Get away

«Ἀπολείπειν ὁ Θεός Ἀντώνιον»

Κωνσταντίνος Καβάφης

Johnny was tired of running. He felt exhausted. As he struggled to put one foot in front of the other, the cool night air whipped at his face, making his eyes water. His breathing was labored and erratic. The forest floor was dangerous. Branches kept trying to trip him and a thick mat of leaves covered any holes. The moon, almost full, hung high in the sky, lighting the sparse clouds in fantastical ways, and piercing the canopy of the trees leaving silver columns that messed with his perception.

No thoughts managed to pierce the mantle of panic that had covered his mind. Self-preservation had kicked in and he just kept running. Eventually he came to the clearing. Here the moonlight was almost blinding, and it stung his eyes after having been in the dark for so long. Across the way Johnny could see the barn. He made a run for it with renewed vigor. Reaching the building, he absentmindedly thought of how the moonlight seemed to take away all traces of color, leaving the landscape a palette of blacks and greys. He fumbled with the door latch, managing to get it open after a few tries. As the doors swung open with a push, the stench came. As rotting, acrid and nauseating as it was before.

He stumbled.

“No…” He whispered.

“NO!” The whisper turning to a shout he called, desperately: “NO! I got away from you! I left, I ran!“

Swinging around he grabbed a pitchfork that lay on the ground, and brandishing it like a pike he tried to find the source of the stench. The moonlight was coming through the doors and the wrecked roof, lighting some parts of the barn and plunging others into darkness.

“Fucking show yourself! Show me what you are! I’m sick of this!”

The laughter came again. Low and menacing, it echoed inside the barn – but it shouldn’t echo, there was nothing in here to reflect sound, but still it echoed and it drove poor Johnny crazy. Then the rustling started and Johnny could hear the thing move and it was in front of him and behind him and above him and next to him and on him and – oh God – inside him.

The scream that Johnny let out was not human. There were no words in that scream.

“Show me! I want to see what you are!”

Tears ran down his face, mixing with the dirt and the blood from his head wound. It couldn’t be. He had gotten away, he had run, run for days in the woods, and still the laughter and the scent and the scurrying were there, all of them, gnawing at his mind, gnawing at his sanity, at the fabric of his being. He felt himself begin to unravel and fought – oh how he fought – the urge to keep running. He planted his feet firmly in the ground and closed his eyes, jaw squared against his horror.

Poor Johnny stood there in the barn, with his eyes closed, and the pitchfork in his hands, fighting a darkness that seemed endless. His eyes suddenly opened, his teeth flashed as he snarled, and with spittle dribbling down his chin, poor Johnny said through clenched teeth:

“For weeks you’ve tormented me. Laughed at me, played with me. You have ruined my life! Can’t talk to people, can’t sleep, can’t work. Even out here you stalk me.

Let’s fucking end this!“

The laughter crescendoed along with Johnny’s shouts, the scurrying and rustling becoming louder and louder. Then… silence. It was broken only by his panting and the pounding of his heart inside his chest.

A small whisper in Johnny’s ear went:

“Behind you”.

The momentum of Johnny’s swerve almost threw him off his feet. A death grip on the pitchfork, his breath caught at the sight in front of him.

His younger self was looking back at him. 10, maybe 15 years younger…definitely in the teens. The clothes were familiar…his favorite pair of jeans as a teen with that T-shirt that his mom eventually threw out when the holes in it became obscene.

Only now the head was leaning to one side, blood pouring from the empty eye sockets, from the nostrils, from the mouth, the clothes were tattered and dirty and bloody, and a gurgling laughter started to emanate from the sickening form, which seemed to be choking in its own blood. The arms flew up, like a zombie’s (it’s no time to laugh Johnny) and a voice like sandpaper on glass was heard:

“Why don’t you like me?”

No mouth moved, but it was coming from Little Johnny, and all the while, the choked gurgle of a chuckle kept going.

Poor Johnny stood there looking at Little Johnny, the pitchfork now limp in his hands. He tried to say something, but the words weren’t coming.

“Why don’t you like me Johnny?” resounded the voice one more time.

The form then seemed to shrink, turning into a baby, then grow back again to the size of a toddler. A Johnny Toddler.

“Johnny, you don’t love me. You never did.”

It kept morphing, to a Child Johnny, a Teen Johnny, then an Adult Johnny. All the while the blood was there, dripping out of every orifice, the head still tilted to one side.

Poor Johnny watched as Adult Johnny lifted his arms and reached for his eyes.

Poor Johnny felt his own arms lift up and reach for his own eyes. He screamed. It didn’t matter. The squishing sound or fingers pushing through eyeball sockets still came, along with the pain, as fingernails dug into flesh, hitting bone, tearing the flesh from the eyes and from the fingers themselves as they scraped against the skull bones.

“Do you love me now Johnny? Do you love you now?”

«Ἀπολείπειν ὁ Θεός Ἀντώνιον»

Κωνσταντίνος Καβάφης

The Cactus