Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Please Be a Dream
Madison
Blinding white light flashes in a disorienting rhythm, making the floor and the walls skip as I try to blink through it.
It only makes it worse.
But then, the fog starts to seep out from the cracks in the walls. And a high-pitched wail screams from above me.
I’m attacked from all sides—but not physically.
It’s all in my head, and I can’t fight it.
The wet slaps of my shoes against the black and white tile floor resounds in my head. It’s a distorted, warped, white noise as I push down with every ounce of strength I have, but just as I think I’m finally gaining distance, I collide with a wall.
“Nngh,” I groan as my face smacks into the splintered wood. A sliver pierces my nose. I wince.
My hands finally catch up with my brain and slam against the wall, two seconds too late. My nose throbs and burns. Wetness trickles out of my nostril. My cheek stings from the fresh scrape.
The wetness slips into my mouth, and I shudder at the tang of copper as it slides over my teeth and seeps into my porous tongue.
A bellowed wail sounds somewhere to my left. Or maybe my right. Jesus, is that coming from above me?
Slaps of shoes hammer on the floor. More follow. A flash of movement has my every muscle tensing, locked in place. “Shit! Fuck!” Panting breaths so close. “Oh, God, no!” someone howls. I barely hear, let alone recognize their voice through the racketing clamor blaring.
A vibrating growl accompanies. I grip the wall, curling my fingers around an exposed beam as I try to scale it, to get the hell away from whatever’s coming. My feet leave the ground just as a shadow moves through the drowning fog.
All I see is black. Flashes of white. No eyes. Just black, soulless holes. My chest heaves and contracts as air whistles out of me, faster than I can replenish it. Sweat slicks my palms. I can’t look away from the horrifying creature coming right for me.
Oh, my God, I’m going to die.
My breath stutters. Tears spring to my eyes. I slip from the wall and cower, curling into a ball. Wind whips past me. The flash of cold amongst the heat singing my skin makes me jerk and whimper.
Then someone—something—much heavier, bigger, all-consuming presses closer. There’s a shift of fabric against my soaked jeans. They stick to my legs, making my skin itch and crawl even worse. Hot breath blows in my face, inches away from my hands and forearms.
My eyes are squeezed shut so tight, I see white lines zigging and zagging behind my closed lids. The pressure in my skull magnifies, my optic nerve the radial point.
A voice hitches. Then, a cackle unlike anything I’ve ever heard before blares in my face, right on me. Into me.
A shriek of my own rips from my vocal cords as spittle flies across my cheeks, my lips. Inside my mouth. Coolness douses me in an instant. Liquid pools over my head and flows downward. I inhale and splutter, choking on water as I breathe it in.
It keeps coming.
It doesn’t stop.
My arms flail, reaching and grasping for purchase anywhere. Somewhere.
I can’t breathe. I can’t see. My heart jumps into my throat, hammering away, reminding me how real this is.
The suffocating presence looming disappears in an instant. So does the water dousing me. My eyes fly open—and I’ve never regretted an action more.
I should’ve stayed in the dark.
I should’ve never walked through the doors of Mayhem.
My eyes lock on the figure at the end of the hall. It’s… oh, Jesus, it’s tall. He takes a step forward with a sharp, grating noise. The strobe lights make my head pulse, and my eyes burn as I try to focus.
The figure is leering, head cocked to the side as it comes closer.
Another step.
I press back into the wall. It doesn’t make me feel any safer. My feet press and drag along the slick, chipped, tile floor as I scramble to push myself upright.
I force my eyes away from whatever is coming for me. To escape. With my life.
A life he wants for himself.
More screams and rips of terror echo out. More high-pitched, booming laughter. Taunting bellows.
It’s all too much. I’m dizzy and disoriented with the intensity of it all.
The water beneath my hands makes it impossible to gain any traction. I can feel the figure gaining distance with every wheezing breath. The scraping gets louder. More pronounced. Like the sharpest nails on a chalkboard. Each long, drawn-out decibel another stitch in the fate I sealed for myself.
One second, I was safe. In distance, but maybe not in sanity.
The next, the most haunting, horrific, entrancing clown I have ever seen is in my face, large mouth spread into a manic, crazed smile, two full rows of pointed, white teeth on display and flashing in the light.
My eyes dart over every inch of his white-painted face. Over the coal black smudges around his eyes and mouth. The way they flicker up in distorted lines, adding to the horror.
The collar around his neck is black and frilly, shredded and sleek with something… oh, God. My stomach revolts, and the urge to hunch over is nearly too strong to resist.
But if I move, I’ll touch…
“Scream for me.” A wickedly long tongue sneaks out and swipes across my stinging cheek. My eyes slam shut on a pathetic whimper just as fingers delve into the hair on the top of my head and yank, making me do just as he demanded.
His mouth stretches even wider. Shit, that’s not normal. Is he real?
I never believed in ghosts until now, but hell.
His tongue scrapes over my chin. My bottom lip wobbles.
I tremble and moan. Small whimpers that are barely audible.
Long, thin fingers clasp my throat and steal what little oxygen I had left. My eyelids fly open in a panic—a worse one than I’m already wracked with. The clown in front of me beams. His white eyes glow, nearly iridescent.
Tears spring to my eyes as he clamps down on the sides of my neck. My blood chugs. I can feel each heavy pulse as it slows, drawing to a stop.
My lungs deflate, contract. Scream.
His fingers tighten, grazing the hair at my nape.
“Sweet dreams, darlin’.”
The first thing my brain registers is that it’s quieter. The high-pitched wail is gone, and in its place is a deep, thundering bass. It’s heavy, vibrating into me, into my lungs.
Breathing hurts. My throat burns and aches. I swallow the lump down, but it stays lodged against my uvula.
My eyes are much harder to force open. To see what I saw before.
Please be a dream.
I lean forward, only to be slammed back at my efforts. I wriggle my shoulders, feeling tight bands wrapped around my biceps. My stomach.
Hell, my feet, too?
Dropping my head until my chin bumps my… My eyes fly open at the feel of my bare skin. I blink through the lights still flashing and the fog still lingering.
My stomach is contracted, heaving and waving with my stuttered pants.
My jeans are long gone, leaving only my wet boxers plastered to my thighs.
“Welcome back,” a heavy voice drawls in a… southern accent? My head jerks up at the sound, finding the clown pacing the space opposite me. The room we’re in resembles a regular motel room, only… not.
What once was wallpaper is now bare, ripped open walls, gaps in wood separating rooms. There’s a bed. It’s stained. Black speckles, red puddles, and… yellow blobs.
A rope hangs from the banister. A gut-punch reminder of the suicides that happened here.
Evil churns all around me, forcing itself into me. Tainting my blood. Blackening my organs. Eradicating my soul.
I glance down. But it’s still so impossible to see with that godforsaken, flashing light. My eyes burn so badly. The tears never stop flowing.
“Please,” I whisper. My voice cracks. A loud cackle booms out.
I wince and hunch inward. The sound creeps up my spine, slithering slow and daunting. A slow descent into madness.
That scraping sounds again. A glint of silver. The clown… shit, what was his name? It was creepy. Made my skin crawl.
He lifts his arm into the air, casually swinging… oh, Jesus, is that an axe? That’s an axe…
Flashes of red streak as he swings it around. My eyes draw toward the wooden handle, where there’s even more red. It’s stained into the grain.
It’s fake blood. It’s fake, it’s fake, it’s fake.
My yelp is muffled when he lunges, the handle of his axe aiming right for my mouth. It slams against my teeth, rocking my head back as they clank together. He pries my mouth apart and shoves the wooden handle inside.
Copper.
Oh, my God, it’s real blood.
I start hyperventilating. My vision swarms as I choke, gagging as he shoves it deeper, the curved end splintering my flesh. My throat contracts, preventing entry, even as vomit threatens, creeping up.
My eyes are wide, blurry with wetness as I stare at… Static.
Static the clown.
His black-painted lips are stretched thin, those long, sharp, white teeth on full display as he holds the bloodied axe head in his hand, sharp edge pressed against his covered palm.
He rotates it, twisting the handle inside my mouth—a mouth far too small for such a large piece of wood. I whimper and blubber, trying to speak around the wood gagging me, my eyes never straying from his white ones.
“What was that?” He presses closer and yanks out the handle. I gasp, splutter, and retch as vomit spews from between my lips and splatters on the worn, shredded, exposed carpet below.
With the strobe flashing behind him, Static comes into view in fractured segments.
A black and white striped shirt with the collar donning his neck… I shiver, my body twitching from the force. His hair is black and thick and pushed up into thick spikes in haunting disarray.
Pants with one half a solid black, the other striped to match his shirt. Thick, black boots with what I think are buckles… I crane my neck, but from the way I’m pinned against something, I can’t make out more than that.
He steps around me, drawing closer. Hot air wafts across my face, and the dampness of my tears only heightens the sensation.
I try to squeeze my legs together against the pressure in my bladder, but it surmounts my capabilities. And the sharp scrape of that blade’s edge against the back of my neck followed by my hollowed screams has my bladder releasing.
At first, the warmth is almost comforting against the haunting chill of the room, but then, my lagging brain registers that I’m peeing all over myself, and I start sobbing.
They wrack my body. My lungs concave. My ribs protrude from my body. All as my urine streams down and soaks into the carpet. The smell… oh, Jesus, the smell wafts into the air, lingering with the fog.
A deep inhale sounds right next to my ear—a sharp whistling noise. The drag of a nose. A tongue. That axe…
All marrying to demolish my psyche.