He fell back, his forced fleshy body bounced off of the stubbornness of the door which stood tall in front of him, mocking him. Thomas was dazed, but desperately he threw himself at the door again and again, harder and harder, until he heard a painful crack in his left arm. He braced himself before he slowly looked down to see the gnashed bone protruding from what should have been his elbow. Shocked, he stumbled backwards and fell to a kneel after his back slid down the wall opposite the door. He wept. He felt himself losing energy, weaker and weaker as time went on, and yet there was no other cure than to devour the young. This was not his choice. The guilt he felt was unbearable. But he knew of his genealogy, and he had to sacrifice the life of this young boy before he, too, became a monster.
His teeth grinded together, in hopes of inspiring physical strength, ignorant that his indurate tongue tip was resting in between his molars. As the realization of the pain struck him, his own gleaming blood reminded him once again what his purpose was. He wasn't decrepit just yet. It was time to end this, before it was too late.
He gathered composure and stood up to face the door, his unmatched opponent. If it had eyes, his phlegmatical glare of quiet confidence would have been burning holes straight through them. He lifted his left foot and was about to kick the door in before another surprise was thrown his way. In all the irony that is life, the golden lock unlatched itself and there was an entire inch of darkness separating the door from its white frame.
He took a deep breath and stood dumbfounded for a moment before he decided to take the next logical step fate was offering him. His right hand lifted from his side towards the doorknob, shaking. Jonah was waiting.
As he pushed open the red door, the outside light from the hallway illuminated the small, furnished room. Thomas could barely see through the unsettled dust clouds in the air but still he entered, this time cautiously. Although he felt it would be better to make a silent entrance, the floorboards forbid it. The echos of creaks and crepitation bounced from wall to wall, and he realized that this room was larger than he originally thought, a master suite of some sort. Burgundy satin sheets were left made on the canopy bed, with imprints towards the center made by a small child who was now in hiding from his murderer. Almost a bulls-eye. He stepped further into the room and scoped for possible hiding places. He eyed the gaps between the hemmed curtains and the floor, the musty fireplace, for any lifted corners of rugs; he searched for anything that could be out of place. With no obvious luck, he began lifting, opening, emptying and rustling through the fallen furniture. In his fragile condition, he couldn't afford to be too rough. "Jonah," he called in a soothing, raspy voice. "Jonah I know you're in here. Please, won't you come out? I'm getting so tired; and, look I've hurt my arm...I need your help." He stumbled upon a small door in the back of the room, hidden from his original viewpoint by a large mahogany wardrobe. He didn't hear the rain, but a dampness seeped into his shoes as it traveled through the seams of the wooden floor, in and under the cracks. Due to the disintegrated and stain infested ceiling, he pressed on with his search, knowing that dampness was the least of his worries. He opened the door, and crawled into a small cement room large enough to hold no more then twelve people at one time- uncomfortably.
It was cold in this room, not to mention pitch black dark and smelly. The stench was increasingly strong but his sense of smell was immune to it in its weakened condition. As he trudged through the inches of collected liquid, he continued to call out to Jonah seductively, pausing slightly after each time to hold his breath in hopes of hearing a movement of the boy. To his patient disappointment, the only sounds he could hear were the constant drips of the liquid from the wooden bedroom floor into the small room that was half a level below ground. After what seemed to be ten minutes of waiting for Jonah to reveal himself, or to be found, his body hadn't stopped growing weaker. He needed light, there were no windows in this room. To quicken the solution to his strife, he searched his pockets for a flashlight or anything that could enable him to see. With luck, he found a cigarette lighter- an engraved silver trinket he took to remember his son, whom he killed the same way he would kill his grandson- a bullet to the head, quick and efficient, followed by the consumption of human flesh. He flipped the top and applied pressure to the thumbwheel.
Jonah stood across the street and dropped the emptied can of gasoline to the ground.
0 comments:
Post a Comment