November mystery short stories

1 – DISTORT

1.45 am. I stare at my alarm clock sitting on the right side of my bed where I lie. Its funny, the way you look at an object to much bends your reality. I watch the 2-bit numbers on the screen creating the only light from the room. The decimal points flashing rhythmically. Like a hypnotises, watching them flicker sends me into a deep slumber, I wake with a start, bolt upright in bed, the residue of saliva on my chin.

I turn to the right; the clock is no longer drumming to the beat but hammering as if the noise is reaching my heart. My own heart seems like a drumming analogue clock.

I stare at the alarm intently, squinting my eyes to focus, in the darkness. My head and heart beating together.

The numbers that were still, seem to be now dancing like trees in the wind. I blink several times a second to make sure it is that I am seeing. The green neon light is now caving in like a sand mountain, the green turning to a runny gooey consistently crossing from the digital world into my reality, spreading its juice on the quilt.

I jump off, startled peeling over the goo that seems to be stuck to backside, dragging it off with my hands.

I look back at them, my fingers and nails seem to be repulsed by my skin texture. I notice that my long thin fingers are stretching resembling that from a witch. My nails growing twisted and wild like vines in a forest. I scream but no sound comes from my voice box.

Staring around, the entire carpet is covered in thick, neon goo. As I pull the goop from the floor, my tree fingers drop back to the ground as if we are opposite poles on a magnetic stip.

I crawl back into bed, sobbing, my knees squelch as I move up towards the top of the bed, scrunching myself up into a tiny ball, sheet wrapped around me while the green overtakes like a sea monster.

I can feel myself chocking uncontrollably, but afraid to cut ties with my sheets.

Silence. I breathe in one mighty breath, pulling the sheets off my body slowly. Crawling backwards from the bed that seems to be completely disappeared goop. I know it was just a fever dream.

I close my eyes and breathe counting back from ten, as I open them again, I am shocked to see a figure lying in the same place I was lying in bed. I ditch the bed I am knelt on and edge towards it.

My alarm clock now back to its original form, flicking in the darkness, the only piece of light shining in the room.

Lying in front, an empty shell, like that of a spider. My own body, just my skin curled into a pile, a complete lifeless replica of myself.

2 VAST

The sound of the word, the thought of the word made her blood turn cold. Even as a baby her mother would take her to the swimming pool where she just struggled through the water. Babies are meant to swim by themselves, float and love the water as they float, not her, one dangle in the wet, being dropped in by her mother started a crying fit.

Throughout her whole life she avoided water. A school visit to the pool? A day of sick. Holiday around the sandy beaches? She just never entered the hellish place. She never dared go out in the open waters on a boat, even the thought of flying over water sent her into panic so she never entered those flying boxes. Living on an island filled her heart with dread, but that was were she was born and raised she wasn’t about to risk drowning to be cantered around many other islands shielding her.

Showers were always the first option, less chance of death of drowning, even so showering her body never felt comfortable if there was a way to clean herself without water she would in a heartbeat.

Now she had turned 65, her life lived without water and drowning of any sort of her family wondered how on earth she could have lived her entire life like this and even so her family was always there for her so when her 66th birthday rolled around in mid-August she trusted them to take her away for a weekend in the mountains.

The temperature was cold when they arrived, thoughts that it would snow was in sight. The cabin they were all staying inside, the windows were frozen. She didn’t particularly the snow and ice as we all know they melt when heated, so not much chance of that seeing as right at the front door was a temperature reading -2C.

She wrapped up tightly in her single bed, thick blankets she pulled from the wardrobe in her tiny box room, her face completely covered in sheets and blankets. She could feel her eyes dropping as the cold seemed to be consuming the inside of her body.

The next thing she remembered was being dragged from her bed, her eyes drifting in and out of consciousness. It took a moment to realise she was being dragged on the floor, her head touching the ground. She didn’t have the energy to talk or even move and the more she was being bounced around the more she wanted to sleep.

Just the colour white was the first thing she noticed and then the cold hit. As she stared down the thing she dreaded had happened. 5ft of water surrounding her body all around for miles around, the ice wrapped around her ankles realising she was only wearing the night dress she had when she was asleep.

She panicked but no noise came from her vocal cords. Searching for any sign of her family, any sign of the cabin she was dragged from. This person knew her, knew her fears and wished her dead.

She thought the feeling would be more powerful, more overwhelming, but the icy coldness from the ice petrified her in her step. She couldn’t even feel herself bobbing up and down, it was as though the water had control over her mind, she didn’t seem to mind the feeling and this was the most confusing as if the water was somehow protecting her.

In the midst in the distance in the vast gloom, tiny pockets of moonshine lit up tiny figures seemed to show in her vision. The faces of her family members covered in the smiles of darkness.