Nimi: a dark place
Kirjoittaja: Bluji Ronen
Ikäraja: K-11
Genre: absurdi kauhu?
Varoitukset: viittauksia väkivaltaan ja seksiin pakottamiseen
A/N: Kilpailuteksti fantasia- / kauhukirjoituskilpailuun, jonka järjestäjänä toimi Suomen englanninopettajien liitto. Voittoa ei harmi kyllä tullut, mutta olen sen verran tyytyväinen tähän, että uskallan pistää tämän ulos tällaisenaan. Oikeastaan kaikki tässä novellissa on hyvinkin tulkinnanvaraista (genrestä lähtien)... nauttikaahan? ;P
I woke up in the darkness, in a place I did not know. The sheets on the bed I was lying on were probably linen, or that's how it felt to me at least. As my eyes slowly got used to the lighting of the room, I started seeing shadowy figures of the furniture that mostly seemed to be pushed next to the walls. A rocking chair in the corner, a cupboard on the other side… I also noticed the drapes on the wall to the right. I got up from the bed – every single muscle in my body hurt like hell, what could've I done before this? Somehow I managed to scramble my way to the window, hitting my bare foot into the foot of the table beside the window. Grasping onto the heavy window cover, I had a continuous feeling that I was being watched. I pulled the fabric aside and revealed the room as it began to bathe in the oddly blue light from outside. I took a quick look out the window – it was raining and thundering and all I could see was endless plains far from the house. From the view, I figured I had to be at least on the second floor of the house if not the third but what was the house I was in?
I turned around 180 degrees and took a better look around the room. There was a mirror in the far nook of the room, and as I took a look into it, I had no reflection. Similarly, I tried my hardest to remember what had happened to me the night before, what this place was – but I could not have a reminiscence of any events and I barely even knew who I was myself. On a second thought, did I know even that? As I examined my clothes, they seemed to be rather simple: a neat dress shirt possibly made out of cotton – I wasn't exactly sure but I felt extremely uncomfortable with the idea of taking it off and checking, so I determined that's how it had to be – and simple trousers that gave me no clue of where I was. I continued searching for clues in the small bedroom, but eventually gave up as I could not find a single item that would refer to my location. Thus I was simply forced to leave the room.
I opened the door (the handle seemed sturdy and the entire door was made from a thick wood) and entered the hallway behind it. It was seemingly narrow and made me feel unbelievably claustrophobic as if I had no air to breathe whatsoever. On a more positive note, the sconces on the walls at least lit up the hallway so I could see where I was going but I made the tragic mistake of looking upward. The corridor seemed like meters high and it gave me a feeling of vertigo that I tried to shake by looking down and taking deep breaths. After calming down for some time, I decided that I needed to leave, I had no option. I forced myself to walk through the corridor, ignoring the other, rather inviting doors on both of its sides. That led me to the top of the staircase that looked like it followed the same insane height of the hallway – the stairs looked like they just kept on going and going.
I stepped carefully on the first step downward. The hardwood they were made of felt so good on my bare foot; I felt like I was safe, like there was nothing that could stop me from escaping the house. The third step let out a significant creak when my whole weight hit it which was a pity because I did not want to let out any sounds in case I was being held here by a madman. Trying to move as quickly as possible but also as carefully as I could, I found my way to the landing of the floor below. It seemed like a more inviting space, with more light, less pressure from walls, and a giant window overlooking a view of something. As I made my way across the landing, I found my feet hugging a red carpet that was unbelievably soft. The view, however, made me almost gag.
There was a massive wasteland seen from it. From what I could determine from that distance was dozens if not hundreds of partly decomposed bodies lying around, pools of acid and some other liquids I could not determine and mutated animals running and trying to find other sources of food than the disgusting former human beings. I closed my eyes and turned around – the desolate land was so disgusting I almost started crying in addition to not being able to keep my digestive system together. I opened the doors around the landing and eventually came across the bathroom where I just quickly opened the toilet and let everything inside me come out. The tiles on the floor felt so cold, almost freezing. What in the world – if it even was the world I was used to – was this place, and how could I ever find a way back home wherever that was? Trying to bring myself back to a peace of mind, I flushed the toilet and washed my hands once, twice, three times before getting out of the room.
I tried hard not to look again through the window as I continued my search on that particular floor. I knew that the stairs were still there and continued downward, but I had a good feeling, an intuition of sorts, that told me to keep searching here. I came across the kitchen after a short while. Every single room on the floor seemed to be separated off from each other with thick doors. The kitchen was a remnant with its ancient, rusty devices – half of which I could not even recognize, leading me to think they must be decades if not centuries old – and a Victorianesque style that somehow did fall in place with the decoration and furniture from the parts of the house I had seen so far. I leaned against a wooden table there and tried to catch my breath. The place was so confusing in its architecture, so incomprehensible with the views from the windows and whatnot.
Then I heard a voice.
"You didn't read the note." I turned around and saw a woman who was probably in her late twenties, maybe early thirties. Her hair was long, straight and blond, and she was wearing a neat blue dress that fit her like a glove. Her lips were painted deep red, and she looked a bit like a beautiful but extremely busy business woman – if it hadn't been for the eyepatch covering the left eye that made me imagine things based on what I had seen from the giant window. Her head leaned a bit to the right as she subtly licked her lips and examined me from head to toe, preparing to say something.
"Yeah, you didn't read the note upstairs. It said that there were… specific clothes in the cupboard in the bedroom. Why are you not wearing them? Mommy's gonna punish you," she stated in a bit snarky voice followed by a mean laughter. I could not determine if it was evil or pitiful or whatever else. I tried to respond to her but my mouth just couldn't form any sounds. Then I realized something – my tongue was missing. It must have reflected onto my face, because she smirked at me.
"So you noticed. You were a bad, bad boy last night. Mommy had to cut your tongue out so you wouldn't make a sound… or maybe you just didn't use the tongue like she wanted you to. Pick whichever you like," she stated in a way I interpreted as having perhaps a flirtatious tone. She stepped a couple steps towards me – only now did I notice her sparkle-covered high heels – and whispered, "Want to see what mommy's got in store for you?" She looked away for a moment and seemed to chuckle.
Suddenly, I noticed there was a pile of blank papers and some pens on a nearby table. I pushed her gently aside, maybe catching her off guard surprisingly, and scribbled something quickly onto the paper. A burning pain started tearing me apart after I finished the sentence and to my shock, I saw the same words appear on my skin as bloody wounds. I tried not to care about the pain, grabbed the paper with my bloody left hand and revealed the words I wrote to the woman. She looked at my paper with a smug impression and looked like she took a slight moment to consider her following words.
"Oh, where are you? Welcome to the worst place there is – well, technically, downstairs is even worse." I looked at her with a clear questioning face, and she elaborated on her words.
"Welcome to the purgatory."
