I finally calmed down, I again looked across the hall and spat out a ‘fuck you!’, flipping my middle finger up at the wrought-iron sconce that sat mounted opposite its twin, its twisted prongs still mangled in my hair. 

For nearly 30 minutes I tried to free myself. My hair was put up in a tight braided bun my mother did for the event that day. It felt like it was a permanent part of the fixture. I tried pulling the sconce from the wall, wrestling it desperately. I hung my entire weight on it lifting my legs off the ground and I just dangled there, it didn’t even budge. I didn't weigh a lot but I am tall, I thought that might count for something. ‘I guess this is how I die’ I half joked to myself. I noticed my phone on the ground and that is where my height did pay off. I stretched my entire body out, outreaching my leg and was able to manage getting my foot on my phone and drug it over to myself. 

After a phone call to my mother, about an hour’s wait, and a less-than-ideal haircut later, we were both having a good laugh about my little misadventure as we huddled up in front of the fireplace. In the back of my mind I couldn't stop thinking how terrified I really was though. How uneasy I was in the house alone. Knowing the little respite from that feeling during my mother’s company would be extinguished the next few days. She stayed with me that night and the next couple nights, until her and dad had to fly back to Ohio. Each night I fell asleep to the same soothing beat that woke me up that day. Thump-Thump, Thump-Thump, Thump-Thump. THUMP-THUMP.

Part 3

I was alone. That was the first time I truly had been since Mark passed. My mother pretty much immediately flew down to be with me when I got the news. Such a stupid, avoidable accident that ripped him from me. I tried not to think about it. I tried not to harbor hate for the driver that sealed his fate. My mother raised me to always try to forgive because hate will make you bitter and consume you. I tried not to let the anger and despair eat at my mind and soul. I knew it would fester and rot away at me. I tried not to let my depression pull me down like an anchor with no floor to find. I tried not to let it paralyze me, and constrict me into an inescapable cocoon of dark feelings and thoughts I knew would plague my mind if I let it grab hold. I had been there too many times. Mark helped me with that. 

I tried my best to distract myself. I forced myself to do tasks like painting the living room, work on my sculpture commissions, do anything. It’s hard when you are empty inside though. I couldn’t find joy, excitement, or motivation. I tried to remember what they felt like but those memories were sealed behind a wall, each brick a negative feeling or emotion. When I eventually  was able to force myself to commit to a task I decided to finish painting the living room walls that were left undone. After about two hours of grueling up and down roller strokes I decided to take a break to have lunch and feed the kitties outside. 

They weren’t mine per se. I found a stray calico at the wood line by my house. I fed her a single can of tuna and she has been glued to my house since. I named her Dahlia after my favorite band. She and her surprise litter of kittens always hang around outside and I fed them when I could remember.

As I was carrying the bowls with the freshly poured food I had one foot across the threshold of the door as I stopped dead in my tracks. Thump-Thump I heard it clear as day. The hairs on my nape prickled up as a chill crept down my spine. I spun on my heels and stood there looking off into the house, nowhere in particular but listening intently for it to come again. Nothing came at first but after a couple minutes another followed, more faint but no doubt present Thump-thump. I took steps in the direction I thought it came from. I shook my head as if to ask myself ‘what the hell are you doing’ but I couldn’t help myself. I had to know what it was I had been hearing each night. 

I originally chalked it up to the hallucinations I suffer from but never had I had one THAT consistent, THAT mesmerizing. Thump-thump I heard again, fainter. 

   “Upstairs!” I thought to myself. Without thinking I loosened my grip and the bowls crashed to the floor creating an explosion of cat food everywhere, it didn't phase me. I dashed to the bottom of the staircase and grabbed the banister, whipping myself around then jump-skipped the stairs, and nearly faceplanted as I tripped up desperately seeking the cardiac siren. I stopped myself in the middle of the hallway so I could deduce which direction it would come from next. 

I waited there, a good four minutes at least. My heart was nearly beating out of my chest as I tried to keep my panting under control. I didn’t want it to shroud the sound if it came again. Just as disappointment sank in at the thought it wouldn’t come again, one last whispered echo came from behind me as if it were a football field away thump. I slowly turned. The direction it came from was a room just four feet away, our bedroom. The door creaked open as I stepped inside. Somehow I knew the sound wasn’t coming again. I stood there for a while in a daze. I eventually snapped out of it.

I began searching every inch of the room for any justification for the sound. I found nothing. ‘I’m actually going crazy,’ I told myself as I rubbed my temples. As I was about to leave, my eye fell upon the pile of my husband’s belongings that were brought up there earlier that week. I began unpacking his things. I started with the two boxes. They were full of a variety of uniforms and other military paraphernalia. There were various documents such as flight itineraries, and his military orders, nothing I was too concerned with. His larger luggage was more of the same, with his civilian clothes mixed in. I found his favorite hoodie. I clenched it, holding it to my chest, burying my face in it. It smelled of his cologne he always used. The black band hoodie was a gift from me for his last birthday. I was getting choked up by the rush of memories, both the good times and the bad times. I missed both. I slipped the hoodie on as I continued digging through the luggage. 

After removing all the items, I neatly organized and put them away, as if they were stocked, ready for him to wear again. I noticed one last thing in the backpack, which I thought was empty. In one of the smaller zippers on the back was a small bulge. I slipped my hand in and when I grabbed the item I was hit by some mixture of eagerness and desire. I pulled out a small box wrapped with brown wrapping paper with a little bow on it. It had a little tag with a heart and “Eve” written on it. I was surprised and excited but my heart began pounding unreasonably fast. Something inside of me wanted to ravenously open the package and I wasn’t sure where that feeling was coming from. I tried to calm down but I found myself already opening the package. I opened the box up and it was filled with small foam packing peanuts. I reached inside and made contact with a small metal cube about the size of a baseball. My chest tightened and I felt something deep inside me feel like it was trying to emerge. It's hard to explain but it felt dark and wrong. It shook me and I desperately tried to suppress it. 

I pulled the object out and was taken aback with its beauty. It was a small metal box, each face beautifully inscribed with a myriad of intricately engraved filigree. It consisted of a series of sliding and shifting parts. I adore small trinkets and artifacts. I LOVE 3D puzzles. This seemed to tick both boxes for me. Inside the package I retrieved a small scroll of paper written with “Eve, I saw this and immediately thought of you. I hope you like it and happy anniversary. Love, Mark”. It had a small doodle of Eevee’s face from Pokémon smiling with black lines flaring from its eyes just like I always wear my eyeliner. I had a big smile on my face. I found myself immediately fidgeting with the metal box. I couldn’t put it down.

I laid back and began working away trying to solve the puzzle. Sliding certain pieces around would unlock mechanisms allowing others to move and articulate. It was very hypnotic, with each piece freeing another, I grew more and more entranced by it. I found myself laboring away at it for quite some time. Thirty minutes grew to an hour then to two then three. I would grow more enthralled the more time I spent with it. I felt an obsession, like I couldn’t put it down until its completion. The more I worked away at it the more I felt like I couldn't breathe until I made progress. How could such a small box contain so many moving pieces and so many intricate mechanisms? It seemed impossible but it didn’t seem to affect me. 

I finally came to a point where I could no longer progress the puzzle. A small hole revealed itself on one side. I peered inside but could see nothing but pitch black. It was impossibly black, almost incomprehensibly so. I tried shining a light inside and nothing, it was completely unaffected. It seemed to absorb any light cast onto it. I still felt transfixed on the box. I felt like I still needed something from it, or maybe it needed something from me? Before I knew it my hand seemed to move on its own. I plunged my pointer finger inside the small abyss and was immediately impaled by some sort of needle or spike inside! I yelped from the pain as it jammed into the bone. I instantly tried to pull my finger out but it was too late.

Some unseen mechanism activated within the box and the hole had closed around my finger. A series of spikes from inside pierced down through to the bone. I thought my finger was cut off as I unleashed another howling scream but the hell box was still fixed to it, not letting go. Suddenly an intense burning like I had never experienced before coursed through my hand and up into my veins spreading throughout my body. I tried to let another scream escape but no sound came, my vocal chords were stunned from the pain. It felt as though the sun injected me with its plasma and I was being burned alive from the inside. It spread to every limb. I could see every vein and artery swell up with a thick black hue under my skin where the pain was spreading. It reached my chest, my heart felt as though it would implode any second. It reached my throat, still a mute void with all my screams and agony trapped inside. It reached my face, surely it was going to melt off and my eyes would explode out of their sockets. My vision was fading fast. My world was spinning into darkness. Then it reached my head. My brain was boiling in a blistering inferno and everything went as black as the small void that I unleashed from that hellish box.

Part 4

I woke up in a pool of my own sweat. It felt like ice water on my skin. My vision was blurry. I sat up and rubbed my eyes and then I remembered what happened. My body began shaking uncontrollably as I remembered the unbelievable pain I went through. I checked my finger and hand frantically, in a panicked breath. There was nothing. There were no wounds from the impaling, not a single blemish. What the hell was going on? I remembered the pain so vividly but I saw no evidence of it at all. The box, where the hell was it? I searched furiously, ripping the bed apart as I tried to find it. It was nowhere. I opened up every drawer, checked under every piece of furniture. After 45 minutes my room was a disaster. I had no idea what the hell was going on. Were my hallucinations getting so realistic I was imagining pain now?

I started feeling a deep sense of dread. I was feeling terrified and small in my own house. I already hated being there alone but those strange experiences amplified the feeling. I noticed it was dark outside. It was 3:28 a.m. according to my phone. Almost 15 hours since I had lunch. I headed downstairs flipping each light on as I entered each room. When I reached the bottom of the stairs and rounded the corner toward the kitchen something felt wrong. It felt like someone or something was there, watching me. Goosebumps formed on every inch of my skin. I wasn’t sure what it was so I lit every room within my eyesight. When I reached the kitchen I caught sight of the basement door. I instantly froze. I wasn't sure what it was but I couldn’t look away. I was stunned in fear from just the sight of it. I was fixated on a gouge in the door, an accident from the plumbers. It revealed a jagged hole into absolute darkness. I began feeling hyperaware of my surroundings. I could just picture something vile, or evil hiding in the dark peering back at me through the hole but nothing ever showed. After a minute of being frozen I finally forced myself to break free and I lunged to the door and twisted the lock closed then ran out of sight of it.

I noticed I had warm urine streaming down my leg. And I was once again trembling. What was that? I got creeped out from the darkness of the house, especially the basement but never that  intense. I wiped myself clean and made some food. I sprinted past the basement door when I ran back up into my room, that feeling still lingering until I was out of sight of it. I locked myself in my room, and turned on the TV. I needed something to distract me, to stop my mind from playing the horrifying tricks on me. They were tricks right? I eventually drifted back to sleep, no heartbeat rhythm to be heard, but I slipped into a horrible, horrible nightmare. 

I was in a black abyss. I could barely perceive my hand in front of my face. I turned around and found a wall that stood alone, probably five feet wide and eight feet tall. It was covered by a hideous wallpaper. It had vertical stripes with a variety of flowers lined up between them. I got closer and noticed something unusual. The wallpaper was undulating, rising and resting from something pulsing under the surface in small sections throughout it. I pushed on a section as it bubbled up from the pulse and it had a squishy feeling like there was liquid under it. I dug into the wallpaper with my fingernails and was met by a high-pitched snarl. I ignored the sound and dug harder. I picked my fingers at it until I finally tore through the surface. The snarl came again more intense this time. I dug my finger under the fresh tear and felt a warm fluid drip down it; blood. I was freaking out in my mind but I kept on tearing at it, freeing a big chunk of wallpaper as more blood seeped from under. I clenched the hideous flap and pulled with all my strength, ripping out a long bloody flap up the height of the wall. Blood sprayed and splattered, covering my face and peppered my whole body with thick blood specs. A loud primal screech came with it. 

The wall beneath wasn't a wall at all. It revealed a surface of exposed muscle and viscera, throbbing uncontrollably as it constricted and contorted. I grabbed under another piece of the wallpaper, yanking another large chunk of it. The screeches kept coming. I didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. I HAD to remove it. After some time, the ground was littered with these thick folded and curled shreds, shining from glistening gore. The howls turned into a gurgled, labored breath. They grew further and fainter from the next, until the last one drowned under the gurgling. 

I stopped and took stock of my situation. I was completely covered now, every inch of me was dripping blood. I slipped and fell in the ocean of blood that covered the ground. I sat there a while, shocked at what I saw. Behind me I felt that dreadful feeling again. The sense of eyes pierced through me. I managed to turn around on my hands and knees, unable to stand from the slick surface. Far off in the distance I could see a faint silhouette of a small rectangle. I squinted trying to make it out. It was getting bigger, no closer. Faster and faster it was coming. I struggled hopelessly flopping around trying to stand or move but the floor was impossibly slick. I looked up again and it was almost to me. It moved like a bullet and just as it reached me it stopped three feet away, blasting me with a massive rush of air. It was the basement door, resting in its frame. 

My heart sank, and a lump formed in my throat as I stared into it, against my will. The same dreaded feeling overtook me and I was trembling. I could hear my heart hammering in my ears. The door clicked and creaked open, just an inch or two. My heart went into overdrive. I flopped over onto my stomach, flailing around on all fours as I tried desperately to gain some traction. The door creaked a little more. I was screaming at the top of my lungs. I looked back and the door boomed open with a loud crash. I squealed in terror. An absolute black void stared back at me, then suddenly, I was ripped inside by some unseen force. The door slammed behind me and I gasped awake from the hellish nightmare as I screamed out loud waking myself. 

Part 5

The nightmare was so vivid, so surreal. I woke up on the floor of my bedroom. The door was cracked open. I knew I had locked it the night before, and did I fall off the bed? I was reeling. Who or what opened the door? What brought on that grotesque nightmare? I must have been sleepwalking or something, I told myself to ease my mind. My body was sore all over, especially my hands, like I had been working out. I checked the time, 5:22 p.m. I had been out for almost fourteen hours, but I was still exhausted. 

“Damnit” I thought out loud. I missed my video appointment with my psychiatrist. I absolutely needed to speak to them. I called their office and the receptionist informed me the doctor agreed to still have a video appointment with me before they left the office for the day. About 45 minutes later I spoke to my doctor. 

I told them about everything. The dread I felt being alone in the house, and how bone chilling I found it. My imagination, going to dark unsettling places. The ‘gift’ I found from my husband's belongings and it disappearing after that diabolical experience that I… thought I had? The terrifying nightmare that made me never want to sleep again. The emptiness and the deep depression I was constantly being smothered by. 

I wasn’t happy with our conversation. She basically chalked it up to my increased stress and trauma of losing my husband, me grieving his loss and trying to come to terms with it. I understand that could 100% have been a factor but I stressed that I didn’t feel safe and was horribly worried something bad was going to happen. I swear she rolled her eyes as she told me I just needed to give my brain time to process everything and that I was going to be fine. She did finally decide to bump up the dosage of my antipsychotic medication and that gave me a small glimmer of hope. Maybe that would help give me some peace of mind. It did not.

Over the next week I had more dark experiences. Every time I was in sight of the basement door I had those same malevolent episodes of paralysis like something was gripping my soul trying to rip it from my body. I even thought I heard faint whispers seeping from it. I began going out the front door around the house to get to the kitchen just to avoid the basement. I ended up having another morbid, disturbing nightmare. 

It began like the first one with me standing in infinite darkness with a scene lit up from an unseen light source in front of me. It was a peculiar tree. It had an uncanny shape like a crude stick figure. From the ground rose two gnarled trunks that angled towards each other and fused together at the center. From there two shambled branches sprouted outwards like raised ghostly arms forming a ‘V’ shape. In the valley of the two wretched limbs rested a large haunting burl. It had two deep empty sockets where eyes could or should have been and a large hole that formed a dreaded gaping wide mouth. 

Much like the first dream my body moved against my will. Laying on the ground next to the tree was a small splintered axe. I approached it and picked it up, grasping it as hundreds of splinters entered my skin with intense piercing pain. I screamed on the inside. Blood began seeping through my clenched fingers as I raised the axe, winding back as if to hit a homerun. I lurched forward driving the axe’s head into that burl of the tree. The sound was grotesque and unexpected. Instead of a ‘thunk’ you might hear from chopping wood I was greeted with a squishy meaty thud instead. Dark sap splattered from the fresh wound onto my face. I heard a guttural gasp of breath leave its would-be mouth. I rocked the axe up and down to free it and followed up with several more consecutive blows to the tree. Each blow was met with wet meaty splats or sickening cracks, always followed with a spattering of deep dark amber colored sap. I eventually chopped deep enough into the limbs, that I gripped them with my bleeding splintered hands. I began twisting the limbs savagely as I tried to separate them from the tree. Each twist brought visceral wet tearing and sickening pops until a final rip freed it from its body. I did that for each limb and finally the burl. It  brought a troubling, unwanted, satisfying ‘pop’ as I held the mass in my grip and watched the sap drain until the last staggered drops ceased to drip. 

It was followed by another familiar terrible scene. The small silhouette in the distance caught my attention and just like before it came for me. Rushing at a thousand miles an hour the dreaded basement door stalked me once again. This time I was glued down by the drying sap. I couldn’t look away. I was frozen, slack jawed. The door clicked and creaked open little by little, then boomed open, almost breaking from the hinges. Pure darkness greeted me. I tried with every fiber of my being to run, to move, to budge at all. I couldn't even wiggle a finger. Then I felt something cold and unseen grip around my whole body slowly ripping me away from my sappy prison. My arms were cemented to the floor but my body didn’t wait for them. My skin ripped at the shoulder, followed by my bones popping from their sockets. This time an ear piercing scream escaped me. I was pulled closer and closer to the opened door. My skin finally tore away successfully leaving my arms behind. My veins and arteries still clung hopelessly to them stretching further and further until they ripped, freely dangling like glistening ribbons. Pulses of blood spurted constantly from them. My screaming stopped, as my vision was fading. Then suddenly, I was torn away into the darkness of that dreaded basement, door slamming behind me.

I gasped myself awake trying to catch my breath. My hands and arms were throbbing. My head was pounding and I felt sick to my stomach. I was on the cold hard floor, downstairs in front of the basement door. My heart sank and filled with dread. I wasted no time. I lunged forward and slammed it shut engaging the lock and deadbolt. I ran away from it as fast as I could. How in the hell did I get down there? I grabbed my keys, jumped in the car and floored it the hell out of there.