I Remember Everything

Look, I know this is your job and everything right? I understand that you have to ask these questions, but I've already told this whole story to the officer who rescued me. Well... the officer who untied me. Somebody else rescued me... or something at any rate.

I have a good memory for details, do you understand me? Like nearly a photographic memory. Yes I know that technically doesn't happen but the point is I remember everything about a scene, down to the most minute details. It's an annoying part of who I am, both for people who know me and myself, just a side effect of my OCD. And not this nonsense self-diagnosed “I like things clean so I must have OCD” stuff. I have an actual mental aberration about this sort of thing.

I remember the exact amount of my first paycheck from my first job 12 years ago: $544.11. I remember the exact outfit I was wearing on the night of my disastrous first date, a white t-shirt which was about two sizes too small on purpose and blue jeans with my favorite pair of brown sandals. Don't judge, it was 2005. It's not just milestones either. I remember the exact pattern of the neck tattoo of a blonde cashier who sold me a bag of potato chips in Biloxi, MS back in 2008. It was a tribal art design that vaguely resembled a fox. The left ear was a little wonky so I thought it was a rabbit at first until the guy corrected me.

Are you getting my point? I remember everything. So when I tell you that I remember everything that happened to me, you know that I'm not exaggerating. I know a lot of people in similar situations repress a lot of stuff but this isn't me, okay? God, I wish I could though...

I remember it was three nights ago when I was driving home. I felt cold steel against the back of my head a short ways down the road. I remember the rotten breath of the creep in my back seat who gave me instructions well off the beaten path up to this little old shanty out in the woods. I remember him keeping his gun trained on me as he got out of the car first and then dragged me out. There was a crunching under my feet- dead leaves and twigs from the forest floor. I knew from how long we'd been driving there was nobody around for miles but he still felt the need to gag me. I remember the sickeningly sweet smell and taste of the duct tape he used to cover my mouth. Not to mention the feel of the adhesive on my wrists as he bound them tightly behind my back. He then forced me to march at gunpoint around the back of his house to his cellar, though I'm sure the creep has his own little pet name for the place of torment.

Before I was forced in however, I remember seeing something very strange. I filed this one away for later as I was obviously occupied: Even with attentiveness like mine you tend to get distracted when you are bound, gagged and kidnapped by some foul-breathed pervert. But I remember seeing it. I don't know how to describe it... it was like a piece of the trees had broken off and taken a roughly human shape,  oak brown with a strange sort of shimmer to it. It was like a finely polished wooden statue of a man. There were no facial features, which is why at first I thought that's exactly what it was.

Until I saw it again.

The son of a bitch put a metal collar around me and locked it to this cold steel pole giving me just enough space to be able to sit, but no lay down. He then went on a diatribe like most of these sickos do to justify his actions. He began talking about how all of us really love this kind of treatment and before time I'd be thanking him.

Even without my condition I would have remembered these words because that's when I saw it again, peeking at us through the small cellar window. It was maybe a foot tall and three feet wide but it's face was clearly there, staring at us. I would have said something, but the duct tape was still over my mouth. I may have had some sort of expression of fear or at least curiosity at the beast, but I'm sure this guy just thought it was a reaction to him.

The damndest thing though is that despite the fact that this being had no eyes, and the fact that me and the pervert were in roughly the same position in the cellar, I knew for a fact that the creature was looking at him, not at me. There was something sinister... hungry even in it's contemplation. I didn't have the facial cues, but I could feel the creature's energy well enough.

I, of course, had my own problems to worry about as the freak began to prepare himself for whatever sick plans he had for me. But he didn't get very far. There was knocking on the door upstairs. The creep dropped his little bag of “toys” and shook like a leaf. He put an extra layer of duct tape over my mouth and then put a cloth hood over my head.

All I can remember from this point on is the sounds of what happened. I didn't have any other sense to really go by until your officer found me two days later. What I heard I will never forget as long as I live. I may eventually forget my first paycheck, my first date and that damned botched tattoo, but I swear the sounds that creature made as it pushed its way through the door will haunt me forever.

Try to imagine the sound of every tree in the forest snapping in half at the same time and you might approach what it sounded like as this beast tore this man apart, bone by bone. The screaming only lasted a little bit, but when the screaming stopped, the desecration of this monster continued.

I was scared, of course. I still hadn't pieced everything together yet and here I was bound up to a pole with no way of helping myself and convinced that I would be the next thing to suffer the same fate. Just about the time I began to panic, pulling tightly against the damn collar that kept me tethered in place, I felt a soft polished wooden hand grasp my forearm. It wasn't a firm grip, or a forceful one. It was a soft, reassuring grip. I felt the creatures face mere inches away from mine behind the hood.

There was a whisper, almost like a child's voice only a touch more raspy.

“Don't worry,” it said. “The monster is gone now.”

After that the creature left me. And I don't mean that it went back upstairs or anything I mean it disappeared on the spot. And that's it. That's everything that I remember until you all showed up. I don't trust I need to bore you with the details of the two days I spent alone in that damned cellar.

I know you probably think I'm crazy already, but there is one last thing I guess I should add.

While the creep was screaming, I heard another sound echoing through the cabin over top his. It was the sound of dozens of people around my age, laughing in triumph and malice glee. I'm sure when you search the place you'll find evidence that I wasn't the first. Far from it.

But I know for a fact that I was the last.