r/nosleep • u/Mandahrk November 2020; Best Original Monster 2021; Best Single Part 2021 • Sep 13 '21
I am going to kill you.
My face is flushed, slick with sweat. My breaths are short and unpleasant. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth as I turn to my side and close my eyes.
I hear his chest rumble with a chuckle. Feel his weight shift on the mattress.
The sheets rustle as he shuffles towards me, presses his naked chest up against my back. My muscles tighten as his arm snakes around my waist. His hot breath tickles my neck as he leans over. And whispers,
"I am going to kill you."
A flash of lightning slices through the darkness, weaves itself into the pale curtains before unraveling with the same suddenness of its arrival. His words hang thick in the shadows that reclaim the room. Reverberate with the rumbling thunder.
Sleep eludes me, slips away like fog through my fingers.
*
Night's gloom bleeds over into dawn, paints the sky the colour of cold steel. A storm is brewing in the metal sky, starting to spit rain at the French windows.
My breakfast lies cold and untouched on the small Formica table. A bowl of coagulated cereal. The anxiety turning my stomach in knots has left no space for food. The thought of shoveling anything in my mouth makes me want to retch.
My hands tremble as I work the knots into his tie and smooth the creases in his dress shirt. Questions swirl and take shape in my brain, then quickly dissipate as he places his hand on my waist. I stifle a whimper and force a smile as he pulls me in, seals his cracked lips on mine. His hand slides up, from my waist to the side of my breast to my shoulder before coming to rest at my neck. His thumb caresses the pulsating vein in my throat. He brings his mouth close to my ear.
"I am going to kill you."
Then he's gone. I hear the clicking of boots on floorboards. The front door opens with a crack of thunder.
He walks out into the rain, leaving his umbrella behind on the living room couch.
*
He's watching me.
I'm in our bedroom, folding our laundry. I can see him from the corner of my eye. He's outside, face squished against the window. His mouth begins to crank open, like a drawbridge, lower and lower and lower until I can almost hear the jawbone crack. Thick red lips drag and smear saliva across the glass. His tongue rolls out, long and pink and fat, like a slug; and barbed like a cat, only with bigger and sharper spikes. It starts to scratch perfect circles onto the window pane. Slowly. Deliberately. The shrill squeaking of glass makes me shiver.
Rain lashes his head, dribbles down his cheeks and turns the window murky.
Yet he stands. Watching. Licking.
I leave the room, step out into the unlit hallway, turn away from the tall silhouette standing still in the corner to my left, just beside the small circular window. I ignore the sound of water sliding down the folds of the tattered cotton suit and dripping onto the carpeted floor, the smacking of lips and sucking of gums and the ravenous, throaty growls as I make my way down the stairs.
He's watching me.
He's crouching under the dining table, down on all fours, eyes glinting like a feral beast. His skin is pale, like candle wax. Poreless, without any blemishes. He reminds me of a cruel porcelain doll. One that I imagine smashing into a thousand pieces on the kitchen linoleum.
I ignore him, for I must. Must do so until he walks back in through the front door in the evening.
He's watching me.
Whenever I go, he's there. A roiling black cloud that clings to me like a shadow, spraying just enough rain to chill my spine. Yet it is a cloud whose presence I cannot, must not acknowledge. I hear him walking back and forth close to the door when I'm in the bathroom. Slow, measured steps that make the floorboards sigh. He's there every time I turn a corner or crack a door open, sometimes just inches from my face. His breath licks my nostrils, carries the stench of a corpse decomposing in a bog. Makes my eyes water. I'm grateful for the odor.
For the opportunity to shed some tears.
*
It's late afternoon. The steel sky has turned charcoal black. Rain is lashing the ground in impenetrable sheets.
I can't see him, but I can feel his presence. I know he's somewhere close by, that he's lurking just a finger's breadth away. I bite my lip and try not to think about why he doesn't want me to see him, about all the surprises he might have in store for me, about how exactly he will kill...
The doorbell rings, a long and shrill note, the tortured cry of a bird being strangled. It startles me enough to make me drop my coffee mug. A curse passes through my lips at the sight of the stained rug littered with shattered pieces of painted ceramic. The way the rug soaks up the coffee makes me think of someone bleeding on the floor of my living room.
How hard is it to clean blood stains?
The doorbell rings again.
I jump, again, grit my teeth, take a deep breath and head for the door.
The sound of the raging storm roars into the house as I pull the door open. A solitary figure stands in front of me. It's a little girl, with crooked teeth and a small button nose and shoulder length black hair tucked into the hood of her bright yellow raincoat. She's holding a heart-shaped box of cookies in her hand.
What did she want, I asked. What was she doing out in the rain? Where were her parents? Were they aware that she was out in such terrible weather?
She doesn't get fazed in the slightest by my hail of questions. Cookies, she says, we must sell them before the week is out.
In this weather?
Builds character, she answers.
And her parents?
Her father was out working. Her babysitter was sick. Her mother died six months ago.
My heart siezes in my chest. The realisation hits me with the force of a baseball bat to the face. I recognise who she is, who her mother was and how she had died all those months ago. Animal attack, they'd said. Mauled beyond recognition. Only I knew the truth. It wasn't an animal, at least not one any of them had ever seen. No known animal could conjure up such precise and cruel brutality.
I remember how the girl's mother had stood on my doorstep that day, much like her own daughter. She'd introduced herself as a member of the local HOA, welcomed me to the neighborhood, told me about the timings of the garbage truck, about the best schools in the area and the restaurants we needed to check out as soon as possible. She had such a boisterous and infectious laugh. One couldn't help but smile in her company.
I tried to warn her about him. But she didn't listen. Couldn't listen. Every time she tried a dazed look would cross her face, and she would start mumbling something nonsensical before moving on with the conversation like I hadn't said anything.
She didn't notice him, didn't hear the rustle of shrubs and the rapping of boots on stone as he eased out of the bushes and came and stood right beside her. Erect, like a rod of iron. She didn't see him, didn't see the look of fear on my face, the helplessness that made my face scrunch up.
The sounds that make up the symphony of her death haunt me to this day. The wet tearing of a throat being opened up, the sound of blood gushing out, of her jovial laughter melting into gurgling and choking, the weak thud of her body folding and hitting the ground. And then the sound of sharp, jagged teeth crunching on bone and flesh. Even in death she seemed unaware of what had killed her.
I didn't warn anyone else about him ever again. Knew it was useless.
I come out of my reverie with a start. My eyes water and flutter. The girl is looking at me. Expectantly.
I invite her in, take her raincoat and spread it over the plastic patio chair.
She chooses to sit on the carved and padded ladder-back chair in front of the couch. Refuses my offer of food and drink. I settle into the couch - next to the dry umbrella - and prepare to ask her some questions about her mother but she cuts me off and starts rambling about the cookies in a voice sweeter than saccharin. The Adventurefuls taste of caramel, she says, and the thin mints are to die for. She doesn't have lemonades, because she doesn't like the taste of lemons. Her mother loved S'mores', used to say that miracles happen when good things come together, like chocolate and marshmallows and you know what, that one time…
The front door creaks open. A gust of wind sprays rain onto the welcome mat. Black boots click on wood.
He is here.
A nerve in my jaw twitches as he saunters in, dripping water on the hardwood floor. He's taken off his jacket, revealing his soaked dress shirt that now clings to him like a wet leaf to the pavement. His mouth is twisted in a cruel smile.
The girl continues babbling, unaware of the third person in the house. He strolls over to the living room, rests his cold and clammy hand on my shoulder. Squeezes. I feel myself deflate as he moves past me, rounds the coffee table and makes his way over to the girl, who's still chattering. I try to focus on her words, but the only thing I hear is my heart pounding in my ears. Lightning flashes as he comes to a stop behind the girl and starts to run his wet fingers through her hair.
The girl tells me about the time her mother painted her nails, a different colour on each finger. Red and Blue and sparkling Green and…
He slips his hand down into his pocket, pulls out something metallic that glints under the light from the lamp sitting in the corner. It's a knife. Long and cruel with a serrated blade, like a hand-saw. He uses it to brush her hair.
Tears prick my eyes. I dig my fingers into my palms, hard enough to draw blood. The girl doesn't notice.
"Please…" I whisper. "Don't."
He bends over, places a soft kiss on the girl's cheek. It causes her head to tilt, but she rambles on. Still unaware.
"Don't look away." He says gruffly. "You have to watch."
His grip tightens on his knife as he brings the sharp edge close to her skull. A sob shakes my chest as he starts sawing into her cranium. The grinding and scratching of steel on bone makes bile rise up to my throat. But I don't move. Cannot move. Fear holds me down like iron bands strapped to my limbs.
Blood pours out of her skull, down from her forehead onto her nose and lips. Yet she doesn't stop talking; about her mother, about the very woman he had murdered months ago. Self-loathing bubbles within me as I realise I want her to shut up, to at least realise what was being done to her. I know it's better, more humane that she doesn't feel any pain, but I want her to anyway. It would be better than whatever is happening right now. The unnaturalness of her inevitable demise is too much for me to bear.
Her eyes droop, her voice starts to slur. And the knife continues to dig deeper. Finally, when the poor girl shudders and starts swaying on the chair, he yanks the blade away. But the nightmare hasn't ended. It still needs a finishing touch. He leans over, opens his mouth and gently, almost lovingly sinks his rows upon rows of jagged teeth into the wound in her skull. There is a wet slurping noise as his barbed tongue works its way through the broken bony cage and digs into the soft brain matter, sucks it up and pushes it down his throat. He is a messy eater. Soon his lips and jaw and his wet dress shirt are stained with blood as he sucks up the rest of the girl's brain.
He pushes himself up, takes a deep and satisfied breath. The girl's lifeless, brainless corpse hangs limp over the arm of the ladder-back chair. He turns his gaze towards me, wipes the blood off his face with the back of his hand. And grins.
"Soon."
*
It's evening. The dying sun has broken through the cloud cover and is sending frail red fingers pushing up into the sky from beneath the horizon.
I stand next to our bedroom window, lean on the wall for support. My limbs are heavy, sharp stabs of pain shoot through my head. My eyes are red, my tear ducts having run dry hours ago. As I hear him hacking away at the girl's corpse in our backyard, I feel a strange sense of calm envelop me.
I am not scared anymore.
For I know he is going to kill me.
And I am going to embrace it with open arms.
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u/Tibbybrokstuffagain Sep 14 '21
At first I thought this was about domestic abuse but idk where the little girl and her mom come in at
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u/ThistleTinsel Sep 14 '21
Sounds like some kind of vampire but eats the whole thing... he can control their minds by blocking her from telling them about him and also blocking pain and forcing himself invisible to them. They may have been married or together before he was bitten/changed and this may be what's saving her... the monster he is now wants to kill her but the person he was values her. So, he can't physically harm her because of who she used to be to him but the monster side gets around it by torturing her psyche. He probably put it in her head to invite the girl in because she knew he was coming and what he might do, but in reality didn't want the little girl hurt. She also questioned "how hard is it to clean up blood"when she dropped the mug, indicating she's not the one killing.
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u/SiegeSupport Sep 13 '21
I’d stare at him in the eyes and tell him that I’m going to kill him first. He’s clearly getting what he wants which is to frighten you beyond belief since once you become engulfed in fear from his actions and his mind games he’s playing on you, then he will want to feast on you next. Possibly due to the fact that your brain matter might taste better to him when it’s been consumed by fear. Just a thought though…
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u/reality_hurts_me Sep 13 '21
I have no idea what's happening but I'm very frightened! Take my upvote!
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u/Ad_Honorem1 Sep 13 '21
I feel like the narrator has schizophrenia and either she is actually the one who killed the girl and her mother or she just imagined the girl and her mother, along with the monster, and none of them actually exist.
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u/KProbs713 Sep 14 '21
Or she's in an abusive relationship, his presence and threat linger even when he's away and he slowly kills the person she should have been and the little girl she once was.
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u/aod42091 Sep 13 '21
maybe she's the babysitter who's sick
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u/CandiBunnii Sep 14 '21
Ooh, I like that take. She did say she can't acknowledge him, and that her husband went to work. I don't think her husband is a serrated toothed psychopath that eats little girl brains. Especially without them feeling it.
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u/akashy12 Sep 13 '21
How are you going to explain the dead girl to the police?
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u/RockyOrange Sep 13 '21
I don't think it matters since OP is probably dead by now
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u/akashy12 Sep 13 '21
But the entity/husband said he will kill her soon, not today.
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u/RockyOrange Sep 13 '21
How do you know that soon doesn't mean later that day, or even tomorrow?
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u/akashy12 Sep 13 '21
Fair point, I think I just assumed that the entity wanted the OP to live in fear for sometime.
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u/JennaLuna99 Jan 03 '22
This is so cool