Written By: Rishi Popat
Edited By: Akrit Agarwal
Designed By: Saisha Singh and Aradhya Poddar
My head hurts. I don’t know where I am. I open my eyes and it’s pitch black. I feel around, bump into a table, pens scattered around on it making a jarring sound that echoes in the room. I don’t know where I am, but I have a guess. If it’s true, I truly must be in deep trouble. I feel the wall with my hands - cold and rough - until I reach the familiar feel of a light switch. I flick it on, the incandescent light hurting my pupils. Once my eyes adjust, I look around the room. I suddenly realize why that table sounded familiar. Not here. Anywhere but here. We used to live here. She died here.
I look up when I hear a voice outside the room. The door’s closed, but I can hear the faint sound of a few people. One's deep, its guttural voice sending shockwaves of fear through me. I feel like I should be running away. I want to be running away… but I can’t.
The door handles rotate, the springs creak slowly as if they haven’t been opened for decades. As the raucous sound faded, the door doesn’t move, but it comes forward half an inch. Barely enough for me to make out his face.
It is white. Strips of red run across his face like blood on fresh snow. His mouth a ghastly smile, red smeared on it. He has no hair, and no pupils. His eyes a swirling white. His tall figure steps back and slides into the ensuing darkness.
I don’t know what’s going on. My childhood home, this... entity? What's happening?
The next few days were a blur. I didn’t see the white man again. I found out I couldn’t leave the house; the windows were boarded up and the doors were locked.
One night, I discovered that there was one working television in the house. Finally, something that I can use to see what’s going on in the outside world- and find out more about how I got here.
As I laid in bed, watching the news, the reporter began scratching at her face. Her motions became aggressive and her skin began peeling. Blood dripped from the wounds as she continued to relay her report without missing a beat. No one seemed to notice or react to her appearance. Eventually, she froze in place and stared at the camera. Then, a close-up of her face, grotesque and mangled. Her bloodied lips spread apart and offered an ominous noise.
I switched off the TV, my mind still reeling from the brutality of the gore that I witnessed. I hurried back down to the other rooms. I turned the corner and saw him again, looking into the distance. My head filled with fear. All I could see was the dreadful face. Panic filled my whole body. I took a few steps back, trying not to disturb the creature. On my third step back, a floorboard creaked.
The creature’s head whipped to face me, his eyes white, red nerves filling up the corners. He bared his teeth, a long row of meat-eating choppers stretching from one side of his face to the other. He opened his mouth to scream, his jaw unhinged and expanded to the size of my head.
The white creature limped towards me; his teeth bared. His lips moving. I couldn’t figure out what it was saying. Its lips moved, screaming at me. It started running towards me from across the corridor.
I turned back and ran, the sound of my feet hitting the wood as fast as my beating heart. I turned towards the front door, but there wasn’t anywhere else left to go. I made a desperate attempt to turn the handle to get out. I couldn’t.
I looked back, and I saw it running towards me slowly, but getting closer every second.
I kept trying the locked door, expecting something to happen. Nothing did. I scratched it, desperate. Wooden splinters dug under my fingernails, but it was hopeless.
Then it slammed into me, and we broke the door. The door didn’t lead to outside. It led into a hospital, but nobody was there. I suddenly felt the weight of the creature on my back, its arms looping around me, its body cold as ice.
I fought it off and started running again. I ran for what seemed like hours, or days. The creature chasing after me. He started to change slowly, but I noticed it.
At first, I noticed his arms weren’t that long anymore. His mouth more human. He kept screaming the same thing repeatedly, his lips moving but no sound reaching me. It’s like he was screaming to someone else.
I kept on running, my brain tingling and my heart pounding in my ears. I turned a dozen more corridors, the medical wards passing me like a train passes houses. In some rooms I thought I saw faces. Then my father. He’d always make my wishes happen, no matter what.
I kept running. The creature was changing slowly, his glazed eyes had become clear. They were full of sadness, full of anger, but there was no life behind them.
I kept running until I reached the end. There was only one door, and it was illuminated, there were people in there. I looked behind me, the creature was still running, his transformations quite clear.
He had a hospital gown on, his eyes now full of tears. His head was split open, his brain exposed, the red flesh clearly visible. Crimson liquid pooling on his head causing what’s left of it inside to pour out like a red, veiny egg yolk.
It came toward me, but it didn’t leap for me again, instead it bashed straight through the door that I couldn’t get past. I followed.
It was me.
It was a dark room but there were two visible doctors there, their gowns dripping with blood. The creature was nowhere to be seen, but there I was, laying down on a cold slab of metal. Machines beeped in the background. A big machine with sixteen arms sticking out of it, with needles on each arm working on me.
“I don’t know how this is even possible.” said the first one, her voice full of wonder and disgust.
“This is his seventh surgery. Each time he’s been killed, then brought back to life. I can’t imagine what the poor fellow’s going through.” said the older doctor.
“Let me die. Please.” I begged. Again, and again, but they wouldn’t listen. The top half of my head was missing, white bone showing from my skull, but it was cut too, revealing my pink brain that was being worked on by the machine. Reaching inside me, altering me. It was painful, my eyes darted around, looking for a flame in the dark. It was cold, I could see myself on the slab, suffering.
“Please. I’m begging you, let me die, please. I’ll do anything, let me die please. Don’t do this.”
My eyes were wide, staring towards the doctors. I kept begging them to let me die, I didn’t want to live anymore. I wanted to die. My voice kept breaking, I kept choking on my own words, but wishing them into existence.
I looked once more at the room laid out in front of me. The two doctors, hovering over me. The machine, attached to a monolithic single pillar that came out of the ceiling, laced with wires and tubes. Wherever the machine’s needles touch my brain, it glowed red with a neurotic pulse.
That’s why I was here. I had to decide.
I decided to end it.
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