Hands in the Water

They reach for me, calling to me. Whispering inside my mind. Clawing nails digging into my brain. I cannot give up, but it would be so much easier.

Look Doctor, I don't know why you think talking about it will help. No one will believe me. I'll be sent off to live out my days in a creaky old institution that somehow passes for a psychiatric hospital.

This, this won't help anyone. Not me. Not you. Nor anyone else.  I was never the kind of person who believed in supernatural beings but now I live in fear.

I sleep with one eye open and I hear the whispers in my head. Even if I cover my ears. They are still there. Talking to me.

My name is Edward. I have no need for a last name though I suppose I had one once. I'm a painter by trade. Not a very good one, but I could pay the bills with my work.

The house I live in is old, the walls are full of holes and the ceiling has peeling paint. When I bought it I had plans to fix all of that. Like my life however those plans eroded.

I remember as clearly as rainwater the first time I saw them. There was a storm directly overhead. So that the lights kept flickering and the house shook with every roar of thunder.

I was up late working on a painting. My hands and arms were caked in red paint. My shirt was speckled with it.

I decided to go to the bathroom and wash it off. My bed had white sheets and I didn't want to smear red all over them.

My bathroom wasn't all that clean, its just me in the house and after fourteen years I had become lenient with certain things. I filled the sink with water. My mind still wrapped in paint.

I put my hands into the water and that is when it happened. Something soft and cold wrapped itself around both of my hands.

I tried to jerk my hands back but I couldn't. The water was clouding up from the paint washing off my hands. Turning a watery red colour. I could only just see the outline of hands holding mine.

They were almost see through and the same red as the water but they felt real. I could feel the creases on each finger and the tightness of them holding onto me.

In a panic, I knocked out the plug with my arm. As the water disappeared, the hands released me. I pulled my hands out of the sink and saw the tiny crescent shaped dents left by fingernails.

I was shaken, in the days that followed every time I had a shower or washed paint from my arms the hands would grab me. I was terrified.

The previous owners of the house were dead and the townsfolk would think I was crazy. I began to jump at every shadow, I stopped going anywhere near water. I didn't sleep.

My work suffered, I couldn't pay the bills. They took my house and all of my paintings. I had nothing but the clothes on my back. Whenever it rained I would twitch until my muscles tensed.

Once I was walking past a puddle and I saw them. The hands in the water, reaching for me. I was tempted to let them hold me. Drag me under to my watery doom.

There was still a part of me that wasn't ready to give in to them. I saw an ad in the paper ' Doctor C.G King. Professor of Paranormal Science'. So thats where you come in to play.

Help me, tell me why these hands haunt me. Teach me to get rid of them and the whispers that I should just give in.

I... I don't know how long I've lived with them. Time is irrelevant just send them away. I don't deserve this. I'm a good man and I can't, I can't live like this anymore.

Every day my resistance starts to waver. One day whatever it is that stops me from doing what the hands want will wither away.

Would you do me a favour Doctor? When they find me floating in the water. Will you tell them I want my last painting thrown in with me?

It is a painting of the hands. Reaching out of the rippling blue of a local pool. Blood under the fingernails, skin chipping off. What I will see at the end of my life.

Oh, put away the Morphine! I'm okay for the moment, I'm not going to throw myself off the pier. Into the cold slippery embrace of the hands and the warm blackness of drowning.

Or am I?

Author's Note

This what written a long time ago. One of my finest One chapter stories.

Reviews

[JD Hyde]

Well that ruined my bath...
I had to read it twice.

[BlackRose23]

Very interesting story. It was very descriptive. I could see the hands reaching out clearly in my mind. Keep up the good work!!