I woke up with the very faint taste of blood in my mouth. I could feel the pain in my lung throbbing rhythmically to the vexatious ticking of that damned clock. It was accompanied by the dripping of my very own crimson liquid clicking against the cement flooring.
I had to admit, it was rather nice having this irritable sound keep my mind of my punctured lung, pulsing out my valued liquid with every breath. I had the strong urge to sit up, but I knew I couldn't. I quickly began to feel anxious, I needed out. I was about ready to do myself in when I heard the door arrogantly creak open, showing no remorse for my new-found headache.
I tried to turn my head to see it. I let my head fall back to its original position. I knew what was there. That abomination, the vermin. I could only begin to imagine what it would want with me now. My last few minutes of life, and it was here to deprive me of a proper death. It's familiar stench corrupting my once clean lungs, what was left of them anyway.
The date was February 8th, 2009. This was the day I spent laying impaled on what use to be my favorite pool table in the pub, breathing in my last breaths of oxygen. February 8, 1989. The date of my birth, something I've never thought much of, I've never had to.
It was in 1989 that the vermin, in which I later found myself giving the formal nickname, The Scritch, started to take a particular interest in me. Something was wrong from the beginning. Although I was too young to remember any of this, its illuminated yellow eyes have always stuck with me. Flash memories would be the best way to describe it, I'm sure you know what I mean by that. Nonetheless it kept its distance. I must've only seen it a few times being in the close care of my mother.
My childhood lacked its involvement until the age of 7, February 20th, 1996. It was at this point that I had 3 dogs, all of which came from the pound. I thought of myself as a savior. They were going to be put down, hence the reason I chose to adopt them. It was a month before this, January to simplify things, that my first dog had an unfortunate death that I would've been so bold as to call a gruesome coincidence. Unfortunately for me that wasn't the case. As said it was February 20th.
I was walking home from school, I never took the bus. There was a large field I had to walk through to get to my neighborhood, a childhood memory I was quite fond of up to this date. It was lined with trees, caging me in until I made it to the other end.
I was moving at my average pace, but something caught my attention. A flash of movement in the corner of my eye. As a stupid, mindless, curious child I looked over to see what it was, an action I'm not proud to say I'd do even today. As I expected there was nothing there, just the line of tree's.
Although there was an unfamiliar color, almost a white bobbing in front of the tree. Being the curious person I was I slowly made my way over to it. I got closer and it started to form a shape, a shape that made my chest drop. The feeling of heavy-chested fear overwhelmed me before I could make out what it was, my imagination was already coming up with an answer. I continued for a few more minutes and stopped in my tracks. I wanted to run. I would've given anything to be home at this moment.
My dog died a few months back from this point. It's body should have been decomposed but here its mangled body was hanging from the tree bobbing back and forth. It's body was in the exact condition as it was on the day I found it. I stood there uselessly for a moment before I heard a crack in the brush below. My eyes quickly locked onto the familiar yellow eyes. The eyes slowly faded, and my vision darkened. From what I remember I woke up in the hospital. I supposedly hit my head off a rock and was knocked out cold. The dog wasn't mentioned, I kept it to myself.
I turned my head down to see the clock, I wanted to know the time. I wanted to know, and remember what time I died, just in case there was any after life. The clock read 2:47 AM. It was a strain on my eyes to try to read the clock from here. I never could understand why everyone hasn't switched over to digital for the ease of use. I could hear the abomination, The Scritch, skittering around the floor occasionally. It seemed to move in bursts. I was ready and waiting for my death, although it seemed to be here for the show.
April 14th, 2003.[]
I was 14. I saw flashes of it quite a few more times sense my last encounter with it. I was growing paranoid, starting to make any excuse I could to stay in the house. Of course that didn't work as well as I would've liked it to. It was after school on April 14th that me and one of my many friends, Victor, decided to head to town. To sum it up quickly he insisted that I go. I followed him to the bus stop where we waited for 15 minutes before this idea grew from bad, to worse. I just wanted to go home. I remember examining the vulgar marker sketches from the previous teens that were here and the chewed gum smeared across the less than cared for glass when I decided it was time to leave.
I remember telling him I thought this was a bad idea, that I wasn't going to go to town. I had things at home I needed to do. Of course he wasn't impressed, he argued. Angry with me started motioning his hands for a push, the only thing going through my mind was the dirty glass. If he pushed me I'd press up against it, I couldn't let that happen.
With his arms already in motion I had no choice but to press my arm against his hands and push back with all my force. He was knocked off-balance, he stumbled backwards a few feet before tripping over what was once a beer bottle. He landed on his back part way on the road, I looked up to see the bus coming. It came out of nowhere but it was going too fast to stop for him.
I remember how fitting his body was next to the corroding town I dared to call my home. It took a moment for me to get these thoughts out of my head and snap back into reality. His body was laying lifelessly cutting off at his shoulders where the tires did there work on him. My heart was racing, there were to many questions, too much that could go wrong. I felt like crying, but I felt angry as well.
I couldn't decide how to feel. When I looked up I saw it through the windows of the now stopped bus. Those god-damn yellow eyes. At that moment I really could've used some rest, I'd do anything to be home. But instead I spent my afternoon explaining what happened to the law enforcement and clearing the mess up. I got out of it easily with the truth.
After this incident it got much worse, it was growing closer to me. I started reading books, checking the internet. I did everything within my power to learn about it. I just wanted to rid of it before it put me in an institution, before it drove me insane. I found nothing.
I snapped the end of the pool stick that clogged the hole it made through my lung. I set it down on the pool table by my side looking up through the hole in the ceiling. The stars were fading away, morning was approaching.
I could hear it making its way around the table. I watched carefully as it pulled itself up finally coming into close eye contact with me. For the first time I could actually get a good look at these vermin. It was very similar in shape to a human, it had long arms for its body and large hands. Under its yellow eyes was a line of teeth that opened into an almost circular mouth. It's skin was a greyish-white colour. It looked perfectly drawn, like something only an artist with his tools could create. The impressive dead looking skin was covered in repulsive veins.
It tilted its long thing head slightly tapping its claws against the pool table to the ticking of the clock. My vision began to fade, in the back of my head I could hear my brain making its last connection to the noise in this body. 'Tick tock tick.'
I could feel a nice comfortable surface underneath me, it felt like pillows. But the stench was horrible. My vision was returning to me. At first I figured I was just waking up like I would any other day, then my death replayed itself in the back of my head, or so what I thought was my death. The question was where was I now?
My eyes finished their recovery to see a dark black void above me. Even with nothing up there a strange lighting was focused on me. I pushed myself up and jumped when I saw that I was laying on a pile of human corpses. I started to scramble up to my feet panicked. I intended to get out of here fast as I could when I froze seeing that the pile of corpses formed a path.
Just like that day in the field I was surrounded, this time by what seemed to be an endless black void. I slowly pushed myself up onto my feet and took a careful step forward. I paused when I saw it on the far side, it almost looked like it smiled before climbing over the side of the bodies to the bottom of the path out of my site. Disgusting abomination I thought to myself.
I slowly made my way forward towards the light focusing on something else on the opposing side of the path. I noticed the surrounding light followed, I didn't understand it so I took some time toying around with the light while I made my way down to the far end. It took no more than three minutes of walking to arrive at the far end, what stood before me was a fetus. It was larger than normal, it was about two feet tall. It was floating above a stone pedestal curled up with its very own spotlight giving me a clear view of it. I continued to stare at it. It took a few minutes to notice it was staring back. It bothered me, made me feel sick. I carefully reached my hand out when I heard a familiar voice behind me.
"All of your memories collected in one large fucking freak show of a room eh?" A familiar voice, it's been a while sense I've heard a voice outside of my head. I turned to face my old friend, alive and well. He smiled and leaned back as a wall formed behind him for what seemed to be for no more than his convenience. I was speechless, he picked up on that and opened his mouth again. "It's been a while, no hello? Nothing, nope. Well I personally would've expected more from the guy who killed me, and let us not forget that we were friends when you did this."
I opened my mouth to object to his accusation but stopped mid-way to see that vermin crawl back up a short distance behind him. "What's going on? Where am I?" I asked, dumbfounded. I had no idea what was going on here. His smile turned to a frown, he seemed disappointed. "You did the impossible and certainly caused quite the pile of shit while doing so."
He pushed himself off the wall and raised both his arms out to everything around him. "Can you honestly tell me you have no idea what any of this is? All of this is you, even me.
What's left of you anyway. You're dead, but not all of this. But even though you're gone we still have a problem. You see I'm here as well, I'm not supposed to be, but here I stand. And all of this never should've come to be. You're in over your head."
His rambling still meant nothing to me. I didn't understand what was happening, my interest was getting out of here. I looked behind him to see the way I came in. The path of bodies cut off at the black void. "I don't und- ..Look, I just want out."
He shook his head a little at my response, I didn't know how to take it. "Then we both want the same thing, simple enough." He raised one of his arms to the vermin and smiled proudly. "This is the ticket out. For me anyway.. You kind of fucked up. Well something did. You're not exactly... Real? But you've caused an impact on my life and many others, all the ones you see here are you're doing.
"You're dead but that doesn't mean I can go back and have things the way they were, not yet. All of this has to be erased. In a sense we have to revert you to nothing but that hideous embryo behind you. February 8th, 1989. The day you were supposed to die. Me and this friend of yours can fix this problem. If you don't exist, I live! I'll be disposed of here along with what's left of you. But I'll also get a second chance considering the incident you caused will have never taken place. Not even I will remember you."
He seemed quite fond of his plan. He obviously didn't understand everything about what was going on here. Nonetheless I didn't approve of what I was hearing. But what could I do. "No, that isn't right. If I'm here now then how can it be a mistake! It does-"
He knew what I was going to say, I guess anyone would've. He was already on it. "A mistake is something that happens that wasn't planned. Wasn't supposed to happen. You have no right to judge whether you belong here or not when you clearly don't." The vermin wandered off out of my sight while he continued to talk, probably to fix the 'mistake' as he liked to put it... "We all have a set life, we live and we die at set times. You managed to sneak past this somehow and kill me along plenty of others. Can you really be so arrogant to think you have a right to live? Your friend who just left watches for people like you. He looks for mistakes like you and disposes of them, understand? You CAN'T live. And you won't, you don't get much say in this anyway."
The overwhelming burst of emotions came over me again, I wasn't sure how to deal with this. I couldn't just let them erase me. At the far end of the room I could see the bodies beginning to fade, my world was slowly dying. I looked over to the ticking clock. I had to think of something quickly to get out of this. I couldn't let them do this... Could I...
July 11th, 2006.[]
I was paranoid. I was seeing a lot more of that damned creature it was driving me insane. I was sitting on the porch with the last remaining dog I got from the pound. The second died of natural causes. The traffic was a little more hectic than usual. I was throwing a ball for the dog and watching it run around in the grass. It would grab the ball and bring it back ready to repeat the process.
I raised my arm ready to throw the ball again when the eyes across the street gleamed at me. I paused part way through the action, this would've been fine despite the fact that my dog happened to see it as well. Like the simple-minded dog it was it ran towards its interest as fast as it could. As the dog was doing this I noticed a bus was coming down the street rather quickly. I was sure the dog was about to get hit when the bus smashed the breaks and turned trying to avoid the dog.
The dog was not hit by the bus that day. Thirty-six people were killed in the accident. I wasn't surprised or bothered by the incident. I couldn't bring myself to care anymore.
February 8th, 2009.[]
My name is Ruphus, I died in the womb during birth from an unknown cause on February 8, 1989.
February 8th, 2009. My name was going to be Ruphus when I was born. I died in the womb during birth from an unknown cause on February 8th, 1989.
February 8th.... My name is.... I died in the womb during birth from an unknown cause on February 8, 1989.