Had she?
Her mind was fuzzy from drugs and fear. Could she believe anything her memory told her, could she trust any of her actions?
A barked sob escaped her chest.
Her legs were weak beneath her and they gave way, the side of the bed finding her for support. It creaked beneath her slight weight and Stacey put her face in her hands.
What was happening here?
Someone must be playing tricks on her, it was the only explanation.
Then, from beneath the bed, something reached out and grabbed her ankle.
Stacey screamed and threw herself across the room, landing on the floor. She scrambled away, her feet propelling her backwards. Her heart pounded, her breath left her body in frantic, shaky gasps. From her position she could see beneath the metal frame of the bed.
There was nothing there.
Her mind tripped, jumped over a moment in time. She tried to escape into the darkness of oblivion, but she couldn"t forget the feeling of cold, dead fingers as they wrapped around her skin.
There had been something there. Something had touched her.
But there was nothing beneath the bed now, not even dust-bunnies shifted in the slight breeze her movement had created. And Stacey realized something else. The book had gone.
She needed to get out of there.
Stacey turned to the door and her mind swam in disbelief. Where moments ago she had been pounding on the cheap painted wood, now there was only smooth wallpaper.
Her eyes filled with tears of fear and confusion.
On trembling limbs, she crawled across the floor to where the door had been. On her knees now, she reached up. Her fingers and palms spanned the wall, searching for grooves and indents; something to prove to her that the door was still there, hidden beneath the textured paper.
But it was just an expanse of wallpaper; no hidden cracks lay beneath its surface.
No, no, no, no...
How could this be? How was it even possible? Someone was changing things when she wasn"t looking, moving things around.
She spun back round.
"Who"s here?" she screamed at the empty room. "I know someone"s here! Stop f.u.c.king around and show yourself!"
Only the silence and hollowness of an empty room answered her.
Her hands shook; trembling she recognized that was not caused by terror, but by need. Her fear had sped up her metabolism. Increased adrenaline, heartbeat, blood flow, had all processed the stuff through her system quicker than normal. And, like in any moment of stress, she needed her fix.
Nausea suddenly rushed up over her, and she leant to one side and vomited onto the carpet. She retched again, dry and painful. A thin sliver of saliva hung from her mouth and, using the back of her hand, she wiped it away. Her skin was clammy and hot, her nose streamed clear fluid.
A painful cramp deep in her bowel doubled her over and she moaned in pain. It was a familiar feeling, the twisting of her guts, and its recognition brought with it despair.
Oh G.o.d, please, not that.
To be reduced to s.h.i.tting in the corner of a room, without even a bucket to capture the waste. Somehow that degradation was worse than anything else that was happening.
But, for the moment, the cramp pa.s.sed. Turning back to where the door had been, she placed both hands against the wall, her forehead resting against it.
"Please," she begged through the wall. "I"ll do anything you want." She was sobbing now. "Just let me out of here".
With tears pouring down her cheeks, she turned her back on the offending wall and slid down, her face in her hands.
What had she done to deserve this? Why was this happening to her?
"I"ll do anything you want," she yelled at the room. "Please..." Her voice broke as the tears took over once again. "Please, I"ll do anything you want me to."
She would vow to rescind everything bad in her life if it meant she could get out of this f.u.c.king room.
From behind her came a ripple of movement-a strange shifting, ripping sound. Stacey froze; the skin on the back of her neck p.r.i.c.kling. At first she was too scared to move and she buried her head in her hands, her hands clamped over her ears, shaking her head.
But she couldn"t hide from the sounds still coming from behind her; the horrific sound of sucking and stretching.
Unable to bear it any longer, Stacey pushed herself away and turned around.
Her eyes widened in terror.
Something was moving beneath the wallpaper.
Beneath the thin layer of paper something bubbled and bulged, moving across the wall. Were there insects trapped beneath? Or were they just air pockets, moving because of a draft or breeze?
Of course that was nuts. Watching the paper bulge out across the wall, she knew there was no way the movement was being caused by air pockets. There was something beneath it.
Like a new shoot breaking through the earth, a soft, pliable tube, filled with a dark red fluid, pushed through the wall, splitting the paper. As she watched, it divided and sprouted.
Stacey recognized what it was, but the setting was too abstract for her to believe it.
It was a vein.
More veins pushed through, and now sheathes of white, striated muscle followed, rippling across the paper, stretching and growing like fast growing fungi.
The veins split and then divided again, budding with new arteries and capillaries, spreading a network across the wall.
Stacey"s eyes were wide with disbelief. This could not be happening. She must still be asleep and dreaming, it was the only explanation. Yet she knows she is not.
The thick pulse of veins and arteries spread like fingers, creeping across the cheap wallpaper, feeding into the plasterboard walls. Layers of muscle wound throughout; thinner, striated muscle, divided by the thicker ropes of tendons.
And still it continued to grow, elongating, reaching, covering one wall and now spreading across the ceiling above her. The metallic scent of blood filled the air, and clogged the back of her throat like the taste of vomit. Flesh, raw and pink, bubbled between the muscle, filling in the gaps.
The whole structure throbbed at a rhythmic beat around her. It had a pulse.
The whole room was living.
She screamed again and her screams were echoed back to her, screams that seemed to come from the muscle and flesh itself. The flesh tightened and contracted around her, as if it could feel her pain, as if it were in a world of agony itself and was shrieking out its own torture.
Stacey clamped her hands to her ears.
Her terror had made her forget her nausea for the moment, but nothing could stop her hands from shaking, or her nose and eyes from streaming. She felt the steady throb in the back of her brain, that itchy, anxious need building up inside.
Despite the horror surrounding her, she was still held hostage by her addiction.
The flesh continued to spread. It was covering the opposite wall now, and still it grew.
Was she hallucinating? Surely, she must be...
A bubble of anger suddenly welled up inside her.
What the h.e.l.l had that woman given her? That b.i.t.c.h! She must have given her something. The heroin must have been cut with some kind of hallucinogenic.
It was the only explanation; she was on some kind of crazy, strong acid. Yet Stacey wasn"t averse to taking hallucinogenic drugs. She had experienced them before and they had never been like this.
All around her the flesh pulsed and rippled. As she watched, something started to morph from the wall. Fingers pushed out from behind the tissue, coating themselves in flesh, tendons, and muscles. A second hand joined it. Arms followed the hands, reaching out. Everything was exposed, and it look as though the arms had been flayed, leaving the skin behind. A torso joined the arms; first the narrow, thin chest, then the concave dip of a stomach. Legs and feet stepped out. Finally a skull forehead, cheekbones, and nose-pushed through the wall. Dull, dead eyeb.a.l.l.s stared out.
Stacey screamed again and scrabbled away, but there was nowhere to go.
The figure started to disengage from the wall. As it pulled away, the exposed flesh grew a thin layer of pale, white skin. Starting at the fingertips, the skin crawled up the arms and chest, and up over its face. Long, mousy hair sprouted from its scalp.
It was a young girl, just like herself. Her hair was slick with vomit, her skin white and drawn. Bruises marked the inside of her arms. Even with the skin, her eyes looked too big in her head. The girl reached out a hand and opened her mouth in a silent plea of anguish.
Stacey shook her head in denial and ran to the one place she has ever sought comfort-the bed. Even though there were no sheets to hide beneath, she grabbed the thin pillow and clutched it to her chest.
But the girl seemed unaware of Stacey"s presence. As she took slow, unsteady steps across the room, Stacey felt as if she was watching a hologram. The girl reached the opposite wall and the wall of flesh morphed out to her, like a mother to a child, claiming her home. It wrapped her within its folds and, face first, she melted into the wall.
The girl sank back into it as though she was never there.
Stacey moaned in fear. What could she do? The flesh was all around her now, above her head, around all of the walls. It was as though she was trapped inside the body of a hideous creature and there was no escape.
She sat, hunched up on the bed, keening, and rocking back and forth. If only she could get a hit, then she could shoot up and sink into oblivion. Then whatever h.e.l.l she suddenly inhabited would no longer exist.
She looked up. Was it her imagination, but did the room seem smaller now? Maybe all of the extra layers have made it appear smaller? But no, it was noticeably so. The walls were closing in around her.
She would lose her mind if it closed around her completely, if it claimed her the same way it had the girl. She squeezed her eyes shut and, when she opened them, the walls had moved again.
"Leave me alone," she cried. "Just leave me alone!"
Like tentacles, some of the veins, arteries and tendons whipped out from the wall, thrashing their way towards her. Stacey shrieked and tried to clamber away, but she fell from the bed, the jolt winding her, and her teeth clacking together.
Still the things came at her and she continued to back away. They reached out, feeling their way towards her. From the wall behind her, the veins and tendons extended out and grabbed her, wrapping around her wrists and ankles. Their touch was slick and hot against her skin.
She screamed and fought against them, struggling like a fly caught in a web. They wrapped around her, tightening their hold. She bucked her body back and forth, but she was held fast.
Another tentacle lashed across her wrists, slicing her skin. In an instant one of the veins had plugged the hole. Pain speared through her and she screamed afresh, a new pitch of terror to her voice.
It was as though she had suddenly become part of the living substance around her.
The tendons and sheathes of muscle wrapped around her and squeezed. They were wringing her out as though she was plugged into a terrifying dialysis machine Stacey writhed, her screams piercing in her ears. Black sludge squeezed from her veins, all the drugs, the darkness of her soul and body, flooding into the system she was plugged into.
Then suddenly they were gone and she was free.
Stacey fell away from the wall and collapsed on the floor.
Around her the wall of flesh had disappeared. The walls were only walls again.
She dragged herself back to the bed and pulled herself up onto it, her face wet with tears. She curled up onto her side, shaking violently.
Suddenly the bed sagged beneath her. Her shoulder started to sink into it, and then her hip. She tried to sit up, but the mattress had turned to sludge and, as though she was stuck in a badly filled water bed, she couldn"t get any traction.
The bottom dropped out of it and she was falling...
Stacy woke with a jolt. Damp cardboard squashed beneath her and her skin was numb with cold. She was lying back in the alley again.
She felt different. The itchy feeling of addiction had left her, her skin no longer crawled with it, her brain didn"t thrum. She was more lucid than she has been in a long time, and she was seeing clearly.
Could that place have taken the drugs out of her system?
Stacey shivered. Was the room even real?
She checked her wrists for the marks from the veins, but they could have been any one of the numerous scabs and scars on the inside of her arms.
It had been real.
She had been there; she knew it as certainly as she was lying in the alley right now.
Suddenly going into detox wasn"t the most terrifying thing she could think of-there were much worse things out there in the world-and she knew she would never do anything that would cause her to go back to that horrifying place. She would never again put something inside her body that could make it happen.
However bad things got, however desperate she felt, she would always have the memory of the things that she had seen and experienced that night. It would always serve as a reminder.
Never would she risk going back to that tortured room.
She knew, without a doubt, that she would stay clean.
Liked Marissa"s story? Check out her latest t.i.tle: The Dark Road.
When a group of backpackers are thrown together on a bus from Bangkok to Siem Reap, Cambodia, they have no idea of the journey ahead of them.
Shortly after crossing the Cambodian border, one of the group disappears off the side of the road, and they quickly discover they have more than the threat of land mines to worry about. They are plunged into a terrifying world of ancient temples, curses and long-dead kings. One by one, they start to lose both their minds and their lives as what was supposed to be an adventure turns into a fight for survival.
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