Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28428152-20170122225803

The Book of Agony

From Ben Ross to David Sakamura:

It all started when I turned ten. I will never forget that fateful day. It was a Sunday, and I was anxious to play with my new set of Legos. They were my favorite as a child. My parents had thrown me a grand little party; I’d had a few friends over, as well as my grandparents and a few other relatives. There was cake, ice cream, all the necessities of a ten year old’s birthday party. Yes, it had been quite an eventful day. For some reason unknown to me, or perhaps forgotten, my parents had chosen this night to go out for a date. So, after all my friends and most of my relatives had gone, my father asked my grandmother - his mother - to watch me while they were gone. Immediately I knew that I needed to get away: she had put on another one of her excruciatingly terrible detective shows. It was then that I went upstairs to my play room. In the play room, on the right hand wall, was a door about half the size of a normal one, and this door led to a sort of cubby hole. It was in here that I played most, for it’s small space was like a comforting womb. I didn’t only play here, but I also read, napped, and even cried in that cubby hole. If ever there was a word to be an antonym of myself, I think that claustrophobic would more than suffice.

I possessed an abundance of toys and books as a kid, probably more than most. Some may even say an obscene amount. As it was, it was not a rare occurance for me to stumble across a toy or a book that I had forgotten about, and suddenly remember playing with it or reading it. This is what I thought had happened when I saw a book partially covered up by some plastic dinosaurs. Yet picking it up, I knew immediately that my eyes had never before beheld it.

The book’s cover was made of some sort of strange, black, spongy, leather-ish material. A golden picture of a severed head was stamped onto the front, and the title, The Book of Agony, was gilded along the spine. I opened the book up to a random page, and saw that the paper was a blotchy grey, and there was a long page of miniscule handwriting. The ink was a curious shade of reddish-brown. At the time, I didn’t know what it was, but looking back I know exactly what the author used in place of ink. Turning the page, my eyes flung wide open, and I heard a soft moan escape my lips. Staring me in the eyes was a grotesquely realistic painting of an old woman with her lower jaw cut in two and needles shoved carelessly into her yes. It, too, was in that same shade of reddish-brown.

I slammed the book shut Immediately, hurled it at the wall, and bolted downstairs to the living room. I’d been hoping to go to my grandmother and find warm comfort, but instead I found her head thrust back, and her mouth dangling open. Upon closer inspection, I saw a long trail of drool slithering down her cheek and neck. Since I was a shy kid, I didn’t wake her. Instead, I tried to find the remote so I could change the channel to something decent, but I couldn’t. So, I just got a big bowl of ice cream and watched Mike Hawk: Undercover, and then an even more boring documentary about forest fires. Try as I might, I simply could not get the image of that woman out of my mind. I must have dozed off, because the next thing I remember is hearing: “ I tried everything! I tried Drano, coathangers, heroin, legal abortion! Nothing worked!” blaring from the TV. My grandmother’s drool had now made her shirt-front wet.

Bang!

My grandmother gave a snort and flailed her arms for a moment, looking around wildly! Just then, my parents walked in just in time to hear: “Seven out of ten doctors agree that child pregnancy is even worse before puberty!” and see a picture of a girl who looked about my age giving birth.

“What...in God’s holy name… are you watching?” My father asked incredulously. My grandmother pulled out the remote from underneath her, and frantically tried to change the channel, but only succeeded in clanking the volume up. “JOIN US AFTER THE BREAK TO LEARN HOW ONE MAN GOT SYPHILIS BY STICKING HIS WHOLE HEAD UP A--”

I never did learn what that unfortunate man stuck his head in, because right then my father walked over to the television and turned it off.

“Ma…” he said, looking at her sopping shirt front, “did you fall asleep again? Come on, we’ve talked about this.”

“N-no, of course not!” she sputtered. “I had an eye on him the whole time!”

“Ma,” Dad said sternly, “your shirt’s all wet and a show about pre-pubescent pregnancy and unusually contracted venereal diseases is on.”

“Ah, well, er… um… I really must be going!” and with that, she snatched up her purse and coat, and bustled out the door. I can’t remember what sort of horrors sought refuge in my dreams that night, but they were enough to jolt me awake in a frigid sweat. Oddly enough, I drifted off into a peaceful slumber immediately afterwards.

School was very normal the next day. Despite the fright that The Book of Agony gave me, not once did it enter my head. In fact, I recall that I was in quite a good mood that day. That is, until I came home. Dad was still at the office. For he always had to stay late on Mondays, but Mom was home from her job as a nurse. Initially, there was nothing to trouble me, but as the afternoon came on, Increasingly felt as though somebody or something was watching me. I tried to ignore it, because I felt silly, but it eventually became so overwhelming that, even though I already knew the answer, I asked my mother is there was anybody else home. Of course, there wasn’t. The whole time, I’d had a nagging suspicion that the book had something to do with it. Unable to stand it any longer, I finally resolved to read the wretched thing. As one might figure, the rest of it was much like the page I’d seen the day before. The book’s sole purpose seemed to be to instruct the reader how to perform the most grisly tortures humanly possible. I distinctly remember a man being devoured alive by a pack of starving wolves. So being the young little tike I was, I stuffed the thing in my closet and pretended it never existed.

Over the next two weeks, I became very humorless and apathetic. Nothing managed to entertain me, nothing. Jokes were lame, books were boring, TV was stupid, toys were trivial… Yet, despite what it may seem, I was not at all depressed. There wasn’t an ounce of sadness, just flat apathy.

Then the nightmares came. Right as my apathy began to decay, I was given terrible dreams. At first, I could not remember what it was that had plagued my slumber that night; but as time wore on, I could recall what they were each morning with increasingly clarity. These nightmares were all united under the same dark umbrella: every night, the dream would be of me receiving a different tortured method described in The Book of Agony. Whether it was being drowned and quartered with barbed wire, or having live scorpions shoved down my throat, it was always a Hellish experience. It was inescapable. If I tried staying awake, I would always fall asleep against my will. The dreams would come if I so much as dozed off in school or took a nap. My nerves became on edge. I had bags under my eyes, and I jumped at unexpected noises. I didn’t know how much more I could take.

You are probably wondering by now why I never told anybody, namely my parents. At first, when I had found The Book of Agony on that November afternoon, I had kept it secret merely out of child whim for secrecy. Though, as time went on, it transformed into a terror that if I told somebody, anybody, about the book and my nightmares, that something horrible would happen. What that horrible something was, I didn’t know, but it was enough to keep it a secret. Until, at last, I cracked.

-

“What in the sweaty hell have you been watching on TV?” my father asked one December morning at breakfast, after I’d just described a chapter about drowning people in their own blood.

“Just normal cartoons, Dad,” I replied. “B-but it’s not TV! Weren’t you listening? It’s a book! Written in blood with all these nasty pictures in it!”

“Davie,” my mother called from the kitchen, “did Ben steal a copy of Hustler from the school library again?” She must have heard me say “nasty pictures.”

“No, honey, he’s not talking about nudie magazines, he’s talking about- -” he stopped and peered at me over his expansive newspaper. “What were you talking about?”

I just stared at him incredulously. I had been talking at least ten minutes about the stupid thing. So instead of repeating myself, I lead him- and my mother- upstairs to my bedroom, so that I could just show it to them. The only problem was that it was nowhere to be found. I prefer to not think about the embarrassment that followed immediately.

School that day was pretty normal. Some kid soiled themselves and a fat kid broke the tire swing; nothing unusual. Walking home from the bus stop, I could see that both cars were parked in the driveway. But when I got home, there were no signs of life. They were usually in the living room around this time of day, but no lights were on, there or anywhere else in the house. I tried calling their cell phones from the house phones, but they went straight to voicemail. Very spooked by this point, I set off to to check upstairs in the playroom, the one place I hadn’t looked. The creaking of the floor seemed abnormally loud.

The room was completely empty, and completely silent. It was eerily dark in here than the rest of the house, as the quickly- fading winter light struggled to squirm through the blinds. The only place left to check was the cubbyhole and the attic. If they weren’t there… then what? I’d figure it out when I got there, I figured.

By the time I’d crossed the long room to the cubby door, the sun had gone completely down, I’d moved so slowly. The only light come from the hallway. I’d forgotten to turn the light on when I came in, and it was all the way across the room. Oh well, I thought. Then I flung open the door.

CRASH

- a great noise from the attic adjacent to the playroom.

WHAM-

the door slammed shut with so much force it shook the walls.

The two booming noises came in such rapid succession that at first I’d hardly even noticed that the light had gone away. I didn’t even realize what the second noise was until I’d already flung myself at the door and tried the locked door knob. Then the silence and utter blackness to hold of me.

The attic was to the left of the playroom, and was accessed by a door about two-thirds the size of normal doors. I never went into the attic alone, because when I was really young, a toddler, I think, my father made me watch a horror movie where there was this creature living in the attic, and ever since then I’ve had an unnatural fear of attics. This is also why I never looked for my parents in there.

So, now I was locked in total darkness and silence. Though I could not see anything, I could hear my heart pounding like a drum, and my breath was a whirlwind of sound against the ringing silence. Then… then came a slow, creeping, creaking from the attic door that was to my back. I stood frozen to the spot in fear, imagining some horrible, slimy monster with hands reaching out towards me, waiting to wrap themselves around my throat, but… instead I heard a soft weeping. It sounded like woman’s… It sounded like… no, it couldn’t be, but it sounded like my mother. Then I heard her say my name, “Ben, Ben, I just want my baby…. Please, give me my baby.”

“Mom?” I whispered, but there was no answer. I turned around, and could vaguely make out the open doorway to that long, narrow room that was somehow even darker than the playroom. I tried to flick the lights on, but to no avail.

“Mom? Mom?” I whispered again, but got no reply. It sounded like she was all they way in the back of the attic. Drenched in sweat, I finally mustered up the courage to venture in to that black abyss.

Once inside, I could definitely tell that my Mother was in the very back.

“Mom? Mom?” I said in a hushed voice.

“My baby… that’s all I ask… I just want Ben…”

“Mom!” I whispered. “I’m right here! It’s Ben!”

“B-Ben?” I heard her croak. “Ben, is that really you? Oh, thank goodness I - - no, no, No!”

I heard a short-lived shriek followed by what sounded like Mom being thrown against the wall and crumpling up on the floor.

“M-mom?” I quavered. No answer. I stifled a sob.

And I heard a high, quiet growling from the back of the attic.

WHAM-

the door was slammed shut behind me, and I heard the lock click.

“Give it to us.” a high, raspy voice hissed in front of me.

“Yes,” a low, guttural voice growled behind me, “We know of the book.” I couldn’t have answered if I’d wanted; i was frozen where I was. I could perceive that the that the two creatures were creeping forward, closing in for the kill.

“Where is it?” the creature to my front spat.

“I-I,” I stammered.

“Tell us!” The thing, behind me roared.

“I -I don’t- don’t know!” I sobbed, tears flooding down my face in a huge tidal wave. After I said this, the thing in front of me gave an ear-piercing, harpy-like shriek straight from the depths of Hell.

The I was seized from behind by large, powerful arms and spun around. I saw a bright, blinding light and saw- -

Dad.

“Sacred-ja, didn’t we sport?’ he said playfully, tousling my hair, as if nothing he and Mom just did was seriously traumatic to my young mind. I didn’t answer him, I just shoved him away in disgust and stormed off to my room, not wanting them to see my angry tears.

“What gives, sport?’ I heard him call after me. “It’s just a prank, man, chill!”

I thought long and hard that night, until I’d gotten a pretty good idea of how they had staged the whole thing. After turning off their cell phones, all they had to do was wait for me to come home. I figured Mom stayed hidden in the attic the whole time, while Dad probably hid in either the spare bedroom or the bathroom that was near the playroom. While I was in the playroom, my Mother must’ve been watching my by peeking at through a crack in the door. When I opened the door to the cubby hole, she knocked something over as hard as she could and shut off the house’s lighting through the electric panel that was in the attic. I figured this was the cue for my Dad, who was probably right outside the door at this point, to slam it shut and lock me in. After I quieted down, my Mom slowly opened the attic door, and then snuck to the back of it and pretended to sob, which would explain the delay between the door creaking open and the sound of her lament. All it took was to lure me far enough into the attic, and then she pretended to be killed, which signalled for Dad to unlock the door and creep up behind me, and slam the door shut and lock it. After that, all it took was decent acting, which wouldn’t have been hard for them, seeing as they met in the drama club during high school. Why they thought the whole thing would be okay to do, I’ve never figured out, and probably never will.

22:58, January 22, 2017 (UTC)22:58, January 22, 2017 (UTC)22:58, January 22, 2017 (UTC)22:58, January 22, 2017 (UTC)22:58, January 22, 2017 (UTC)Banned In CP (talk) 22:58, January 22, 2017 (UTC)

I awoke the next morning to dazzling sunshine and a chorus or singing birds, as though nothing unpleasant had ever existed in the world. I eventually managed to drag myself downstairs, where a mountain of buttery pancakes and a towering glass of orange juice greeted me. I suppose that this could’ve been their way of apologizing, but after the previous night's events, I seriously felt that the universe was mocking me by being so cheerful.

“Mery morning!” my mother sang from the kitchen.

I sat down opposite Dad, who was hidden behind a ginormous newspaper and already dressed for work.

“D’ja sleep well, sport?” he asked off handedly. Yep, the universe was definitely mocking me.

“Well, how ‘bout it, son?” he added, with a sharp look from over the top of the paper. It was little difficult to take him seriously when the headline read: “MAN CLAIMS HIS DOG GAVE HIM MOUTH CANCER!” with a picture of a tiny little old man holding the leash of a colossal Tibetan Mastiff.

“Umm,” I replied, “good, i guess” I took a tentative sip of my orange juice.

“Didn’t let the bedbugs bite, did you?” Mom chimed over the running sink, giving a high, false chuckle.

“Nooo…” I said through a mouthful of pancake, shaking my head. What sort of game were they playing here, exactly?

“Say, sport,” Dad said seriously, folding up his newspaper and leaning sternly across the table. What had I done now! “You haven’t by any chance seen my pair of underwear, have you?”

I just stared at him.

“Oh, if you’d just let me buy you some--” Mom interjected.

“Penny, we both know how I feel about this!”

“But honey, it makes your thingy taste --”

At this, my father cleared his throat, turning his attention back to me. “Well, if you do see them--”

“You need more than one pair, Dave.” Dad closed his eyes, quite visibly restraining himself.

“Look, sport,” he said opening his eyes, “ just tell me if you see them, okay? And if you did take them, then that’s a pretty nasty trick, Ben. Hey, how about I drive you to school today? Sound like a plan?”

“No, “ I said calmly, “ I think I’ll ride the bus today.” “But--”

“Dad, I want to ride the bus.”

He leaned back into his chair, and tapped his fingers on the table awkwardly for a moment, before getting up to go to work.

The cold winter sunlight was very warm, coming through the window. Not having slept much the night before, I swiftly drifted off into a light doze. About ten minutes we got to school, I woke up, and noticed a boy my age staring at me. I've never seen him before; I figured he must be a new kid. Like I said, I was a shy kid, so I didn’t get up to talk to him, although I was put off by his constant staring. Something looked off about him, too, he was very gaunt and sickly looking. I tried to ignore it, but I could feel his eyes burning a hole in my face. I decided that I’d try to talk to him after we got off the bus, but I never saw him get off the bus, and I definitely gotten off before him. The bus was empty as it drove away, too. I must have missed him.

I didn’t see him again until the next morning, when he stared at me the whole bus ride again. Again he vanished. I saw him at lunch, though, where he stared at me, not eating a thing. He wasn’t on the afternoon bus. It wasn’t until the next day, Friday, that I told anybody about this. I had suffered another uncomfortable bus ride, and at lunch I told my friends, Bobby and Thomas.

“This kid sounds creepy,” Bobby said as he cut a piece of pork chop. “Hey, you think the pork chops taste like cheese, or is it just me?”

“Lemme try some,” I said, for I had chosen a barbeque sandwich. “Nah… taste more like hotdog to me.”

“I thought it tasted more like mayonnaise,” Thomas added.

“I’m too hungry to care,” Bobby shrugged.

“Same,” said Thomas. “Hey,” he said to me after a moment,” maybe that kid has a crush on you!”

“What, like he’s gay or something?”

“Yeah,” Bobby whispered, “you could, like, let him see you steal one of the nudie magazines from the library again. Then, he’d know you’re straight!”

“Maybe….” There was a contemplative silence.

“Barbeque’s good,” I said casually as I aimed my spoon to hot a girl with a pen the next table over.

“Nice shot,’ Thomas complimented after it smacked her in the eye. “Hey, where is that kid, anyways?”

I scanned the cafeteria in a moment, spotting him alone at a table to himself. “There,” I said, pointing a rude finger at the boy. As I did so, he casually got up and started to walk away. ‘See? He’s getting up.”

“I don’t see anybody.”

“Yeah, there’s nobody over there. You should see a doctor. Hey, Thomas, did you the new episode of Lube Man last night?”

“Yeah!” Thomas exclaimed. “That scene in the Mexican Restaurant's bathroom had me sweating from the tension!”

And as they talked about the latest adventures of their favorite superhero, with nothing to trouble their minds. As I wasn’t much interested in a man whose superpower was to make things slippery, I turned things over in my mind.

Why couldn’t they see him, if they weren’t joking? Was I crazy? Or was it real? If so.. What did he want? Did he even want anything? What if he wanted to kill me, or what if…. What if he was already dead? At this thought, I gave a very melodramatic gasp.

“Uh, Ben, you okay?” Thomas asked worriedly.

“Yeah, I just… uh… I farted,” I lied stupidly.

“Thanks for the gift, bubble butt,” Bobby chided before returning to his conversation with Thomas about Lube Man defeating a creepy old man who owned a toy store. I spent the rest of lunch continuing my musings.

I hadn’t really expected to see the gaunt-faced boy until Monday, so I was somewhat surprised when I saw him on the afternoon bus. I was about to confront him, when he came up to me first

“Hello,” I said stiffly.

“Where is it?” the boy asked harshly. He was obviously above such annoyance as common courtesy.

“What?” I asked incredulously.

“Do not feign ignorance. You know precisely what I desire.’

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Do I know you?”

His face twisted in a rather nasty sneer. ‘If you do not presently know what I want, then you will in good time. Even then, you will not know what I am really after.” And without further ado, he took residence in a seat and resumed his gazing. I was seriously weirded out by this kid now.

“Who were you talking to?” a reputably obnoxious fifth grader in the seat in front of me asked.

“To Little Boy Oogle Eyes over there,” I said, pointing to the mysterious boy.

“That seats empty, freak,” he said before turning back around.

“Is it your imaginary friend?” the fifth grader chived after a minute.

“No,” I snapped.

“Is too. You know, only babies have imaginary friends.”

“I’m not a baby.”

“Are too.”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Am not!”

“Aww,” he cooed in a mockful baby tone, “ Is ickle shmudikums gonna cwy?” “Shut the hell up, dickface.”

“Does baby need a bottle?”

“At least I’m not a--”

“Baby needs his mommy, doesn’t he?’

“At least I got a mom who loves me.”

“My mom loves me,” he said defensively. “Yeah,” I chuckled, “Only a mother could love a face like that!”

“Well, your mom must look like a gorilla to pop out a kid as ugly as you!” “Shut up, butt-wipe!”

“I bet your moms a circus act! It must be cool seeing a gorilla fling shit!” he spat. Then he started imitating a monkey by scratching his armpits. That was the last straw.

“Hey, numb-nuts, come here,” I commanded.

“What?” he asked, leaning forward with his face still looking like a chimp. I grabbed his hair with my left hands, pulled his neck over the seat, and pummelled his face with my right. His squeals only fueled my fire.

---

“You broke his nose in three places!” my mother screeched.

“But the nurse isn’t a doctor! How can she tell?” I screamed back.

“A lobotomized bag of piss could tell you where it broke! His nose looked like somebody jammed a jackhammer to it!”

“What does ’lobotomized’ even mean?” I demanded.

“Oh, nevermind!” she grumped.

After the bus driver had pulled me off, he’d patched the kid up and made us sit separately in the front two seat until everybody else got off, then drove us back to the school. He’d called the school from his cellphone, who must’ve called our parents, because they were already there. The fifth-grader was sent to the nurse, and I was sent to the principal's office with my parents. Miraculously, I was let off with a wee’s bus suspension, rather than out-of-school suspension. Needless to say, my parents were royally pissed. At the moment, we were in the car on the way home, the black winter night already nigh.

“Look,: my father shot forcefully, “you better damn well hope his parents don’t press charges, or your little ass is fuck’n grass, you hear me? You fucked him up pretty bad, kid!”

“But he called mom a shit-flinging gorilla!”

At this he reached around the seat and slapped me in the mouth, screaming. “Watch your goddamned mouth!”

“But that’s what he said!” I protested.

“I don’t care!” he roared. “You don’t swear!”

“But you just--”

“He is an adult, Ben!” Mom yelled. “You’re only ten years old!”

“Ben, when we get home, you're to go straight to the bathroom and wash your mouth out with soap,” my Dad growled,” And make sure it’s the liquid, this time. Apparently, you didn’t learn from the bar soap last time.’

“But Dad--”

“No buts!”

“But--”

“Not a word! Y’hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled dejectedly.

“And come back downstairs after you’ve got the soap,” he added. “ I’m not about to sit up there for half an hour.”

“Half an hour?” I whined.

“Make it an hour!” he said sternly. “But Dad--”

“Does it need to be two hours?” “No, sir,” I mumbled.

“Good. he sighed and relaxed into his seat.

“Dave,” my Mother said softly to my father,” do you really think an hour’s necessary? I mean, it seems a little--”

“Abso-lutely,” he said with relish, patting her knee and giving her a reassuring smile. “Boy’s gotta learn somehow, right?” After a moment, he muttered half to himself, “Yes, yes, absolutely necessary. Hey, Penny, how about some Domino's eh?”

“What about Benjamin?” she asked curtly.

“There should be some bologna in the freezer. Might have some freezer burn, but it’ll be alright.”

“Fine,” she sighed, “but no meat lover’s, okay?”

“Well, what kind do you want?”

“Extra meat.”

“Deal! Oh, and uh, sport?” he addressed me, looking at me through the rear-view mirror.

“Yes, Dad?”

“Don’t swallow the soap, it’ll give you mud’butt.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Diarrhea.”

“Oh.”

We eventually made it home, and I did exactly as I’d been told. I went straight to the upstairs bathroom, filled my mouth with soap (God, I can taste it just thinking about it), and went downstairs. It wasn’t easy to endure them gloating over their pizza, but I figured that’s what I got for caving that kid’s face in. After an excruciating hour, I was finally allowed to spit out the soap into the sink.

“Rinse your mouth out with water a few times,” Dad called from the living room. “Should do the trick.”

“Where’d you say the bologna was, again?” I asked, leaning over the sink, spitting out the last remnants of Watermelon-Kiwi hand soap.

“I’sh in da freesher nesh do da fish,” he answered through a mouthful of pizza.

“Can I put it in the microwave?”

“No.”

“But it’s frozen!” I protested.

“Thaw it out under your armpit.” Apparently Mom found this hilarious, because I heard a series of short, girlish giggles.

“Umm… I’m okay….”

“Damn, honey, this pizza is so warm and rich,” Dad gloated as I was forced to watch them eat their pizza while I only had frozen, fishy bologna.

“The crust is so thick and soft,” Mom added with exaggerated foodgasms, “ and the cheese is so moist and gooey.”

I glared at them and cursed them internally for somehow savoring their glorious pizza for nearly an hour.

“I sure wish Ben could have some,” Dad taunted as he reached for a particularly tasty looking piece.

“Do you have to rub it in?” I snapped.

“Go to bed, sport.”

--

I was in a wooded clearing, completely alone. Looking down, I saw that I was holding a gas can in my left hand, and a revolver in the other. Somehow, the gun looked familiar. I looked back up to see my parents standing a few yards away from me, the full, orange moon casting an eerie light on their faces. They were slowly shaking their heads in unision. After a moment or two, they blew away like dust in the wind, and were replaced by my maternal grandparents, who were nodding at me in sync with each other.

Then, their necks snapped with a loud crack, and they fell to the ground, thrashing violently. I heard a noise behind me and turned to see a large, black pitbull trotting up to me. She nipped my left hand, making the gas can drop. She picked up the can by the handle with her mouth, strode over the flailing grandparents, and drizzled the gasoline over them. Immediately, they started hissing and coughing vehemently. Then the black dog cast down the gas can and trotted over to a sapling that had not been there before. The dog barked at the falling, hissing bodies and curled up as if to go to sleep. The second the dog barked, though, flames erupted from the drizzled gas, and my grandparents immediately, became motionless and silent. Then I was sent into a furious rage, for I heard an insane cracking from somewhere. I realized it was me, and it went away, and the sapling started to ooze blood.

“Kill it! Kill it!” commanded the gaunt-faced boy fomr the bus, who was now poised on the other side of the tree, pointing at it. I tried to ask why, but my throat felt clogged and swollen.

“Kill it! Kill it! Kill it now!” he screeched. I raised the gun to the bleeding sapling. The pitbull whimpered.

“Kill it! Kill it! KILL IT!”

I shook my head and left the gun to fall to the ground. The boy stopped screaming and the dog wasn’t whimpering anymore. All was silent, save the soft crackling of the fire. The tree gushing blood like an open tap. Then the boy made a slicing motion across his neck with his finger, giving me a look of deepest loathing. He reached down and picked up a revolver. I looked down at my feet, but the gun was no longer there.

“How?” I asked. He only put his finger to his lips and put on a murderous smile. The dog was growling. The boy aimed at the tree.

Then he fired.

I collapsed to the ground instantly, screaming, clutching the new hole in my chest. Warm… Wet… hollow… Looking up, all was total emptiness, save the boy, who was now standing over me. He glowed a deep, blood-red. He smiled saintly.

“The tree!” I gasped through the blood in my lungs. He shook his head, still smiling sweetly.

“You,” he whispered, raising the gun to my face.

“Who are you?!” I wailed in agony.

“Names,” he spoke softly,” have power. And while I know yours, Benjamin Ross, I don’t think I shall tell you mine. I have many aliases… Tragedy, Death, Loss, Lament, Misfortune… but you could just call me The Nameless.”

“Wh-AAAGH!!” I blurted through puddles of blood gushing out of my mouth… Some even through my eyes and nose.

“I’m sorry?” he asked, obviously knowing what I meant, but making me suffer the misery of talking.

“What do you WANT?” I sobbed to the ground. The Nameless hurled The Book of Agony in front of me, that severed head leering up at me.

“Though,” he added contemplatively, “what I really want, you can’t give… yet.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” I choked.

“Only I,” he answered. He raised the gun again, his his smile even becoming more holier. Then he cocked the gun.

--

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

“Ben, honey, your grandparents are here!” my mother called through my closed bedroom door.

“‘Kay!” I groaned. The blankets were abnormally cozy that morning.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

“Sport, get up before I make you wash your grandmother’s dentures with your own toothbrush!” Dad roared twenty minutes later.

“Coming!” I shouted. I looked at my alarm clock. It was only 7:30 in the morning. As I lay there, with the brilliant sunshine dancing across my room, I went over the nightmare I’d had. It was crystal clear in my mind. I tried telling myself that it was just a dream, but I couldn’t shake a strong sense of foreboding. I rolled grudgingly out of bed and shuffled zombie-like to my closet to get some clothes.

Fwump! - “SHIT!” I thundered when something came cascading onto my crown.

“What was that?” Dad yelled in a dangerous tone.

“Tits!” I cried down stupidly, blurting out the first replacement that came to mind.

“What?” he called.

“Mits! I found my mittens!”

“That's what I thought!”

Cursing and massaging the top of my head, I reached down to pick up what had fallen from the top shelf. Then I realized something that me freeze in my tracks: it was the cover of The Book of Agony. I didn’t know where it came from, because I had scoured that closet for the horrid thing, but to no avail. Cautiously, I picked it up and was taken aback by how light it was. Then I found that all of the pages had been torn out. I quickly stuffed it in a coat pocket before getting dressed.

“Hi-ya, Benny,” my grandma greeted when I came downstairs, “ how ya been?”

“Good,” I lied thickly while receiving a rib-crushing hug.

“That’s always good to hear!”

“Hey, son,” Grandad said to my dad (though he was actually son-in-law), “You still got that rake I let you borrow?”

“Yeah, it’s out back,” he replied, pointing his thumb over his shoulder.

“Good, good. Y’know, that rake was my great- great grandpappy’s?”

“No,” Dad said with a look of mild surprise. “No, I didn’t.”

“Yeah, yeah. Legend has that it that he shoved the end of it up a yankee’s bootyhole durin’ the Civil War, but I ain’t so sure about that.”

“Oh, ummm….”

“Benji!” Grandad boomed, taking notice of my presence and coming over to violently attempt to shake my arm loose. “Say, how ya been, eh? Long time no see! School goin’ okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, school’s fine,” I answered. This, at least, was true.

‘Heard-ja got inna fight?” he pried eagerly, eyes huge with excitement. “D’jou het ‘im good?”

‘Dad,” Mom interjected sternly,” You’re not encouraging him, are you?”

“Ahem, hmm-hmm,” my grandad coughed awkwardly, straightening his posture.

“Ben,” he stated with a sudden seriousness, “ what you did was highly unacceptable. I hope you learned your lesson!” However, when my parents backs were tuned a few minutes later, he turned to me and punched his palm and gave me two thumbs up, a boyish grin spread across his face.

The day passed joyfully, and night the same. We rose early the next morning and all put on our sunny best. The unusually uneventful drive to Church was spent in merriment brought by my grandparents presence immediately after taking seats in the pews, we were all spendily bored out of our minds by the wheezy, droning rambles of the tiny old preacher.

-

“Ben,” my grandad said as we sat in the car while my parents were inside, talking to the preacher,” You’ve been awfully reserved this weekend. Are you really okay? If not, then you can tell us, if you like.”

“I- I’m fine.” I stammered, “really.”

“Are you sure, Ben?” she asked with a meaningful look.

Was about to tell her again that everything was fine, but… Somehow I couldn't. It’d been pointless to confide in my parents, they’d never actually cared when something was wrong. My grandparents, on the other hand, had always shown love and support, which I rarely felt from my parents with sincerity. Maybe now somebody would actually listen to me. I sighed.

“No, “ I moaned.

“Well, what is it, son?” Grandad asked softly.

“You’d just laugh, or not believe me,” I said dejectedly.

“We won’t laugh,” Grandma assured. “Okay… well, it all started on my birthday…” I began to my knees. I was hesitant at first, but I soon found myself recounting all that I could remember since finding the book, from first picking it up all the way to finding the book, from the first it up all the way to finding the page-’ess over the morning before. They said nothing, but respectfully let me talk. I took a surprisingly short amount of time to tell the tale, and my parents returned soon after.

-

“So, you did actually make him wash out his mouth out with liquid soap for an hour?” my grandma exclaimed.

“Well, he has to learn somehow,” Dad replied irritably.

“But liquid soap for an hour?” “He didn't learn from the bar soap last time, so, this liquid soap this time,” I heard Mom say.

“Plus,” Dad argued,” he kept arguing with me. I was gonna make it half an hour, but I had to make it an hour. Ben nearly pushed it to two hours.”

I heard my grandad scoff. “ And if he accidently swallowed it?” he asked incredulously.

“Then it’d teach him lesson even better!” Mom retorted.

It wasn’t very late, but I had been sent to bed early after falling asleep on the couch. Once in bed, though, I found it impossible to go to sleep. Drawn by the sounds of heated words, I was now crouched at the top of the stairs as I listened to the argument in the living room below.

“Penny,” Grandma sighed, “did we teach you nothing as a child.”

“You taught me to be more conservative,” Mom said. “ You're much too liberal.”

“Helen,” Grandad rumbled lowly to my grandma,” we need to talk about the book.”

“Book?” Dad asked confusedly, “Charlie, what book are you talking about?”

“David,” Grandad began heavily, “Benjamin has told us about a particular book that he found a little while ago. On his birthday, actually. He says he told you about it?”

“There was a long pause.

“Oh!” my mother exclaimed. “Davey, he means the book Ben said was written in blood!”

“That!” Dad scoffed. “That stupid thing he made up? You don’t honestly believe him, do you? It’s nonsense!” “Nonsense?” Grandma said in a dangerously quiet voice. “What’s nonsense is staging an elaborate ‘prank’- as you call it- and traumatizing him!”

“Prank! What prank?” Mom blurted a little too hastily. “We just ignored it. What is this prank-y thing?”

“He says you lured him into the attic and scared him,” Grandad explained.

“What?” laughed Dad disbelievingly. “You don’t seriously buy that, right? I mean, he’s claiming to have a book written in blood.”

“I,’ Grandma stressed,” am willing to take Ben’s word wholeheartedly about this.”

“You’re joking, right? I Mean, c’mon, the whole things fucking preposterous.”

I heard something flop onto the coffee table. Peeking down into the living room, I saw my parents staring open-mouthed at the pageless cover to The Book of Agony. I had given it to my grandparents earlier. “The Book of Agony?” Grandma prodded. “Ring any bells?’

“I-I--”

“Mom,” I heard my mother say quietly,”Where are the pages?”

“Ben said he found them torn out yesterday morning.”

“But-but--” Dad blubbered.

“Look,” Grandad said, “Ben’s experiences with this thing have disturbed him greatly--”

“Experiences? What experiences?” “He hasn’t told you?”

“N-no, “ Dad stammered.

That was half true. I’d told them about the nightmares, and feelings of being watched the morning I tried to show them the book. They hadn’t been listening, though and I didn’t trust them enough to confide in them after they had lured me into the attic.

“Nightmares every night, David. Dream about burning in battery acid, like that and stuff,” Grandad said firmly.

“I-I--”

“Feels like he’s always being watched. A boy he’s never seen before stalks him at school and demands to have this book.” “Well, I um--”

“Whatever the case, I suggest you sign your sun up for therapy. See a psychiatrist. You can at least do that for him, can’t you?” my grandad spat.

“Yeah, yeah, will do,” Dad mumbled weakly.

“I just told you, I don’t have it!” I hissed.

“And I told you to bring it!” The Nameless spat.

He and I were standing alone by a broken swingset during recess the next day, well out of earshot from anybody else. He had approached me demanding The Book of Agony. The only problem was that my grandparents still had it, and they were home to several states to the north. “No you didn’t!” I exclaimed. ‘You just said you wanted something, and you didn’t even say what it was you wanted!”

“Well, what the hell happened to it?” he growled.

“The pages disappeared and I gave it to my grandparents!”

The boy straightened his back and put on a peculiar smile, as if pleased about something. “Well, then,” he smirked, “I guess this means I can get what I'm really after.”

“Which is…?”

“Only I,” he said, sticking out two fingers like a gun and shooting my face. At that moment, the teachers called us to come back in. I turned towards them, but when I turned back, the boy was gone.

--

“Benjamin Ross, get you ass in here! NOW!”

My father was staringly rigidly in the doorway, knuckles clenched tight on the frame, when I came home from the bus. My stomach seemed to plummet at the sight of his barely-restrained rage.

“Upstairs. Bedroom. Now!” he spat through gritted teeth, shoving me into the stairs. I stumbled up the stairs and found my Mom outside my closed door. The look on her face was of utmost disgust and loathing.

“Inside,” she said hoarsely. It looked as though she’d been crying.

I gently pushed open the door and froze in cold horror. All over the walls, the ceiling, even the floor, were the missing pages of The Book of Agony, nailed to the spot. But this was nothing compared to that which was in the center of the room. Anchored from the spinning ceiling fan was a gagged and strangled bloodhound, revolving slowly from where it hung. The eyes had been gouged out, and dried spit and blood was caked around the lips and snout. The dog’s underside rib cage had been ripped open, revealing a hollow cavity. All of the organs were spilling out onto the floor, some even torn free. A drizzle of blood was still dribbling out, making a sickening slapping sound as it hit the intestines.

I was suddenly picked up by my backpack and hurled into the wall. “YOU LITTLE FUCKER, WHAT IN THE HOLY FUCKING HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, HUH?!” my father thundered deafeningly as he advanced menacingly towards me. “DO YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY?! THIS IS JUST SOME KIND OF SICK JOKE?!”

“Dad- Dad--” I stammered, but he picked me up by the hair and came within an inch of my face,

“NO, LISTEN TO ME, YOU PSYCHOTIC PIECE OF SHIT!” I’M GONNA BEAT THE LIVING HELL OUT OF YOU, AND YOU’RE GONNA TAKE IT!” He slammed me face first into the floor, ripping off my backpack simultaneously.

“M-MOM!” I screamed through having my head slammed into the ground repeatedly.

“I-SAID-YOU'RE-GONNA-FUCKING-TAKE-IT!”

And then I found myself thrown into my dresser. My lamp fell off and smacked me in the head. I tried to crawl away, but he threw me back into the dresser and meat me up with the lamp, not even stopping after the bottom shattered against my skull, Through the blood, tears, and blinding pain, I saw The Nameless sneering at me across the room from my open closet.

“D-DADDY!” I pleaded, “IT WAS HIM! IT WAS HIM, IN THE CLOSET!” But he only threw me into the closet, and the last thing I saw before I blacked out was not my father, but the Nameless beating me to a pulp with a wooden bat.

---

The story was that I had been beaten mercilessly by a group of teenagers, and that Dad had found me in a ditch after I never came home. All of them were male, all of them white. One was a curly-haired blond wearing a red shirt. It was he who used the bat on me, Another one was tan with dark hair. He was wearing a brown hoodie and ripped jeans. The last one, and seemingly the leader, was tall and muscular, with sleek brown hair and an orange jacket. Personally, I found the story a bit far-fetched, but the doctors at the emergency room seemed to buy into it.

‘I’d suffered several fractured and two broken ribs, a broken nose, internal bleeding, a broken elbow, and fractured eye socket, cracked skull, and a concussion. Obviously, the police became involved, but they too believed the cover story. The tried to find the imaginary attackers, but their efforts were fruitless.

While I was in the hospital, my parents had turned over legal custody to my grandparents, who gladly took me after I was deemed fit to return to home. They never were told the truth about what had happened to me, and I wasn’t eager to tell them, either, To be honest, I was afraid of what my father would do to me if he ever found out that I’d told anybody.

Theirs was a modest and a cozy little house tucked neatly in the mountains up north. Woods hugged the house for miles around, and neighbors were far and few between. It was now January, and snow always blanketed the landscape. During the day, snow and icicles glistened under the gentle sunlight, and at night the snow was blue and the air clean and crisp. Under the light of the moon, the trees stood tall and protective, branches intertwined to guard the night. This new haven was never sinister or ominous, but was a reserve of nature’s beauty and comfort. It was home.

It was saddening to leave me friends behind, but I never did have all that many. But being with my grandparents was very enjoyable, and I adjusted fairly well into school. For once in my life, I actually felt truly happy. Everything was really quite wonderful. Wonderful, until one Thursday afternoon.

Due to being thrust into a new curriculum, and having been in the hospital for several weeks, when I first came back to school, I had to spend lots of time studying in order to catch up. Thankfully, my grandparents were always to help me if I needed it, something my parents had never done.

“Figure it out, sport,” my father would grunt. “But, I can’t!” I would wail. “Ask the teacher.” :But it’s due tomorrow!” “Leave me alone.” Or if it was my Mother: “Figure it out.” she would huff. “But, I can’t” I would whine. “Ask you father.” “But he won’t help me either!” “Then ask the teacher.” “But It’s due tomorrow!” “Leave me alone.”

I didn’t notice it at first when I opened my backpack. The day had already died; the only light in my room came from the lamp on my desk, casting a dim amber glow about a room, broken by long, creeping shadows. The initial confusion I felt when I noticed an extra book in my bad quickly turned into a horror after I pulled it out. There, nestled in my hands like some sick ambition of a child, was The Book of Agony; the pages roughly sewn and stapled back together. They all had holes in them where they’d been nailed down, and some even had footprints from being stepped on and splotches of blood from the disemboweled bloodhound.

No, I thought, no, no, no, no, no, this can’t be happening. This can’t be-- I froze. There… there, in the very back of the book was a new page. A page that hadn’t been there before. A page glistening with fresh, scarlet blood that showed myself dead on the ground with a bullet hole in my chest and a large pitbull curled up beside me, cleaning the wound. I just stared at it, frozen by terror. Only when I realized that I was trembling in a cold sweat from head to foot did I slam the book shut. Nobody was home, nobody. If there was, then maybe I would’ve shown it to my grandparents and would have been advised and comforted by them. But I was alone, with nobody for comfort, and so an icy independent determination set over me, and not even when my grandparents came home, did I ever confide in them. Because… I already knew what I had to do.

---

It was nearly 2:00 AM. I pressed my ear to the crack under my grandparent’s bedroom door one last time, just to be sure… Still, only snores; it was safe to carry on. I proceeded my way downstairs and out the door, drawing my coat more tightly around me against the deadly cold. At the shed, I fumbled with the doors and got the shovel, and trudged deeper into the woods through the snow.

I eventually came into a wide clearing about two miles away from home. I’d chosen it because I didn’t want to cause any damage to the forest that I’d so often played in before. The night was bright and clear, but long, groping shapes and shadows in the tree still preyed on my imagination, but my mind was set. I had to do this, or the nightmare might never stop. I had to end it, end it all that night.

Failing to suppress a shudder that had very little to do with the cold, I grit my teeth and dropped two of the things I was carrying, and began shoveling away a patch of snow. It took a lot longer than I expected, due mostly to the fact that the shovel was about as tall as I was. Leaning on my shovel after I was done, I thought that I heard something behind me. I froze to the spot, waiting for any other noise. After I heard nothing else, I somehow managed to convince myself that it had just been a rabbit, though I was still too scared to turn around. I quickly snatched up The Book of Agony and chucked it into the clearing I’d made in the snow and was reaching down for the gas can when--

Snap!

I whirled around wildly on the spot, my frantic eyes scouring the shadows behind me. I rather thought that I saw something move in the bushes, but after a few minutes had passed by without any incident, I mustered up just enough resolve to resume what I was doing. More than somewhat panicked, I hurriedly doused the book in gasoline and fumbled around in my pockets for the matches that I’d brought. I finally managed to light one and keep it lit long enough to flick it onto the gas-covered book.

The instant that the match made contact with the book, I was violently thrust backwards through the air, finally smashing into a tree and crumpling up at tis base. Dazed, I tried to focus on the scene through the pinpricks of pain. The fire had definitely started, but it was all wrong. The flames were tall, black, and spiraling. There wasn’t any smoke that I could see, but the air was thick and toxic, as if the whole woods were covered in dense smoke. I vaguely wondered why I could see so well if the flames were black, for there was a sharp glare emanating from the fire, but like the flames, it too was wrong. The light seemed to drain all color, like a black-and-white movie, and it brought everything into extremely sharp focus, as if I were looking through the eyes of a hawk. It also seemed to be fading in and out of darkness, but that admittedly could have been me still recovering from being slammed into a tree.

In my confusion, I suddenly took notice of an odd tickling sensation. When I looked up, I saw to my horror that the tree was on fire. IN fact, now that I actually looked around me, I saw that, despite the burning booking being the center of a large clearing, the whole forest around me was ignited by that black flame. I tried to get up, but a blast of fire pummeled me in the chest, knocking me off my feet again. I tried again two more times, but twice again I was knocked backwards by a blast of the ebony flames. I was done… finished. I was going to die right here, and there was nothing I could do about it. Already I could feel the flames taking me into their burning embrace. Even though I knew it was useless, I tried over and over again to run from the tree to quench the flames in the untouched snow just a few feet away and end the pain. But every time that persistent blast of fire would knock m e back into the scorching black flames against the tree.

At first I thought that it was the hissing of flame on wood, and I don’t know how I heard it over my panic and screaming, but I noticed that the hissing had the quiet undulations of speech. It wasn’t discernable enough to understand it, though. Through the streaming tears in my eyes, dark shapes appeared in my peripheral vision. The stalked and creeped even closer, but whenever I tried to look directly at them, they disappeared, as if they trapped in some other realm that my eyes could not penetrate.

eeeeEEEEYAAaaauu!

A fiery black figure broke free, charging full tilt at me. No, it wasn’t made of fire. It was the charred corpse of a woman, still a-flame. It came closer, closer, closer, and then --

-

I awoke with a start, gasping for breath and tangled in my sheets. It took me a moment to realize that I was no longer trapped against the burning tree and that I was safe in my room, with the yellow morning sunshine peaking through my frosted windows. I sighed deeply to ease my nerves and strangled myself from my cocoon. The chilly air bit at my sweat-soaked skin, and I hurried to my closet to change out of my pajamas.

Wait… pajamas? But I hadn’t put on any pajamas the night before. I looked over my body. I found no burns or dirt, or scratched or anything. Could it be? Could it all had been a dream? But… but it has seemed so real. It wasn branded into my memory fresh as the burns I’d suffered the night before. No, the burns I thought I’d suffered. But my relief was short-lived. If I had dreamed all of the previous night’s events, horrible as they were, then that meant I’d never destroyed the book. Or had it been destroyed? What was I thinking? Of course it hadn’t, it’d obviously all been a dream. But where was the book now? Or had that all been a dream, to0? No, I’d been haunted by that wretched thing for months now, there's no way I’d have dreamed all of that. But… but what if it had all been in my head? The thought that I was completely crazy sent me into panic, but then a calm came over me. If none of my troubles had been real… then I was in no real danger. I almost laughed with relief.

Yet… there was an odd, empty feeling in my chest… as if it had been hollowed out with a knife. I felt a strong sense of loss that had nothing to do with the realization that I had imagined all of the things that had happened. It was as if somebody close and dear to me had died. Had they? No, of course not. Nobody had died, I was being silly.

The day went by in blissful denial of my problems. I forced myself to be happy and cheerful, and I half-believed I really was happy. But deep down, I knew that I was only fooling myself. When I came home, though, a hole appeared to me in my theory: What about when I showed my grandparents the book cover? Or the dog, even?

Oh, what was I thinking? Of course the dead dog had never been there? I’d obviously been beaten up by a group of older kids, like my parents had said. The dead dog must’ve been part of a dream. Now that I thought about it, I did kind of remember being beaten senseless by those kids. And I’d probably imagined showing the book cover to grandparents. Why, if I asked them about, they’d probably have no idea as to what the hell I was talking about. I went to bed that night firmly convinced that I was totally insane, which brought a deal of comfort to me.

-

No! No! Take me back! I don’t want to be here anymore!” I wailed.

“Be quiet, you,” the Nameless snarled, “and get a move on.”

He kicked me, which sent me face-first into the snow. Both of my arms and both of my legs had been broken after that charred woman charged at me. The Nameless came soon afterwards, and how he was forcing me to crawl somewhere. Wherever we were going, I had no clue to where it was. But he sure wanted to get there. We’d been going all day, but still not very far, seeing as I was crawling on broken bones.

“Why?” I whimpered.

“You are much too tediously slow,” he said.

“No, why are you doing this to me? What did I ever do to deserve this?”

He didn’t answer.

We travelled on a few minutes more before he stopped. I could just make him out in the darkness.

‘Ben,” he said quietly, staring ahed with his hands in his pockets, “if you want it to end, you need to come to us. To where we are going. Start by going to the clearing.” “B-but… We just came from there!” I sobbed. I didn’t know how much more pain I can take.

“I am not talking to you.”

“B-but- -”

His head turned towards me, his eyes staring deeply into mine. “Open your eyes, Ben,. Wake up.”

---

I awoke with a start. I looked on the clock on my wall. I t was 8:00.

“Helen, honey, we need more Lucky Charms,” I heard my grandad rumble from the kitchen.

“Hey, Ben,” Grandad said when I came into the kitchen a few minutes later. The kitchen and dining area were in the same room. “How’d ja sleep?” His voice was groggy and his eyes still puffy from waking up.

“Alright, I guess,” I lied. Hmmm. He strikes me funny that people so often lie about their well-being out of politeness. Nobody is exempt from this phenomenon, it seems. Even the most honest people are guilty of this offense.

“Good, good,” he said with a slow nod of his head towards his cereal bowl.

“Grandma?” I said at the table after I’d gotten a bowl of cheerios.

“Yes, sweety?”

“Do you remember that book cover I gave to you?”

“Book cover?” My spirits soared. “Y’mean the one to the book you said was written in blood?” It felt like a boulder dropped in my stomach.

“Um… yeah…,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Do you remember what you did with it?”

“Oh, we threw that thing out almost immediately,” Grandad replied airily. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing,” I said, trying to sound offhand. “I was just wondering, that’s all.”

He shrugged and continued to steadily plow through his cereal.

I finished breakfast and watched some cartoons, though I wasn’t paying any particular attention. My whole theory about making everything up in my head was crashing down around me. So the book had been real. Unless… Unless maybe I had seen the book, but maybe everything else had been in my head. Yeah… Yeah, I must’ve torn the papers out of the book myself, and just forgot about it. It had seemed so real. And the way the Nameless had started in my eyes, it was like he was looking through to my soul. He'd said to look at the clearing, that it would lead me to the end of it all.

No. Stop thinking about it, I told myself. It’s just a dream. It’s just a - -

---

A clump of snow slipped from a tree branch above and slapped me on the head.

What the hell am I doing? I thought. I’m not going t find anything there.

I trudged on through the sloshy snow a bit more. I should have been there by then, but I must’ve gotten lost somewhere. This was stupid. This was pointless. It’d just been a stupid dream, and here I was wandering around in the woods in melting snow. I was burning up under all my layers, because for some reason the sun decided it would be hot enough for May weather even though it was still in the middle of January. I didn't feel like carrying any of my coats though, so I was somewhat content to endure the heat.

This is stupid, this is stupid, this is stupid. This is - -

I stopped in my tracks. I hadn’t quite reached the clearing, but already I knew I was close, because every single tree was burned to an absolute crisp. They towered over me, stretching out their long black fingers towards the clearing ahead, as if daring me to progress into their charred domain. I knew the clearing I dreamed about, for I had been there before, and none of it’s trees or shrubs were burnt. This must be the wrong place, it must be. Nonetheless, I creeped forward, stumbling through the snow, until at last I was behind the bony bushes surrounding the clearing.

See, there’s nothing there, I told myself. I was just turning to go back when I saw it. From that distance, it just looked like a twig in the ground, but still I felt a tremendous dread of it like I already knew what it was subconsciously. Warily, I creeped forward, until I was only a few feet away from it. There was not denying it, the thing definitely wasn’t a twig. It wa a faded, dirty, yellow hollow tube. I felt as though all my insides had been siphoned off. I put my gloves back on and started scooping away the snow from the tube. Right below the snow wa a red plastic handle, and under that a gas can. Well, maybe somebody else had left it here, it didn’t necessarily man what I feared it meant. About a foot away, I found an unsettling familiar shovel, and then…..

“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT?!” I shrieked to the trees around me, hurling The Book of Agony at the nearest one.

“I NEVER DID ANYTHING TO YOU!” I roared. I smashed the shovel into the same tree I’d thrown the book at, but the forced knocked it out of my hands.

‘I’d never felt rage like this before. I’d never, except for that time on the bus, been one with disposition towards violence. But now I wanted to smash. I wanted to tear. I wanted to destroy. I wanted to scream. I wanted to kill.

“You-stupid-piece-of-fucking-SHIT!” I snarled, ripping out a page from The Book of Agony with each livid iteration. ‘How’s your stupid book now, asshole?” I yelled to the air around me, laughing like a maniac.

On the way back home, the sun hotter than ever, I couldn’t help but fuming about my idiocy. How could I have seriously thought it hadn’t been real. Of course it had! I’d been so stupid! There’s no way that dog hadn’t been real. And my grandparents had even said that they’d known what the hell I was talking about. I stomped onto the back porch, still furious. No matter what I did, that kid and his stupid book just wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone. I paused, slumping a little bit. No matter what, I thought. “Oh God, What’s the point?” I sighed as I opened the door. Nothing I ever tried would ever help with anything. So, why even fight? Just a waste of time.

I spent the remainder of the day holed up in my room. I didn’t do anything except lie on my bed in a fetal position, silent streams leaking from my eyes. I didn't eat anything, or have anything to drink, either. My grandparents tried to come in a couple of times, but I just pretended to be asleep. I think I may have gone to the bathroom once or twice, but I’m not even sure of that. Eventually, sometime in the early afternoon, the sun began to set, and I could feel my conscious ebbing slowly away into the darkness.

--

All I knew was that I was chained to the floor. I couldn’t see a thing. Well, maybe it’s entirely true that I didn’t know anything else. I knew that the shackles were too tight, and that they were causing my wrists and ankles to bleed. I also know that I felt as though my bones would break even more from the early cold, and that the floor was rough and uncomfortable. But I didn't have a clue as to where the hell I was, because the Nameless had bashed me over the head with a rock, effectively knocking me out cold. After that I found myself in this cold abyss.

“Well now, this is not right, now is it?” I heard in the darkness a few feet in front of me. “We need some light in here, do we not?”

A faint light appeared as the person slid open a tiny. Barred, grimy little window, just bright enough to barely illuminate the small room I was in. Filth and rot covered every inch of the place; it was all over the cobbled floor, the damp stone walls, the tall rusty metal blars in front of me. The ground was littered with animal bones, and there was no visible doors in the bars, or even in the rom. I squinted up at the low ceiling, looking for a hole or a trap door, but here was nothing. I had no idea how the tall pale man on the other side of the bars came to be in here.

‘Come now, don’t be crumpled all up on the floor, sit up and have a bit of dignity. No? Suit yourself then.” He grabbed the bars and slumped against them lazily.

“Who are you?” I asked hoarsely. He raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. “What, do you not recognize me?” His voice was deep and authoritative. I shook my head. He sighed and stood up straight again, and leaned against the wall.

“I have been haunting you for the past two months, now, “ he said. “With How intimate we’ve become lately, I thought surely you would recognize an old friend when you saw one.”

“B-but, you’re just a kid, like me,” I whispered, trying to move into a sitting position, but couldn’t because of my broken bones. The man smiled cooly.

“You don’t honestly think I am just another kid, do you?” he chucked condescendingly. “After a-a-a-ll I have done to you and made others do to you, you seriously think that I’m just some kid?” He scoffed. “The ghost of a kid, perhaps?” “Then what are you?”

“That,” he said, “Is not for you to know. However,” here he snapped his fingers and began to pace in front of the rusted bars, “I will tell you this: I am much, much more, than a ghost. While ghosts are what mortals fear in the dark, I am that which the most horrific ghost fears. No, I have never, I am proud to say, been mortal.”

‘Then what do you want?” I whimpered.

“Oh, I’ve almost got it. In fact I would say that I will have it in less than two days. Of course, I could have easily taken it on you birthday in an instant, but frankly I have quite a bit of pleasure in toying with people. It makes it so much more interesting, you know?”

‘But you’ve been torturing me for so long!” I protested.

“Oh, to you, it may seem like a long time, but for me, it’s only feels like a few minutes. Think of it as a cat batting around a spider before it eats it.”

“You’re gonna eat me?” I cried, shrinking back into the wall. He actually laughed a genuine laugh; it was cold and heartless.

“No, I’m not going to eat you, you stupid idiot!” he chortled. “Haven’t you listened to a damned word I’ve said? I have no need for food, or drink, or anything. I just like fucking with you. Of course, everybody needs a hobby.”

I just stared anxiously at him for a minute or two.

“Oh, come on! This is the part where you ask in mortal fear what the hell my hobby is!”

“W-what… What is it?” I murmured.

“Shit, I’m not fucking telling you.”

“Then why did you--”

“Did I not just say I like fucking with people?”

“I just shrank further in the shadows, though the whole room was in shadow.

“All small talk aside, Ben,” the Nameless said in a sudden business-like tone, halting in his tracks, “there is one thing I came here today for. You see, I want something of yours. However, you cannot give it to me… willingly, at least.” “What is it?”

“You will know in good time. But, if you want everything- all of this- to end, then you’re in luck. You see, (here he started pacing again) I will grant you your freedom from me if you do one teensy little thing.” “What?”

“Oh, nothing much, but if you give me blood, then I may let you be.” Oh, what a relief! The shackles were making me bleed enough.

“Well, the chains are making my- -” “No, no, Benjamin, not your blood.” He showed a nasty grin. “ I want the blood of others. Two people, in fact.”

“Who?”

“The two people you love the most, Ben.” No, no, no this couldn’t be it. No!

“But I’m stuck here!” I yelled, attempting to find some sort of loophole.

“I’m not talking to you,” he snapped. “But--”

“Benjamin Ross, if you want to end this nightmare, then you need to kill your grandparents. Now wake up.”

“NO!” I screeched, projecting my torso into the air. For a second, I thought that I was still in that dank, horrible dungeon, but then I realized that I was safely in my room. The light was suddenly thrust on, and my eyes watered as the light beat them senselessly. Then I was crushed in an embrace to rival that of a boa constrictors.

‘Ben! Ben, what’s wrong?” I heard my grandad yell anxiously behind my grandmother, who was attempting to squeeze all of my insides out of every orifice in my body.

“C-Can’t…. Breed, “ I choked through my constricted lungs.

“What?” my grandmother asked, slackening her grip just enough, so that I could speak somewhat properly.

‘Can’t breathe,” I grunted.

“Oh, sorry sweetie,” she said, releasing me so quickly that I nearly passed out.

“Are you okay, Ben? What’s wrong?” Grandad whispered anxiously. I mumbled something along the lines of “Nightmare, just a nightmare.” Eventually they left me in the dark, and returned to their own room. All was silent.

“Stop!” I screamed. “No, no, No, NOOO!!” I couldn’t take the pain. I just couldn’t fucking take this agony. I’d never felt so much pain.

“Ben,” said the Nameless softly, “if you want to end this, then you need to kill your grandparents.”

“But how am I supposed to--”

“I’m not talking to you. If you want this to end, just do as I say. Otherwise, it will only get worse. Now, I need you to wake up. Open your eyes, ben.”

I awoke again for the second time that night, tears stuck to my face and sheets binding me like a mummy. The relief I felt at being painless was immeasurable. The pain I’d felt was… indescribable. It simply is failed by the English Language. It was as if every single never in my body had been on fire, except about a trillion times worse. And the Nameless had said that it would only get worse. It would drive me insane, if not outright kill me. It had to stop. It had to end. And somehow, in that instant, I knew exactly what I had to do, as if somebody had taken it off an old shelf, brushed it off, and neatly nestled it into my hands.

And I couldn’t wait. It had to be now.

I took off my black pajamas, and put on my boots, coat, and gloves. If everything went according to plan, then I would be soon outside, and I wouldn’t have time to put on my clothes then. I also packed some stuff into a bag and hid it under a bush out front. Then I came back inside and snuck to the hallway closet near my grandparent’s bedroom, and opened the door.

CREAK!

I froze in terror. I’f forgotten that this door creaked as if it were blowing on a trumpet. I listened hard, but the snores coming from the next room didn’t stop.

Creeeeeak! CREAK! I heard a snort. I’d opened the door slowly, but then flung it open just to get it over with. I stayed silent for a few minutes until I heard the second snore quietly continue.

Shit, I thought. The top shelf was too high for me to reach. Luckily, there was a step-stool in the kitchen. I quickly got it and set it in the closet door way. I still had to stand on the tips of my toes to reach it, though.

It’s a bit wobbly, I thought. I sure hope it doesn’t -- CRASH!

Of course, I had fallen over and made an ungodly amount of noise.

“Honey, wake up,” I heard my grandma whisper, “I think someone’s in the house.”

Blinking black stars and tears of pain, I shoved the footstool into the closet and jammed myself into a plastic bin, closing the door from the inside just as I head them open theirs. Thankfully, the door didn’t creak so much when being closed, it was a more of a mousy squeak.

“Should I call the cops, Charlie? I thought I heard Ben scream.”

“Yeah, I’ll call 911. I’ll grab the gun real quick.”

I heard his footsteps approaching the closet, and closed the lid onto myself. It was very hot and stuffy in there, especially with my coat on. My hat and gloves were in my pocket. After a moment, I heard the closet close again. I thought that I felt something crawl on my arm, but I didn’t dare move, lest I should make any noise.

After what seemed like eternity, my grandad came back and told my grandmother that I wasn’t in my bed, and that neither I nor whoever had broken into the house were anywhere in the house or in the immediate area outside the house. She invariably told whoever was on the phone.

I have no idea how long I actually waited in that tub, but it seemed to be hours before my grandparents went outside to talk to the cops. Knowing it was only a matter of time before the cops came inside to investigate, I scurried out of the closet, and used the step-stool to pull down the ladder to the attic, carrying it with me on the way up, where I turned on the light and closed the attic door. The attic was very large, and very cluttered, which suited me well, for it provided an ample amount of places to hide should anybody come up there to look around, which they did, after I’d turned the light off.

I stayed holed up in that attic through the whole night, not sleeping a bit. Not that I couldn’t. I was dead tired, but I was afraid of what I might dream if I did. I didn’t come down until the next morning, when my grandparents left to go to church. I came down and had a feast befit for a King (I hadn’t eaten since the previous morning’s breakfast). I even tried to watch some TV, but my nerves were just too shot. It was too cheerful, too fake. The day dragged by in that attic. A few cops came to talk to my grandparents, and I heard my grandad say that he was going to his gun in his bedside table, but besides that, nothing of any interest happened. I wasn’t going to complain, though. I was dreading when they would go to sleep. As all things go, that time eventually came, and as I sat there trembling, waiting for their snores, I could hear the wind howling outside. I felt like I was going to be sick.

When I finally heard snores coming from below, I silently crept down from the attic, which slinked silently into their room. Oh, God, I’m going to be sick. I was at the foot of their bed. Please, Please, wake up so that I don’t have to do this. I was at my grandfather’s end table. I feel like I’m going to pass out. I was pulling out the loaded revolver. It was the same one that my grandad had taught me to shoot with. I pointed the gun at him. I cocked it.

The noise woke him up.

“Who-- Ben?” he whispered in quiet disbelief. He moved as if to sit up, but then he saw the gun in my hand.

“Ben-- Ben,” he said hoarsely, eyes wide with disbelief, “Why do you have my gun?”

“What Charlie?” my grandmother muttered sleepily.

“Nothing, Helen, go back to sleep.”

“Who has a gun?”

“Nobody, now go back to sleep.” But she turned over and saw me. She made to get up, but I backed out of arm's reach of my grandfather and pointed it at her, who slowly laid back down.

“Ben, why do you have my gun?” he asked a little more forcibly.

“I-I’m so… s-so sorry,” I croaked through welling tears.

“Why do you have my gun?”

“I don’t mean to, I-I don’t!” I cried. My grandmother also began to cry, I could hear her.

“Don’t want t-to do what, ex-exactly?” Grandad asked, forcing his voice to remain calm. The wind was howling worse than ever. Outside, I could see snow whipping around violently.

“He made me, he made me!” I choked, hot tears streaming down my face.

“Ben, j-just put the gun down, okay?”

“I c-can’t!” I sobbed. My grandmother was sobbing hysterically.

“Ben, just put the gun… down,” he said calmly, though his voice trembled like an earthquake.

“I CAN’T! HE MADE ME! I HAVE NO CHOICE!” I screamed.

“Ben, put the goddamned gun down, and we can talk about this--”

BANG! “AAAAAAAH! AAAAAGH!” My grandmother was backing away into the corner.

“I’M SO SORRY!”

BANG!

Thud!

The body hit the floor. I’d shot my granddad right in the head, but it only hit my grandmother’s lungs. As if in a daze, I walked over to her.

“Ben,” she moaned as blood dribbled out of her mouth, “Ben, honey, why?” I seemed to have lost the ability to speak.

BANG!

All was silent, save the wailing of the wind.

After that, my memory is fuzzy. I remember dousing their bodies in gasoline, and then the whole house. After I grabbed my backpack (which was miraculously still under the bush, despite cops having swarmed the area the night before), I set the place on fire and ran. I didn’t know where I was going, I just ran. The snow was picking up, now. I must’ve gone miles, being whipped around by the wind and blinding snow, where I found myself standing on road. I could but only see a few feet in front of me, but in the distance I saw what looked like a pair of yellow head lights crawling down the road towards me. I ran to it, screaming and waving my arms to grab whoever was driving it’s attention.

“Whoah, whoah, whoah, Kid!” I heard a man say from behind the wheel of a brown pickup truck. At a glance it’d looked like two people were in it, but there weren’t

“Help! Help! I screamed frantically through the lowered window. “Was- was camping, and- and a mountain lion came, so I ran, and- and--”

“Hey, hey, get in, Kid,” he said, leaning over and pushing open the door for me. I climbed in hastily, eager to escape the frigid cold and come into the toastiness of the ruck.

“Now slow down,” he said soothingly with a southern drawl, “and start from the beginning, okay?” He started his snail’s-pace drive again. I gave a sigh and told him that I’d been camping in the woods with my family when we were attacked by a mountain lion. I’d ran as fast and far away as I could, and I was scared that my family was dead or seriously injured, and that we needed to call the police to find them.

“And you had time to put on a coat and pack up all of your things?” he asked suspiciously. I gulped and searched my mind frantically, for an explanation.

“It was so cold that I already had all of my stuff on, and my bag was already by my feet, so I just grabbed it on the way out.”

“And you ran outside the tent, where the mountain lion was?”

“It had already ripped through the tent and was attacking my parents.” I bit my lip, anxiously waiting to see if he would buy it.

“Well, I don’t have a phone on me, Kid, so we’ll have to just drive to the first place with a phone.” I sighed with relief. “I’ve got a buddy who lives nearby, so we’ll go there, call the police, get you some food and warm clothes. We’ll take care of you until we get word from your family or the police.”

“Thank you, sir, thank you so much!” I gasped.

“You from the south?” he asked.

“Wh- how did you know?” I asked. I didn't have an accent. Did I?   “You called me ‘sir.”

“Oh... yeah,” I said awkwardly, “I’m from Georgia.”

“I’m a Texan, through and through,” he remarked. “That cross right there?” he said, pointing to a wooden crucifix suspended from his rear-view mirror. “Granpa was a pastor. Wanted me to be one, too, but I didn't want to.”

“What do you do?” I asked politely.

“Me? Oh, I work with cattle.” He glanced at my curious face. “Work at a slaughterhouse. I mostly run ‘em through the dip. I’m just here visitin’ some family.”

“Yep, this looks like the place,” he said an hour later. The blizzard was worse than ever, so I had to squint to make out the dark building. It looked more like an old bunker more than anything. I felt something hard and cold touch the side of my temple, followed by the sound of a metallic click.

“You fuckin’ let out a goddamn sound, or try to run away, and I blow your fucking brains out, Kid, you got it?” he growled. My insides seemed to have ceased to exist.

“You got it?” he hissed, pressing the gun harder against my head. I nodded my head a fraction of an inch.

“Alright, now get out of the car on my side, nice and easy.” The gun left my temple while he got out.

“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said coldly after we;d both gotten out. The. he shoved me towards the building, saying, “Now, get the fuck inside, boy.”

Once inside, he threw me onto the debris-strewn ground.

“Take your clothes off,” he barked as he fumbled around with a lamp.

“What?” he spat after seeing that I was still on my back. “You hard o’ hearin’ or some shit? I said take your damn clothes off.”

I stood up trembling, but found that my legs could no longer support me, so I ended up crashing to my knees painfully. I numbly fumbled with my coat zipper as that man went to close the door. I thought I saw something move in the shadows.

“C’mon, boy, hurry up! I ain’t got all night!”

I finally managed to take my coat and shirt off.

“Alright, now take off your pants.” He nodded towards my legs. I clumsily attempted to unbutton my pants.

Shrik.

We both looked to the right (my right), trying to see what had made that noise. It’d sounded like something scraping against concrete.

“Just a mouse,” the man muttered, setting his gun on the ground so that he could unbutton his own pants. I still swore I saw something large lurking in the darkness.

He’d just loosened his belt when there came a low growl. He bent down to get his gun, but as he did so, a huge black shape came hurtling out of that shadows towards the man. He tried to put out his hands to stop it, but the thing had already slammed into his chest, sending the man sprawling backwards and shooting randomly to the side. It tore out the man's throat, who struggled helplessly to get the thing off of him. It happened so quickly that I had no idea what to make of it. I was lying back on my elbows, shocked into a awed silence. It turned it’s bloody face, and I saw that it was a huge black pitbull, just like the one in my dream. Just like the one I’d seen with me in the back of The Book of Agony. I looked down at my chest.

There was a bullet hole right through my heart.

I touched it with my fingers, allowing the warm blood to seep over them. I felt a warm, slobbery tongue sliding over the wound. I layed down and pet the angel until blackness finally overtook me.

I woke up in cold darkness. There was just enough light to see the dark silhouette of a man in front of me.

“You’re all mine, now, Ben,” a familiar voice said.

I felt the cold metal around my wrists and ankles.

“All Mine.” 