Walking into that haunted house

Horror shop thrill ride moment

The time slowing and flowing like cooling lava

Flash photos in the minds eye as I move with uncanny speed yet

Slow so slow

Looking for the partner I know is inside

As I move through a garage crowded with life’s detritus and the family car

I hear the moan

Zombie on my left

Dawn of the Dead in my peripheral

My mouth o-ing out and my eyes wider, wider

He is covered in blood

It is on every inch of him that I can see

Like some bad grindhouse movie effects it is splattered on the wall behind him

Down the front of his holed up shirt

On his head and on his shoes

His face though is the most cosmic parody of all

Eyes stabbed out

Teeth knocked out

Bulges where none should be

Flat where some should bulge

He speaks then

Just loud enough for me to hear over the pounding of my heart

“He stabbed me in the eye”

“He stabbed me in the body”

“He stabbed me and stabbed me and stabbed me and he wouldn’t let me get up”

“If I stood he promised to murder me completely by stabbing me in my heart”

This hissing calm voice coming from this folded up discarded pile of humanity

Arrowed directly into the bottom rocker of my spine

So calm and relaxed as if we chatted over hot tea and biscuits

I learned his name and that he was 73 years old and that he was married and that his wife was

STABBED TOO

Time speeding back up, I discovered the name of his attacker, a future son-in-law who they shared their house with and  moving in a blur again I plunged into the house

Freak out freak show freakatronic shit storm

She lay on the carpet near the door

Stabbed in the neck

Lake of blood that she had crawled from in the kitchen rivering into the space she occupied

Neck compressed by her blood soaked house dress she talked to me too in the same detached way as Hubby, noting that she was scared but revealing what had occurred and sounding apologetic about the mess on the carpet and doors and hallway and everywhere she was 73 too and dying so I did what I could and screamed at the medics to hurry the fuck up and they were saved and the man who did it was captured and all was so Brothers Grimm in the end I kept seeing the moving jaw of the old man whose eye was torn from his head by the hand of evil and I had to see the weapon a long unfixed bayonet K-bar knife with grooved blade and wooden handle about 12 inches long covered in even more blood and once again I stand in some strange place and another piece of me is chipped out and thrown into the void and I can only be vindicated in that when I get home I will love my family with my heart and shelter them with my peace, and take care of them and never ever hurt them.

 

 

©2011 Harry Fagel all rights reserved