One Word Empty

A Story by DFalls

A Psych Horror piece

I celebrated my last birthday alone. Several of my last birthdays, actually. A few Christmases, and some Thanksgivings, too. No, no, no this isn’t some powder keg of too-long-lidded emotion masquerading as a revelating cry of loneliness. Loneliness has its purpose. You find who you are in solitude. No, this is to celebrate the value of the little things in life. I buy a single slice of cake for myself, turn off the lights in my living room, spark a fire on the single candle atop my cake, and smile. My chin reflects the small radiant, red-orange glow of the candle and feels the near-absent but constant emittance of its heat. It’s the silence that gets you sometimes, but it’s in those moments, those moments of reflection, we can truly appreciate- a form materialized before me, stopping my mind from speaking. In that moment, with the air stilled, the air conditioner shut off, the cacophony of the world outside hushed, she appeared.

She sits across from me at the table. Her hair falls like liquid night over her gray face, an ominous shroud it gives her. I see through the slits of her hair at her eyes, pupilless and devoid of color, off-white like single pocked eggs. They stare straight ahead, without intention, and holding every single one. Her lips, full and stormy gray, are closed. She never speaks. A smock, frayed and dirty is all that houses her body, so thin was she, I could the outline of her ribcage and shoulder blades shift as she breathed. Her hands rest upon her full belly, bloated with pregnancy, and gargantuan in proportion to her thin wired frame. She sat hunched forward, for on her back sat an enlarged bag made of drab leather, and tied loose with string, its mass at the least double her size, two straps braced over her shoulders for holding.

My heartbeat begins to drum upon the seeing of her, and I hear its pounding rhythm echo in my ears as I keep staring. I try to turn away, but my eyes are cemented, as if instinctively, as if the moment I look away is the moment my life will cease. The curiosity of their mysteries leaves a nauseating iron taste in my mouth, sickening me. As I keep staring my fingers start to tremble to the thick melody of trepidation permeating the room. A bead of sweat rolls down my cheek, and as if seeing my fear eek out from me, the ghoul-woman grabs the string of the sack and pulls, letting loose whatever dark contents exist within the bag’s orifice.

I let out a compulsory gasp, a knife of fear piercing my back with inextricable violence, leaving me paralyzed to my chair. From the abyssal hole I watch the room gets penetrated with the formless emulsions of several shades. Transient, dark plumes of smokeless blurs, each a different size than the other, yet all of the same shrouded substance. The glow of the candle wanes and flickers, losing life underneath my agape mouth, the air of my still screams escaping outward from me. My hands white-knuckle the chair arms, squeezing till my fingers, now blanched with pressure, begin to burst, small capillaries slipping bits of blood from the edges of my nailbeds.

The darkening things hover around the woman, in séance, as she tilts her head backward. A splash hits the floor underneath her, and my blood thickens in realization of her going into labor. The reverberations of my heartbeats screams ring as I watch the abomination of perverted birth take place before me. One of the shadows slips underneath her, and upon her final push, catches a slithering liquid form. Nausea and the taste of bile tract from stomach to the back of my throat, and the woman moves her head to look at me, as the shadowed thing places the slimed protrusion in her arms. The woman looks to this ghastly mass, and smiles. She turns to me, and the shadows do as well. The inebriation of truth thrusts upon me at the sight of their now formed faces. The gray thing looks at me, cooing as it does so, with the same revelation upon its visage as the rest. In the mute air I feel my soul crush under the vise of the truth pervading in front of me. The woman, the beings, the slick gray thing, they all had my face. My face, placed upon them. I feel the brand of the inevitable dread knowledge that the faces were where they belonged. Where I belonged.

A rupture began to rise where my soul once rested, and I could not hold back its voluptuous rapture upon the room. I laughed in acceptance, a laugh that echoed and struck in that dead emptiness, that pierced at the bodiless terror and perverted light of revelation. And in that dissonant cavalcade I looked up, into the voidless nothing, and saw only that one word, that word of resolute and full vacuity, the word of which was her name, and as the candle consumed its remaining source of wick, I screamed it aloud: “Silence!” I screamed. “Silence! SILENCE!”

© 2015 DFalls

Author's Note

Been awhile since I've done horror, or rather, attempted. Tell me what you think, how you felt, what'd you change...if it's a piece of crap, I wanna know. If it's a diamond in the rough, tell me what to chip away so it'll shine. And above all, thanks for taking the time to read it. -DFalls

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Featured Review

Dhanadeepa Dixit

I love the language in this story, the descriptions are very all very spooky and detailed. And you used several very uncommon words like "cacophony" "revelating" "inebriation". I don't believe I've ever actually seen revelating used. Or cacophony either. So it's nice to see these words make their way out of the closet.

My only issue with this story is that it strikes me a little overdone at points. Several of the phrases, while lovely and imaginative, strike me as a little forced.

"No, no, no this isn’t some powder keg of too-long-lidded emotion masquerading as a revelating cry of loneliness". I love that you used such obscure and very cool words here, but it does seem a little overdone.

"As I keep staring my fingers start to tremble to the thick melody of trepidation permeating the room". I see what your trying to do here, but " thick melody of trepidation" is a little hard to imagine. perhaps an air of trepidation, but a melody does'nt sound right to me.

"I let out a compulsory gasp, a knife of fear piercing my back with inextricable violence". this is fine, except for the use of "inextrecable". Its a good word, but your whole story has a very spooky and dark feel to it, and this word seems a little out of place. I had to stop and make sure I knew what it meant actually. But a different one I think would make your story a little smoother.

Overall, I do this story alot, I like that you tried to use great words, took a risk and used extremely original and imaginative language(perverted light is a VERY cool phrase, I liked that alot, and plenty others (:). But I think simplifying this a little would make it alot smoother, and scarier.

Bahut Darwanna (;