Chattering Monkeys

Orpheus · Joined: 20 Apr 2007 Posts: 250

Drink.

A flurry of images flashed before his eyes, and not a single one he recognized. Where was he when it all began? It wasn’t at his meager studio apartment where he lived alone, where the exposed pipes rusted and leaked, and where he would hear his drunken neighbor scream in a language he didn’t understand and beat his wife. It wasn’t where the knotted floorboards creaked in their own form of misery, where the only luxuries were a moth-eaten couch that was missing a leg and an iron-framed bed that was past its prime. Where through the windows, brown with dust, was no view except the façade of decrepit mill, vomiting puffs of some sort of toxic gas that could, and did kill any bird daring enough to venture above. God only knows what that sort of pollution would do to the people who lived in his apartment complex, and the children who went to school nearby. He always thought it would one day kill him, but it was the only place where a man of little importance to society could call home. But this isn’t where it started.

You must drink.

Nor was it during his midday walk. He would have normally been in his office where he worked for a local newspaper, if only he hadn’t been fired from that job a few months before. To his misfortune, a bill banning any negative press against government officials was passed on October 5th 2011, the day before he published an article revealing a scandal involving a New York state senator and his policies about gang violence. It was a story that could have changed the way politics runs as a whole, but instead it got him fired and forced him to remain unemployed. So instead of making the world a better place with his writing, the man walked the streets, forced to watch and listen to the very things he tried to stop. There was violence in the streets, children drinking, and old men in shabby clothing begging for change. All of these things had become routine in the last few months he lived here, and he realized he couldn’t help anyone now.

Drink now!

After that his memory was hazy. It was dark out, and the surrounding area no longer seemed familiar to him. He would normally be afraid of what could happen to him, but in the last few months he stopped caring about his own life. At times he even wished that a shady figure would jump out of the shadows and put him out of his misery. Then finally it happened. An unseen stranger slid out of an alley and struck him bluntly in the back of his head. There weren’t any memories after that… none at all.

“Drink now or you’ll fucking die!”

The daze lifted enough for the man to realize he was lying on the ground, but he couldn’t seem to feel what appeared to be a cold slate floor. He stretched a hand out to examine the ground, but it seemed like he touched nothing more than air. There was another peculiar thing, too. The man couldn’t see his own hand. There were other things in the room he could see. There was a woman kneeling on the floor directly in front of him she was naked and chained, and her body was visibly covered with bruises and cuts. Someone had beaten her horrifically. Tears streamed down her face, washing away a thin layer of dirt and grime.

There was a man standing next to him. It sounded like this was the man who had been yelling at him. He couldn’t see any more of the man than his rough sneakers. What was he yelling about, anyway? The man couldn’t understand what he was supposed to drink.

He looked around the room, if that’s what it was. The shadows were heavy, cloaking nearly every corner of the space. He strained his eyes to try to take in more of his surroundings and noticed one thing of particular interest. There was a body lying somewhere behind the man standing to his left. He couldn’t distinguish many details, but it seemed to be lying in a pool of black liquid, and it was definitely not moving. He shouldn’t have felt too surprised, considering the half-dead woman in front of him, but this body seemed more familiar. When his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw the body’s face and realized why it was so familiar. The dead body was his own.

Panic swept over the man on the ground. He must have been dreaming. That was the only logical explanation. He looked down again at where his hand should have been, and this time he could see a faint shadow of an arm. He strained his neck to look at himself. There was no body, just a dim shadow. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but there weren’t any other words he could think of to describe his current state.

“Drink, God damn you!”

With that he finally understood what he was supposed to do. The shadow crawled forward on all fours and sank his fangs into the dying woman’s neck… and he drank.

Mechanical Bunny · Site Admin Joined: 19 Apr 2007 Posts: 223

Creeeeepy!! I like it. Are you going to continue it or is it a short story?

Orpheus · Joined: 20 Apr 2007 Posts: 250

i had no idea where to go after this, so until I figure something out I'm just going to stop.