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Chapter 1

Haunted

I'm afraid to go to sleep. I have these nightmares you see, they keep coming back, night after night, haunting me. I'm dreaming about abhorrent trains from the underworld where I have no place and still I have to get on it, not knowing where it will take me and what will happen to me during the journey. And I'm dreaming about sitting in a sauna-like room, naked, together with other naked people, we belong together somehow, and then, a man enters the room. He guns us down with an automatic rifle and a millisecond later there's just naked flesh and blood and bodily substances, all smeared together in such a gore it masks any resemblance with human remains.
          There's no way you could tell that what you behold was once living, breathing people. What meets the eye is just a violent explosion of pinkish white skin, red flesh, white bones, dark red blood, and a strange greyish-white substance, like a mixture of brain matter and floating fat. The absence of clothes or any kind of fabric means there's nothing there to absorb the liquids. Some of them blend together, some of them pour down and pool up oddly separated from each other. Together they're generating a wholeness that, if you could watch it out of context, creates an image that is stunningly beautiful in its colours and structure – still, as there's just no way to avoid seeing it all for what it really is, it is a horrific sight.
          The man with the rifle approaches me. As he reaches the bench where I lay he sits down right next to me. He lifts me up and he holds me. He lets his fingers run down my arm, touching it in a way that reminds me of how a loving parent can touch its child, to comfort it and make it feel safe and secure. My arm is covered with blood and other bodily fluids. That makes his touch feel even smoother, more pleasurable – amiable somehow. So kind. "Almost", I find myself thinking, "almost satisfying, in an asexualised way". Yes I'm alive still, I don't how I can be: I should've been dead, dissolved beyond recognition like all the others, but I'm not. I'm just badly wounded and I have trouble breathing due to all the blood and fluids pouring down my throat. I try to lift my head, carefully, just a tiny bit, to get some air. I have to be very careful now with every movement I make, because I know that if the man realises I'm not dead he will throw me down and execute me.
          I wake up in fear not knowing where I am. The mare of night strangles my soul in her embrace for yet a few seconds, then I recall the familiarity of my own bedroom walls. I look at the clock. Usually when I wake up it's 4 am, or 5 am or, if I'm lucky, its 6 am. 6 am means I can allow myself to get up. 6 am makes me happy.

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A new evening is here. It's raining. The darkness outside is so intense you can't see your own hand in front of you. I enjoy evenings like these, sometimes I wish time could stand still so the rainy dark evening would go on forever. That would, of course, also prevent the coming of the night. But time passes, of course, and night falls, of course. I stay up late, thinking that it might help me sleep deeper, fall into a dreamless sound and safe sleep. Way past midnight I finally, finally, feel somewhat tired. I tuck myself in and as I fall asleep I have a feeling that this night the mare will leave me alone.
          I wake up. Something has awoken me. At first I don't know what it is but then ... I sense a presence in the room next to my bedroom. It's dark so I can't see what it is but I can feel it, and, I can hear it. Somehow I just know what it is that I’m hearing. Its demons, hundreds of them, I can hear them crawling all of over the walls like cockroaches. Their presence wouldn't be so terrifying if it weren't for the noise they're making. I've never heard anything like it before, and yet I know that it's the silent screams of souls entrapped in-between worlds.
          I lie in my bed, the horror I feel freezes me up. I want to, I try to, lift my hand to touch the Cross I'm always wearing on my necklace. I focus all my energy into performing this one movement, but the fear, the absolute fear, is so overwhelming I can't move a muscle. So I just lie there, all still and quiet, paralyzed, listening to their screams, sensing their constant crawling up and down the walls, picturing in my mind how they might look like, hoping – praying – they won't enter my bedroom. Their screams are of a frequency beyond measure, like their voices lie on a level much higher and at the same time much lower than any living being is able to utter, or should be able to hear.
          But I hear them, I wish to God I didn't, but I do. And I'm thinking it's like their screams aren't just random, it's like they're communicating with each other. And it's like they're so absorbed by this internal interaction they aren't aware of anything else. I'm grateful for this because I know, I don't know how I can know this, I just do, that if they should hear me, or sense me somehow, they would come for me, to feed off of my soul in some kind of desperate hope that such an attachment with the living can help ease their own agony, even if it's just for the short moment when my soul still resides within a live body. In an attack like that their individual shapes would transform and they'd all become parts in a large unified body, horrific beyond comprehension.
          I can't move. I'm wondering how long this will go on. The next thing I know I wake up and it's 6 am. They are gone. 6 am makes me happy.