Writer's Wednesday #26: Horror or Sci-Fi Genre

On my blog, I do an 'event' called Writer Wednesdays. I post a prompt and others(including me) write something based on that prompt.

     The year was 1955 when my beloved Thomas died.  Not that anyone could know just how much I loved him.  They thought I was just devastated about losing my best friend; after all we had fought over in Korea together.  I knew that I could never come forward about my true feelings for Thomas, after all, he had been shot in a bar by a man for being a ‘fairy’; for supposedly coming onto him.  Defending him would only be a confirmation of his - our - ‘perversion.’

     Thomas and I met in 1951, during the Korean War.  Being far from home and knowing that you could die at any moment makes for quick and close friends.  Bunkmates.  Lovers.  Yes, Thomas and I fell in love on war-torn Asian soil.  But it all had to be kept secret or we would both be discharged, as well as shunned by our families.

     In 1953, when the war ended and we returned home to the States, I found out that Thomas and I both hailed from Georgia.  We wrote to each other frequently and finally rented a small farmhouse in Savannah, proclaiming ourselves as bachelors.  We were happy, and there was a certain thrill in having a dirty secret we had to keep from the world.

     Until that cloudy morning in 1955 when the police arrived at my door, hats in hand, with the news that my war buddy and best friend - my secret lover - had been shot and killed.  My world shattered.  I was overtaken with grief.  Not only had I lost my Thomas, my Georgia peach, but if the stories were to be believed, he had been shot by Andrew Finney for coming onto him at the bar.  Maybe he had had too many drinks, maybe he had wanted something new, or maybe Andrew had been in a killing mood that night.  Regardless, I almost ended it several times in that house we’d shared, but always chickened out at the last minute.  I continued to live in the house, alone; the house which held so many fond memories.  Until October of 1956, when a gypsy caravan came through town.

     I saw my chance.  I visited a gypsy palm reader, begged her to bring back my Thomas.  She told me that she did not have that kind of power, nor did anyone within her caravan.  But, in their travels, they had heard tell of woman who lived deep in the Louisiana bayou that could do what I desired.  She also warned me that magic like that would come at a cost.  I didn’t give a damn, I had plenty of money; the money meant nothing to me if I could have Thomas back.

     I took the train to New Orleans shortly after the caravan left Savannah to hunt down the woman that was rumored to be able to bring back the dead.  She was not all too hard to find.  She also warned me of the price of what I was requesting.  When it came down to it in the end, the price was not nearly as steep as I had anticipated: $200 in cash and the name of someone’s life who would be traded for Thomas’s.  That wasn’t hard; Andrew Finney, the man who had shot him and destroyed my world.  The ritual was carried out and I was told that Thomas would return to me in a week; these kinds of things took time to take effect.  I took the train back home and waited.

     On the seventh day following my trip, I was sitting alone nursing a glass of whiskey when I heard it.  Footsteps, coming up the driveway.  They seemed to drag, as if the person whom they belonged to had a limp.  I heard them walk up the steps to the front porch.  A feeble knock came at the door.  My heart fluttered.  Could it truly be my Thomas, finally returned to me?

     I sat a moment longer and another knock came, slightly louder this time.  I stood and walked to the door, unlocking it and hesitating for a moment with my hand on the knob before pulling it open.  I caught sight of the person on my porch and my smile shrank.  I wanted to scream but my voice caught in my throat.  I now knew what the gypsy palm reader and bayou voodoo woman had meant when they had said that magic like this would come at a cost.

     Alas, it was my Thomas that stood on my porch, dressed in his military uniform.  But the fabric had rotted away in places and was covered in dirt.  His beautiful blonde hair, always parted on the side, was matted and falling out.  His skin was dry, pulled taut over his bones like old shriveled leather, peeling off in some places, and it had taken on a sickening grey-green color.  His nails and teeth were an awful yellow, his eyes sunken back in his skull, staring out at me.  I suddenly noticed that one of his boots was unlaced.

     I stared at him a moment longer, my mouth agape in silent horror.  “My God… what have I done?” I finally managed to utter as a putrid odor filled my nostrils.

     He silently shambled past me into the house - our house - and ventured into the kitchen.  I heard him rummaging in the cabinet, the clinking of glassware, the sink turn on and then off.  Sickening gulping noises followed as he guzzled down a glass of water and then I heard a tortured moan cross his vocal chords.

     I slumped down into my chair, still in a daze, and knocked back the rest of my whiskey in one swig.  He limped back into the room and opened his mouth; I could tell he was trying to speak.  It broke my heart to look at him, but I could not turn away, my eyes glued to the morbid creation I had helped drag from the grave.

     He finally managed to hack up some words, accompanied by some dirt encrusted phlegm.  “I’m… home… How… the pain…”

     Then he ventured upstairs and the idea of lying in bed with him made me shudder, so I stayed in my chair for the night.

     The next day Thomas wandered around the house, staring at everything like he had never seen it before, his face sometimes showing some semblance of recognition.  I contemplated what to do for the next few days.  I wished that I had never brought him back and that hurt my heart more than anything.  I also knew that no matter what, nobody could find out what was now lurking in my house.

     Thomas did try to make occasional conversation, but all that ever came out were jumbled words and dirty phlegm.  It took me nearly a month to come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t Thomas anymore, just a reanimated husk of what he had once been, a shadow of the man I had loved.  I finally settled on what to do.

     Once Thomas had laid down to sleep, I tiptoed into his room; the room that had once been ours, a room that had once been a place of love and warmth.  I grabbed my recently unused pillow from the bed.  I held it firmly between my hands and brought it down fast and hard over Thomas’s face, applying as much pressure as humanly possible.  He flailed around a bit, but did not put up much of a fight.  Before I knew it, he lay still and limp under the weight of myself and the pillow.  It was not until he stopped moving that I realized I had salty tears running down my cheeks.

     I walked downstairs in an utterly destroyed daze, into the kitchen.  I pulled the largest knife from the butcher block out and gripped it in both of my hands.  For a brief moment I pondered what the police would think when they found the corpse upstairs.  Not that it would truly matter what anybody thought now… I had lost my Thomas twice.  I was a broken man.  I shoved the blade up between my ribs.  I stumbled backwards, hitting the counter with my hip before falling to the floor, feeling my blood and life draining from my body.  Now I would be reunited with Thomas in the way we were meant to be, before I had dragged him back from the beyond.

     The police found my body a few days later; they came out due to me missing work and not answering my phone.  While doing a walkthrough of the house, they noticed the bed was unmade.  A strange odor hung in the air.  On the pillow were a mass of blonde hairs and a few strips of what looked like shriveled grey-green paper or thin leather.

Author's Note

I have mixed feelings about this one... would love some feedback!