Horror story

BEWARE: This page is both horrible and graphic. It deals with horror in the raw. To avoid being traumatized, you might wish to consider only reading this page while blindfolded.

Monday Morning

As Biff approached the sink, it produced a shockingly gloopy and drawn out belching noise, accompanied by a smell as though a mouse -- or a whole family of mice, perhaps -- had crawled into the drain and died about a week earlier. He peered cautiously over the edge of it. Something that looked like a pair of tentacles protruding from the drain vanished with a sort of slurping sound as soon as he saw them.

Biff jumped back in surprise. When he looked again, the drain plug was in. "That's odd," he thought. "If the plug is in, how ..."

Plug or no plug, it was Monday morning, and that meant cleaning up the old mouth-orifice. Biff reached for his toothbrush.

It snickered evilly at him, and a slender pink tongue about three inches long flicked out of the end, waved around as though tasting the air, and vanished again. All seven of the brush's eyes leered at him from among the bristles.

Biff snatched his hand back, but not before the toothbrush's tail wrapped around his wrist. Now firmly attached to his hand, it began biting at his thumb with all of its tiny mouths. Tiny they may have been, but each one was filled with sharp teeth.

As the blood ran down his arm, Biff tried to scream, but he couldn't. His throat was plugged -- jammed up, he realized, with masses of scrabbling cockroaches. "Oh no not again!" he thought, in despair.

Monday Morning, Take Two

He woke with a jerk. It was pitch dark. The alarm hadn't gone off yet.

Biff felt disoriented.

What had that dream been about? Why had he thought "Oh no not again" when he was choking on .. ick ... why did that seem so familiar? He couldn't remember now what it was it had reminded him of. (Or maybe it had just been a cheap ripoff from Douglas Adams.)

He also couldn't think what had awakened him. Sure, it was better to be awake in the dark than stuck in a nightmare, but he had the feeling something more than just dream-roaches had pulled him out of it.

And then it happened again. There was a soft "Plop!" on the bed, and something spattered across his face. He touched the bedspread. It was wet. Actually, no, it was soaked. Soaked with something sticky.

Biff found himself frantically struggling to get out of the bed. Something seemed to have hold of him -- it had wrapped around his legs and wouldn't let go. He finally fell out onto the floor and dragged himself, and whatever was holding his legs, across the floor to the lamp. He switched it on, and -- blessed relief! -- the world of sight and sanity returned.

The thing "attacking" him was just the sheet, which had gotten twisted around his legs while he slept. And the sticky stuff was just ... uh ... just ....

no "just" about it, actually. The bed was completely soaked with what looked unmistakably like blood. It was dripping from the overhead light fixture -- the one that had never worked.

Some of the red stuff was on his pyjamas. Biff touched it. It sure felt like partly dried blood. He sniffed it. It smelled weird. He ... tasted it. And spat. If it was blood it was the strangest tasting blood he'd every heard of -- in fact it tasted more like latex paint than anything else.

And then the dripping from the overhead light stopped. And something gelatinous bulged obscenely, and made a faint popping noise, and fell onto the bed with a heavy squelch.

It was a giant eyeball. And it was looking at him.

The dripping had started up again as soon as the eye hit the bed.

"OK," thought Biff. "Time to call the landlord."

Negotiations Part I

Biff had reached the landlord on the phone.

"Allo? Allo? Vhat you vant?" It was the landlord, all right. The familiar Austrian accent sounded annoyed, as usual.

Biff explained about the light fixture dripping blood, and the gooshy eyeball.

"Yah? Yah? So vhat you vant? Da bathtub, upstairs, hasz leak. Plum-ber hass been called. Done."

"But why," asked Biff, "would a leaky bathtub make blood... uh ..."

"Told you -- have called plum-ber. Endt of shtory! OK? Done! Venn you no like drip on bed, move bed! Easy! OK?" There was a click, and the conversation ended.

It Gets Worse

Biff stayed late at the tire painting shop where he worked to make up for the time it took him to rearrange the furniture in his room. He had also gone to the local hardware store for a bucket. Tonight, if the light dripped, all it would do would be to fill the bucket.

It was after 7 when he finished painting the last truck tire ("Let the paint wear down, instead of the tread! Tire Paint FTW!") and he was looking forward to eating a microwave burger and going to bed early. He stepped into his room and flicked on the lamp.

"Awwww no....." he said, quietly.

Hanging from the light fixture, directly over the bucket, were several loops of what could only be intestines. As he watched, something lumpy bulged out of the light fixture and fell with a splash into the bucket. It looked suspiciously like a pancreas.

Biff backed out of the room and headed for the stairs. If the landlord wouldn't do anything about his weird neighbors, he'd do it himself.

Negotiations Part II

Biff found the room directly over his without any trouble. It was easy to recognize by the wide, brown stain on the carpet in the hall directly in front of the door. As Biff stepped up to the door, his shoes made a squishing noise on the soaked rug.

He rapped smartly on the door with his knuckles, and grimaced. The door didn't make a rapping noise. It just made a sort of squishing noise. It appeared to be soggy, as well as somewhat sticky. Some sort of reddish brown goo was now all over his knuckles, as well.

But someone had heard him knocking. He heard a sort of gabbling noise from inside the room, and the sound of heavy footsteps approaching the door. There was a pause while what sounded like at least four deadbolts and a chain lock were unlocked, and then the door opened ... about two inches. And stopped.

The room inside was entirely dark, but Biff could just make out what looked like a pair of dim red things at his eye level. They seemed to be staring at him. A rush of high pitched gabbling sounds washed out of the room, along with a smell of the sort that makes a slaughterhouse such an undesirable neighbor.

Biff tried to explain the problem. "Uh ... the intestines ... and blood ... leaking down. If you could just... uh ... it's kind of, well, gross, you know?" he said.

There was more gabbling. Biff couldn't make out a word of it, but it sounded outraged. A thing that looked vaguely like a hand slithered out through the barely open door and poked him on the chest. With a final gabble, the door slammed shut.

It Gets Worse

After a restless night, Biff arrived at work early. He just wanted to get away from his apartment and his incomprehensible neighbors.

But arriving at work early meant coming home early, too, and so he found himself walking up the street to his building in the middle of the afternoon. Toward his building, rather -- there was a yellow line of police tape across the street which blocked access to it.

In fact, the building didn't seem to be there. Part of it was, but the entire upper section seemed to have melted. And what was left of it was surrounded by cops.

One of the cops noticed him. He -- or she -- was in black riot gear, covered from head to toe. In a voice like a garbage disposal grinding a load of ball bearings, the cop shouted at Biff, "You! What are you looking at? What's your business here?"

"I live here ... sir. Or there, I mean. Or I did, before, uh," said Biff, uncertainly, pointing at the melted building.

"Did you now? We've got a few questions, then. I think you'd better come with us."

Biff found himself surrounded by a whole group of the black clad riot cops. They all seemed huge. They towered over him as they reached out to keep him from running away before they took him ... somewhere ... for questioning.

Interrogated

Biff could barely see anything beyond the floodlight which was shining directly in his eyes. His hands were cuffed to the chair, behind him.

"I'm going to ask you once again," said the huge riot cop standing on the other side of the light. "Why are you here?"

"You brought me here" replied Biff, in confusion.

In a perfect imitation of James Earl Jones, the cop rumbled, "I find your lack of cooperation disturbing. I shall ask you once more, why are you here?"

"I don't know, sir!" cried Biff. "I lived in the house that melted, because I lived there, and you -- not you, the other you -- you -- or they -- brought me here, and then you asked me why I'm here, and I don't know!"

The cop turned to someone Biff couldn't see. "He is useless to us," he said. "Take him away."

It Gets Worse

Two huge cops, one holding each of his arms, marched Biff down the hall to the elevator. The three of them went down to the ground floor. For a moment Biff thought they might just let him go at that point, but no such luck. From the elevator, they crossed to a stairwell and started down. Biff couldn't keep up and found himself being dragged down the stairs, bruising his ankles on every step.

He found himself being dragged along a dimly lit corridor with a stone floor. There was as sort of grill set in the floor. They stopped in front of it.

"Oubliette?" asked one of the cops.

"Yeah," said the other one, and lifted the grill out of the floor.

"In you go," was the last thing Biff heard as they threw him head first into the hole.

Can It Get Worse?

Biff's head hurt. He had landed on something -- decayed straw, he thought -- that had broken his fall, but he'd still gotten a major bash on the head. And it was completely dark. Feeling around with his hands, there seemed to be a bare floor, a lot of straw, and a bad smell, and nothing much else here. He wondered dully if there were food and water somewhere, or if he were doomed to a slow death by starvation.

And then there was a sound. It was a sort of gurgle, followed by a giggle and a belch.

This was accompanied by a smell like someone set off a firecracker in the middle of a large Limburger cheese.

Something made a sort of "What have we HERE?" sound, and touched him briefly on the arm, and then there was a scratching noise.

And then a candle lit.

Two feet from Biff, something was sitting and staring at him. It had shaggy hair in all the wrong places -- sort of like all-over dreadlocks. And its ... Biff hesitated to think of it as clothing -- seemed to be made of partly decayed skins from some animal. At least, Biff hoped it had been an animal. The face ... Biff looked away again. There were a lot of teeth and aside from that he didn't want to know.

"Heeelllooooo" gargled the whatsis in a soggy voice.

"What ... ah ... EEEEEEEEK HEEELP!" said Biff, as he tried to retreat as far as he could from the creature.

And Then

"It's OK," said the creature, in a dreary tone. "You can insult me. It doesn't bother me, I'm used to it. I won't tear your throat out. Not for that, anyway." It made a sort of sobbing noise.

Biff was flummoxed. He tried to say something, but all he could think of was the question they'd asked him over and over before throwing him down here.

"Uh ... why are you here?" he asked.

"Because I'm gross."

There was a long pause, and then a sucking sound and a long gurgling noise. The creature reached out for Biff.

Before Biff's hairs could all stand on end together and run away in panic, he realized the thing was offering him something. A tube. There was some kind of smokey stuff leaking out of it.

"Ganja?" asked the thing. "It's good stuff. It helps to pass the time."

Biff traced the tube back to ... a large hookah. The monster was offering him a hit on its hookah. Biff cautiously took a hit. It sure tasted like good stuff -- and it immediately started to cut through his panic. A second hit, and he stopped worrying about food and water. It really was good stuff.

"Here, this may help, too," added the creature and flipped a switch. An overhead light went on. "I keep it off most of the time so they don't notice the light through the grill up there and wonder about it."

Biff looked around. It was a tiny apartment, with a mini-fridge in one corner, a small sink in the opposite wall, and a television on a low table. In the corner opposite the fridge there was what looked an awful lot like a low door in the wall.

"Is that a ... um ... a door?"

"Yeah. It opens on the alley behind the police station. It's how the Rastas get in when they come visiting shut-ins. They're real nice -- make sure everybody's fed, the water's OK, and we've got enough ganja."

Biff took another hit on the pipe. "Thanks!" he said, belatedly. And then added, "Hey, I'm Biff. And I'm really glad to meet you."

"And I'm Bob. Glad you could drop by," said the monster.

Biff closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. It felt so good to be sleeping someplace nice again -- his apartment had turned into such a weird scene lately...