Horror Story

[Gildarts]

Trisha had decided and reached for the black, glossy latch of the wooden door. This was enough playing games and deciding. It was pitch black and she was completely alone. There was only one real answer. To open the door. To continue wandering when the universe had thrown her a bone would have been reckless. Who knew what was in those woods? What lay dormant in the darkness, waiting to be stirred by the fresh scent of her pulsing blood.

Yeah, waiting out the night in spooksville here seemed like a good bet. First however, she knocked. It was polite, and well, if the outhouse was occupied, that was fine too. The cracks in the woodwork showed no interior light, good thing this torch had been left here… Eerily lit by no one in sight. This was definitely spooksville. She looked around, at the sound and feel of the freshly tilted latch. Nothing had stirred, but somehow it felt like she was walking into a trap.

It was too late now, she gulped and held the torch in hand as she swung the door open and jumped back a few steps. When nothing stirred, she took a few steps forward, ready to run if necessary, but filling the room with warm, amber light. It was surprisingly roomy inside and she was right, there had been a toilet. When was the last time she’d peed? She couldn’t bring it to mind, but she thought she’d opt for behind a bush than this. The stench wasn’t as bad as some state park outhouses and Trisha found herself taking another step forward, inside to get a better look. The wood below her screamed as though it were in agony, or simply warning her to run.

In front of her directly was the porcelain throne, she didn’t see any toilet paper near it, which was like, kind of gross, though there was still a pretty dark shadowed part of the corner. To her left however, there was a wall, a very dirty porcelain sink, and a faded, scratched up mirror above it. Trisha noticed herself in the mirror and stepped closer to it, her eyes narrow with worry and fear, and oh, had this change of emotion transformed her. The flesh between the bones of her cheeks looked gaunt, her eyes had dark circles underneath them and her hair was looking drab and out of place. She was in this spooky place and well, she was the one that looked haunted. There was a taste of irony in it, but Trisha resisted the urge to powder herself, though it had been built in since she was young from her perfection seeking parentals.

Then, the flame licked and she saw something shiny in the reflection behind her, a chill of fear was suddenly sent down her spine, she used the mirror and couldn’t bring herself to look behind her. Ah, but she was trapped and had to turn around and face this to know exactly what she was running from.

She gulped and she identified the pair of unique spectacles that their professor had worn. Yes, the same professor who had been running late to their class that very same morning before they’d somehow ended up here. Wrapped around his professor’s wool coat was something like fresh cotton, something like it.

Trisha braved up, clenched her teeth and dug her soles to the floorboards beneath her. There, waving in the flickering light was his dead, virtually mummified body. There was a silver sheet of skinny web (though she bet it was stronger than it looked) suspending the professor’s corpse in the air. Wrapped around him mostly like a cocoon was the webbing, lining his body like an infinite reel of silver fish line.

Trisha nearly dropped her flame as she let out a sickened scream.

But it wasn’t over yet. While she hadn’t seen the spider who had done this to the teacher, she was sure that it was either well-fed or that it would be eager to gain another prize for his display case of victims. She went to run, be free of this hellish outhouse when someone stepped in front of the doorway and blocked her way.

Trisha’s eyes widened, “Is that you Johnson? Oh my God, what ever happened?”

She couldn’t quite find it in herself to tell him to run, not when his hand had extended to her shoulder, not when she saw the sad state of his bubbling green face, and the purple haired arm that remained at his side with a bottle of Jack Daniels in hand.

“Help me… Trisha, what am I becoming?” Johnson’s voice was garbled and muffled by the roar of the beast that desperately wished to be released from within.

“What did you… How can this be happening?” Trisha asked herself as her eyes continuously scanned him. This was definitely a dream. It had to be. Johnson was becoming some sort of mutated monster, his skin, his eyes, his face… Everything looked as though it had been cut up from little pieces of magazine and sewn on together, he was a mismatch and… He shouldn’t have been allowed to see himself. She had to lead him out the door, away from the mirror and the light. No one should have to see themselves as… Becoming a Halloween costume.

But perhaps he already had seen, the alcohol was on his breath and it didn’t seem like his transformation was complete. “Don’t insult me! I lost Claire, I lost her, and then I got lost here! How, how, how can this world be so cruel? And how can my body be changing like this… Trisha you have to help me find a cure, Claire wouldn’t like what I’ve become. Don’t just stand there, help me!”

The beast began to shake her shoulders, with little to know disregard for the flame-lit torch still in her hand. The light shone below Johnson’s monstrous green chin, showing a new face, captured in all its horror the way the light streaked upward and left shadows above his already ghoulish eyes. Boils had formed on his skin since first moment she’d seen him and it seemed that he was still transforming. His voice was warping into deeper tones and his words became incoherent slurs. “Rahhhhhh!”

He really did sound like a monster now, but that didn’t necessarily have to mean he had become one, right? Trisha struggled to get free, stepping to the side and edging back from the outhouse, “RAHHH!” He was still trying to reason with her, maybe, but he’d lost his ability for english. He was becoming less and less human by the second. “Help me please, or I’ll crush your little neck in!”

He had started to say, the thread stood. He was going to kill her. The enlivened flint in his eyes told her it was true, the evil, the inner monster was spreading throughout his body and threatening to take hold. And she was witnessing it. A man turned demon. And Johnson, in all his anger and self-pity and sorrow was letting it in. Trisha stood back again, and Johnson’s monster lurched at her, claws had formed on his purple-haired arm, “RAHH! I’m not jooooking!!” he cackled, releasing the madness in the air of amusement that was filling him.

Just then, when Trisha was sure she was going to die at the hands of her former classmate and football champion, a hope shot out through the darkness in the form of a small wire. Then another shot out, aimed at Johnson’s foot and sealing him to the ground. The monster thrashed and grunted as he fought hard to pull up his foot. Trisha gasped as she looked at her savior, a giant spider crawling out of the out house’s ajar door, it had enormous black legs that carefully plucked where it stood and balanced its weight one by one. The creature’s thorax was patterned with black and neon splotches, almost like the watercolor patterns they show you when you get your psych evaluation. How lovely for that thought to have popped in her head.

The spider was almost feminine, though it could have been her legs and the way she seductively strut over to her fresh meat. Then, it spun its web around Johnson with a whirlwind of stunning speed, it didn’t like being out in the open this long, it seemed. Then when he was pinned an immobilized though, unlike the professor, still squirming, the spider took one look at Trisha, as though sizing her up for both her meat and her threat level.

The spider’s myriad of eyes glinted in the light she held in her hand. Trisha’s body was rigid with fear, but she was sure that the giant arachnid knew which of them was stronger. She took a hesitant step back, hoping it would translate into spider as “I mean no trouble, I won’t fight or injure you in any way” and God, did Trisha hope those days of her childhood where she’d tossed the spiders she found in her room back outside rather than squatting at them would pay off in this moment where karma and kismet collided.

The spider’s pincers drooled with poison, the same that had paralyzed the prof before he’d died. To think this colossal creature was hiding in that bathroom all along made her afraid to use any kind of restrooms any time soon. Her black eyes stayed steady on Trisha, as though deciding, “Is tonight to get greedy? Do I let gluttony take hold?” however, the heat of the flame in the fire made her reconsider, she did not like to get burned, and was vulnerable to fire, she could lose a leg. The spider had pittered with its eight legs over to her gift-wrapped dessert, Johnson, and sunk her fangs into his neck. Still, its eyes was on Trisha, as though still testing the human prey.

Trisha stood glacially still and the arachnid receded into the darkness of its precious home. It wasn’t until she heard his agonized scream was she sure it was safe to run.