Chapter 4 – Echoes

I wake up shaking, the sense of her dying breath whispering past my ear still strong, vibrating down my spine like hell’s own tuning fork, calling me forth from the dream of depravity into the cold white light and dark screen of my room. I look down at my hands, expecting to see blood, but only seeing shadows and crumbs.

I look around, trying to gain semblance of balance, of comfort, of normalcy, but only end up feeling all the more disjointed, as if I have been split in two, living a parallel life with that demon self that has gone downstairs to maim and murder. Hot blood courses through my veins, exciting me as I remember what it was like to feel her life slip through me even as hope lit her face for a moment, believing she could somehow escape me, the final puzzle piece to her never-ending, soon over life. Over all too soon.

And still that sense that I should check, go knock on their door. It had been so real, the blood and death. Maybe she is standing there, speared on a blade, staring into another man’s eyes as she breathes her last, her eyes falling on her disemboweled lover spread out on the bed like so much leftover tripe.

Tripe. I shudder, remembering the first, and last, time I had slurped that particularly disgusting meal, the smooth intestines fighting, then bursting against, my teeth, filling my mouth with molten mush. Hot it was gross. Cold, it was foul. I gag momentarily, reaching for the milk and cookies to wash away the taste as my mind serves up the image of me munching on her lover’s entrails while I wait for her to escape the bathroom.

I feel dirty, and take a shower to clean my soul. It does no good … I am forever soiled by my own thoughts, dreams, desires. Forever tainted by my own internal demon. I scrub my skin red raw yet nothing, no change. I am as corrupted as any murderer that walked the earth, though I have no real blood on my hands, the virtual demons and doings that I have been driven to are enough to consign me to damnation forever, the devil laughing as he throws my meager soul straight to hell. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

And still I go on.

This is it, with me. The furnace burns, yet I am still cold to the touch. There is no other but I, yet I am not alone. No one shares my space, but in my mind there is no room, so many ‘others’ team inside the dark spaces, crouching in corners, whispering in my ears until I am sure this is already hell on earth.

Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can hear them skittering, just outside the edge of my conscious hearing, but skittering nonetheless. They are closing in, always inching closer, until my skin crawls and it is all I can do not to scream and thrash about. I know it would not help. I do not need to be wrapped up in some cosy striaghtjacket in a room with pink padded walls. That would not help me, would not stop the demons from coming.

In fact, I am sure they would finally take over, my soul and self finally succumbing to my basest desires. I would be the lunatic throwing his own faeces at the wall, to drip down and be drawn in, scratching his own face until his hands are taped over to protect himself. That would be me, flipped out and forever flipping over, down, deep down to the very base of myself, where the real demons of dreams waited to take me home, even further inside, until there is no escape, and I suffocate on all the shit that I have swallowed and ignored all of these years.

For therein lies true madness, true hell; to drown in one’s own bullshit.

I almost did, there. So I take a deep breath, and come up for air. The dream-guilt is gone, leaving behind the reverberation of something horrible. It takes me a good few moments to realise that the remaining ugliness is not of my own making, that my chest is tightened in the middle, making it difficult to breathe, because of something else that I had seen, or remembered, or thought I remembered I had seen. A demon of a thought was kicking its steel-toed boots into the inside of my skull, a headache waiting to happen as I try to focus, crunching through the last of my cookies, and downing my brown-shredded milk (for I always dip my Oreos before I eat them – soggy Oreos are one of life’s small joys that can be enjoyed anywhere, anytime, as long as you have Oreos and milk to hand).

What was it?

A nightmare flash of blood, this time not me, but something seen. My heart flutters, like the sugar-free rush of the blood not fed with glucose, and I see it again for a moment. The briefest lightning punch to my head and gut that leaves me gasping. This is real. I saw it. Somewhere deep in my half-asleep slumbering I saw something horrible.

I look back at the screen, expecting it to light up on the bloody scene of my dream, or at least on the two beautiful innocents, intertwined and asleep, bodies heaving with deep rest that has escaped me for the last twenty years. Nothing.

I play with the contrast, the zoom, flick the camera back and forth between other rooms, ignoring the scenes that play before my eyes, my entire self focused on this one space, in the dark, where the two lovers did slide and suck themselves into oblivion only hours before. Was this the end? Were they a bloody mess, or just happily head-to-head, hand on breast? I had to know, regardless of the ridiculousness of the whole thing. I had to know.

My heart pounded heavy and hard in my chest, blood light in my mind, my eyes tracking the walls and carpet without seeing as I raced down the hall, down the stairs, down the hall, to their door. And there it was, what a door is, when it is not a door.

Ajar.

Shit. I knew what this meant. It meant that what had happened inside could really be as mean and base as I had dreamed. Could it be that I had actually lived my dream, slept-walked down here, committed the most heinous crime, then slipped back up to my room, washed myself up, and crumbled back into the chair to pretend to myself that I was an innocent asleep, simply dreaming? Could it be?

Only one way to find out.

I step forward and press the door open with my palm, thinking not to leave fingerprints. Just in case. When the smart-ass in my head points out that my fingerprints are all over this door already, all over the room, all over the furniture, and every bannister and wall, and door, and piece of furniture in the whole hotel. For I am the handy-man, although deep down I know as I opened that door to hell, it will all end; my own normalcy will be turned upside down by what will meet my eyes on the other side.

I am stepping through my own personal portal to hell. I know it, can feel it in my gut, yet I cannot control my hands or feet as they push open the door and draw me in.