William Rose - Shut the Fuck Up and Die!

Daryl felt the warmth spread across his crotch like the blossoming of a liquid flower. It trickled down his thighs as its sharp vapors rose like heat to sting his nostrils. He was only vaguely aware of the cleaver clattering to the floor as his hands stretched into the darkness as if they could somehow push it back.

His screams came in short, shrill bursts that wavered with the trembling that seized his entire body and he staggered forward, hoping to find his way to the stairs. The darkness, however, had other plans: it wrapped around his feet like an over-friendly cat, made him stumble and fall, tried to force its way down his throat where it could choke the air from his lungs; every breath was a battle to be won, every beat of his heart felt as if might be that muscle’s last spasm. A tightness clinched his chest, but his legs felt as if they were as wobbly and unsteady as a newborn calf. In the time it took to blink an eye, he’d been plunged into the gaping maw of his worst fear and he was all too keenly aware of the gnashing teeth housed within this great, black beast.

The concrete floor banged against Daryl’s knees as he toppled forward, scraping away both fabric and skin as his jaw cracked into something hard and metallic. His mouth flooded with a taste that was as if he’d stuck his tongue to the posts of a battery and his back hitched as sobs tried to force their way through the screeches that raked his vocal chords.

On the floor, with the darkness squeezing in from all sides, he was an eight year old boy again. It was as if the scars that crisscrossed his arms and back had all ripped open with the disappearance of light. Rather than seeping blood, however, these wounds oozed the invisible muck of child-like fear. It coated his body with a cold slime that made the maturity of years wither into a man-sized husk; this atrophied shell pulled tightly around the youth within, reminding him of all the times cling wrap had been wrapped around his mouth while streams of water poured down. He was choking, drowning, gasping for air as his fingers clawed through dark waves for even the smallest hint of stability.

And they were out there. He could feel their eyes, like pinpricks in his soul, burning into the back of his neck and piercing his mind with their primal hunger. Spinning on his knees like a dervish, his watery eyes searched the darkness for their red glow. But they were always just out of sight, always somewhere behind him, above him, closing in, and moving so fast that they would tear the flesh from his bones before he even felt the twitch of wiry whiskers against his chin.

“Good boy… I will… I’ll be good, Mama, please, please, please, I swear….”

His voice was raw and raspy from the initial burst of screaming and cut in and out through the sobs that bubbled snot from his nose. At the same time, there was also a careening tone to the words, as if he might be set free if only he could plead his case long enough.

“Please, Mama… please….”

He’d wrapped his arms around himself and curled into a small ball in a nest of crushed carboard boxes and trash bags stuffed with old clothes. His head was tucked so low that his chin rested on the tops of his knees and he rocked quickly from side to side as tears and urine pooled below him.

“Mama….”

Mama was his only hope, the only thing that could drive away the darkness and turn back the creatures that slithered and scuttled toward the scent of his blood. Mama could hold him in her arms and wipe the glistening tears from his cheeks as she explained how he would never have to be in the dark again. How he would always be safe and protected and strong. If only, he would listen to her. If only he would be a good boy.

His voice tapered off into a low moan and his teeth clattered between hiccups, sniffles, and weeping so soft that it almost seemed as if the air were leaking out of him. He pinched his own arms, gasped for breath, and tried to silence the pounding in his head long enough to hear that scuffling sound.

It was somewhere in the darkness. Like the scrape of feet dragging slowly across the floor. Circling him, but never actually moving in for the kill.

“Daryl….”

Mama’s voice whispered so sharply that his name could have been nothing more than a quick gasp of air.

“Daryl, you’ve been a bad boy.”

The sting of the reprimanding tone made his stomach feel as though he’d just swallowed battery acid. It rose through his trachea and flooded his mouth with acrid bile as he clenched his eyes closed.

“A very bad boy.”

“I’m sorry, Mama… I’ll be good, I swear I will….”

“You let them do this to me. You let them kill me.”

The voice drew out the word kill as if it were a long sigh. And all the while it moved through the darkness, floating through the void like a disembodied spirit.

“NO! No, no, no, no. I wanted to stop it. I wanted to save you. Ask Earl, he’ll tell you, I wanted to come home and make sure….”

“You let them kill me you bad, bad boy.”

Daryl banged his head against the floor as if the dull thuds could drive Mama’s ghost from his mind. But with each new burst of pain, he saw those empty eyes… staring at him through the darkness. Judging. Accusing.

“It hurt soooo bad, Daryl. All I wanted was for them to stop. For the pain to go away. For someone to help.”

His hands were pressed tightly to the sides of his head now and he felt a pressure growing inside him. Almost as if he were swelling up like a leech. Only this pressure was cold and seemed to shred his thoughts into disjointed fragments. Past and present overlapped, memories and reality fought for dominance, and his brain felt as if it were being pulled in a thousand directions all at the same time.

But still Mama’s voice kept circling in the dark. Taunting. Jabbing with its words. Feeding the confusion and fear and pain and loathing that roiled within Daryl’s mind.

“I reckon you know what happens to bad boys, Daryl. I reckon you know all too well.”

His tears now bordered on laughter and he ripped clumps of hair from his scalp to keep his hands from scratching open his own throat. Every muscle in his body was pulled taut and the shivering that had overtook him now seemed as if it had sank into his very core.

“It’s not my fault, Mama….”

“All your fault, you naughty boy. You should’ve protected me.”

“It’s not my fault.”

This time the statement was louder and sounded more like a statement than a question. As if the pressure and trembling within were forcing the words out like bursts of escaping gas.

“You let them torture me. You allowed me to die.”

Daryl felt as if a fissure cracked through his skull and everything that had been building up gushed out into the open. The force made him spring to his feet and his voice bellowed through the darkened basement as spittle flew from the snarl that distorted his face.

“No! I was a little boy, you fuckin’ bitch! A little fuckin’ boy that you were s’posed to love and cherish and protect! I was your son but it was never fuckin’ good enough, was it? Never good enough for anything!”

Mama’s voice laughed and Daryl’s hand shot into the darkness, scrambling over the mounds of junk until it felt cold metal beneath its fingers. He snatched the object with a rattling clink that caused the image of a pipe wrench to flare in his mind.

“You were s’posed to love me, you miserable fucking cunt!”

Daryl launched the wrench toward Mama’s laughter with the flick of the wrist. It tumbled through the air and then there was a sharp crack followed by the shattering of glass. The windowpane tinkled to the ground and sunlight streamed into the basement as if it had been pressed against the blackened glass and waiting to save him all along.