[Short Story] The Visitor in the Hall

Today I end my own life. I never wanted to, do believe me, but the pain which I experience – both in body and soul – is wholly unbearable. The laudanum that my doctors have given me do nothing to stop the pain or nightmares which plague me on a daily basis. From the previous months of trauma, I am so pathetic and bedridden, that I have little choice but to drown myself in this blasted opiate, and hope that it is more effective in eliminating lives than it is pain.

It was several months ago that this pain and horror began in my life. I at that point, was a man who lived alone, and prided myself in my independence. Having caught the nightly news on my radio, I switched the cabinet off, and began to do my nightly routine. As I placed the tooth powder upon my brush the sound of an eldritch footstep began to come to my awareness. It came from the hall. I froze momentarily, and soon the sound stopped. I creaked the bathroom door open, and peeked my frothed head out the hall. Was there anyone there? No! Not a sign of any other life. Continuing on, I dismissed the incident as the work of a neighbor in the apartment above.

As soon as I was done, I retreated to the bedroom, winding my alarm up ready for the next day. Thus I left for the world of slumber.

There I was in my dream, sitting in my bed, absent-mindedly staring at the clock as both hands aligned themselves to the top, and the footsteps I heard from just moments before began to pick up again. Their lurch and slither - as if my visitor were struggling to hold something slimy that it itself could not - began to go louder, and louder and louder, then the door forced open.

I awakened and turned my head immediately to the door. While it was open, there was nothing there. Perhaps I never shut it? I thought to myself. Trying to think nothing of it I laid my head back on my pillow, and tried to go back to sleep.

Soon, however, I became aware of a slimy tendril which began to wrap itself around my mouth. My eyes jutted to the other side of me, and what the monstrosity which they beheld is of such I do not wish to ever fully recall. The bulbous and pulsing argus-eyed wad of cephalopodic flesh, never blinking, sitting atop a thin body clad in the most disgusting tentacles some of which flared into hand like fins, quickly climbed upon my helpless body. Carefully locked it into a tight blanket-covered coffin and extended another one of his appendages toward my head. All that my lungs allowed me to give was nothing but a silent whimper.

The tentacle made its way to the left side of my neck and burrowed itself into the flesh with a single sharp tooth. It began to suck a large chunk the flesh of my neck from out of my body, cutting with the tooth and wiggling underneath the skin of my neck, slowly carving a hole. Then came the most unpleasant sensation, for as it finished gorging upon my insides it began to regurgitate something of itself into my neck, and my mind, no longer able to bear what had just happened, gave me the mercy of fainting for the first time in my life.

The alarm rang the next morning, with no sign of anything which had happened last night, outside of the unsettling feeling of something foreign inside my neck. I checked the mirror, and in it I saw no sign of scarring or bleeding or anything else of that sort, barring the large singular mole which I had not noticed before.

As the days passed however, my neck began to grow ever more painful. The pain seemed to radiate from that singular spot, digging further and further into my flesh, and veins I never new I had began to show themselves around the single blackened spot. I finally saw a doctor about the issue. As I showed them the spot, a small glimpse of sadness came across his face. When I asked him what was wrong, he said that I have the cancer, and there was little that he could do outside of ease my pain. I did not believe that, but I dared not tell him the truth on fear of being denounced as crazy.

The doctor prescribed to me tinctures of laudanum, and while it worked at first it did not work for long. The spot began to bulge from my neck. Ashamed of it, I would try my best to hide it with scarves and collars until it eventually the pain and size of it caused me to have to abandon my line of work entirely. And all the long while, if I could sleep at all, I could not dream of anything to relive the experience of that abomination slowly eating insides with that wretched implement. I was forced to take refuge in the house of my parents and the look of pain my mother had seeing what had happened to me is an image painful too painful to bear.

Now as I write this, it sits upon my neck, a painful pulsating mound of flesh balls laced with veins. No longer am I much more than a haggard pile of bones. It makes the most dreadful noises at times. I feel it pulling at my flesh, and nightmares slithering beneath the pale skin.

For the last time I shiv-Oh god. The pain! Something-oh the dreadful things! They’re coming out of me!

-Tetraca