Stains Of Loneliness

Chapter 6

She gripped Albert's neck tightly and lifted him up. Her gaze darted around the room, looking for the ideal murder weapon to end him. Her hollow eyes met an unlit fireplace. Albert begins to panic and sweat profusely. The thing that scares him the most is fire. He saw his parents burn down to ashes in a car. His mother pushed him out of the car before it crashed. The horrific scene flashed before his eyes once more.

"To be honest, it's hilarious how your poetry began with Linda and ended with her, mirroring your pathetic life. People like you do not deserve to live! I honestly wish I could have swapped my lifespan with yours so that I could spend more time with my lovely family the way it should have been." She threw the book into the fireplace.

Tania snapped her fingers and lit the fireplace. She threw him into the fire and let it burn his skin until blood poured out. He screamed aloud in agony. He coughed incessantly while struggling to breathe. He started panting loudly. "s-stop," he said while wheezing. 'So this is how hell feels,' he thought, shedding a tear that quickly evaporated. 'I'm dying now; I don't feel any physical pain, only pain in my heart as a train of memories passes through my mind. My friends, family, Andrew, and Linda are all smiling and looking at me. Mom and dad, I'm joining you; please make room for me. But, on second thought, they are in heaven, while I... will undoubtedly end up in hell.' He thinks and smiles as he delves deep into his inner world.

Just when he was losing hope and giving up on his body, he was yanked out of the fireplace by a powerful force. He struggled to open his eyes and saw her eerie figure through his blurred vision. He was floating in the air with blood dripping from his burns onto the carpet. He felt stinging pain as air touched his burns. She continued to choke him. Slowly, his senses finally came back, he heard her say,

"I had a family and a long life ahead of me. My children, Sydney and Nicole, were very small. They had no idea what death was! They were just four years old. And my husband couldn't go a day without me. He now has to live his entire life in sadness! And as for me, I can't see my children grow up in front of me, can't hear them say mama, and can't feel their warmth when they hug me! I can see my husband embracing my photo and wailing as if there were no future. It breaks my heart that I can't soothe him. Every day, I have to see him like this! Every day, I witness my kids run to their father to ask him one question: "Where is mommy?" It is just so hard for me to watch them in this state." She cries.

Albert begins to lose consciousness as a result of the constant strangling.

" Do you even realize what you've done?" She shrieks. "Or were you too busy with your dear little Linda?" She got cut off by a doorbell. The door flung open as he fell to the ground.

His throat felt okay, and his vision was clear now. He wasn't breathing heavily anymore. He felt relieved, as if a tremendous burden had been removed. He stood up without difficulty, and his wounds vanished. He felt like he was reborn.

"Surprise!", he heard as he stood up, only to be faced with Linda. The real one.
"What happened? Why do you look so frightened?" Linda asked with concern.
"I am being attacked by Tania's ghost, who took your face and visited me. Can you see her?" he asked, gesturing towards the back of the room. "Wait, Tania, is it you again? Cut it with your dumb disguise; you can't fool me anymore!' he exclaimed, turning to her.

"Is this some sort of sick joke?!" she stated as her expression darkened. "What will she be doing here, huh?!"

"If you are the real one, then..." Turning back to the point where the ghost was, Albert was clouded with confusion.
He went around his whole house, but she was nowhere to be found. No blood stains. fireplace unlit. No broken glass anywhere. Everything was back to normal.
"I swear to God, you've gone mad. Have guilt and PTSD gotten to you? Are you regretting it? Because you can't go to the police! You know very well that if you spill, even your future will be spent rotting in jail like mine."
He couldn't stop trembling with fear. Denying her suspicions, he told her that he wasn't feeling well, playing it off as a nightmare of his imagination. Linda, upset with him, rebukes as she bursts that she came to visit him after such a long time that she put off her work for him, but now he is playing with her feelings.

"I gave you so many missed calls and received no response. So I asked Andrew about your whereabouts, and he told me you lived here! Also, out of all the nice bungalows, you had to choose this filth?" She scowled.

"You just left your house without telling me." "Am I not a valuable friend to you?" She started sobbing.

Not wanting to have to deal with her in his state and not wishing Linda to have an uncanny experience during her visit, he sent her off, saying,

"Now is not the right time to tell me your sob story." He rolled his eyes.

A fight ensued. She screamed these lines: I wish to never see you again! You and I are done. Then she stomped away, wiping her tears.

Albert thought to himself, Now she won't visit me again, so Tania cannot harm her. He grinned while shutting his door.

He was sure that whatever he experienced wasn't fake. Albert grows dizzy as he proceeds to try to relax by assuring himself that it was just a nightmare. Head raised, he walks inside slowly, one inch at a time, to see that everything is still normal, not noticing that when he closed the door, the locks went off on all the doors and windows. Proceeding his steps inside, his vision goes blank. His ears begin ringing at an excruciating level. He felt his chest tighten. The air around him was slowly becoming damp and hazy. He was getting a strong, rotting stench; it was unbearable and incredibly suffocating to be inhaled.

Shaking his head, he finds himself, not inside his home. He widens his eyes to catch a glimpse of...

An infinite void of darkness... There was only one light source, which resembled the moon. He looked down and saw...blood. There was blood everywhere. He screamed at what he saw next. His body was floating in the endless ocean of blood. There were several other bodies, including Tania's. The sight was devastating.

He continued gaping around, trying to clear his vision, not believing his surroundings, only to come to a stop as he froze. A small distance away. A figure slowly floated to him. Tania.

She came closer and halted right in front of him. Flashing him a wicked smile,

"Welcome to My World"

Her voice echoed everywhere, resonating in the void of emptiness as they came back, sounding louder and sending shivers down his spine.

"Oh, and don't worry about your Linda; I'm going to take great care of her!"

"Also, it's a shame that you died on that carpet before you even met your real Linda!" She giggled like a maniac. Her spooky laughter reverberated endlessly.

'I'm cursed to be lonely for eternity.' He shed a tear. Then unconsciousness overcame...
Never spotted again in real life. Stuck in the miserable world forever. A void so empty, never imaginable, a place so dreadful in his life. Surrounded by loneliness.

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