Purgatory

“Ann, it’s time to wake up, sweetheart,” Harris said, rolling over and rubbing his wife’s shoulder. He slid out of bed and shuffled to the window, pulling back the curtains so that the Colorado sunrise would stream in. A candle sat flickering in the window that he had forgotten to expire before they went to bed. He took his fingers and pinched out the flame before turning back to his wife. But when he looked at Ann, he noticed how she was still sound asleep. He decided to give her time to wake up and went to the bathroom.

Harris relieved himself before standing in front of the bathroom mirror to look at himself. His face was scruffy, and his eyes sunken. He couldn’t remember the last time he had shaved, but he just didn’t have the energy. All Harris could focus on was getting himself to work each day, no matter how he looked.

He splashed some water on his face and rubbed the sleep from his eyes before going back to the bedroom. Harris had hoped that Ann would be up and moving by the time he was done, but she was still sound asleep – despite the sun shining on her face.

“Ann, come on baby,” Harris said, failing to hide the annoyance in his voice. He didn’t have time to deal with Ann this morning – he had a business meeting today. Since he was the only one with an income, he couldn’t miss it. Harris pulled a pair of trousers and a sport coat from the closet, slipping them on before going to Ann’s side again.

“Ann, I can’t do this today. You need to get up – NOW!”

Harris grabbed her shoulder and rolled her onto her back. Ann’s face was moist, strands of her scarlet hair sticking to her cheeks and forehead. She jerked awake at Harris’ touch, her bloodshot eyes snapping open, wide as saucers. Ann grabbed Harris’ wrist with her left hand, digging her nails into his skin. Her fingers purpled with the pressure.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” she screeched, her voice crackling in the stale air. Harris yanked his hand away in shock, falling as he clutched his wrist and rubbed the red nail marks indented into his skin. Ann’s wailing stopped as her eyes shut once again. She rolled back over as though nothing had happened.

“WHAT THE FUCK, ANN?!” he screamed as he walked back up to her. Harris grabbed her arm and tried to yank her out of the bed, but she would not move. The harder he yanked, the more she seemed to sink into the bed – unaware of his touch.

“Come on, Ann, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t go through the loss of our children and the loss of you, too. Come on, just talk to me. We can work through this…please, I’m begging you…”

The skin of Ann’s arm began to boil, forcing Harris’ hand to recoil in pain. He looked down at his palm as a burn began to blister across his skin. Hot tears ran from his eyes and sweat flared on his forehead before making its way down his face. The skin on Ann’s arm erupted in livid, white blisters and began to pop. Puss sprang from each blister and splattered across Harris’ face and sport jacket. He sprang back in disgust and fell against the window, still clutching his hand. He tried to form words, but his voice had been stripped from him. As the puss from Ann’s blisters seized, he took a step closer to her to inspect the damage. But the closer he got, he realized that her skin was ripping as though something was trying to claw its way out.

“Ann?”

The ripples found their way to Ann’s gashes and fat stubs sprang from each blister. The stubs tore through each wound, maroon blood pouring from her skin. Harris shook his head in fear, unbelieving what he was seeing. As the stubs continued to rip through Ann’s flesh, he realized that they weren’t stubs at all, but fingers trying to claw their way out. As they tore through Ann, they revealed hands coated in cracking and yellowed nails. Puss oozed from each nail, igniting a putrid stench. Harris couldn’t control his gag reflex.

Ann’s eyes remained closed, but her left arm raised and grabbed the fingers protruding from her right arm. She grasped onto them and pulled with a sickening wet sound as she ripped a severed hand from her arm – tearing her skin to pieces. Ann threw the severed hand to the floor with a resounding thud. Her eyes shot open, red and coated in yellow mucus that streamed down her cheeks. She let out a blood curdling scream and began to tear at her eyes, her nails clawing into her eyelids and scraping through to her eyeballs.

Harris’ focus clicked back into place at the sound of his wife’s agony. He ran to her side and pulled her hands away from her eyes. Through her shredded eyelids he saw movement as pairs of tiny hands reached their fingers through her skin and crawled their way up from beneath her eyeballs. Ann’s screams intensified as he held her down, trying to stop her thrashing. The small, blood covered hands crawled down her face and across her body. They leapt onto Harris’ arms, causing him to jump back in shock. He tried to flick the hands away as they crawled further up his arms, but they continued to jump back onto his skin. He glanced back at his wife through his struggle and realized that the hands that had leapt onto him weren’t the only ones crawling their way out of Ann’s eyes. Streams of bloody, mutant hands continued to shred through Ann’s eyes from inside as her screams intensified before becoming choked. She tried to claw at her eyes to stop the hands from crawling out, but she was not strong enough.

“Harris…help me…” Ann choked out, before the mutated hands finished tearing through her eyeballs, leaving nothing but sockets.

Her body went limp.

“Ann!” Harris screamed, dread filling his body. His shock convinced him that he could wake her by shaking her arm, but she was gone. As he touched her cold skin, the mutated hands streaming from her eye sockets climbed onto his arms, his chest, and finally down to his legs. Harris fell back as he tried to wipe the hands off of him, but their sharp, yellow nails dug into his clothes before reaching his skin. He wailed as they pierced his flesh before he jumped up and tried to run from the room.

Harris did not notice that the severed hand that had erupted from Ann’s arm had made its way to the door. It leapt at his face and grabbed his cheeks, the fingers digging into his flesh. He pulled at the severed hand, trying to pry it off of his face before realizing that the hand was decaying and coming apart in sopping chunks of flesh. The hands coving his body continued to dig into his skin as though they were trying to get inside of him. He was finally able to peel the remains of the severed hand from his face and focus on tearing the small hands off of him. He threw them to the ground one by one, smashing them with his foot – the sounds a symphony of cracking bones, tearing flesh, and splattering blood. Harris shouted in anguish with each hand that he pried from his body and squashed, feeling them lose their power with each crush of his foot. His body was covered in blood, puss, and cuts, but the pain had reached a point so severe that he felt numb. Harris pulled off his sports coat and trousers – both of which were torn to shreds. This left him in a t-shirt and underwear. Harris could not process what he had just experienced, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at Ann’s body. Instead, he closed his eyes and walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him. Harris leaned against it and brought his hands to his eyes as he began to sob. His legs gave out and he slid down the door before crouching onto the floor. Maybe he was going crazy. He had always thought that Ann was the one who had gone crazy after their children had died, but maybe it was all him. When Harris closed his eyes, he could still see the marks on his children’s necks from where they had been strangled. Maybe the trauma from that memory had made him psychotic.

Harris pulled his hands away from his eyes and looked at his arms. They were covered in bloody pricks where the nails of the small hands had dug into his skin. It didn’t make sense. Everything that had just happened in the bedroom had been a psychotic episode, that was all. Ann wasn’t dead. But if that were true, then why was he covered in puss, Ann’s blood, and bloody wounds of his own? Harris threw his head back in anguish and screamed, banging against the door over and over.

“WAKE UP!” he screamed, hoping that maybe he could shock himself back to reality. Maybe this was a nightmare caused by stress. “WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!”

But when Harris opened his eyes again, he was still sitting on the floor in front of his closed bedroom door, covered in the stench of rotting flesh. This was certainly not a dream.